My initial inspiration in becoming a vegetarian was simple: eating animals is not essential to living a healthy life and I would prefer to avoid engaging in a discordant relationship with nonhuman animals and the natural world. Theretofore, I had been an eager, indiscriminate consumer of nonhuman animals, often outfitted in leather footwear and annually swathed in my winter wool. Thenceforth, family anticipated and dreaded my finicky dietary demands and envisaged the emaciated shell of a once healthy