Question for those raised vegan/vegetarian

[completecompassion]

I was curious for those who were raised vegan or vegetarian if you are happy your parents raised you that way or if you would have prefered to have chosen later on.

Thanks for your input!
Jen

[CookingWithHeat]

I'm not a teenager (pity!) but was raised moderate vegan ... by moderate I mean that my parents didn't freak out if someone baked an otherwise vegan cake for us but put honey in it. Or if we grilled somewhere, we just put foil over the grill. (Friends wouldn't use the same grill where meat had been cooked.)

That said. I always had the choice! At one point after an operation in which I'd lost a lot of blood, after trying everything possible to get my iron levels back up, I did eat a small piece of meat from a source I knew. Bizarre, but it seemed to be what my body was demanding at the time. (Disgusts me now, but I try to be open to the moment.)

What I'm most glad about is that we got so much non-processed whole food. Once I moved to the city to study, I saw for the first time a lot of technically vegan stuff that's so nastily processed, and saw other veg students eating horrible stuff in the dining room. I felt like I still had the choice to eat whatever processed stuff I wanted, but I'm not sure the others would find it so easy to start eating sprouts and other "strange" stuff that's unfamiliar to them. (Maybe that's not an entirely honest comparison - I can't fathom going into a McDonalds and getting a meal. But is that an "option" I need to have?)