3.1. Motivations for Meat Reduction
Respondents drew on a range of explanations when recounting why they had decided to reduce the amount of meat they eat. Personal motivations were recounted primarily in relation to health and individuals’ bodies. These were explained in the context of both isolated events (such as diagnosis of illness) as well as general feelings of desire to improve overall health and ‘get fit’. Such personal motivations for meat reduction were often positioned in the context of wider narratives, which extended beyond eating to other aspects of personal life, and a feeling that ‘something needs to change’. Several interviewees recounted ‘health scares’ for themselves or family members as important motivations for meat reduction. While such ‘scares’ varied in nature (including a diagnoses of high cholesterol; risk of future illness due to body weight and a father’s heart attack), common between them was their manifestation through encounters with medical professionals. Consequently the ‘scares’ appeared in contrast with the ‘general feelings’ which were described as developing more gradually, over longer periods, and explained with reference to ideas and information from wider range of sources, such as friends, family and the media. Nevertheless, even in cases when particular events were presented as the primary drivers for decisions to attempt to reduce meat eating, further exploration usually uncovered a range of contributing factors—including pre-existing thoughts and established associations between high meat intake and adverse effects on various aspects of health. Notably this was not the case for one interviewee who had, during the period between survey and interview, become vegetarian—omitting all meat from her diet. This newly vegetarian interviewee described enthusiastic meat consumption before a parent’s heath scare, followed by an experience of ‘enlightenment’ during which dietary change was reportedly accompanied by changes in food provisioning routines, preparation skills, and the range of dishes that she cooked for herself and her partner.
While all meat-reducers drew on ideas of health in their explanations—these ideas did not share a common form between respondents. Alice, a self-employed professional in her 50s with two teenage children living at home, related her personal motivations for meat reduction to changes in her digestion, lifestyle and ultimately her age:
now that I’ve got older—yeah, I ate more meat when I was younger. So I was much more active, so you know, muscle-building or whatever, but now I just can’t take that kind of quantity of [meat] in my digestion, basically
Alice
Alice went on to explain her broader mind-set in relation to meat eating and diet, and in doing so illustrated how her view on ‘balance’ in her diet had consequences for meat provision in her home, and meat eating for other members of her family:
Nowadays it seems to be recommended much more of a vegetable—vegan diet. Which I actually don’t necessarily agree with. I don’t actually think just eating—cutting out certain things is a good idea. It’s just always eat things in moderation. So yeah, you should have a balance through your diet. I know some people like to eat meat every day, but it’s not something we would do, probably. (…) I actually think it’s healthy for people to eat some red meats in terms of the iron content, you know, sort of healthy for their bodies, isn’t it?
Alice
Alice’s impression was of a growing societal pressure to reduce meat eating and noted increasingly frequent encounters with attempts to promote vegetarian and vegan eating. Alice did not agree with this latter approach to diet, citing nutritional reasons her explanation (related to iron intake), although she appeared unsure about this link and clearly enjoyed cooking and eating meat on a frequent basis. It was health and nutritional information that formed the basis of the initial explanation and rationalisation of Alice’s approach to meat—in contrast to her explanation of motivations which related primarily to her own feelings of vitality within her body.
The centrality of health and the body in Alice’s account of motivations for meat reduction was reflected across most interviewees—albeit in different ways. This variety is illustrated by comparison between Alice and Jamal, who is in his early 20s and lives with his mother while he studies engineering at university. Jamal expressed his primary motivations in relation to the resultant benefits for athletic fitness and bodily aesthetic. Jamal has been consciously trying to reduce the amount of meat he ate for the past two years. His account of why he decided to do so touched on multiple explanations. At the forefront of his mind was nutrition and its relation to fitness:
I think what happened was that I started going to the gym. (…)I believed that going to the gym would get me what I needed. But then I realised it’s not just about that, it’s about what you eat as well. That helps you with your gym development as well. So I started researching about it, my eating habits as well. I changed it quite a bit, what I eat now compared to 5 years ago.
Jamal
Jamal’s meat reduction has taken place alongside wider dietary change—reducing highly processed and sugar-heavy foods—which he referred to as ‘junk’. For Jamal eating and food selection is about fueling his body. Meat was referenced according to its bio-chemical characteristics as protein, fats, cholesterol and energy. Within Jamal’s process of dietary improvement, the status of meat appeared ambiguous. Considered in terms of protein, meat was a valuable foodstuff and not to be omitted. But when referred to as fat, understood variously as ‘bad fats’, ‘cholesterol’ and ‘transfats’, reasons to cut down meat intake emerged. Micronutrients such as iron, which were important to Alice’s meat reduction motivations, did not feature. However, Alice and Jamal did share a perception of the link between meat and muscle development. This was treated as malleable by Jamal, who saw adjustments in meat eating (quantity, quality and timing) as a tool for improving the appearance of his body, while for Alice muscle development (or lack of it) was an inevitable by-product of the changes in her lifestyle and metabolism during her life course, which she responded to by altering her meat intake.
