I have noticed that among philosophers, vegetarianism of one form or another is quite common. In fact, I became a vegetarian (technically a pescetarian) myself partly out of respect for an undergraduate philosophy professor. I am interested in finding out if there is a similar disproportion in the Less Wrong community.
I didn't request that this go into Yvain's survey because I want more information than just what animal products you do or don't eat; I'd also like to see nuances of the reasons behind your diet. There are a lot more shades than carnivore/vegetarian/vegan - if you want to be a vegetarian but are allergic to soy and gluten, that's a compelling reason to diversify protein sources, for instance. I'd also like to hear about if you avoid any plant foods (if you think they're farmed in a way that's environmentally destructive or that hurts people or if you have warm fuzzy feelings for plants, maybe). Here are some questions that come to mind:
- What foods, if any, do you normally avoid for reasons other than pure culinary taste, cost, individual health concerns (allergies, diabetes, etc.) or ease of preparation? (Avoiding foods that are considered revolting or just non-food in your culture of origin, like balut or fried locusts, counts as "culinary taste".)
- What are your reasons for avoiding those foods?
- How strictly do you avoid them? For instance, will you eat them if you are served them while a guest at a meal, or if you are hungry and there is nothing else available? Do you check to see if they're in potentially questionable dishes at restaurants (and if so, do you trust what the server says?)
- If you have children or plan to have children, will you expect or encourage them to avoid the same foods?
- Do you try to convince your friends and family members to make dietary choices similar to yours? If so, have you ever succeeded?
- If you avoid a class of foods with valuable nutritive content (as opposed to Twinkies), what do you replace it with to get complete nutrition?
- What are your attitudes to people who are more restrictive in their diets than you are? Less restrictive?
- What is the timeline of your dietary restrictions? (Transitions, lapses, increases or decreases in restrictiveness, etc.)
- If you have not avoided these foods for your entire life, how much did you enjoy them when you ate them, and do you still sometimes want to eat them?
- Is there anything else about your choice of diet that might be relevant or interesting?
I'm here to strike a blow against selection bias: I eat anything.
- I don't eat meat.
- Ethical. If I wouldn't want people torturing dogs, I have no justification to be okay with people torturing cows, pigs, and chickens, and from what I've seen conditions in a lot of farms and slaughterhouses are tantamount to torture. Even though animals can't think verbally, they still have some level of awareness and the ability to feel pain, so causing them suffering is verboten. I am kind of sympathetic to the argument that free range meat raised with the animals' welfare in mind isn't so bad, and to the argument that if we weren't ra
... (read more)Kin selection suggests that chickens may care about their siblings, and general evolution suggests they definitely care about their children.
...which is exactly the problem. You sound like you're holding a grudge against chickens for not being evolutionarily programmed in a certain way. Let it go. If you set some criteria for "deserving" our respect, of course a lot of animals can't live up to it. But it doesn't seem right to use that as justification for hurting them.
Thought experiment: I take Bob and cut out the part of his brain involved in empathy. Now he can't care about other people, but his thought and emotions are otherwise intact. Is it now okay to torture Bob?
I weight the well-being of animals in proportion to what I would call for lack of a better word their consciousness. I think dolphins are probably self-aware, capable of reflection, and have strong senses of pain and pleasure. I think ants are probably much less so, although still nonzero. So I place much less emphasis upon the well-being of ants than upon the well-being of dolphins. Since viruses have no nervous system and no brain, I'm prepared to give them zero value.
However, I have no evidence that dogs are more aware than pigs are. Any personal preference I have for dogs is because they're cuter than pigs are, which seems like a bad way to make moral decisions. So I am not prepared to make pigs less valuable than dogs.
I never thought about it in terms of your two-different-kinds-of-chicken-breast problem, but I would agree that this would require an actual calculation to see whether the money saved could prevent more suffering than was caused to the chicken. Given the low probability of me actually going through with donating $1 more to charity just because I bought a $1 cheaper chicken, I'd probably take the more expensive one, though.
Interesting thread. Looks like people are still responding to it from time to time, so here are my long-winded (sorry, can't help it :P) answers.
... (read more)I do not eat any animal products other than honey (which I don't use much, but don't morally object to in the same way that I do other animal products). I also don't usually use animal-based materials like wool or leather, with some minor exceptions (see my answer to #2). On that basis, some would call me a vegan and others would not. I do call myself a vegan.
