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Jim East ( wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net )  to Good News Everyone@piefed.socialEnglish · 10 months ago

Gen Z has the highest rate of veganism in history and it's reshaping the food industry

vegoutmag.com

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Gen Z has the highest rate of veganism in history and it's reshaping the food industry

vegoutmag.com

Jim East ( wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net )  to Good News Everyone@piefed.socialEnglish · 10 months ago
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  • cross-posted to:
  • vegan@slrpnk.net
The generation that grew up with climate anxiety and TikTok is quietly transforming what ends up on grocery store shelves and restaurant menus.
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  • renegadespork ( renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net ) 
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    10 months ago

    It’s nice to see Gen Z getting more qualitatively neutral headline language. Millennials would’ve been “killing the meat industry.”

    Also, this is really good. While we don’t all need to become total vegans, reducing the number of domesticated animals would have a significantly positive impact on both the environment and the quality of those animals’ lives.

    • jjjalljs ( jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ) 
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      10 months ago

      While we don’t all need to become total vegans, reducing the number of domesticated animals would have a significantly positive impact on both the environment and the quality of those animals’ lives.

      This is where I’m at. Half-assed vegetarian. I don’t buy meat but if someone serves it at a dinner I don’t refuse to eat. Baby steps. It’s making progress without the shock of an abrupt change all at once.

      • renegadespork ( renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net ) 
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        10 months ago

        Yeah I turned meat into a “special occasion” food, and it was way easier than I thought once I got over the perfectionism. Animal products are a lot easier to reduce than completely eliminate, but every little bit helps.

      • the_q ( the_q@lemmy.zip ) 
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        8 months ago

        deleted by creator

        • ThirdConsul ( ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml ) 
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          10 months ago

          The healthiest take is to eat the best quality food you can afford that isn’t ultra processed.

          Vegan food can be slop - see beyond meat, meat substitutes, lab grown meat etc. Heck, even South Park made an episode about it.

          (I know you meant “the healthiest take in the vegan-nonvegan dichotomy”, but I just couldn’t help myself, tee hee)

          • the_q ( the_q@lemmy.zip ) 
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            deleted by creator

        • Sailor Anarres ( theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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          10 months ago

          It’s not about your health its primarily about the exploited group.

          • the_q ( the_q@lemmy.zip ) 
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            deleted by creator

          • pressedhams ( pressedhams@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
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            10 months ago

            For you. Let other people have other perspectives and they can all be valid.

            • Sailor Anarres ( theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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              10 months ago

              “Perspectives” doesn’t work when they are beings being harmed. When they are victims let people oppress isn’t a good take.

              • pressedhams ( pressedhams@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
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                10 months ago

                Sure it does when we’re discussing the motivation for someone to choose eating less meat. If they are doing it for health reasons that’s no less valid than your reasons.

            • bearboiblake [he/him] ( bearboiblake@pawb.social ) 
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              10 months ago

              I’m just saying, if your reasons for being against the holocaust is that burning the corpses contributed to greenhouse gas emissions, you are kind of a shitty person, but hey, whatever gets you there…?

              • pressedhams ( pressedhams@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
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                10 months ago

                You’re the vegan everyone complains about.

                • bearboiblake [he/him] ( bearboiblake@pawb.social ) 
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                  10 months ago

                  Complain all you want, at least I don’t pay people to kill animals so that I may consume their corpse. Merry Christmas though!

              • anarchaos ( anarchaos@lemmy.ml ) 
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                10 months ago

                godwin strikes again

    • Canaconda ( Canconda@lemmy.ca ) 
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      10 months ago

      Over >50% of the space humans occupy is for agriculture. 3/4 of that space is dedicated to livestock/feed.

      Recently I learned that plants like Bambara Nuts (africa) and Water Lentils (duckweed) have complete amino complexes and b12. They’re probably not the only ones either.