All interviewees gave accounts in which personal motivations for meat reduction were explained with reference to their bodies relating to function (such as digestion or strength), aesthetics (such as muscles or bodyweight), and health (including freedom from illness and cardiovascular fitness). In addition, personal motivations in relation to the body were also recounted by some interviewees in relation to changes in personal circumstances, which were presented as ‘triggers’ for reflection on diet and subsequent action on meat reduction. These included changes in family relationships and employment status, such as children moving out of home (two interviewees), divorce (one interviewee), bereavement (one interviewee) retirement (one interviewee) and a new job (one interviewee). It was in the context of changing personal circumstances that the constraining influence of other people’s expectations came to the fore. These were often experienced as a liberation, in which changing routines offered opportunities for freedom from previously established ways of providing and eating food. Half the meat-reducers interviewed recounted taking advantage of being alone more frequently to eat in a different way—with the inclusion of less meat in the diet.
Most accounts of personal motivations were further situated with reference to the conditions of meat production and provision as they developed during the interview. This included recounting concerns about agricultural production, most notably the use of hormones and antibiotics in animal rearing; the practices of slaughtering and butchering (and the hygiene and ethics of this) and the quality of meat products available to purchase from supermarkets and restaurants. Many respondents expressed concerns about the quality of meat associated with particular products (e.g., burgers; ready meals) and certain types of restaurant (e.g., fast food restaurants; kebab shops). Central to these accounts was the issue of trust, and what or who could be trusted in relation to meat. Knowledge about potentially concerning issues of ethics, hygiene, safety, health and environmental sustainability of meat production and consumption were variable in both quality and quantity. As such, the conclusions drawn by meat-reducers in relation to questions of trust were not shared, in several cases exhibiting opposed conclusions, for example, in relation to the role of supermarkets in providing high quality meat, and meat quality on offer in fast-food restaurants. The variety in the trust engendered by different ways of accessing meat observed across the interviewees is likely to be a reflection of the multiple institutional underpinnings of trust in food across different populations, which is acutely apparent in relation to meat [
25].
All the meat-reducers interviewed (as well as most non-reducers) recounted some general concern about meat quality and how it was provisioned, some experiencing this as anxiety. However, respondents were not acutely aware of specific consumer campaigns to raise awareness of these issues, less than half the meat-reducers were able to accurately name a meat consumption related campaign when asked. Terry, who is in his 60s, has two grown up children, lives with his wife and works part time as a school teacher, responded in a way which reflected this. When asked if he was aware of any attempts to influence meat consumption, his answer was quite typical in suggesting a ‘general impression’ rather than knowledge of particular initiative:
…the general impression is that they’re trying to get people to eat less meat because it’s healthier for you in terms of vegetables, more vegetables and fruit. Just a better balance, rather than a high-protein diet.
Terry generally tried to reduce meat eating, but expressed less concern about ‘healthy eating’ than either Alice or Jamal, and relied more heavily on an experiential explanations emphasising that he prefers to eat fish. Nevertheless, he did hold established views which situated less meat eating as part of a ‘healthy lifestyle’, but did not relate this to changing his body as both Alice and Jamal had done. Rather, Terry emphasised balance (in terms of varied diet) and moderation (in red meat and ‘fatty’ and ‘processed’ foods in general).
While individuals gave different explanations of their motivations for reducing meat eating, common to all accounts was the mobilisation of personal reasons (in relation to various aspects of health), which were usually situated alongside perceptions (often expressed as anxieties) in relation to the wider food system. Having considered peoples’ stated motivations for reducing meat eating, the next section turns the ways in which they attempt to act upon these motivations by enacting meat reduction.
3.2. Strategies for Meat Reduction
Three strategies appeared most prominently in interviewees’ accounts of their efforts to reduce meat eating. The first was avoiding meals in which a main dish included meat as a central ingredient; the second was replacing meat in traditionally meat-based dishes with alternative ingredients; and the third was altering the repertoire of meals or dishes that were regularly prepared, in order to decrease the occurrence of meat-based meals over a given time period. These strategies are not mutually exclusive, for example creating new meat-reduced dishes (strategy 2) often played a role in changing the weekly menu (strategy 3). Nevertheless, for the purposes of analysis, their separation enables a closer examination of the different ways in which purposive action toward meat reduction is negotiated alongside the existing activities of eating and food provision.