There are probably some plant foods that I should giv
Well, you're certainly going to get some selective reporting from this poll. Personally, I love eating meat. If it isn't sentient now, isn't going to become sentient in the foreseeable future, and is owned by me, then I have no moral problem with killing it. In fact, I think I could eat venison while watching Disney's film Bambi, without it bothering me.
The word is "sapient". Animals are sentient - which refers to their "experiencing sensation or feeling" [American Heritage Dictionary]; although I admit this is an increasingly common confusion.
Several vegetarians have mentioned health benefits as a reason for choosing a vegetarian diet. I'd be interested to know what the health benefits they have in mind are. I've been adjusting my diet recently to incorporate more red meat and saturated animal fats because of the increasing evidence that they are beneficial (I was previously eating less than I would choose to on taste grounds because of a belief that they were unhealthy).
The claimed health benefits of vegetarianism that I'm aware of seem to be based on the low-fat/high-carb theory of a healthy... (read more)
- I'm trying to cut back on sugar and refined or processed foods.
- Health reasons
- Not very strict.
- Yes, hopefully by the time I have kids, I'll have moved away from the crappy college student diet.
- Most of the pressure with regards to vegetarianism has been in the reverse direction. All three girls I seriously dated are vegetarian, so I've had serious discussions about the subject (this also created a weird subconscious expectation that all women are vegetarian by default).
- NA
- I have no issues with what other people eat. I happily eat meat (though wondering
... (read more)Inspired by mattnewport's comment, here are additional questions for any vegetarians: if vat-grown meat were developed, would you eat it? Would there be any ethical issues with eating it?
... (read more)I don't eat meat (including fish). I also try to avoid eggs that are not free-range wherever possible.
I think that while it's possible to live perfectly happily and healthily off plants, there's just no need to inflict pain and death on animals. There are other factors (most of them on your don't-include list) that are not reasons per se for vegetarianism but do contribute to making it an easier choice for me: the fact that I don't like meat all that much anyway, and the fact that vegetarian food is generally cheaper than meat.
These days (see question
I guess most people who will bother to speak out are those who do avoid some categories of food for ideological reasons. So here I'm speaking as a member of majority who doesn't do anything of the kind.
1 and 3). I'm mostly vegetarian. I eat fish about once a week. I eat air breathing animals' flesh when I think it is otherwise going to waste or (very rarely) when it is merely very inconvenient to be vegetarian. On the margin, I make a small attempt to reduce my intake of dairy and eggs. I eat refined carbohydrates, and quite a bit of soy, but try to avoid eating extreme amounts for health reasons.
2) I do this to prevent, and to signal concern about, unnecessary animal suffering. I would have no qualms about eating animals if they were certifiably ... (read more)
Did any useful knowledge come out of this survey? Is it summarized anywhere?
First thing you need to know as a vegetarian rationalist is that you need to supplement with creatine.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691485/
- I became a vegetarian in about '94 due to ethical reasoning and the scare of madcow disease that was rampant in the German media back then. Both reasons have since disappeare
... (read more)
... (read more)Any animal part.
To prevent animals from suffering or dying. Vegetarianism seems inevitable to me as I work to bring my behavior in line with my values.
Very strictly; I won't eat it as a guest, if hungry, or by not checking questionable dishes.
Yes.
Very rarely, and with limited success. I do encourage my friends to think about it if they're receptive, and I'll certainly talk about it if they want to, but I ultimately think that outside help can only go so far, and people need to reach conclusions on their own if they're going to stick.
I'm not as s
It's not a coincidence. People farming meat animals do so because they expect to be able to sell the meat. If they consistently find that they can't sell it all, or have enough surplus floating around that the price drops and underperforming farms can no longer economically stay in the business, then some farms will shut down. If you've eaten 40 hogs in your life, then you have generated demand for 40 hogs. If there's a farm that had produced 40,000 hogs' worth of meat in your lifetime, then it takes 1,000 people like you to support that farm. It's a problem of collective action to get the necessary number of people to quit patronizing it, but that sort of thing is relatively elementary for LW.
... (read more)I try to cut down on the meat of mammals. The few times it's come up, I've refused to eat octopus.
I find that if I eat beef without concern, I start eating it all the damn time. Like, multiple times a day. So, partly out of concern for my health, and partly out of a personal-bordering-on-ethical decision.
Not very strictly at all. I'll eat what I feel like, although I make a mild conscious effort.
I don't know that I'll have children, but if I do, they can eat what they please. Not that it'll be on the dinner table very often if it's not my thing
I'm another paleo dieter. It seems like that diet is overrepresented among rationalists and individualists from my experience, but that is just personal empiricism.
