Vegetarianism and disgust of meat

[baardmk]

I love reading abstracts on pubmed of studies that have some relevance for my interests and where I can understand what they actually are describing. This is one of them.

A comparison of attitudes toward meat and animals among strict and semi-vegetarians.

The last sentence reads

The results suggest that semi-vegetarians are distinct from strict vegetarians primarily in their evaluation of and disgust toward meat, likely as a cause or consequence of their occasional consumption of animal flesh.

I have gotten pretty disgusted with meat/dairy/fish. Is it the new knowledge I have about these things (Greger has some disturbing videos about how filthy and prevalent animal bacteria and virus contaminations are) which have caused me this, or the simple fact that they are alien, and naturally disgusting to me, now that I eat a "clean diet", as many people like to frame it?

Some even cite the disgust vegans typically have towards all types of meat as an argument against being wholly vegan:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food ... yster.html
http://sentientist.org/2013/05/20/the-e ... d-mussels/
I don't endorse the message by these articles, but I think they offer maybe the least bad alternatives for people who for whatever reason think they need some animal products in their diet.

Is this just an argument for social assimilation, ostracising vegans' and everybody's natural instincts towards viewing meat as repugnant(at least in its natural form)?

I guess I'm asking,
are you also increasingly repulsed by animal products? And if so, do you know why?
Are vegans vegans because of nature or nurture? (I think it's 90% nurture myself, but that's just my feeble intuition, and is pretty much my figure for all nature-nurture debates) And what does a percentage really mean, anyway? Very difficult to say.

[auntemmy]

I've always found raw meat repulsive. My grandmother cleaned her freshly killed chickens in the kitchen sink of her farm house. I know what's inside a chicken. The older I got, the more repulsed I felt. This led to never eating meat off the bone, buying boneless skinless chicken and turkey breast or tenders that look nothing like the animal they came from. Canned tuna and salmon, etc. My mother made calves liver once a month and it was the most disgusting sight, no matter how many onions she sliced into the pan. Would I eat raw meat like true carnivores do? No way. I want it breaded and resembling nothing close to animal. Maybe even shaped like cute little breaded dinosaurs....or stars...or nuggets.

I think it's nature.

[MarionP]

I haven't consciously eaten a morsel of meat since I became vegan. I do not plan on ever consuming animal products again, and not once have I been tempted to, because I have fully internalized what the animals have to go through to satisfy our selfish cravings.

However, although I find the mere presence of meat and the idea of people eating it distasteful, I still find prepared pieces of meat appetizing and the smell, enjoyable. This is unlike sea meat, the smell of which I've always found inherently disgusting, even when I was an avid meat-eater.

Before I became vegan, I felt that my dislike of sea meats was a curse, and now I find it a blessing, because even though I'm not tempted by other meats, I still miss them.

[CarrotTopsRGreen]

I am now the grandmother of two little ones, and my sisters and friends are also becoming grandmothers right now - so I have a lot of small children to observe. What I am realizing in speaking to the mothers and watching the tiny kids is that more often than not, toddlers do not like meat and have to be coaxed and taught to eat it. From this, I am drawing the conclusion that meat is not a natural food for us and that is why so many children have an aversion to it before they develop a taste for it. My mother never did like meat. She only ate it because she was taught it was good for her health.

[colonyofcells]

I definitely feel bad about the killing of animals, plants, mushrooms, eukarya, bacteria, archaea, people, countless species extinctions, etc. and I do my best to do my small part contributing to the impossible dream.

[MINNIE]

I was always disgusted by meat. By meat (I mean any kind of dead animal flesh, meaning mammal, fish, fowl, reptile, whatever. I also hated to eat or even smell or see cooked eggs. As a little girl I felt sorry for the birds that had their babies stolen, as I saw it. Like auntemmy posted above, I saw the killing and butchering of food animals in daily life when I was a child, and couldn't feel the acceptance that other people felt.

I feel even more disgusted now, as I know more about the health and environmental effects of eating animal foods.

I was never able to see any reason that the fear, pain and suffering of animals was any different from my own, and I still don't. But I have learned that most people I live among do not think this way and they think I'm a lunatic. I used to think that maybe they were right, and there was something wrong with me, but now I don't care. What I think is what I think.

[hazelrah]

I guess I'm asking,
are you also increasingly repulsed by animal products? And if so, do you know why?

I think the opposite is true for me; The more I eat this way the more I see the choice of protein sources as being the best decision you can make given the available information. Having been raised Catholic, my initial reason for straying into vegetarian and vegan diets was guilt avoidance, but these days I'm thinking more that these factory chicken farms are just a means for producing as much protein in as short a time for as little cost as possible and if business decisions favored developing super legumes to do that, we'd all be getting cancer and heart disease from isolated soy protein. I'm not sure I'd find that easier on my conscience, although it's not as direct a connection as I get from seeing the beaks of small chicks being burned off or watching Babe. But if I actually give it some thought, they seem equally wrong. I was reading a thread on Jeff's facebook page about a year ago where he seemed to ask why it was that ethical vegans cannot have a conversation without turning it into a sermon on the immorality of the way we treat animals; Is there something more ethical about the way we treat animals than how we take care of our health? When I think about that thread I increasingly come to the conclusion that it is a sort of religion; the feeling that we are, or should be, measured by how well we care for those who cannot care for themselves. But the more I follow this lifestyle, the more I view myself as a sort of biochemical machine, responding at a molecular level to the chemistry that I am creating by the food I ingest. This, it seems to me, is also the timbre of Dr Esselstyn's lectures lately and something related to it seems the very premise of The Pleasure Trap. There is still some of that righteous pride of empathy, sympathy, and the panoply of human emotion, but more and more, the proper course of action is becoming ingesting the food that is most healthy, and if that involves torturing small animals, I am less bothered by that than I used to be about losing a soul, which increasingly does not seem to have ever existed.

