Going Veggie

It's always interesting to me to hear why people "go veggie". The other day I was online searching for some recipes and I stumbled upon a series of links that brought me to a page called The Vegetarian Resource Group. After just taking a quick look around I've already found it to be very promising (highlights include cool articles, statistics, a quiz rating your "level of vegetarianism", a restaurant guide, and tons of information on basically everything veg*n). The really exciting thing, though, was the group's annual essay contest (more info. here). There's a list of past winners' essays, which really got me thinking about when I decided to stop eating meat--and exactly what led to it. It was neat to see vegetarians and vegans of all ages writing about why they made the switch, or even just talking about an aspect of their veggie-fied lives. Browsing through the essays, I saw people who wrote about becoming vegetarian for health or environmental reasons, and people who told stories of traumatic experiences. People who had realizations thanks to strangers. Animal-loving people who simply came to realize that they didn't want to eat something that had once been as alive as themselves. I read through so many reasons, and with each passing word I found myself nodding along, thinking about my own vegetarianism, many years in the making. I realized I can't really pinpoint one event that caused my own switch, except it just suddenly felt like the only right way to live. I love hearing other vegetarian/vegan's stories because they make me reflect and I feel insanely happy to be a vegetarian all over again.