Post Punk Kitchen Forum

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2006/08/08_hussar.html

I came across this article while doing research for a paper I'm writing on Kohlberg's moral development theory. I'm supposed to relate it to my life, and I'm trying to figure out how to account for my turning vegetarian at the age of 11.

Who else became a vegetarian/vegan at an early age?

vegetarian at 8...

Vegetarian at 13? That's not that young, a bunch of my friends stopped eating meat at the same time and I'm the only one for whom it stuck. Now vegan at 20 (have been since 16).

I was 14 or 15, my best friend became a vegetarian first at the same age.

I went vegetarian at 13, so not super young. I don't even remember what the catalyst was, I just remember that I was running some errands with my neighbor and sometime during our conversation I made the link between the animals I loved so much and the food I ate.

I tried to go vegetarian around age 12 but without my parent's support it didn't stick until I was out on my own at age 21. Now, for about a week at age 5ish I only ate cheese sandwiches because I told my mom I didin't like her cooking and she said that was fine, I was free to fend for myself. So if you count that. :)

I went vegetarian at 9 when I realized that the only reason we eat cows and not dogs is because we've arbitrarily decided dogs are "cute" and have relationships with them. Went vegan 11 years later.

I was 12/13, growing up on a farm and knew that I couldn't couldn't eat the friend's I had helped raise, when they went off to market. I then thought about all the other animals I didn't know and realised that they were as valuable as the ones I had worked with and loved.

i went vegetarian when i was 12, after a deer was hit by a car outside my house. it only took me about 5 seconds to relate that deer to my burger.

however old you are in uuuuuh 4th or 5th grade.....I think 5th grade, I'm trying to remember when I didn't eat ravioli or chicken nuggets at lunch time anymore haha.

I was vegetarian at 15. The frog dissection in 9th grade paved the way. My teacher was extra cruel and didn't use ether, he just poked a hole into the frog's head and declared them brain dead.

I didn't have much support. I ate a lot of spaghetti.

beyond age, is there anything else we can give you that may be insightful or helpful?

I wanted to go vegetarian when Lisa went vegetarian on the Simpsons, but my parents made me eat meat anyway. Mom said I would sit there for hours because she wouldn't let me leave the table without finishing my food. Eventually I caved and when I was 17 I took a nutrition course and was finally armed with information and proof that I wouldn't die. So, late bloomer, but I really wanted to stop earlier!

Vegetarian at 15, Vegan at 17. I was late on board.

Vegetarian at 13, along with a bunch of my friends. (We had some book from PETA that we were passing around school and it convinced all of us to go veg.)

Actually, now I kind of wonder whether any of them are still veg -- I switched schools soon after this, and I haven't talked to any of them in since.

Me too, but 15, attempted forced fetal pig dissection, already dead and floating in a baggie of fluid. My brain went "If you can't cut that apart, how come you can eat them? WHAT I CAN'T EAT THEM!! AHHHH" The rest was history.

I did have at least parental indifference. We already ate a lot of vegetarian foods, my dad always had tofu in the rotation (but he called it "bean curd") so it wasn't a huge adjustment for anyone.

I was 6 when I first told my mum I wanted to be vegetarian. I was crazy into animal rights (particularly with regards seal culling at that time, and had a huge crush on both Morrissey and my veggie primary school teacher) She wouldn't let me for a couple of years and made me eat meat once a week, but eventually she gave in.

My older sister had become vegetarian and then went back to eating meat several times around ages 13-16, so when I went vegetarian at 13, my parents figured it was just what teenage girls do. It wasn't too much of a transition -- I didn't really like the taste of most meat foods, and the few I did like (hot dogs, chicken nuggets, tacos) could be pretty easily made with even the fake meats available in 1994.

I didn't become vegetarian until I was 17 or vegan until I was 26. This may explain the lag in my moral development...

7th or 8th grade, so 14 yrs old?

I started being vegetarian when I was 12, but I think my first attempt only lasted a few months. It was pretty on and off until I was 17 or so. It wasnt' really based on ethics or anything. I just had a friend who was vegetarian and a vegan cousin who made awesome cookies.

Tried at 11. Got sat on and force fed. Tried again at 13 and got forced again. Finally at 15 I succeeded only because I had been working and was rarely home for dinner. I actually pulled the "I already ate" bit a ton for about two years. My mom knew but my father...was having none of it. He still dangles stuff in front of me.

i went vegetarian when i was 10. i feel like that was the age when i became a conscious human being, and caring about the suffering of animals is just sort of part of who i am. i went vegan at 17 when i gained the knowledge that the reasons i was a vegetarian actually obligated me to be vegan.

I was 12 when I went vegetarian, 21 when I became vegan.

Same! Although, my parents like to say I was born a vegetarian, and they have always been very supportive. I mostly refused meat even when I was a little kid. I tolerated chicken sometimes, but I can't actually recall eating red meat in my life, although I'm sure it happened when I was too young to remember it. I didn't like meat long before I really understood what meat was. It became an ethics issue when I got older. I guess it was easy for me because "giving up" meat wasn't much of a transition.