Eating non-meat meals was a strategy reported by all interviewees in the enactment of meat reduction. Not surprisingly eating non-meat meals was also reported by respondents who did not self-identity as meat reducers. The qualitative nature of this research means that a quantification of how often non-meat meals were eaten by meat reducers is not possible, but data from the interviews suggest that this was meat-reducers’ most frequently deployed strategy, and likely to be the most significant in terms of volume of meat reduction.
Where, how and by whom the food was prepared and served all played a key role in the avoidance of meaty meals. Meat-based meal avoidance was often enacted in circumstances of self-provisioning and solo eating. In these circumstances it was described as a positive, satisfying choice. In other circumstances, notably eating out with other people, for example when Jamal was obliged to accompany friends to a kebab shop on his lunch break from University, the selection of the non-meat meal was undertaken grudgingly. More generally for Jamal, the type of eating outlet had a strong effect on whether and what type of meat he would eat. Familiarity with the particular restaurant, or the menu, influenced the selections that were made. Past experiences of both eating commercially provisioned meals, and eating socially at other peoples’ homes shaped the likelihood that meat reduction would be enacted:
if I don’t know that restaurant, then I’ll say “ok I won’t have the meat option because I’m not too sure about it.” But a place like Nandos or Gourmet Burger Kitchen, they have a menu I can trust, I’ve been there before. But if it’s a new place I haven’t been before I’m very careful about that kind of thing. But I do try to cut down the meat that I have now, at home as well.
Jamal
Alice also recounted avoiding meat-dishes when eating out of home. In her account this was more specifically linked to certainty about provenance, aligning with her explanations of motivations for meat reduction described above.
sometimes, if you ask at a restaurant, they will tell you [where meat comes from]. They will say ‘Yeah, it’s from the local farm. Or they state their products are organic. Sourced from within a 10-mile radius, and things like that. But you know, you can’t do that 100%. It’s not up to you if the restaurant does its end. I’m not a picky eater as such, you know, but if it’s more obvious where things are from—if it isn’t, I’d probably go for things like pasta.
Alice
Both Jamal and Alice’s avoidance of meaty dishes when eating out of home were shaped by the degree of trust for the establishment and the food provided—but these were negotiated in quite different ways. While Jamal relied on his own past experience and familiarity to make a judgment, Alice sought particular types of information provided by the restaurant. Ultimately different types of knowledge were being mobilised to shape the circumstances which meat avoidance was enacted. This serves as an illustration of the importance of looking beyond aggregated consumer purchase decisions in the search to understand the underlying mechanisms through which a reduction in meat consumption might be achieved as decisions which might appear similar in terms of the non-meat meals purchased are influenced by different types of knowledge and motivations.
The replacement of meat with non-meat ingredients was the favoured approach of some meat-reducers, while not deployed by others. This strategy, which aimed to keep dishes and meals relatively unchanged from existing meaty versions, was deployed by some interviewees because it engendered feelings of familiarity which were deemed particularly important when cooking for others. Replacing meat in established dishes was done in a variety of ways. For Terry this included swapping meat for fish:
I found a recipe where you do a spaghetti bolognaise, but you do it with anchovies, which is very very tasty.
INTERVIEWER: Instead of the meat?
PARTICIPANT: Yeah. You know, parsley, garlic, tins of tomatoes, grated cheese. So it looks like normal but you use tins of anchovies instead of meat, and that’s one of my standards [meals], everybody expects to see that. And quite often they say, “we really enjoyed that, dad” so it’s one of my staples. I have a fairly short list of things that I invariably do. I’ve been doing that recipe for too many years to stop.
None of the interviewees mentioned the inclusion of foods marketed as ‘meat alternatives’ in the context of adapting existing dishes to replace meat, although most had tried using them at some time. When meat ingredient replacement was deployed it included fish, as described above by Terry, vegetables, or most frequently pulses or beans. This strategy also involved altering dishes to reduce the volume of meat included as an ingredient (such as in stews or curries). The idea of reducing the size of a portion of meat that was served on its own (for example a steak), and compensating with an accompaniment, was not described as a strategy for meat reduction. Indeed, Alice specifically noted the importance of maintaining the size of lone meat-pieces, noting that this was enabled by reducing or eliminating meat in other meals. For Alice the joy of eating meat would be tempered in the context of smaller portions in meals where meat was the ‘main event’ such as in a roast dinner. She explained that she would feel ungenerous if she was providing the meal and unsatisfied if she was eating it. Replacing meat with other ingredients is a strategy which depends on the style of meal being served, and to some extent the nature of the meal occasion—as discussed more fully in the following section.
Planning meals and rotating dishes is perhaps the most intriguing strategy for enacting meat reduction identified in this study. While the timeframe varied, for those who explained their meat reduction in this way, it was associated with the main meal of the day and entailed a ‘rota’ of dishes, as described by Alice:
I try and balance out a week with different things, so it would be, you know, a chicken, or beef or lamb, then pasta, then maybe a salad, a jacket potato, something like that, now maybe more the others than the meat. Just do a sort of five or six or ten day kind of rota of different types of meats and other stuff.
Alice
The use of a relatively stable repertoire of dishes which are eaten and provided within a household has been previously interpreted as a way of practically negotiating multiple pressures of everyday life, through reliance on habit [
19]. In these interpretations, such routines effectively reduce the cognitive load of the person providing the food, limiting the requirement to rethink and reorganise (including deciding on appropriate dishes, sourcing ingredients, preparing, cooking, and the managing risks of dissatisfaction associated with new encounters). A change to the established repertoire, in favour of less meat-based meals, is thus more likely to be a stable, longer term change—and therefore has important implications for sustainable consumption.
Terry also recounted the rotation of meat-based with non-meat based dishes, but on a slightly shorter timeframe than Alice:
So if we’ve had prawns, I do love prawns, even if they’re rubbish prawns, I still like them. (…) So maybe the ying and yang, if I had that last night then I might buy meat. I’m not sure it’s the case, but it might be ying and yang going on. And whether it’s to do with health or flavour or what I fancy, there’s a whole manure of things going on in my head. But it’s quite a limited palette, thinking about it.
Terry
Similar to Alice, Terry’s rotation of dishes included an awareness of creating ‘balance’ (in this case described as ‘ying and yang’) in the occurrence of meat on the menu over time, but involved less forward planning than in Alice’s case. Terry acknowledges he cannot fully explain why particular meals follow others, in the quote above citing health, flavour or ‘just what he fancies’. This is in contrast to the experience of constraints on non-meat eating which are primarily recounted as involving other people (as discussed below). Nevertheless, both Alice and Terry reflected the accounts of several of the meat-reducers interviewed who described rotating and planning meals as a way of managing meat consumption. These plans attempted to space out non-meat meals. Although the timespans varied, the implication is that too much time between meat consumption, particularly for other people, is not considered desirable. This points to the potential for ‘stretching out’ the time between meat eating as a way of promoting meat reduction, in contrast to current NGO-led campaigns which suggest omitting meat to a particular schedule (e.g., one day per week).
3.3. Living Meat Reduction
Respondents’ lived experiences of meat reduction varied markedly and included feelings of satisfaction, liberation, achievement, boredom, drudgery and frustration. Jamal experienced meat reduction as a challenge. Central to this explanation was the availability of acceptable options to eat with others—a theme that appeared in the majority of meat-reducers accounts. This came to the fore for Jamal when eating outside of the home:
“It [reducing meat eating] was hard, I’ll be honest, it was hard. Because like most of the places around me—especially at Uni and stuff—when we’d go out to eat, it’s mostly just meat, just meat places. So my friends would say “let’s go out to eat” and the only places that would allow us to get back in time as well—mostly are meat places like kebab shops and chicken places as well.”
Jamal
At home Jamal’s intentions to reduce meat were more easily translated into desired outcomes. Even when meat-based meals were provided by Jamal’s mother, the potential for adaptation and improvisation, and the perceived lack of social sanctions for doing so, meant that his preferences for less meat could be accommodated, which was experienced as less frustrating and more satisfactory. Data is not available on how Jamal’s mother experienced this process. However, the accounts of other interviewees indicated that the preferences of family members play a key role in shaping the experience of meat reduction for the reducer, and meat-reducers also noted the importance of close family members in providing initial motivations to change diet. Terry for example, recounted multiple ways in which his family constrained his meat reduction, which ultimately meant he found it easier to avoid meat when eating outside the home (in contrast to Jamal). The constraints imposed by Terry’s family related to his understanding of their joy and expectation of the provision of meat, for example in the family meal on Sunday:
My kids love a roast, so it’ll be pork or chicken, roast potato, vegetables. That’s what the kids love. So Sunday’s that.
Terry
It is possible that Terry’s children would also enjoy something else, but the family routine is such that the provision of a Sunday meat roast is expected, implicitly agreed upon, and repeated without challenge. In addition to his children, Terry’s wife is also influential in how Terry experiences meat reduction. This was felt less in terms of specific meals and more in relation to wider ideas of proper eating:
I am a carnivore and I probably always will be a carnivore (…) If I had a partner that really said, we’re not going to eat any more meat, I’d go along with it. But my wife... I mean she’s not... she likes a varied diet. And so do I.
