mnlr posted:

Great thread so far! Love discussing this topic. I’ve been vegetarian for about ten years now, and fully vegan for about four, with no intention of ever going back short of a full-on survival situation.

The OP touches on a lot of my own reasons for going vegan, along with a few others that weren’t really on my radar but make a lot of sense to me. My #1 reason for going vegan hasn’t been discussed in this thread at all yet, and it’s a little more subjective so maybe not totally in the spirit of this discussion, but what about plain old revulsion at the idea of consuming body parts and fluids and so on? Back in my pre-veggie days, my idea of paradise was to be on a sunny patio with a frosty pint and a big basket of crispy golden brown chicken wings. It got to the point where I couldn’t even enjoy that anymore because I couldn’t stop my brain from reminding me constantly “THIS IS THE WING OFF A DEAD BIRD”. I want nothing to do with dead birds. I see them on the street sometimes and I make a point to avoid them. I would never pick one up and I would certainly never put one in my mouth. I recognize there’s an enormous hygienic difference between a piece of roadkill and chicken properly prepared in a restaurant, but fundamentally they’re both still just a dead bird. The meat was the bird’s flesh, the bones were his bones. A basket of wings is a scene of carnage and gore. It got to the point where that was just no longer okay with me.