Why Aren’t There More Vegans?
Over at the Post Punk Kitchen forum, lululuv posted a statistic from a Gallup poll and asked an important question:
“35% strongly support and 64% support passing strict laws concerning the treatment of farm animals.
so why aren’t more people vegan.”
Indeed, former Gallup polls have shown:
“A quarter of Americans say animals deserve the same rights as humans, while almost all of the rest agree that animals should be given some protection from harm and exploitation.”
I have a few theories why there aren’t more vegans:
- People routinely say or think things that don’t match with their actual behaviors. Cognitive dissonance abounds. It’s in the way people treat money, treat each other, treat animals, etc… Hypocrisy is very common.
- Lots of people would love to eat vegan if they only knew how. They are simply clueless. And they’re often not motivated enough to do the research themselves. They literally need someone to hold their hand and show them how to shop and how to cook.
- Propaganda is everywhere. There is pro-meat, pro-dairy, pro-egg propaganda everywhere as well as a fair bit of anti-vegan propaganda. There is money to be made by exploiting animals and by marketing murder, so some evil people will do it.
Luckily, our numbers are growing. More people are going vegan everyday. But the numbers still aren’t even close to representative of the number of people who say they care deeply about animal rights and/or welfare.
Why do you think there aren’t more vegans?
I think we’ve been defined in highly negative way; as extremists, as ‘crazy hippies’, as a bunch of people who fetishize animals and don’t give a damn about humans, and as hypocrites who just like to pick on people. We don’t always do our best to combat these stereotypes, and many people view veganism as some kind of exclusive club that only the best can belong to.
I agree with the propaganda bit, and there’s more. People are, for lack of a better word, ignorant. I don’t mean that in a nasty way, but people honestly don’t know what goes into the food they eat and the products they use. Even highly educated people.
We’re also indoctrinated into a culture that views animals as lesser, almost as things. It’s hard to care when we’re constantly told it doesn’t matter.
Check out Jens most recent blog post: Self-evident animal rights? at http://www.not-quiteright.net/tvg
Agreed. I just watched that movie “Baby Mama” last week and there’s a scene where they go to a vegan restaurant. The scene has them eating strange foods that “taste like dirt”. It’s like people don’t even understand that vegan food = the produce section of the grocery store, grains, beans, and other very common, very normal foods.