I read a scientific study that found that vegetarians and vegans have higher empathy than meat eaters. Interestingly, vegans scored lower in empathy than vegetarians.
Do you think this would hold up in further studies? Does the ethical choice of not eating meat necessarily mean that somebody is more compassionate than someone who does eat meat?
Not in my opinion.
My best friend in college was raised on a farm in Iowa (big farm). He scoffed at vegetarians who thought their choice saved the lives of animals. He told me after the harvesters went through the fields were like Armageddon had occurred. Dead animals everywhere. Turtles, snakes, ground nesting birds, mice and so on.
It is probably true that eating vegetables kills fewer animals than omnivores unless the livestock lives exclusively on grazing and not on feed. Still, plenty of animals die for that salad.
Does having more empathy make someone a better person? That alone seems a stretch. Also, I’d need to see the study, but my WAG is that they are talking about a small, self selected group, and asking them a series of questions geared to getting this result. Or just asking them something silly like ‘do you think you are more empathic than the average person’. Just as a for instance of what I’m getting at, say you asked 1000 omnivores and 1000 vegans/vegetarians…it would be a huge disproportion in numbers of the total population, the vast majority of who aren’t vegans or vegetarians. And if you only asked, say, American vegan/veggie types it would be even more so.
To answer your question in broad terms, I’d go with no…they aren’t ‘better people’, especially looked at through history. They are a very small percentage though of all people, and in modern terms are definitely self selected usually, so I’d consider that in terms of vegans or veggie types in modern industrial nations are more empathic than the vast majority of people might be true.
Personally, I think a lot of them are overly self absorbed and THINK they are superior, and are totally hung up on how good they are and how bad those vicious omnivores are. 
I’m a vegetarian. I like animals better than people. I don’t think that makes me a good person.
ETA: FWIW, I became a vegetarian because I just don’t like the taste of meat.
I totally think you are a better person than I am…but it’s nothing to do with you being a vegetarian or me being a meatatarian. FWIW. 
Sounds like another “study” where they determined how much “empathy” someone had, by measuring how much meat they ate. Had they combined it with a self-righteousness test, I suspect the overall calcultion of who the “best people” were, might balance out nicely.
Eating plants is more efficient than converting the plant matter into animals and then eating those. That’s why the UN and the WHO have been encouraging vegetarian diets for years. That’s honestly the reason I became a vegetarian*, and heeding this important advice certainly makes me a better person.
Just kidding, food is weird, we’re all tied up emotionally with it and a lot of what we eat becomes habit. I love meat but I was able to cut almost all of it out of my diet without too much drama, partly because I can afford to get protein and quality calories from other sources and partly because my wife is a wonderful chef. I don’t begrudge anyone who hasn’t or can’t make the switch, but I do urge people to try. For the children.
*I’m really more of a reducetarian, which is a stupid word that hit the news recently but less hypocritically describes my eating habits. I eat meat about twice a month, on average. Exceptions include Skyline Chili and anything consumed while drunk around a campfire.
This is true IF you feed the animals cultivated crops (which we mostly do these days).
Originally you had the animals graze grass lands unsuitable for cultivation of food crops (think places like Mongolia). Humans cannot eat the grass but they can eat the animals that ate the grass. This is efficient use of the resources available.
I do not have a cite but I seem to recall that in hunter/gatherer societies the gatherers provide 90% of the food mass but the 10% of the food the meat the hunters provided was about 50% of the caloric intake. In short, a few ounces of meat will get you further than a few ounces of lettuce.
You know who else was a vegetarian?
This is very true, the high, mountainous areas of the Alps are unsuited to arable crops but sheep, goats and cattle are ideal for getting the most from the grasses and plants. They then turn the plants that are unsuitable for human consumption into animal products that are. From there on we see human ingenuity turn those products into storage stable foods that keep you going during the lean times until the pastures are usable again. So we have yoghurts, cheeses, butter, salting, curing, smoking, sausages etc etc.
As a sideline any waste from the humans plates can be given to a pig or chicken and nutrition is salvaged that way. Couple that with fish from the rivers and fruit from the trees and it all looks like a pretty harmonious existence.
There is nothing inherently cruel or unsustainable about any of that.
Pol Pot?
Jenny McCarthy! :eek::smack:
True, there’s nothing unsustainable about small-scale animal farming, but to do that for 7.5 billion people we’d all be eating meat like twice a month. Which is great! The unsustainable part is everyone eating meat at 3 meals a day. That requires factory farming, crop-feeding animals, and ravaging non-renewable aquifers.
“Better people”? What an interesting concept. That would require the entire history of life on earth to define what that means.
So, to cut through all of that I have adopted a strategy - I am the measure of all things in my universe (I mean, why would I use someone else as the measure of all things in the universe that I inhabit - that would be ridiculous!), therefore I am the best person, the best at being a person, the most “person”. People who are most like me are better people. People who are least like me are worse people.
Taking that into account: I am an omnivore. I figure I put something in the hole at the top/front, my body has a system to deal with it, what it doesn’t need comes out the hole in the bottom. Fairly simple, actually. So, since I am an omnivore, and people who are most like me are better people, then therefore vegetarians are not better people than omnivores.
The logic is sound. :D:D
Isn’t he the guy who liked dogs?
Yes!!! and if that doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you, I don’t know what will.
While the plural of anecdote is not data, I will offer the point that Hitler was vegetarian. So no, being vegetarian doesn’t necessarily make a person more compassionate that an omnivore.
Would this apply to other animals? Are giraffes better creatures than lions? Would a vegetarian lion be a “better” lion than one who ate gazelles?
Yes.
Cite: they’ve told me so.
This is a result of a prosperous society.
In many parts of the world proteins are only a small part of a meal. For instance in poor, rural areas of China the bulk of the food you eat is rice with some veg and, maybe, a small bit of meat.
In the more affluent areas of China meat figures much more prominently in the daily meals.
I’m going to guess that if vegans scored lower that the number of people in the studies was small. With small numbers you might as well be rolling dice for your results.
I’m also going to guess that you didn’t read the study, you read a report on the results of the study, just because that’s the way most people run into studies. If you have access to the actual study, you can check how many people were surveyed, how the people were selected for the study, and how their level of empathy was determined. Although even all of that wouldn’t let me completely assess the study results. I have no idea if there even IS a standard test for empathy, so I wouldn’t know if the study was testing for empathy properly.