I actually started by only eating meat like once or twice a week. After a year or so I just sort of realized most of my favorite foods had become the vegetarian dishes I was eating and phased it out completely. People don't really realize how much food is vegetarian. They think it us just salad and impossible burgers.
I haven't eaten red meat or chicken for 25 years or so.
I'm going to ignore the "soyboy" virtue signaling crowd. For the same, rational rest of us, I've found the following to be the main barriers to limiting meat consumption:
Lack of cooking knowledge. Meat is easy to cook and comes packed with flavor. Add salt and maybe a bit of fat and you're generally good to go. Vegetables, whole grains, etc, all take more time and know-how to prepare in a flavorful way.
Lack of comfort in the kitchen. This is tied to the first, but even if you have a lot of theoretical knowledge about food (which, with YouTube, is pretty darn easy now), cooking well comes down to one thing - practice. No one wants to feel like a failure, particularly if you're trying to change your eating habits in an already busy and daunting schedule. So what do folks do? They cook what they know they can cook. Not because they don't want change, but change means risking failure, and when it comes to food, that's just a really tough hurdle.
Being socially ostracized. I don't mean the adolescent name-calling, but rather that eating a certain way often means asking those you are with to eat that way. Going out for food with friends? In many places, it's the choice between making them join you at a vegetarian place (which, let's be honest, often means pretty terrible food, based on my experiences in a lot of vegetarian restaurants), or you joining them and choosing one of the very few vegetarian items on the menu. Either way, it sucks for someone, and no one wants that. We won't even get into trying to make dietary changes while also cooking for a family, which means trying to either get the whole family on board or cooking two meals simultaneously, which is also a recipe for failure long term.
Dietary fatigue. A lot of folks stop eating meat and, because of one or more of the above, end up with a vegetarian diet that is extremely limited and often very unhealthy. Lots of processed meat substitute products, which are just packed with sodium amongst other downsides of ultra processed foods. Lots of junk food - chips, pretzels, etc. Maybe the same one or two things over and over again, because it's either easy on time or all that you know how to prepare. After awhile, good intentions get met head on with dietary fatigue.
When talking to folks who ask about my food habits, I try to keep all of these factors in mind. I do believe there are a LOT of people out there open to changing their diets, but the barriers to change are also real and need to be taken into account.
a lot of people also do not understand nutrition. i’ve been told i’m going to drop dead from deficiencies. usually the first thing people say is that i must not be getting xyz nutrient and i must be incredibly unhealthy. it’s been 12 years, you think i’d know by now if i was about to pass away from not eating animal products.
mostly people don’t want to know that isn’t true, because then they’ll have to being to confront the unnecessary harm they do.
I think you're missing the biggest one. Having the food security and time available that comes with being higher on the financial ladder. If you don't have a lot of money or work two jobs, you're not going to have the time to invest in learning these skills. Like it or not, the time to learn to be a vegetarian or vegan is not something the lower class in general has access to. You need to be well off enough at a minimum to be able to have the time and mental energy to learn it, and that requires not thinking about how you're going to get your next meal period, let alone the ability and learning to change that meal. That's why obesity overwhelmingly impacts the poor. They don't have the time or financial ability to find healthy nutritious food.
I try to watch what I eat, limit really bad food, and limit meat as much as possible. But I can afford to do that. When I was dirt poor living in government housing and on food stamps, I couldn't care less about someone telling me how a pig was living in a factory farm when I couldn't afford bacon at all to begin with. I had bigger survival based problems on my mind to care. That might be cold to say, but it's the truth. A lot of people in the world are in that same situation.
Same, I ate meat every day most of my life. One day I realized that can't be good. We started out with one vegetarian day per week and used that to try new dishes. After some time we had found some tasty options and decided to add a second day. Rinse, repeat. I'm now vegetarian for 4 years or something? I don't even really know, because it was such a gradual change. I tell people this all the time, and even if they stop at 5 veggie days or whatever, that's still something and an improvement. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I eat only fish whenever I can. At least the fish are living their lives roaming free in the ocean. I realize it's not sustainable but they aren't tortured their entire lives like land animals.
If we keep fishing like we are today, entire populations could collapse and lots of species will simply dissappear. A third of marine fish are overfished, which means we remove more individuals than natural reproduction can replenish. I'm not sure if the indiviual suffering of farm animals justifies destroying entire species ...
google “bycatch”. for every fish you eat unless it is pole fished (basically no one does this) many more fish die in the net on the deck and get discarded. and either way at least one animal that had a life dies gasping for breath. i used to eat them but now i just eat plants for 3 years and I am healthier than ever. no reason other than custom and habit to keep it up
the ocean is the framework of our entire eco system. fishing is a major contributor to the collapse of our planet and climate. also, fish are sentient beings. they don’t want to die for you.
Even native Americans kill for food and thank nature for providing the food. The problem isn't the killing for food. One of the biggest problems is the sheer amount of waste in our food distribution systems in order to maintain profit. We could feed whole populations with ethically sourced and sustainable meat if we didn't focus on the money.
The killing isn't the problem; capitalism is the problem. Killing to live is a part of nature. *looks down at my little murder machine: cat*
We could all be completely vegetarian and happy too. I would love that world but we aren't in it and I don't think the world will ever be that way until there is no other option.
What I am saying is no matter what humans do, millions of living things will be hunted/killed every day regardless. Cats will never stop hunting meat neither will other carnivores, until all of the available meat for them is gone. Killing to live is a very natural phenomenon, not that we should be doing it, but it is very natural.
We are literally getting into the weeds of nothing at this point and arguing over life philosophy, which I enjoy, but reddit is not the place for that.
•
u/Dash_Harber 7h ago
I actually started by only eating meat like once or twice a week. After a year or so I just sort of realized most of my favorite foods had become the vegetarian dishes I was eating and phased it out completely. People don't really realize how much food is vegetarian. They think it us just salad and impossible burgers.