I try to be as vegetarian as possible not because i think its more healthy, or because i don't like meat. I do like it very much. I don't think its is necessarily more healthy.

I quit eating meat most of the time because i don't like the way animals are treated on most farms. If I was going to choose to eat meat for moral reasons, i would eat beef and lamb here but not pork or chicken unless it raised on a free range farm. Meanwhile here in Australia most sheep and cattle are raised out in the fields. However there's still plenty of cruelty in their lives. Such being shipped in awful conditions to foreign countries where they can be subjected to the most obscene cruelty if they survive the trip. Of course there is cruelty here in our own abattoirs and on farms but not everywhere. But basic cruelty is part of an farm animals life. Branding, docking of tales, shearing, mulesing, and so on. Its a hard life being a farm animal. Fish live most of their lives in freedom, so long as its not farmed. I think the salmon i eat is farmed in the sea. That's probably not as bad as being farmed in a tank. I avoid seafood from asian countries though i am not sure their conditions are worse than ours. Here i try to avoid fish farmed fish as much as possible. I got my own chickens and ducks for my own eggs but my chickens ended up being eaten by snakes. I haven't got anymore. The ducks can fight off the snakes and they have done well but i don't really like their eggs so much. I only eat chicken about once a year and then i buy a free range chicken. I try to buy free range eggs.

I am not happy about the way dairy cows are treated but i can't go without milk. I wanted my own goat but was voted down by others who live here. The neighbour currently has a goat and kid. They are so sweet but they live all day in a smallish pen. When i have animals, i try to let them free range as much as possible. I'd put my goat on a peg and move it around the property if i had one. My ducks go where they like. I still feel bad about stealing their eggs but if i let them hatch, i would have to kill them. Mostly they are males. Its not possible to find homes for them all.

Its a shame that people don't know or care more about the cruelty animals are subjected to on a daily basis throughout their lives. But that's human nature to turn a blind to what conflicts with our own interests and desires.

Probably not an aversion, just that every muscle and joint in my body gets inflamed. It takes 3 or 4 days to settle back down. It's crazy!!! nobody believes me. Can't say as I blame them it doesn't sound reasonable.

I can sympathize with you. I didn't feel enflamed, but even as a child, meat caused me severe stomach upsets. Coming from a meat and potatoes family preference, it was seemingly a steady stream of being sick. I finally figured it out about 20 years ago when I gave up pork and beef. I continued with chicken until about 7 years ago when I stopped eating that as we'll. It took awhile, but the no-meat regimen resulted in my blood pressure and cholesterol dipping to normal levels - nice perk! The idea of the in humane treatment of animals also played a major role.

I really struggle with this. I feel physically better if I eat animal protein and I seem to lose weight faster when I eat it, but I don't crave it at all. I eat as little as possible.

On the other hand, lately the thought of eating meat makes me feel queasy. I also hate the way animals are treated. When I have been vegetarian, I eat too many carbs and gain weight.

I am going to try to eat vegetarian but incorporate more protein, such as soy.

yes, I too have an aversion to straight meat. Not turkey or chicken, but cow, pork, lamb, horse, or anything that starred in Charlotte's Web(1956?).

I honestly feel so bad for these poor suffering farm animals, that I just live on mainly rice, veggies,fruits,tofu,and sometimes turkey and baked chicken. I really am more concerned about the 4 legged animals, and sea mammals too.

If someone buys a pizza I would eat a bit of the salami but if i order my own type it is always veggy pizza or chicken w/ olives, green pepper, and pineapples, and mushrooms too. I haven't lost weight all that fast just because I avoid purchasing and preparing meats. I just feel better.

I don't like the smell of it in the house cooking even. I did have relatives whose entire diet was meat, ham , lamb,steak,etc. I miss the relatives but not the smell of animal flesh cooking in a small urban home.

But, in eating this way, w/in a country of sooooo many meats all around us, even meat peddlers are pushing this in yuppy neighborhoods. I just feel like I can rise above all the meats I walk by in the store while shopping, and feel like I have that much more Self Control than people who must eat it to survive.

But I'm above the "Cave man" level of existence and feel so much more liberated in knowing that in America I have a Choice, and No I don't have to eat a 4 legged animal if I don't want to. This allows me to have a sense of Total Control over whatever I choose to put into, "The sacred temple of My Body."

Thanks God for giving me that choice, Amen.

I never liked meat much so it wasn't hard to give up, fish was my thing and I struggled with that for a while but I'm glad I quit.

I don't have an aversion to meat, I have an aversion to causing pain and suffering to animals -- all animals.