Terry
Terry’s wife’s understanding of a ‘varied diet’, which Terry ultimately agrees with, necessitates the inclusion of meat. The desirability of variety, which also appeared in Alice’s descriptions of feeding her family (above), was found in most of the meat-reducers accounts. Notably it was mobilised in support of both meat reduction (reducing meat creating opportunity for greater variety of other food types) as well as against meat exclusion (a varied diet entails all types of food, including meat). In Terry’s case, his wife’s concern with variety plays out in the context of Terry’s relatively limited repertoire of the dishes he cooks (see above). As such, Terry’s enactment of meat reduction takes shape through a process of negotiation between his understandings of a healthy diet, the anticipated desires of other people, and his trusted, familiar dishes.
Terry’s account illustrates the importance of immediate family circumstances in opportunities for enacting meat reduction, which was a theme running through each of the interviews. Despite the constraints placed upon him by other people, in contrast to Jamal, Terry recounted enjoying meat reduction—which he experienced as opening up opportunities for other more delightful eating experiences. Meat-free dishes were described with joy, and in some instances sentimentality:
I had a girlfriend back in the day, thirty years ago, and she was very much into pulses and she was forever cooking lovely things. She did the black-eye bean bake, I used to try and make that as well, which was almost like meat, very tasty. I sometimes do that.
Terry
Similarly for Alice, meat reduction was viewed as something which maximised the joy of eating. This is experienced differently from Terry however, by ensuring that the meat she does consume has certain preferential characteristics (in contrast to Terry who emphasises enjoyment of non-meat dishes). Alice aims to avoid ‘bad quality’ meat rather than meat in general. Alice is effectively re-categorising meat to enable continued consumption, while simultaneously responding to the concerns which prompt her to adjust her diet. In order to do so Alice draws on knowledge about how and where meat is produced (in contrast to Terry whose narrative relies on his wife’s idea of a healthy diet). By categorising some types of meat as ‘bad meat’, the contrasting ‘good meat’ can be eaten regularly and with enjoyment, which Alice does on average five times a week as part of her main meal.
Entertaining guests at home, and to a lesser extent feeding family, was a key challenge for meat-reducers. Alice viewed both occasions as inappropriate for avoiding or limiting meat. When describing feeding extended family at home, she explained:
I tend to do a big sort of casserole, so we’ll do chicken breasts with chorizo sausages and tomatoes and onions and put it all in, and then I’d do rice or pasta and put it on the table, and everyone can help themselves.
INTERVIEWER: Why would you choose that?
PARTICIPANT: It’s just an easy dish to do, and one of them [only] eats chicken, so if she’s coming I’ll do chicken, obviously. If I do something else, sometimes I will cater and do a separate chicken, because I know it will get used in sandwiches, and it lasts a long time. But yeah, I don’t want to force her to eat red meat if she doesn’t like it.
Alice
Alice’s account of providing a meal for family touches on several themes which were common to meat-reducers’ explanations of when less meat was desirable or appropriate. The first is the ease with which the meal could be provided. The inclusion of meat was generally considered to be a less effort-intensive way of providing an acceptable meal. The second is the idea that proper meals contain meat. Alice’s niece does not eat any other type of meat apart from chicken. As such chicken must be provided, to the extent that other meaty dishes might be accompanied by additional chicken because the availability of no meat for Alice’s niece would be so unusual that it is not even considered a possibility. The third theme is that meat saves time. Not only in planning a menu and cooking a meal, but also in the use of meaty leftovers which can be re-purposed to provide sustenance at a later time. Planning ahead, and the occurrence future activities, such as described by Alice in relation to chicken sandwiches (in the context of her son’s football practice), exert influence in sustaining meat as an important part of diet. Ease, flexibility, and convenience were all positive meanings embodied by meat. Significantly, the conditions in which these characteristics (that meat is easy and convenient) take shape extend beyond the particular dishes of which they form a part, supporting the observation that meat is not required as part of a ‘spaghetti bolognaise’ (which as Terry’s description above illustrates—it is not). Rather, the fact that meat is taken for granted as an easy and convenient way of providing appropriate food is reproduced alongside multiple activities of daily life—including managing weekly schedules (as for Alice who cooks roast chicken in anticipation of sandwiches after football), and organising meal occasions (as Terry does for Sunday dinner with his children). This observation emphasises the importance of looking beyond the selection of dishes at moments of eating in order to identify the factors that hold meat eating and meat provision stable alongside multiple activities of daily life, even in the face of concerted attempts to reduce it.