Abstract: Food choice can be a way for people to express their ideals and identities. In particular, for those who identify as vegetarian, this label is more than just a set of dietary preferences. Choosing to follow a plant-based diet shapes one’s personal and social identity and is likely to influence a person’s values, attitudes, beliefs, and well-being. The available data suggest that vegetarians are more pro-social than omnivores and tend to have more liberal political views. Nevertheless, vegetarians do not appear to be as well-adjusted as omnivores, which may be the result of their status as a social minority. Despite the attention vegetarianism has received, more research is needed to understand the antecedents, correlates, consequences, and socio-cultural contexts of vegetarianism.
Conclusions, limitations, and future directions
There is little doubt that vegetarianism is a social identity and that it is more than a mere dietary choice. Moreover, similar to other social identities being a vegetarian has implications for the values, beliefs, and attitudes people hold. In turn the values, beliefs, and attitudes vegetarians hold have implications for their behavior (broadly defined) and for their well-being.
Nevertheless, the existing research suffers from important limitations. Conceptually, not enough attention has been paid to possible differences among types of vegetarians, including differences in why people are vegetarians. Some research suggests that vegans are meaningfully different from other types of vegetarians [e.g., 18, 39, 41], but more attention needs to be paid to possible differences between vegetarians who have similar eating habits but different reasons for being vegetarians. For example, two people may be lactoovo vegetarians, but one may do so for health reasons whereas another does so for ecological reasons. Although Plante et al. [24] found that different motives can lead to different behavioral outcomes, they suggest that future research should investigate possible moderator variables (e.g., length of time identifying as a vegetarian), establish better validated measures of vegetarian motivations, and employ behavioral outcomes rather than relying solely on self-report.
The empirical database is also limited geographically. Most of the research on vegetarianism as a social identity has been done in Western and Northern Europe (e.g., Germany and the Netherlands), the US and Canada, and Australasia. Relatively little has been done in Latin America, Southern, Central, or Eastern Europe, Asia (Western, Central, or Eastern), parts of Oceania other than Australasia, and Africa. Given that existing research suggests that being a vegetarian is associated with holding more pro-social socio-political attitudes and with reduced mental health in Western cultures, it is important to determine if such relationships exist outside of the capitalist democracies that have been studied to date. For example, Jin, Kandula, Kanaya, and Talegwkar [46] found that South Asian immigrants to the US who were vegetarians were less likely to be depressed than their relatives who were omnivores. This may have been because vegetarians were not social minorities in the communities in which these immigrants resided.
Contrary to the trends in some of the countries in which vegetarianism as a social identity has been studied, meat consumption is on the rise in some countries that have enjoyed recent improvements in their economies [47]. Although a decrease in meat consumption may not indicate an increase in vegetarianism, despite the risks involved in using trends in meat consumption as proxies for trends in vegetarianism, it seems unlikely that an increase in meat consumption could be accompanied by an increase in vegetarianism. Such trends suggest that understanding vegetarianism and its antecedents, correlates, and consequences needs to take into account the socio-cultural contexts within which people are living.
Reducing meat consumption has become an important sustainability goal, and there has been an increase in campaigns across the globe to dissuade consumers from consuming animal-based products, particularly eating meat. The effectiveness of such advocacy may depend on the social identity of the advocates and how they communicate their message [48]. Thus it will be important to consider social identity theory to develop effective messages to increase meat-eaters’ willingness to reduce meat consumption.
Related to changing attitudes about meat consumption is what the popular press sometimes refers to as “vegetarian activism.” Given differences in the centrality of diet based identities [18], a more accurate term would probably be “vegan activism.” although even this distinction cannot be supported by any research. Putting aside definitional issues, there is virtually no research on vegetarian activism per se. Nevertheless, there is a body of research showing that minorities can influence majorities [49], and given this, it is possible that vegetarians can influence the dietary practices of omnivores [48], although how successful such efforts will be remains to be seen.
Finally, there are issues of causation. Why do people decide to become vegetarians? How do such decisions unfold? What are the causal relationships among the values, beliefs and attitudes that define contemporary vegetarianism? In terms of substantive questions such as relationships between diet and well-being and between diet and pro-sociality, are people with lower well-being more likely to become vegetarians than people who are higher in well-being, and are more pro-social people likely to become vegetarians than people who are less pro-social? Such questions have not been the focus of systematic empirical research and cannot be answered conclusively. Although much is known, much more needs to be known.
And Taste and health concerns trump anticipated stigma as barriers to vegetarianism. Daniel L.Rosenfeld, A. JanetTomiyama. Appetite, Volume 144, January 1 2020, 104469. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/09/vegetarian-diets-may-be-perceived-as.html
And Relationships between Vegetarian Dietary Habits and Daily Well-Being. John B. Nezlek, Catherine A. Forestell & David B. Newman. Ecology of Food and Nutrition, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/10/vegetarians-reported-lower-self-esteem.html
And Psychology of Men & Masculinity: Eating meat makes you sexy / Conformity to dietary gender norms and attractiveness. Timeo, S., & Suitner, C. (2018). Eating meat makes you sexy: Conformity to dietary gender norms and attractiveness. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 19(3), 418-429. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/06/psychology-of-men-masculinity-eating.html
And Baby Animals Less Appetizing? Tenderness toward Baby Animals and Appetite for Meat. Jared Piazza, Neil McLatchie & Cecilie Olesen. Anthrozoös, Volume 31, 2018 - Issue 3, Pages 319-335. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/05/presenting-images-of-baby-animals.html
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