Why I Became Vegetarian

It was the start of the lunar new year in 2004. I was at my grandmother's house along with my entire extended family on my father's side. We had a big get-together to celebrate the lunar new year, which featured a glut of traditional Korean food. I stuffed myself silly, felt a bit disgusted at how much meat I had eaten and vowed never to eat meat again. And I never did. The End!

...Well, not quite. That's the one of the stories I tell when people ask me when and why I became vegetarian. The next day I had myself a bowl of Campbell's chicken noodle soup but didn't eat the scrawny cubes of chicken. After that I decided I should do this vegetarian thing properly, set some rules for myself. I wouldn't eat beef, pork, poultry or seafood. I would still go on eating cheese and dairy products, as well as marshamallows and anything that had gelatin in it-- basically if it tasted like meat I wouldn't eat it. Lent was around the corner: I would be vegetarian until the end of Lent and take it from there. Maybe I'd eat some turkey at Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday at the time, but I'd cross that bridge when I got there. Sometimes I simply tell people I gave meat up for Lent and never turned back to it after that, which is also true.

Somewhere in my conscience I must've been losing my taste for meat even before then. Mind you, it had never crossed my mind that I would become vegetarian. There was one peer of mine who had been vegetarian her whole life and I distinctly remember offering her a piece of my chicken patty at lunch when she remarked that she was still hungry. Still, it wasn't hard to transition my diet, because I didn't eat too much meat in the first place and I had always viewed tofu as a friendly, familiar food. I never really viewed meat as murder, but now that I've read about how animals are treated... that's a topic for another post. Let's just say I don't regret becoming vegetarian.

That first year I was the healthiest I've ever been. I ate salads every day, read countless vegetarian cookbooks and fastidiously made sure that I still got enough iron, protein and calcium in my diet. To this day I think back on what I've eaten and what I need to eat for the next meal to fulfill my dietary needs but I'm not as enthusiastic about salads--especially salad for lunch. I've read stories of how people got better skin, lost a lot of weight and felt more energetic, more alive; I'm not one of those people. Maybe it's because I'm not terribly observant in the first place but I haven't felt any major changes in my body since I became vegetarian seven years ago. I don't regret my decision to give up meat, and it can be tricky sometimes when I go out to eat but it's only been a major problem for the years I gave up bread for Lent.

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