When people ask me why I am a vegetarian, my answer probably isn’t very satisfying. Although I do think that baby farm animals are adorable, my reasoning isn’t solely based on my deep love for animals. It’s not because not eating meat was the “cool” thing to do in high school. I’m not even a vegetarian for religious reasons. Many people have many different reasons for being vegetarian, or vegan, and all of those reasons are valid. However, I am mostly a vegetarian because that’s how I wanted to live my life -- meat-free. The taste doesn’t really appeal to me, either, but the bottom line is I just don’t eat meat.

I’ve gotten so many questions about being a vegetarian, such as: do you eat eggs? How about fish? Do you ever miss the taste of meat? Does it make you uncomfortable if I eat this extremely rare, double stacked burger with extra bacon in front of you? And I’ve also had people tell me, I’m basically a vegetarian too… except for bacon. I LOVE bacon.

It’s really nice that people try to empathize about what life would be like without meat. Omnivores and carnivores are curious about how you get protein, etc., but the truth is, not many people care what you eat.

People try to be courteous of your feelings when they eat ribs in front of you, which is nice, but that won’t stop them. Sometimes, it’s hard to go out to eat with my friends when they decide to share chicken wings and you get stuck with the celery on the side (I’ve learned to love celery; the problem is that there are usually only two or three sticks of it).

I am in charge of what I eat, and you can be in control of what you put into your body. I just hope you’re not eating arsenic, but who am I to judge?

I was a very picky eater until my junior year of high school, when I starting doing the grocery shopping for my family, and started wondering what that green, leafy stuff tasted like. I did some research before I dove into the world of plants. Looking through food blogs and cookbooks helped me realize that there is more to life than plain pasta and different ways to consume flour and sugar together. I had been an accidental vegetarian, basically a breaditarian, since I was three years old, but with the added responsibility of buying food, I consciously phased meat out, and my already limited diet started to expand in a healthier way.

I spent the summer before my freshman year of college eating salads with avocado instead of oil, experimenting with the different ways to prepare zucchini like pasta, switching from milk chocolate to dark, incorporating flax seeds and chia seeds into oatmeal, adding spinach to smoothies. Cooking anything and everything seedy, leafy, juicy or healthful became my niche.

When it was time for me to say goodbye to my own kitchen, and hello to Lehigh dining halls, I felt prepared. I knew all of the offerings at the salad bar by name, and which nutrients they had in them that I needed. I also took iron pills, just because red meat wasn’t something I was willing to eat. I even had a stash of seeds, dark chocolate and almonds in my room for emergencies. There are always those hazards in the dining hall though -- for everyone.

The main thing I’m emphasizing here, for both vegetarians and meat-lovers, is a healthy lifestyle. Whatever you eat, make sure it’s good for you. I found that it was especially hard at first to control my impulses to not eat pizza at every meal, or to have ice cream every night. The main struggle I had as a vegetarian at college was not the repetitious questions about what I ate, but the know-how that allowed me to be a healthy eater at dining halls where French fries are always in season.