      There’s also many pest/drought resistant perennial crops that are nitrogen/nutrient fixers that eliminate the need for fertilizers and pesticides.

      I expect that the impending climate induced supply chain collapse of global agriculture will force people to return to these more ancestral, and arguably superior, food sources.

      • Ephera ( Ephera@lemmy.ml ) 
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        10 months ago

        By the way, all plant foods have all amino acids. They just have them in proportions to one another that don’t quite match the proportions that we need. But this is only relevant, if you eat the minimum amount of protein necessary to sustain your body tissues.
        In a Western diet, we typically eat significantly more protein than that. As such, if e.g. black beans only provide 50% of an amino acid compared to the other amino acids and compared to what we need, you can totally eat 200% black beans to make up for it.
        Or, what’s more likely the case, you’re not gonna eat just black beans, but rather mix and match them with lots of other protein sources, which will have different amino acid distributions. Even wheat and rice contain protein. Well, and then you’re gonna eat significantly more of that mixture than you actually need, so you don’t need be particularly cautious at mixing+matching either.

        Not the most scientific source, but has some decent illustrations: https://vegfaqs.com/essential-amino-acid-profiles-beans/

        • Canaconda ( Canconda@lemmy.ca ) 
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          10 months ago

          The human body require 20 amino acids of which 9 our bodies cannot produce. A “complete amino complex” contains all 9 of those unproducible acids. Most plants do not contain all of them. Black beans lack methionine; so simply eating more black beans will not suffice.

          • Ephera ( Ephera@lemmy.ml ) 
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            10 months ago

            No, that’s what I’m saying. Black beans ‘lack’ methionine in that they have less milligram methionine per gram protein than other protein sources, but they don’t have none.

            This table in the source that I linked is to be read as “you should eat 4.59 cups of black beans per day to cover the methionine RDA (if you weigh 70kg and all you eat is black beans)”:

            Here’s another diagram showing that black beans do contain methionine, which got published in a scientific paper:

            https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Amino-acid-composition-of-quinoa-black-bean-and-lentil-proteins-g-100-g-of-protein_fig1_351804462

      • NaibofTabr ( NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ) 
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        10 months ago

        Huh, isn’t duckweed pretty easy to grow?

        • Canaconda ( Canconda@lemmy.ca ) 
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          10 months ago

          Just watched a lady “grow” it in buckets of pond/tap water. It doubles in biomass every 48h. Literally just let it sit there.

        • Ms. ArmoredThirteen ( ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip ) 
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          10 months ago

          Most things with weed in the name is going to be easy to grow. A lot of people with aquariums or ponds feel plagued by it. I love it for aquariums it’s one of the few things that can out compete algae

          • Canaconda ( Canconda@lemmy.ca ) 
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            10 months ago

            Youtube has sent me down the rabbit hole. Almost every common weed that’s not native to North America was once a staple food crop in Europe.

            But in the mid 20th century big agriculture realized they’d make more money selling annuals, fertilizer, and pesticides… instead of letting people grow perennial plants that solved those problems on their own.

            • Tollana1234567 ( Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ) 
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              10 months ago

              most of them escape in the wild, and established wild population. iceplant is another one, its from south africa, it actually doesnt help with preventing spread of fires,it blankets the coasts of california. relatives of the plants are quite nifty succulents for hobbyist(aizocae, aka stone plants) while the ornamentals are very hard to take care off, the iceplants is very hardy and invasive. blue gum, a type of eucalyptus grows fast, also invasive but the biggest problem is since its a eucalyptus it makes fires more dangerous because of the oils.

        • Tollana1234567 ( Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ) 
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          10 months ago

          yes, but also super invasive. we have them in areas where thier are bonds in norcal they blanket the entire water surface. they spread by vegatative propagation.

      • ThirdConsul ( ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml ) 
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        10 months ago

        complete amino complexes and b12

        Tis a question of “how much of it can be absorbed by humans”.

