Why I am a vegetarian.

I was not raised on a vegetarian diet.

I have been a vegetarian for about eight years. Being 20 years old, that is creeping on half of my life.

I don't have a suavely-formulated philosophy to back up my dietary choices. This post is not meant to persuade you to go vegetarian. While I would love for everyone to go vegetarian, I know this will never happen. I'm not being pessimistic. I am simply noting that we all view the world differently.

While I compare human trafficking (which many of us will immediately label as "wrong") to the way that factory farm animals are treated, you may not see it that way.

While you may be "pro-life," yet have something dead on your plate, maybe you see that as perfectly fine.

You'd never eat a dog, would you? How is your pet dog any different from the cow you just ate?

You may watch documentaries like Food, Inc., and say, "Oh my God, I'll never eat meat again!" Tomorrow, it will probably still be on your plate.

This I have come to terms with.

And I am trying to understand all of this, just as you are attempting to understand the way I see things.

I just think every life is beautiful. Whether it's a millionaire here in the United States who owns a restaurant or two, a child in Kenya who is fetching water for her family, or a mouse rooting through my family's trash. They are all beautiful lives.

I am a vegetarian because I share approximately 80% of my genes with cattle. (source)

I am a vegetarian because it takes 2,500 gallons of fresh water to produce one pound of beef, and over 3,000 children die everyday due to lack of access to fresh water. (source)

I am a vegetarian because worldwide, 60 billion animals each year are processed for human consumption, not including fish. (M.C. Appleby, Ed., et al, Long Distance Transport and Welfare of Farm Animals, Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International (CABI), 2008.)

I am a vegetarian because the "need" (to many people) for frog legs has left our world with 120 less amphibian species over the last several decades. (source)

I am a vegetarian because 870 million people in the world do not have enough to eat, and the US alone could feed 800 million of them with the grain it uses to maintain its livestock used for meat production. (source)

I am a vegetarian because I can't read the facts about how factory farm animals are treated without crying, which is why this list ends here.

I am a vegetarian because those pigs on that truck did not do a thing wrong.

I am a vegetarian because as a child, I was taught to be kind.