THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation beneath a Creative Commons license.
People have lengthy wrestled with their conscience about killing and consuming animals. The “meat paradox” (the battle between individuals’s desire for meat and their concern for animals) could have inspired cave paintings from 37,000 years in the past. Since then, many leading thinkers have eschewed meat, together with Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci, Mary Shelley, and Mahatma Gandhi.
Immediately, half of US adults and three-quarters of UK adults oppose the manufacturing unit farming that produces almost all of their meat, but solely about one in 10 observe a meat-free weight loss program.
Plant-based diets are more and more tasty and low cost in lots of international locations. Adopting them would spare the lives of over 80 billion animals a yr and would trigger 75 percent less environmental damage than meaty diets.
The advantages of going plant-based on health and longevity are more and more effectively established and have prompted an eminent cardiologist to comment, “There are two sorts of cardiologists: vegans and people who haven’t learn the info.”
Regardless of these confirmed benefits of a vegan weight loss program, most individuals proceed to eat meat, utilizing methods like “defensive reasoning” or moral disengagement and avoidance to cut back any psychological unease.
Each January since 2014, the Veganuary marketing campaign—which inspires individuals to eat a plant-based weight loss program in January—has tried to interrupt down these psychological defenses with footage of cute piglets, fluffy chicks, and an invite to present the problem a go. Final yr, round 25 million people, together with about 4 percent of the UK population, joined in.
Analysis by Veganuary means that over 80 p.c of individuals preserve massive reductions in meat consumption, decreasing their consumption to half or much more, after six months.
On the College of Exeter, we’ve got independently performed three on-line research of Veganuary individuals (a fourth is underway) and located that when individuals scale back or keep away from meat additionally they begin to see meat and themselves in a different way.
Meat Disgust
On common, individuals report liking meat much less, with some even discovering it disgusting. This enhances our earlier research displaying that 74 p.c of vegetarians and 15 p.c of flexitarians discover meat disgusting.
One other of our research (beneath peer evaluation) means that this “meat disgust” runs deep. Those that report it (primarily vegetarians) reply to the thought of consuming meat in an analogous strategy to how meat eaters react to the thought of eating feces, or human or dog flesh.
PICTURE
Caption: Meat disgust runs deep.
Credit score: Filip Obr/Alamy Inventory Picture
If such destructive emotions emerge when individuals keep away from meat throughout Veganuary, giving up meat in the long run is probably not fairly the sacrifice that many would anticipate. We at the moment are gathering information 12 months on from 100 individuals who participated in our Veganuary examine final yr and can see whether or not destructive emotions towards meat predict longer-term adjustments in meat consumption.
