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As a child, I was consumed with a near-obsessive curiosity about what the world felt like for other creatures.

Animals were my pets, and the thought of eating my pets freaked me out.

I was one of those kids who found it difficult to eat anything that looked like an animal.

My wife and I have chosen to bring up our children as vegetarians. In another time or place, we might have made a different decision. But the realities of our present moment compelled us to make that choice.

Maybe one day the world will change, that we'll be in a luxurious position of being able to debate whether or not it's inherently wrong to eat animals, but the question doesn't matter right now.

I'm sure I've changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up - as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I've changed my mind about some food that I didn't like when I was young.

I like animals, I really do, but some animals are just meant to be eaten.

I became a vegetarian at age 13 because I was into animal issues and felt like it was kinder not to eat animals.

I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change - which lasted a couple of weeks - was based on the very simple instinct that it's wrong to kill animals for food.

We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts.