That moo makes ’em eww.
A brand new UK study has uncovered the true reason vegetarians have a lot beef with, well, beef — and it’s enough to make your stomach turn.
Meat-shunners will often inform you they turn down animal flesh for ethical reasons — and while which may be a part of it, researchers found there’s something way more visceral occurring.
What they found was that vegetarians experience a profound sense of disgust when considering meat consumption, akin to the response meat-eaters have toward substances like human flesh, dog meat or poop.
Yes, poop.
The study, published within the journal Appetite, involved 252 vegetarians and 57 omnivores.
Participants were shown images of varied foods and were asked to rate their reactions based on two distinct emotions: distaste — an easy aversion to taste, texture or smell — and disgust — a deeper, more visceral repulsion.
The findings revealed that while disliked vegetables — equivalent to olives, sprouts, raw aubergine and beetroot — elicited feelings of distaste, meat prompted a robust response amongst vegetarians, one which was comparable to the disgust meat-eaters felt when presented with images of human flesh or feces.
It’s value keeping that image in your mind next time you innocently offer a vegetarian a hot dog.
“That is essentially the most robust evidence thus far that we reject meat and vegetables that we discover repellent based on different underlying processes,” Natalia Lawrence, an associate professor of psychology on the University of Exeter within the UK, said in a press release.
“Obviously finding meat disgusting will help people avoid eating it, which has health and environmental advantages. Other research we’ve conducted suggests that these feelings of disgust may develop when people deliberately reduce or avoid eating meat, equivalent to during Veganuary.”
Very like Dry January, Veganuary is a UK-led initiative that encourages Brits to follow a vegan food plan for all the month of January.
Research on the health advantages of vegan diets has been mixed.
While some studies have found that a plant-based food plan can shave years off your biological age, other research indicates it may well make you more more likely to suffer dietary deficiencies.
The researchers behind this recent study consider there’s something rather more evolutionary at play.
“Meat eaters responded to the concept of eating these truly disgusting substances like feces in the identical way that vegetarians responded to photographs of meat that they didn’t wish to eat, and this was very different from the best way they responded to vegetables they rejected,” said Elisa Becker, a postdoctoral researcher on the University of Oxford.
“Although we might imagine we’re rejecting a food just because we don’t wish to eat it, we showed that the idea for this rejection is sort of different — and we expect that’s evolved to guard us from pathogens that may lie undetected in meat.”
That moo makes ’em eww.
A brand new UK study has uncovered the true reason vegetarians have a lot beef with, well, beef — and it’s enough to make your stomach turn.
Meat-shunners will often inform you they turn down animal flesh for ethical reasons — and while which may be a part of it, researchers found there’s something way more visceral occurring.
What they found was that vegetarians experience a profound sense of disgust when considering meat consumption, akin to the response meat-eaters have toward substances like human flesh, dog meat or poop.
Yes, poop.
The study, published within the journal Appetite, involved 252 vegetarians and 57 omnivores.
Participants were shown images of varied foods and were asked to rate their reactions based on two distinct emotions: distaste — an easy aversion to taste, texture or smell — and disgust — a deeper, more visceral repulsion.
The findings revealed that while disliked vegetables — equivalent to olives, sprouts, raw aubergine and beetroot — elicited feelings of distaste, meat prompted a robust response amongst vegetarians, one which was comparable to the disgust meat-eaters felt when presented with images of human flesh or feces.
It’s value keeping that image in your mind next time you innocently offer a vegetarian a hot dog.
“That is essentially the most robust evidence thus far that we reject meat and vegetables that we discover repellent based on different underlying processes,” Natalia Lawrence, an associate professor of psychology on the University of Exeter within the UK, said in a press release.
“Obviously finding meat disgusting will help people avoid eating it, which has health and environmental advantages. Other research we’ve conducted suggests that these feelings of disgust may develop when people deliberately reduce or avoid eating meat, equivalent to during Veganuary.”
Very like Dry January, Veganuary is a UK-led initiative that encourages Brits to follow a vegan food plan for all the month of January.
Research on the health advantages of vegan diets has been mixed.
While some studies have found that a plant-based food plan can shave years off your biological age, other research indicates it may well make you more more likely to suffer dietary deficiencies.
The researchers behind this recent study consider there’s something rather more evolutionary at play.
“Meat eaters responded to the concept of eating these truly disgusting substances like feces in the identical way that vegetarians responded to photographs of meat that they didn’t wish to eat, and this was very different from the best way they responded to vegetables they rejected,” said Elisa Becker, a postdoctoral researcher on the University of Oxford.
“Although we might imagine we’re rejecting a food just because we don’t wish to eat it, we showed that the idea for this rejection is sort of different — and we expect that’s evolved to guard us from pathogens that may lie undetected in meat.”
