my vegan story, part 1

Every vegan has a story; except for those born vegan, no one actually wakes up one day and decides to become vegan for no reason.  As with a lot of my life, my story starts with a book:  PopCo by Scarlett Thomas.  I read a good review of it in the LA Times Sunday Book Review and checked it out at the library; I don't think I even knew there were vegetarians and vegans in it.

Along with all sorts of fun stuff like codes and pirates and anti-capitalism, the main character meets a guy who explains why he became vegan.  In the scene he's explaining that he saw some study where pigs can play video games and right then decided if they can play video games he's not going to eat them (it's much better in the book, trust me).

Well it's not as though I up and quit right then, but it got me thinking.  And when I start thinking I like to do research (I especially liked to do research at my job because back then I was a receptionist with a lot of time on my hands).  So off to the internets I went...