Why am I vegetarian?  I think this is a very difficult question and not something that a glib, try my lifestyle, response can answer.  I am 48 years old and when and where I was young there was no such thing as vegetarianism.  Or so I thought.  My parents pushed meat on me because they genuinely thought it was good, if not essential for me to eat.

Those were days of little or no choice and at mealtimes you were sat down and you ate what you were given.  Now that I have children of my own I can actually see a lot of merit in that but that is another blog all on its own.  My earliest memories are of not liking meat and getting in to trouble for it.  This of course was not a life choice but just a matter of taste.

I had a hierarchy of meats and fish that I could just about cope with and it went like this

 Pork sausage, bacon, tinned beef burgers, spam (spam spam spam spam beautiful spam etc.), corned beef, fish cakes and fish fingers…………….. These things I quite liked (the junkier end of meat).

Battered fish, well cooked beef, mince………….I could just about cope with.

Proper fish, chicken, pork, lamb, liver, kidney ………………….. Not at any price.

We never had other sea food or steak but I did come across these as I got a bit older.  When I was 18 plus and started to eat in restaurants I would order a steak well done and I think it was ok but I could never say I liked it.  Once when I was in Paris aged 20 I inadvertently ordered and ate a horse burger.  If I am honest it didn’t taste so bad but I became vegetarian shortly after this.

When I was 21 my wife (at the time) and I became aware of vegetarianism through my sister and we decided to try it for a week.  It was quite hard as there were no substitute meals so lentils figured a lot.  After the week we said we would do it after we had used up things like beef burgers in the freezer.  I can remember to this day my wife putting out a dinner and we just looked at it and threw it away.