I take a positive view towards the morality of meat consumption. We are doing it because it is practical and delicious - we simply have a weaker preference for not doing unnecessary harm to animals. Once vat-grown meat becomes widely available, I predict that our cultural sentiments surrounding meat consumption will rapidly change such that only vat-grown meat will be acceptable to eat.
Not a vegetarian. Eat and enjoy most types of meat and seafood (and would have no problem trying fried locusts). I don't think animals have rights but I do have a preference, all else being equal, not to cause them unnecessary suffering so if vat grown meat is ever developed that is demonstrated to have the same nutritional value and texture, flavour and appearance as real meat then I would probably consume it in favour of the real thing.
1) I try to avoid refined carbohydrates and sugar. Generally try to eat along the lines of the paleo diet.
2) Health con... (read more)
... (read more)I avoid the meat of any sort of mammal
Moral and ecological. I may eventually also give up all fish save for those that are sustainably farmed, although I do not have much regard for the welfare of fish. Giving up sushi would be a hell of a wrench though.
Very strictly. I will sooner go hungry or offend a host than eat red meat in any quantity.
If I had children, I might suggest that they follow similar restrictions, and would probably not prepare such foods for them.
I haven't pressured them, but I've made suggestions to that effect. Many of my frien
1. None. There are animals I wouldn't care to eat (e.g. primates), but none of them are on offer where I live.
2, 3, 4: N/A. On (3), though, when I have to avoid things that personally disagree with me, I don't expect a waiter to be able to definitively answer questions about the precise ingredients of a dish. I guess conservatively from the menu description.
5. No, I don't try to persuade anyone to omnivorousness.
6. N/A.
7. I might ask them why. Or not.
8. Brought up as an omnivore.
9. N/A.
10. My metabolism appears to be several standard deviations removed fro... (read more)
- None. I'm ~vegan mostly for amoral reasons- I love wheat, am somewhat miserly, am lactose intolerant, live alone and so prefer to cook smaller meals, and so on. I get a bit of warm fuzzies from the trophic level of my food- but that's a tertiary reason, at best.
- Not really relevant.
- I will eat meat at most restaurants because it's the menu item I like the most. (Not a fan of salads, restaurant pasta tends to be terrible, and so it's pizza or chicken.)
- Not sure. It seems easier to switch to meat for developmental reasons and ensure they get everything they
... (read more)I very much enjoy eating meat. However, animal suffering concerns me. Pigs pass a variation of the mirror test.
But I don't see any incentive to become a vegetarian when my decision will not change aggregate animal suffering or even prevent a single pig from being born into an existence of pure suffering. Their existence is so bad it's almost like they're not even alive. In the documentary Food Inc, the farmers refer to "growing" chickens, never raising chickens.
Is there any logical inconsistency here? It seems oddly convenient to be able to accept animal suffering yet be able to completely ignore it.
Your decision may or may not noticeably impact demand for meat; however, in aggregate with others making the same decision, it certainly does. You could be one of the hundreds of people who doesn't change anything; or you could be the one person on the tipping point whose decision prevents a new factory farm from opening, or shuts one down. The expected utility works out to saving or preventing the birth of as many animals as you don't eat.
Consistency is what we build into FAIs, not what we require of ourselves before changing what we would do. If animal suffering is bad enough that we should be an animal rights campaigner, but we nevertheless unethically choose to not become a campaigner, that does not make the decision to eat exactly as much meat as always suddenly an ethical decision.
Is it futile to eat a side of asparagus with your steak rather than a side of calamari? Not at all, we have still saved expected squid equivalent to one side of calamari. Would it be better to not have the steak? Sure, maybe, but the squid doesn't actually care about our inconsistency.
I recently (gradually over the last half-year or so) became a fair-weather vegetarian. I ate pepperoni pizza today, and it would have been more than negligible cost to do otherwise. But the last time I bought groceries I did not purchase any meat. I find that I can forgo something like 90% of the meat I used to eat with positive marginal happiness, since most of the time it's fairly trivial to switch to a non-meat idea instead and I still get more pleasure from the decision to switch than unpleasantness from the switching costs.
This is... an interesting approach. I wonder how many opportunities for marginal improvement we miss, because to admit there's a problem at all would seem to demand complete action by the bright lines of morality and guilt.
