You Eat More Meat Than You Think
As we become increasingly conscious of the barrage of harms eating meat causes, the pressure to lower our consumption mounts. Many of us claim that we’re cutting back – but are we? Veg*nism is certainly viewed more positively today than it has been in the past, but the average American has more than doubled their meat consumption in the past thirty years or so, and currently, a family of four eats over 130 animals each year.
This study explores the gap between what we say and what we do when it comes to eating animals. It begins with an in-depth discussion of the ways in which we justify eating animals, despite knowing that to do so is morally dubious at best. It then turns to the results of a questionnaire to see how these strategies play out in practice, and analyzes the gendered differences in responses.
The author starts by looking at several theories of how we legitimize immoral behavior, and applies these to eating animals. We create distance between ourselves and the horrors of factory farms, cordoned off both physically and legally. We speak of “ham,” not “a pig’s flesh.” We claim that animals don’t feel pain, or that their inner lives lack the emotional richness of our own. We say that these animals exist for us to eat them, or that it’s unhealthy for us not to consume their flesh. Such avoidance, denial, and dehumanization allow us to act unethically. These aren’t necessarily conscious strategies, but their impact is no less real for it.
We can loosely divide the strategies that justify eating animals into two categories: apologetic, and unapologetic. Apologetic strategies tend to look the other way, while unapologetic strategies openly rationalize eating animals. Studies have shown that women are more often apologetic about eating animals, and men unapologetic. The author connects this difference in strategy to gender dynamics. Our culture pushes men to be more oriented toward independence, power, and authority, while the emphasis for women is on nurturing and caregiving.
Since women tend to be more uncomfortable with eating animal flesh, they are also more likely to self-describe as only eating small amounts of meat. This widens the gap between reported diet and actual diet. To examine this gap, the study compared 125 men and women’s responses to a questionnaire spontaneously, versus when primed to be more conscious of meat-eating and their self-image. The control group was simply asked to complete a questionnaire about their habits and lifestyle choices, while the experimental group was told they would watch a PETA video after filling out the questionnaire. Questions focused on how often participants eat animals and on their perceptions of animals’ emotions.
The results of the study reflect the gendered pattern of apologetic and unapologetic strategies surrounding eating animals. Women reported eating less meat when their situational awareness of the ethical concerns was heightened, i.e. when they were more conscious that their behavior was morally problematic. This means that when told they would watch a PETA video, women reported eating meat 64% as often as men. In contrast, women in the control group reported eating meat 91% as often as men — a much more similar figure. It’s not clear whether this 91% is also underreported, or whether perhaps men overreport the amount of meat they eat given the close ties between meat and masculinity. However, the results suggest that to justify eating animals to themselves, women convince themselves that they don’t eat much meat.
Awareness of such a gap between reported and actual diet should motivate us to think critically about our efforts to cut back on meat, and can be useful as we seek to promote change. For example, the author notes that advertisements might remind consumers that we eat more meat than we think we do. More broadly, we need to be honest with ourselves, and to be aware that our self-image and our actions do not always map onto each other. For those of us trying to cut back, this study acts as a call to more radical action: to escape the unsolvable ethical conflict of eating animals, we can simply not eat animals.