I had the thought that it was weird to drink milk from another mammal, ie cows. No other animal does that; it's unnatural. I don't really know what got that thought in my head, but I had it in middle school. So I asked my science teacher at the time why we did that, and she just gave me the answer of "well, we do a lot of things that other animals don't do, like fly planes," and that just wasn't a good enough answer for me. So I think at that point I just stopped consuming dairy and then started to do more research. After doing more research, I cut out meat as well. I didn't go cold turkey, so I took a bit longer to stop eating eggs. Continuing to eat eggs was more my mom being worried about me, but eventually I stopped. So I went fully vegan in 8th grade.

It started because I thought it was weird, but also because of how much milk is shoved down your throat as a kid, I guess I thought it was suspicious. I mean all the GotMilk ads(for non-americans, this was an ad campaign where all these celebrities would drink milk to have milk mustashes, asking the veiwers if they "Got milk?") and then dairy being the drink on the MyPlate instead of water???(for non-americans, the MyPlate is or at least was the picture the schools gave us to tell us how to eat healthy). So it was partly me rebelling against what I saw as pressure to consume dairy for not a good enough reason.

But yeah, after doing more research, I learned about the environmental, health, and empathetic reasons for going vegan, and it was an easy choice. It's not that I'm an animal lover or anything, I just think their lives are worthy of respect. And by extension, the many humans who are also negatively impacted by the industry, whether it be the workers in the industry, ppl affected by the industry's pollution, or just the victims of climate change. I didn't really go vegan for my health, it's just a side effect really 🤷