I evidently missed this post when it appeared. Nonetheless I'll put some thoughts on the record:
#7. Although AlexU expressed it a bit more rudely than I would have, I basically share his opinion. This is somewhat delicate, because, as you can see, I do move in circles where vegetarians are not uncommon. Nevertheless, I am allergic to sanctimony in all its forms, and vegetarianism does strike me as a form of sanctimony. In particular, even quietly practiced private vegetarianism seems more effective as a social signaling device than as a means of actually ... (read more)
I avoid foods with certain preservatives and flavourings (aspartame and MSG). I avoid foods high in carbohydrate. I moderate my red meat intake.
Health. (I take it that 'general' health concerns are acceptable?)
I don't make a fuss about it.
I'll explain the health benefits and influence them somewhat.
On occasion, sometimes.
Ortho Core multivitamin supplement.
They'll lose some expected life span and quality of life but there are dumber things to do.
Somewhat recent.
I am still tempted.
These surveys are fun!
- Fast food e.g. McDonalds
- Concerns about low nutritional value and food safety.
- If I have been drinking I will happily enjoy a fast food burger
- My son is going to be one of those kids who never gets to go to McDonalds unless its for a birthday party.
- No.
- N/A
- If their reasons seem rational I think that's cool. If their reasons seem to be founded on a selective evidence and hippy crap I think they are stupid.
- Friday nights are the killer, see question 2.
- Warm cheeseburgers taste good.
- I enjoy organic and free range animals, especial
... (read more)As a general rule I try to avoid foods made with additives or processes that originated from modern science, because I think overall the selection of cultural traditions over human history is more effective at eliminating non-obvious harmful practices.
I'm not strict about this, I only apply it to things I eat regularly. I don't try to convince anyone and I only mention it if it comes up. If I have children I'll feed them the same way and explain why, but I won't pressure them about it once they get old enough to procure their own food.
In most cases I have ... (read more)
- I avoid all meat, as well as milk. I'm working to reduce other dairy products, but cheese is proving stubborn.
- Environmental and efficiency concerns are my main motivation, particularly GHG emissions. I have no particular concern for animal welfare.
- I have three general exceptions. The first is that I'll try types of food that I've never eaten before if offered the opportunity. (I would totally try fried locusts.) The second is that I'll eat things that I or a close friend or family member has caught/killed (non-farmed). The third is that I'll eat meat to
... (read more)1. None.
8. Went vegetarian for two months last summer to see what it's like. Conclusion: it's considerably cheaper than meat, but lower calorie density means I have to eat and poop more stuff. I ate little meat while I was unemployed. Now I eat extra meat because I'm weightlifting.
I eat anything too. I know a few vegeterians (including my dad), and don't mind them.
I'm fairly militant about eating anything that's tasty. (I suppose I'd draw the line at chimpanzee or nonconsensually-killed human.)
I'm a lifelong vegetarian, raised by non-vegetarians, but my "rationale" falls squarely into this category, so I guess I can't answer these usefully. I don't see what's so creepy about eating fried locusts compared to eating flesh. Or, for that matter, what's so creepy about eating human flesh compared to the flesh of other mammals.
In (1), did you intend not to exclude things like allergies? Questions 4, 5, and 7 suggest that you are asking about dietary restrictions that one thinks a good idea for people in general.
- I don't eat any kind of meat.
- I avoid meat because I suspect that even most animals have a capacity to suffer.
[Edit: or more directly because I experience pangs of guilt when I consider eating meat.]
- I would eat meat if I had a plausible reason to fear that I would starve to death or go hungry for long enough that I would suffer greatly.
- I don't want children (this would be an interesting survey too btw). If I did, I would explain to them why I don't eat meat, but leave it up to them.
- I never talk about it with my family. They know, but for some reason m
... (read more)Do you want any information on other unusual diets? (I consume raw meat and eggs, for example.) Your post title implies that you're only looking for information from vegetarians.
My own data point:
- I don't eat any air-breathing animals or cephalopods; I still eat non-cephalopod seafood.
- I am concerned about animal suffering, environmental impact, food efficiency, and health. (Cost and ease of preparation are also factors.) I can enjoy an excellent quality of life with this restricted diet.
- I do not eat meat when it's offered to me, and so far have not been hungry enough to eat it for that reason. (If I were stranded on a desert island, I would eat animals.) I sometimes order soup in restaurants without asking what kind of stoc
... (read more)What are people's reasons for not eating eggs and would you eat the eggs of your own pet chickens that you were raising?
