ARCHITECTURE student Catherine O'Sullivan (21) went vegetarian overnight over three years ago. "I never liked dinner because I had to eat meat. I hated the veins, organs, I worried I would come across a nail, toe, I found it disgusting. My reasons were not idealistic, I wasn't worried about little lambs or fluffy chickens, just hated horrible, gory meat."
For the first six months she was a model vegetarian. "I went to my doctor and to a health food shop add worked out a good diet. Then I stopped being careful. I ate a lot of junk food. I became very tired and for a full year I had a cold I couldn't shake off.
"Finally I went back to my GP. She said there was no other substitute for red meat. She explained that in order to get the same amount of iron I would need to eat bucket loads of leaf green vegetables. I couldn't return to meat, but I began to be more careful and to eat more vegetables and salads, something I rarely did when I was eating meat. I eat a little fish and eggs, mainly to please my mother.
"Earlier this year I was anaemic again, very tired. Now I'm talking iron tablets and multivitamin and I feel I'm eating well and healthily," she says.