The credits for Babe had barely started when my six-year-old turned to me and said, “I want to be a vegetarian.”

I glanced back to the screen, at the long list of people involved in the making of the film, and I wondered if I should send them all “thank you” cards, perhaps a nice fruit basket. Maybe I could find out where they were registered.

My son was the final family member to give up meat. His older brother had a six-month lead on his decision, and my wife and I were already closing in on a year of vegetarianism. Granted, he had been on board from the beginning, in theory, but only lasted until the next cafe when he realized he could bogart everybody’s discarded bacon. We let him make his choices and applied no pressure to them.

Sometimes life insists that you eat your way out.

And so it was that a timeless tale of a little pig escaping his culinary fate—the timeless tale of a little pig escaping his culinary fate that isn’t Charlotte’s Web—placed just the right amount of compassion on the belly of a big-hearted kid, and suddenly our grocer’s bill became all the more manageable.

A film had pushed the rest of us, too, although we didn’t find the documentary Forks Over Knives to be nearly as cute or charming as Babe, it was incredibly informative and provided the final push that my wife and I needed to quit dancing around vegetarianism, something we had flirted with before, and to jump right in. That was four years ago and we’ve never looked back.

Hollywood has continued to support our decision.

It isn’t just the catchy (preachy?) slogans like Finding Nemo’s “fish are friends, not food,” the great escape of Chicken Run, the secret ingredients of Soylent Green, nor the constant anthropomorphism of the animal kingdom (see Disney’s Zootopia, for example), but basically any film that even hints at wildlife, food or health and environmental issues, which, it turns out, is most of them. We don’t have to see pigs not wanting to be eaten to force our empathy, seeing them eaten (and the consequences thereof) works pretty well, too

The new Shaun the Sheep Movie from Aardman promises to keep the streak alive. Not only does it show the humor and personality of animals (slightly exaggerated for comedic effect, but it’s a thing!), it also hits home as part of my own childhood was spent as a sheepherder (more or less). In fact, decades before I became I vegetarian I had already sworn off mutton because it was just too much (here’s that story).

Have any movies changed your family's lifestyle?

Whit Honea is the author of The Parents’ Phrase Book and his personal website the Honea Express. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two sons, and too many pets.