With such a broad definition of "culinary taste", my answer is “None”; but I think it is way too broad. (Do you really want to consider --say-- a Saudi Muslim's refusal of eating pork if she's never met anyone who eats pork to count as a culinary taste?)
Hence, questions 2), 3), 4), 6), and 9) are N/A, 5) in my case would mean “have you tried to convince someone to eat food they have avoide... (read more)
I'm a vegan. I have not yet considered fully whether or not the beliefs behind it, and this specific course of action based upon those beliefs, are rational.
It seems to me that it would be against my personal morals to assume that I have the right to enslave or take effort from a creature whose intelligence I cannot, at present, measure or determine. I'm not sure if intelligence should be the basis for this decision.
From what I've seen and read of the meat industry, it does seem that this specific industry and way of doing things is one I wish to avoid... (read more)
No one has described my particular situation yet, so I'll give it a shot:
- I do not eat junk food. No potato chips, cookies, desserts, candy, ect.
- I do this primarily for health reasons, but also just to prove I can.
- I will occasionally eat pizza and other borderline-junk food if there is no alternative. (I'll drink Gatorade if there's no water, or order a breakfast pastry if fruit isn't an option). I won't eat candy, desserts, or anything with trans-fats regardless of whether there are alternatives.
- I know a few people whose parents prohibited them from
... (read more)
... (read more)I avoid unergonomic / "low-usability" food, that is, anything with inedible elements like bones, cartilage, shells, scales or fruit stones, or just hard eat. Examples include chicken, bony fish, shrimps, cherry, watermelon (though I've recently found a way to deal with watermelons safely), and generally unwieldy food like this hamburger.
Why? Because I just want to eat the food, not to "deal with" it. Also, when I eat, I prefer my hands to be dry and clean, so when I deal with messy food, it is not uncommon for me to go wash my hands
- I avoid eating human, dog, cat, horse, dolphin, and anything cute. Otherwise, my policy is "I'll try anything twice", especially while traveling.
- I avoid eating things that humans can regard as friends. (dolphins are in the 'gray area' here.)
- I would avoid them even as a guest or if hungry (if literally starving, though, all bets are off)
- Yes.
- only when it comes up. No, I don't think I've ever succeeded.
- not an issue - cow is a fine substitute.
- folks with more restrictive diets are silly. Less restrictive are gross. That's about it.
- Pretty
... (read more)Hmmm.... I just noticed that these questions are all about dietary restrictions, as though a normal diet is unrestricted. But in my case, my dietary distinction is that I eat things that "normal" people don't, not so much a restriction from the normal diet. But oh well, here goes:
... (read more)I don't avoid anything for reasons other than taste, cost, health, or convenience. Cooked meat I avoid for both "health" and "taste"; I can eat it, but mostly prefer raw or seared just enough to warm and soften the fat. Highly-processed foods I
I eat anything. Make a conscious choice to eat healthy stuff and avoid junk food and simple carbs when convenient. Preferred eating pattern is to basically graze all day long. That, as well as a general indifference toward food (I find eating to be a bit of an irritating necessity, and never have cravings for anything) are enough to keep me trim. Probably worth noting that I wasn't always this way; up through college, I loved eating crap foods, sweets, carbs, soda, etc. Permanent preference changes take time, but can happen.
Most vegetarians/vegans strike me as sanctimonious twits, who are more often than not no healthier than anyone else.
Being civil does not mean watering down. It does involve specifying the actual problem one has rather than use a general insult like "twit". The word "sanctimonious" is not helpful either, if the meaning is that vegetarians/vegans try to impose arbitrary moral standards on others, it is better to say so explicitly, so we know what the actual position is, and can respond to it. (It's been my experience that vegetarians/vegans I read about in the news fit this description, but those I meet in person generally do not, and it is likely a minority of activists get most of the press.)
Being civil should convey more information. It communicates what in particular you don't like rather than general contempt.
1: None.
2-4: -
5: Only when it impinges on health effects.
6: -
7: Shrug?
8-9: -
10: Yes.
isn't it funny how often we vegetarians get asked this question? i have a hard time even answering people anymore b/c i am bored of my own story. my standard answer is that i am just about as laid-back-a vegetarian as can be - ovo/lacto/pesca, whatever. lard in the refried beans, chicken stock in the rice, etc, when served to me in a restaurant or at someone's house is totally acceptable, although i'd rather not know about it and when presented with vegetarian options instead, i'll take it/them. my vegetarianism started when a peta representative spoke to ... (read more)
I thought I was just being evil by eating meat until I started reading this. Hat tip to PJ Eby.