I’m as carnivorous as most people, but do want to genuinely understand how vegans/vegetarians feel about meat.
Is it a mere dislike of meat - “I avoid it but will eat it if I have to,” or is even more potent, like “I’ll literally die before I’d eat a hot dog?”
It is of course on a range, like almost anything else with humans.
There are as many degrees of motives, aversion and strictness as there are vegetarians/vegans.
Ninja’d by WE.
Okay, but on the mildest end of the range, how mild is it? Is it like bordering on literal flexitarianism, who are just people who eat mostly vegetables but also some meat, and the mildest vegetarian is simply the one who won’t eat meat unless circumstances make it hard not to?
You might consider how a meat eater would feel about eating a literal cooked canine dog. It’s perfectly good meat, if raised in a sanitary fashion. But most folks would hesitate to eat dog because it’s a food in their “forbidden” realm.
I once ordered roast dog when traveling overseas when feeling adventurous. When it was served, my stomach turned and I just couldn’t eat it. Nothing wrong with the dish, it just smelled… somehow doggy. Skipped lunch, didn’t eat anything for the rest of the day, I felt the smell was still hanging on me. Others around me were eating it like there was nothing wrong.
People’s cognitive sense of taboo can get very deeply wound into unconscious mind/body responses. If someone says the smell of meat make them want to vomit, I would not doubt them or press them on it.
With the obvious answers already given, I think it’s anecdote time. My life experience, having mostly been in long-term relationships with vegetarians, is that come mutual, perpetual dining time for realz, vegetarians mostly adopt the omnivorous diet without any ado. It’s just too hard, and detrimental to the sharing aspect of a relationship, to deal with separate foods. I’m a bit of a foodie, and usually do the cooking.
Vegans are another story, IME.
Interesting. So to many vegans/vegetarians, the thought of eating pork or beef would be like most non-vegetarian people presented with the prospect of eating a cockroach or something similar?
I grew up in a nation where dog-eating was still occasionally prevalent; I’d never eaten it myself but I can definitely see what you mean.
I’ve known vegetarians who ate fish. This apparently has a name: Pescetarianism.
I know a vegetarian who happily eats meat when his spouse isn’t around. He’s a vegetarian because she’s a vegetarian.
The few Vegans I’ve met are very strong in their convictions and as I only know about the vocal ones, very annoying to be around. I’m sure I know others that just quietly enjoy their diet choice without proselytizing. Actually, I am very sure, I’ve met some Vegans that are fun to be around. As they’re don’t proselytize, I forget they’re Vegans.
I see. Although…at the risk of no-true-scotsmanism, I would argue that a “vegetarian” who eats meat when his wife isn’t around, or a pescetarian who thinks fish aren’t real meat, is akin to someone who claims to be a “non-smoker” because he “only smokes marijuana, not tobacco.”
Perhaps by analogy …
I recall a Jewish woman I met in my 30s. She was fully raised in the culture and was a believer, but not much of a practicer. She did the various traditional holidays in the traditional ways, but rarely attended organized services otherwise, etc. So far so common in the USA.
But she didn’t eat pork. Ever. When I asked about that her reply was simple: “It isn’t food. I wasn’t raised eating it and I just don’t see it as food.”
I certainly didn’t press her to see whether she’d eat it in extremis, and if so how extreme was extremis enough. But like @HMS_Irruncible’s story of dog, she simply wasn’t interested in it.
Good point. What I’m curious about is people who convert to vegetarianism or veganism at some point in adult life.
If they were raised never eating meat, it stands to reason that they’d never feel the desire to eat meat - just like how some cultures eat insects, but most Westerners would find eating bugs abhorrent.
But someone who was raised eating meat, then suddenly became vegetarian, must have had something big and unexpected click in their head. (not necessarily in a bad way)
I’ve had long stretches (years) where I ate vegetarian or vegan for health or ethical reasons. I like eating meat but don’t need to, in the same ways that I like eating dessert but don’t need to. I have no aversion to meat but I’d eat less meat overall if I didn’t tend toward anemia. I have never lectured anyone about eating meat or animal products. I have supported local organic and humane husbandry and butchers. I do think meat farming contributes to ecological problems and that we eat more meat than is necessary or healthy.
ETA: no “something clicked” experience. I’ve lived with or dated vegetarians and other people on strict medical diets, and I find it easy to accommodate. I do read and listen to medical and environmental information that informs my food decisions; not just about meat, but packaging, transportation, nutrients, bodily processes and health, etc.
A friend who is mostly vegetarian but will eat fish and wild game. Also would have a small piece of turkey for Thanksgiving or if visiting some place where meat is a central cultural item but that is a 2x a year type thing. She mostly against industrial meat processing for environmental and human rights issues.
Brian
I think many, if not most vegetarians have chosen that diet not because they dislike the taste of meat, but for ethical reasons, and because they don’t think it’s economically and environmentally sustainable.
