Tea Lovers who are also Vegetarian!

20 years here, vegan for most of that (these days I’ll eat some eggs / milk if they’re from no-kill sources, but eat vegan outside the home).

I think that some of my early exposure to tea was at vegetarian restaurants too, from the crappy restaurant tea at Buddhist vegetarian places to Hangawi and Franchia in NY.

I wouldn’t say that soy “isn’t good for you”. Everything in moderation. I would say it’s better to avoid processed soy foods in excess.

To Rachel (re: post above): As far as general advice, watch your balance of fats (Omega-6 to Omega-3 EFAs), don’t eat too much processed foods or “fake” stuff, and learn to enjoy dark leafy greens. And, if you want to stay vegan for a long time, I think it’s important to be vigilant enough (don’t “cheat” on purpose; check about ingredients, etc.), while at the same time not being so picky about minute quantities of animal ingredients that you drive yourself (and other people) crazy. And don’t be too obnoxious to non-vegetarians. Lead by example, but don’t let your newly-converted zeal cause you to become one of those vegans that non-vegetarians hate.

I decided to become a vegetarian at ten years of age! Seeing as I lived with my parents and didn’t yet know how to cook, it took me a few years to filter out all meat products from my diet. For two years I was a strict vegan- now, I’m a strict vegetarian who loves ice cream, cupcakes and cheese! Hah!

It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of tea lovers also follow plant based diets. To be a healthy vegetarian you need to be passionate about cooking, nutrition, fatty acids, minerals and the like, and there is a lot of cross over in terms of passionately memorizing the ingredients and properties of different teas! I love making meal plans and taking about the best sources of plant based Omega 3 almost as much as I love endlessly talking about which is my favourite Oolong and why.

Plus, vegetarian food and tea are both delicious! What’s not to love?

vegetarian 3 years this year december, vegan 1 year :)

i read a report a while back on NPR that most vegetarians/vegans relapse, but i don’t believe i will. only recently did i finally make the switch to all animal-free testing hair and bath products.

I became a vegetarian 3 years ago after reading a few of Jane Goodall’s books. I had seen documentaries like Earthlings previously but had never felt any conviction to abstain from eating animals. Some power in Jane’s words took a hold of me and I’ve never looked back.

As a child I always had many pets (dogs, cats, pigs, sheep….I didn’t even live on a farm, just had crazy parents) and after being bullied in school I made best friends with animals. At one point my parents had 7 dogs, 6 cats, 2 guinea pigs, 3 rabbits and a mouse all under the same roof.

Over time it didn’t make sense to start eating my friends and so I decided to start cutting it out. I began with red meat and felt much happier not eating it so then it was white meat to get the axe (so to speak). Eventually once fish and seafood were cut out I decided to pay more attention into what I was eating, that was when gelatine and other animal derivative items (cheese made with animal rennet, red dye with cochineal bugs etc).

Aged 24 and I have been vegetarian now for over 10 years. I shall never look back :) I met my husband when he ate meat and he decided to give up meat to be with me (bless his heart).

I thought about going vegan but think for now it’s a little extreme for me. I don’t mean to offend any vegans when I say ‘too extreme’, it’s just a personal thing. The eggs I eat are free range (I will not stand for barn/battery) and I drink soy milk (but rarely have cows milk in products such as cheese).

I’ve really been considering becoming a vegetarian recently but am not quite sure how to get started. Can anyone recommend good websites/info?

I’ve been a vegetarian for about 6 years =)

Just a question.. I have been trying to cut meat out of my diet and have looked at hundreds of blogs, but about a week ago I stumbled upon a raw food blog and I have been fascinated with it ever since. Has anyone gone completely raw or mostly raw?

I barely could be vegatarian, let alone either vegan or raw foodist. But that is just me and my unwillingness to give up certain foods.

Hello! This is my first post here. Hooray!

My vegetarian travels started sort of early and took many years. When I was a young’un (elementary school era), I couldn’t handle seeing the dead fish at the supermarket staring up at me with their glossy eyes. I looked at my mom and said “I don’t think I can eat fish anymore. Seeing them like that just makes me too sad and sick feeling.”

Then around high school I stopped eating red meat. I never really felt well after eating it anyway, so it made sense.

Then in college (around 2004) I stopped eating the rest. Now I won’t even eat cheese with rennet or anything with gelatine. It can be a challenge sometimes, but it just makes me sick to think about eating it.

I’ve been told that when I was really small, I’d go for seconds of veggies while my first helping of meat was still relatively untouched on my plate, so being a vegetarian is just something that is fairly natural to me. I don’t begrudge my meat eating friends, I feel that everyone should eat how they feel. Just don’t wave your burger in front of my face..

(yes, that actually happened once. “OOOH LOOKIT THE MEATY BURGER DONCHA WANNA EAT IT?” I surprisingly didn’t punch them in the nose, although I really wanted to!)

Happily vegetarian for… starts counting in head — 26 years!

We don’t need meat to survive, so the idea of killing another living creature because you like the taste of them seems… unthinkable.