Mark

[ETeSelle]

I haven't eaten meat since 1987 (no dairy/eggs since 1990) and yeah, it disgusts me. I went vegan for ethical reasons entirely, though, so by the time I did it I just could no longer countenance eating animals (ergo, it disgusted me from the beginning--it didn't happen over time).

That said, I am fully capable of sitting at a table while others eat meat. It's not pleasant, but I do it all the time, as do all the other vegans I know!

And I prepare raw meat meals for my dogs and cats. It's hard, but I do it.

[Melinda]

I never liked meat as a small child - somehow I learned to eat it and as a teenager even liked beef, but never chicken. I was a sporadic vegetarian since age 28, and then a full fledged vegetarian since 1990. Meat simply repulses me - the smell of it, the look of it, and of course the production of it. We are having an engagement party for our daughter this month who will be living in Europe and she wants beef burgers on the menu - so we are going along with it, and getting grass fed organic beef, since at least they had some quality of life - it really bothers me, but long story, have to go along with it for the sake of family peace. I know that sounds like a cop out.

[baardmk]

Thanks everybody for your posts so far.

Mark, I don't understand your perspective. Is your philosophical perspective almost completely materialistic ("biochemical machine") so that isolated soy protein, in a mechanistic sense is even more bad, and thus also worse in a "moral" sense?

Of course, being too proselytising and moralising about your ways and philosophies can have the opposite effect, so some vegans may perhaps need to tone it down, but on the whole I feel we could need more sanctimonious and less tolerance if that's the bargain that needs to be had to get some action and decrease the ills we are causing ourselves, and the life on this planet.

off-topic NEWS
I read the abstract of this very recent article: An archaeologic dig: A rice-fruit diet reverses ECG changes in hypertension.

It's about the Rice Diet engineered by Walter Kempner. It seems to be very positive, and from a respected researcher.

[MINNIE]

, but on the whole I feel we could need more sanctimonious and less tolerance if that's the bargain that needs to be had to get some action and decrease the ills we are causing ourselves, and the life on this planet.

I would not have agreed with this until now, but maybe this is true. Usually, I don't engage in arguments or debates about vegan versus meat eating, or environmental issues , because I believe people have to make up their minds independently. Also, I hate being told what to believe, first by a religious entity, and then by politicians, TV presenters etc. So it seemed right that I should not impose my opinions on others, unless invited to do so. Which will never happen!

I'm an artist, and have sometimes thought about doing paintings and/or videos about how I see this issue, but is that going to do any good? People don't have to look, I suppose:).

Anyway, you have given me some good ideas to consider. Thanks.

[MarionP]

I do not believe in souls. But if I did, everything that I've learned about animal sensitivity and sentience these last few years would have led me to believe that animals undoubtedly have one.

Edit: I will add that if one's belief in souls fuels that person's belief that it is ok to cause pain and torture on sensitive and sentient beings weaker than themselves to satisfy their cravings, then that person's beliefs are problematic.

[ninehigh99]

I don't like having raw meat in the fridge, and I especially hate dealing with raw chicken. It tends to go bad quickly, and you often end up with slime. I do like a little bit of cooked meat in a dish, but I don't like the splatter involved with cooking it. I find the joy in food comes mainly from the tastes of fresh produce, but small amounts of meat is good occasionally.

I like the term "semi-vegan"

[nayasmom]

I am now the grandmother of two little ones, and my sisters and friends are also becoming grandmothers right now - so I have a lot of small children to observe. What I am realizing in speaking to the mothers and watching the tiny kids is that more often than not, toddlers do not like meat and have to be coaxed and taught to eat it. From this, I am drawing the conclusion that meat is not a natural food for us and that is why so many children have an aversion to it before they develop a taste for it. My mother never did like meat. She only ate it because she was taught it was good for her health.

I agree with the assessment of young children and babies. From my observations of the many kids I babysat or helped raise, eating meat was a learned thing. Kids naturally gravitate toward veggies, starches, and fruits until their tastebuds are corrupted by garbage in the form of nutritionally empty, processed, and fat-filled crap. Which always made me wonder - IF meat is so good and so good for us, why does it have to be hidden in addictive substances to make it more palateable?
I never liked any meats when I was young, but had to eat whatever my mother cooked. Of course, I could eat tuna noodle casserole forever, and all the fried chicken smothered in gravy in the world, and day-after-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches with a thick layer of stuffing and gravy AND mayonnaise, and meatloaf drowning in fat and ketchup... Yah I could eat all that and then some. Vegetables were always sadly prepared, no fun there.
After I became vegetarian, however, oh boy did my food world open up and I took off for the next 30+ years on a compulsive eating adventure.
I don't condone cruelty to animals for any reason, so I don't support zoos, animal racing, animal fighting, hunting of any kind for any reason, fishing for any reason, etc. I certainly don't support the rounding up and slaughtering of wild horses to make room for cattle grazing on BLM lands. None of it. It isn't some code of morality, but a plain and simple need to live in peace and harmony with the Earth and all her inhabitants.
Robyn

[Katydid]

While I didn't start out as a "moral" vegan, I find that the smell of grilling or frying meat is extremely repugnant to me now. I don't mind something roasted or cooked in a crock pot, and actually like the smell of a pot roast or a baked ham. But the smell of frying bacon, grilling burgers, hot dogs, steaks, etc. will literally nauseate me. I think its more the fat burning (with the accompanying carcinogenic smoke) that offends me, but whenever my company decides to "reward" the employees with a BBQ on the big gas grills, I know I'm in for an unpleasant afternoon.

Kate