I was always an on-off 'vegetarian' for most of my adolescence - mainly because I love animals, and couldn't bare to think I was eating something so cute! However, partly because I didn't have enough will-power, and partly because we love our meat in the family, I always fell off the bandwagon.

However, once I went to university (two years ago), I became a full time, dedicated vegetarian. My main reason was this: I couldn't afford organic meat, and I could never force myself to eat the cheaper meats where the animals are severely harmed and suffering. But, once I CAN afford organic meat once more, I'll still be a vegetarian, because at the moment, I don't miss meat, and because I finally have the dedication I lacked when a teenager.

I feel the same way. I ate meat growing up but didn't like the taste of most of it. When I moved out I ate mainly chicken but couldn't eat anything I cooked from raw. It was to gross so see it bloody and then eat it even cooked. Then one day I went with my husband to his sisters farm to get a pig and my husband had to help catch and slaughter it. I have not eating one piece of meat since that day 12 years ago. I still cook it for my family. Just recently I have started to find eggs and milk gross. I love cheese but I don't eat milk or eggs anymore.
Kelly

I was a vegetarian for about 6 years, and my ongoing joke was that I disliked animals so much that I didn't even want to eat them.

Anyone that knows my fear of animals would definitely laugh.

I am not vegetarian, but I only eat organic meat and dairy, and I don't really eat all that much meat (some poultry and seafood, very rarely red meat). I changed to all organic when I read Michael's Pollan's article "An Animal's Place." I cried while reading it, and since then, I have absolutely NO desire to eat any "regular" meat product (e.g., fast food, regular meat from the grocery store, any poultry or meat in restaurants, etc.). I mean, it literally turns my stomach to think of eating it. (Side note: I wish I would somehow get the same sort of epiphany concerning sweets!!).

I think the main reason that factory farms are able to get away with the torture and carnage they do is that people can easily look the other way while they do it and so ignore the problem. In the grocery store, everything is packaged nicely and doesn't resemble the animal it came from (even the names are different---"beef" rather than "cow meat"; "bacon" rather than "pig," etc.). I do understand what you are saying about meat aversion, and sometimes, I get sick thinking about the poor animal ---even ones raised "humanely"---who was killed (especially pigs because I know how intelligent they are). For several days each week, I try to eat only vegetarian (this means that I often cook separate meals from my husband, who regularly eats meat).

I know that if I moved somewhere where I could no longer access the kind of meat and poultry I buy, I would have to become a vegetarian.

Well, like many others in this thread, I have a serious problem with meat. I don't dislike all meat, but lately I can't stand the smell, texture, taste, anything. I was buying it out of habit, because my family are HUGE HUGE HUGE meat eaters. They would eat meat and only meat all day long if they could, it's nuts. So I just not going to buy it or eat it anymore unless it's something I really love (like my mother's meatballs, they're delicious). I use to love chicken, but I just ate some with dinner and I felt horrible while eating it, it tasted awful, like I was eating a living animal and not a dead one. The last time I ate fish I got this intense feeling of guilt and my mind just went over everything the poor fish had experienced in it's short life. Maybe that's nuts, but I'm not going to eat meat anymore because of all the above reasons. It just tastes WRONG.

I am slowly transitioning to vegetarian for several reasons. I feel better when I don't eat meat, and I've learned a lot more recently about the conditions of factory farms and slaughterhouses. It's interesting, I'm not really against eating animals in general, just the way that things are currently done with factory farms. If I had the financial means to buy free-range animal products I would, but as I currently don't I just don't buy them. I have also stopped buying milk and most other dairy products, as I have developed a lactose intolerance as I have gotten a little older.

I still eat meat when i am at home and not at college. I don't want to inconvenience anyone else, including my family, so I just eat what I am given while at home. But whenever I eat meat I keep thinking about the conditions that the animal was likely raised in, and it just doesn't appeal. I force myself to eat it, but I would almost never choose to eat meat anymore, unless I feel like my body really needs it. When I am at school and entirely making my own food choices I don't eat it.

I also don't eat meat fore environmental reasons...it takes so much more energy, land, crops, and time to produce meat and it creates a lot more waste too.

I have had an on-going off/on vegetarian thing for years. When I started it was about 1996. I have back slid so many times since. For me, it is easy to give up meat for months at a time. The hard part is giving up cheese.

Of course, this post reminds me that summer is here (nearly) and its time to go vegetarian again! I'll try to do it without the cheese this time.

giselly, if you need any subs for cheese, let us know! It depends on the recipe but I gave up cheese 8 or 9 years ago and haven't looked back. And I loved cheese.