Breakfast: sausage or bacon.
Lunch: ham or turkey.
Dinner: ground beef, steak, chicken.
I also grew up loving animals, however. I often thought about where the meat was coming from--but I didn't like where those thoughts took me. So I, like a lot of people, tried to not think about what I was putting into my mouth and where it came from. I was an on-again, off-again vegetarian--but it never lasted very long. I liked the taste of meat too much to give it up. I was putting my appetite over the lives of animals.
As I've gotten older, though, I've grown increasingly concerned about my health, the environment, and the welfare of animals. I've educated myself on food: where it comes from, how it's produced, and why it's produced the way it is. In my research, I've come across many undercover videos and read disturbing books, but two things in particular motivated me to quit eating meat, for good this time. The book: Eating Animals, but Jonathan Safran Foer, is an eye-opening piece about the author's struggle to learn where the food that he feeds his toddler son is coming from. The book is honest and unbiased, and it includes the point-of-view of everyone from factory farmers to family farmers to animal-rights activists. Read it.
As life-changing as the book was, the following video was what really propelled me over the edge to vegetarianism and motivated me to never return to my old meat-eating ways.
It's sad, but it's real. That's what you're eating when you eat that burger, or bacon, or turkey at Thanksgiving.
Those are living creatures, and we're denying them a natural life, or any life at all, simply to create cheap meat and make a bigger profit. It's despicable.
Stop ignoring it; start changing it. Go meat free.
