In my teenage years I used to be a person who was annoyed by vegetarianism. I thought one person’s decision not to eat meat could not save the animals of the world. When we had to make eating arrangements with my vegetarian friends, I was frustrated. Choosing to be a vegetarian, I thought, just made life more difficult for both yourself and the people around you.

Flash forward to now, and I am one of those people who deliberately choose to eat less meat. So how did I get here?

I am sure there are many causes to this consequence. All the little things I heard and read during the years surely affected me, little by little. Furthermore, the gradual change of my surrounding environment from more conventional to more progressive certainly must have added to the change. However, I do remember one specific event that opened my eyes.

I was at home, bored to the bone, switching between tv channels in the hopes of finding something at least mildly interesting. I ended up settling on a documentary about climate change and the food production of the world. There was probably no more than 30 minutes left of it when I started watching, and I don’t even remember the name of it. However, what I realized from it was definitely something I would remember.

My first and foremost reason to start reducing my meat consumption is the fact that the meat industry is the biggest cause of pollution and harmful greenhouse gas emissions in the world. In addition, we are eating much more meat today than the humankind has ever eaten before, and certainly much more than is good for us healthwise. Put in a simple analogy, the meat industry weighs much more than the Earth can carry, and at this rate we are facing a huge ecological and economical catastrophe. If we could all at least reduce our meat consumption, it would be so much healthier to both the Earth and ourselves.

Luckily the current climate in nutrition and food trends favor vegetarianism, and apparently this has been estimated to be a permanent change. Awareness has increased, myself being a prime example of it. This is good news for everyone who is vegetarian, vegan, or “flexitarian” (not strictly vegetarian) like myself; it is easier than ever to eat vegetarian food. Restaurants and grocery stores have plenty of options for non-meat-eating folks, not to even mention the internet which is full of tips and recipes. Options for delicious vegetarian and vegan foods are endless, and by now at the latest everyone should forget any notion of “only having to eat salad and carrots”. So all of that trumps my previous grievances of vegetarianism being difficult and requiring arrangements.

When it comes to one person trying to change the world, well, sure, one person alone can’t make much of a difference. But it all starts when each one person individually makes the decision to change, right?

Sudden, big changes always tend to sound intimidating, and I don’t think it’s fair to require anyone to turn into a full vegan in a day. And that is not needed. For example, one of the things that have worked for me is simply quitting eating meat on breakfasts. It is also easy to just choose vegetarian options more often when you eat out, and consequently they might start inspiring you to cook up something similar on your own. It’s about the small daily decisions that facilitate change. No one has to turn their life around overnight.

One thing I’ve learned through the years, vegetarianism being a good example of it, is that you can never force a person to change their opinions. They will come to the conclusion by themselves, if they will. Everyone always wants to think that they are in control of they’re own opinions, which is why I, too, needed that time to have my realization by myself, slouching on that old armchair lazily watching tv.