They may develop, or say they develop, a dislike for the sight and smell of meat, but there’s not a huge industry of impossible burgers and a bunch of other vegetarian stuff that’s supposed to taste ‘just like meat’ for nuthin’.
True, pursuit of a healthier diet is another reason people go vegetarian, but again, I think very few people go veggie just because they dislike meat.
I mean, it depends on why someone is followong a particular diet. I know a guy who eats a vegan diet becsusenhe thinks its healthier. Its not ethical. When eating food someone else made, he doesn’t quibble about things like maybe a bit of broth or milk in baked goods, but he’d never cook with animal stock himself, and he wouldn’t eat food with like pieces of meat or cheese.
Given his reasons, those are perfectly logical boundaries.
There’s a range both of “why vegetarian” and “how vegetarian”. “Why” ranges from “i don’t like meat” to “i don’t like killing animals” to “raising meat is bad for the environment” to “i think meat is unhealthy for me” to “i grew up with a religious prohibition on meat, and it’s not food”. And probably other reasons. But the underlying reason affects how the person feels about “cheating”.
As for “how much”, i have a vegetarian friend who will eat meat if that’s the only food around. She’s in the “environmentally unsound” camp, and tends to be short on cash. So she never buys meat or does anything to encourage its use, but if she’s hungry, and the animal is already dead, and especially if that food will otherwise be thrown out, she’ll eat it. At the other extreme, i have a vegan friend who hasn’t eaten meat in many years, and tells me that she thinks she’s lost the enzymes to digest it, but at any rate, if it accidentally gets into her food she is physically ill.
My daughter must’ve been born vegetarian, she never liked meat all that much.
Definitely did not like meat on the bone and the smell of raw meat cooking would make her gag.
Thing is she wasn’t all that crazy about vegetables either.
Thank goodness she went off to college and roomed with veggie/vegan eaters and discovered her vegetarian self. She’s all in and meat is out.
It’s the textures and smells of meat that are a big turn off. She uses dairy but has some intolerance and prefers substitutes.
Vegan Worcestershire is identical in taste to the stuff with anchovies. Anchovies. Is that a big deal if a vegetarian uses anchovy Worcestershire? She’d prefer not to, personally I figure really? So I asked her to byob of Worcestershire to Tgiving. She did.
I have a coworker from India who has the same attitude about beef. He tried eating beef, but just once. He wasn’t raised with it, and doesn’t have any interest in it. He does eat chicken and pork, but not much at home as his wife is vegetarian.
For someone who doesn’t eat beef regularly, they might have a negative digestive experience. Most of my vegetarian and vegan friends won’t eat beef or any other animal flesh. If there was nothing to eat, and everything had some sort of animal part (broth, gelatin, etc.), they would probably eat something if really necessary. Otherwise? They’d rather wait to get something suitable.
That said, one of my vegetarian friends did end up eating chicken noodle soup when she was sick for a while. Nothing else appealed to her.
This is how my grandpa was (born 1924). I never knew he was a vegetarian until way later in my life. He never talked about it and I never looked at what he ate. I think when he went to the Marines in 1942 he was stationed in San Diego and went to a lecture about vegetarianism and probably was told that meat was unhealthy (it was quite possibly a religious lecture) and he stopped eating meat. He said he used to trade his meat rations for cookies when he was deployed.
He didn’t raise his kids vegetarian and I’m not sure how much he stuck to it in the 50s. But he always avoided meat as much as possible. Later in life he did learn that he liked to eat fish so fish was his main protein.
When he had his sextuple bypass in the 90s, that’s when it was pointed out to me that he was a vegetarian. Because people found it weird that he had blocked arteries considering he never ate meat. But it was also pointed out that he ate a lot of cookies and ice cream.
FWIW my grandpa was always a skinny man. I think he was kind of vain and didn’t want to get fat, and he possibly also avoided meat because he thought it would make him fat.
Anyway, my grandpa was an old school “vegetarian” who avoided meat because someone once told him it was bad for you and it basically gave him an aversion to it. Until he found fish but fish don’t count.
My ex was a vegetarian, but her choice of diet wasn’t based on ethical or financial reasons. She just hated the texture of meat (she told me a couple of times how, when she was very young, she’d had to eat a slice of bacon, couldn’t swallow it and waited for half an hour - in vain of course - for it to somehow melt in her mouth and disappear).
However, she loved prawns and oysters, liked all types of fish and ate cheese as well as yoghurt almost daily. Interestingly, she admitted finding the smell of grilled meat incredibly mouth-watering, but couldn’t bring herself to actually eat some.
Since her decision was entirely based on subjective reasons, she wasn’t preachy about it at all. In spite of the fact that I love meat, I sort of aligned my diet on hers because we enjoyed cooking together and it was more convenient and fun to eat the same things. I had meat anytime we went to the restaurant, though.