The Animals You Eat By VeganGirl, 13 When I was younger, I never really thought much about what was in the food that I was eating. I just made sure that the food didn't have anything I didn't like (you know, like mushrooms and stuff). I never really thought much about the fact that meat was animal flesh. So, until seven years ago, I ate what I thought was food. Then my mom decided to become a vegetarian. I still didn't think much about eating meat, but since mom was eating that way, why shouldn't I try it out too? So I decided to try it out too. Some of the vegan alternatives to meat were sort of gross, but some didn't taste too bad. I decided to be a semi-vegetarian. I would eat some meat on holidays, like on thanksgiving. Also, I still ate milk and eggs. After a while I started to understand exactly what meat was. I had always known it was animal. But I had never thought of it like a dead animal. Sorta weird, huh? It's true, though. I had never really had thought of it as animal flesh. At first, I had said "yuck" to meat because it wasn't vegetarian, and therefore, it was gross. Now I say "yuck" to meat because it's dead animal. Now I think of hot dogs as dead pigs. (Not dogs. Who'd want to eat a dog, anyway?) Now I know chicken is exactly what it's called -- chicken. I don't like that cartoon picture of a happy looking chicken in Fred Meyer next to the frozen chicken dinners anymore. I wouldn't have looked at those things this way a few years ago. It's funny, because it had been right before my eyes all along. Now I look at it this way. Do you? To read the older version of this article, click Here.