I stopped eating meat for ethical reasons, and after a couple of decades it makes me ill, presumably because my gut flora no longer tolerates it. So any reason to not eat meat can become a health-related specification, given time.
From the sounds of it I'm nowhere near as sensitive to it as you and bifrost.
Animal torture (seeing trucks with bleeding pigs on the highway) and not liking meat very much anyway. These days I can add environmental concerns (I was a bit ignorant about that 20 years ago). I just quit cold turkey 20 years ago and I don't miss it. Sometimes I try it (only when travelling; we haven't cooked any in our home for 20 years) and then remember that it wasn't great in the first place; it is ok in an indian or thai curry but then I don't really see the benefit over vegetarian options either.
I like to cook and always have so I had never any issues making exciting food without meat. Most things we cook with we grow in our garden; we could stand a very long time without buying food if we would try which I find another advantage as for meat we would need a lot more land and effort than we have now.
Totally anecdotal, but I was a vegetarian for 12 years (since childhood). A year after I added meat to my diet, I developed Ulcerative Colitis (I was already genetically predisposed).
I have always hated the taste of meat. My pet theory is that some bodies simply can't handle it.
My choice isn’t about health or evolution or talking points. It just doesn’t feel good to me. I’m comfortable with being empirically wrong, and I actually held off from making the transition because I thought it made no sense to stop eating meat. I liked hunting and spear fishing. I stopped caring if it made sense or not at some point though because it simply didn’t feel good anymore.
I don’t know better than anyone. I do know that I buy plant based meats occasionally because I don’t want to eat real meat — not because I want anyone to see me buying it. Come to think of it, I sincerely doubt anyone gives any shits what’s in my shopping cart. If anything they’d think I’m an idiot for buying pink plant slime for ridiculous prices.
Ironically I think people who don’t eat animals actually don’t like telling people (certainly not in person, though on the internet on a site like HN it can lead to interesting conversations), because people such as yourself make it into something it isn’t. I avoid mentioning it and when it does come up, people seem to think they’re entitled to an explanation of a) why I’d do that and b) how I avoid being super unhealthy.
Sometimes it’s a fairly benign, uninteresting facet of one’s life and there’s no reason to conflate it with a superiority complex or knowing better than “basically everyone who lived and died since forever”.
I drive a large SUV. If I was trying to virtue signal I should probably start there.
Being vegetarian really changed my "biology" and "mentality". After a few years I was super sensitive to meat. Could smell it, even just broth, in food. It would make me somewhat sick if I ate it. I think you loose enzymes needed to break it down. Meat stopped being food to me. Was not hungry for it, did not think mmmmm when I smelled it. A few more years and I was repulsed by site of raw meat. When I saw chicken on bone all I could think of was muscles and bones in my own arm and how I wouldn't eat that!
I started (and ended) being vegetarian for health reasons. Somewhere along the way I concluded it was morally wrong to eat meat esp mammals. No one convinced me, it just arose from mental and physical changes. I was / am kind of shocked I feel that way.
After 12-14 years being vegetarian I started eating meat again. I still believe it is morally wrong. I actually went to aqurium to tell fish that I was sorry that I was going to start eating them. Guess I was resolving guilt i felt. I struggle a lot with depression. After trying many things with no success, I decided I needed meat. Can't be sure correlation, but health is better now. I feel guilty eating animals, but I'm selfish enough/depression sucks enough for me to put my health before (some of) my morals.
I don't eat meat because I once butterflied a turkey for dinner, cutting out the backbone and removing the giblets, and I became physically sick when it dawned on me what I was doing. My view is, if I can't butcher something, I probably shouldn't be eating it.
I completely agree. The primary reason to not eat meat is that it's inherently unethical (factory farm or not). But a lot of people don't feel that way, so any argument that will persuade them to eat less (or no) meat works in my book.
I feel you. I stopped eating meat for 40 years for the same reason. But... they are on the same food chain we are, and they’d eat us in a heartbeat, right?
That perfectly sums up why I stopped eating meat. There was no great moral outrage, and I don't yell at friends who eat meat. I just decided that I was no longer comfortable with my money funding processes that I found objectionable.
I stopped eating meat at the start of this year after reading "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Saffran Foer. My primary concerns were ethical. I'm not necessarily morally opposed to eating meat, but I am opposed to the inhumane conditions of factory farming.
I am shocked at how easy it was to stop. I always pictured some long and tormented inner battle, but the book made the necessity of the decision self-evident. I eat meat maybe once per month now, a 99% reduction in intake, with no significant physical or psychological struggle whatsoever.
I've eaten less than 10 fish in my entire life. I don't like it at all. I haven't eaten any meat in 15 years. I don't miss it at all. I also don't miss any of the health problems that went away after I stopped eating meat.
From the sounds of it I'm nowhere near as sensitive to it as you and bifrost.
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