That moo makes ’em eww.
A new UK study has uncovered the real reason vegetarians have so much beef with, well, beef — and it’s enough to make your stomach turn.
Meat-shunners will often tell you they turn down animal flesh for ethical reasons — and while that may be part of it, researchers found there’s something far more visceral going on.
What they discovered was that vegetarians experience a profound sense of disgust when considering meat consumption, akin to the reaction meat-eaters have toward substances like human flesh, dog meat or poop.
Yes, poop.
The study, published in the journal Appetite, involved 252 vegetarians and 57 omnivores.
Participants were shown images of various foods and were asked to rate their reactions based on two distinct emotions: distaste — a simple aversion to taste, texture or smell — and disgust — a deeper, more visceral repulsion.
The findings revealed that while disliked vegetables — such as olives, sprouts, raw aubergine and beetroot — elicited feelings of distaste, meat prompted a strong response among vegetarians, one that was comparable to the disgust meat-eaters felt when presented with images of human flesh or feces.
It’s worth keeping that image in your mind next time you innocently offer a vegetarian a hot dog.
“This is the most robust evidence to date that we reject meat and vegetables that we find repellent based on different underlying processes,” Natalia Lawrence, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Exeter in the UK, said in a statement.
“Obviously finding meat disgusting can help people avoid eating it, which has health and environmental benefits. Other research we’ve conducted suggests that these feelings of disgust may develop when people deliberately reduce or avoid eating meat, such as during Veganuary.”
Much like Dry January, Veganuary is a UK-led initiative that encourages Brits to follow a vegan diet for the entire month of January.
Research on the health benefits of vegan diets has been mixed.
While some studies have found that a plant-based diet can shave years off your biological age, other research indicates it can make you more likely to suffer nutritional deficiencies.
The researchers behind this new study believe there’s something much more evolutionary at play.
“Meat eaters responded to the idea of eating these truly disgusting substances like feces in the same way that vegetarians responded to images of meat that they didn’t want to eat, and this was very different from the way they responded to vegetables they rejected,” said Elisa Becker, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford.
“Although we may think we’re rejecting a food simply because we don’t want to eat it, we showed that the basis for this rejection is quite different — and we think that’s evolved to protect us from pathogens that can lie undetected in meat.”
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