        For example absorption rate of vitamin A from animal sources is ~90%, but about 10% from veggies (if you use vegetable fat it’s a bit higher, animal fat even more higher, cook it, juice it, the absorption rate plateaues at 30%; and technically it’s not a vitamin A but something that will become a vitamin A when dissolved in fat) - and the amount of it in veggies is lower compared to animal byproducts.

        • Canaconda ( Canconda@lemmy.ca ) 
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          10 months ago

          Bambara has apparently been a staple in Western Africa for centuries. So if it had any critical nutritional deficiencies I’d imagine a cultural/culinary solution would have presented itself by now. And the B12 in Bambara is uniquely bioavailable; unlike the b12 in most other plants.

          Rentinol (vitamin a) is not an amino acid. It is a fat soluble molecule which is why you get more from fatty sources. It’s a logical train of thought but you’re comparing apples to oranges.

          • Cam ( dawcas@scribe.disroot.org ) 
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            10 months ago

            Isn’t vit A the one we produce from carotenes? So technically we don’t need to ingest the vitamin itself if we eat enough of the pro-vitamin? Am I confusing it with other vitamin?

            • ThirdConsul ( ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml ) 
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              10 months ago

              Carotene is 10% absorption rate from my example (IIRC 30% from juice), but you still need to dissolve it in fat to get vitamin A.

              • Cam ( dawcas@scribe.disroot.org ) 
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                10 months ago

                Thank you!

      • gandalf_der_12te ( gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
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        10 months ago

        Over >50% of the space humans occupy is for agriculture

        i think it’s more like >90%.

        i.e. of the area that is used (Agriculture, Urban and Built-up Land),

        • urban and built-up land is 1m km²,
        • agriculture is 48m km²,

        so agriculture is 48 of 49 millions km² used, that’s 98%. The remaining 2% are for streets and housing.

    • Sailor Anarres ( theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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      10 months ago

      No we need to free all slaves not just some.

      • anarchaos ( anarchaos@lemmy.ml ) 
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        10 months ago

        comparing slaves to animals is exactly what slavers do

    • aperson ( aperson@beehaw.org ) 
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      10 months ago

      Given the source of the article, of course the title is going to have a positive tone.

    • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace ( ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca ) 
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      10 months ago

      That’s true. But I’m willing to bet it’s also because it’s less affordable.

      • renegadespork ( renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net ) 
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        10 months ago

        While it feels weird to argue that something should be more expensive, I think it’s best that meat is treated like a luxury for special occasions.

        Meat is inherently an expensive process, and it was only ever cheap because the cost was paid elsewhere—mostly by horrible conditions for animals & human workers and environmental destruction.

      • Sailor Anarres ( theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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        10 months ago

        Except the opposite is true by all accounts assuming you aren’t eating fancy meat substitutes all the time.

        • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace ( ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca ) 
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          10 months ago

          The opposite?

          • apotheotic (she/her) ( apotheotic@beehaw.org ) 
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            10 months ago

            A vegan diet is dramatically cheaper than a diet with a significant amount of meat, assuming you aren’t eating expensive meat substitutes

            • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace ( ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca ) 
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              10 months ago

              Aaaah ok I get it. Thanks for the explanation.

  • ngdev ( ngdev@lemmy.zip ) 
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    10 months ago

    4% compared to 2%

    i am not a vegan but if this means more interesting recipes then it’s a W

    • DigitalAudio ( DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz ) 
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      Hell, I’m not vegan (or vegetarian), but I’m almost 100% sure I eat much less meat than Millennials and Boomers did when they were in my wage and age bracket.

      • gandalf_der_12te ( gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
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        10 months ago

        yeah, meat consumption should be about “kg of meat eaten/(person*year)” instead of “percentage of people who eat meat”.

        because you can have a society where 50% of people eat meat and eat like 100 kg of it per year or you can have a society where 50% of people eat meat and eat 30 kg of it per year, makes a lot of difference.

      • Korhaka ( Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ) 
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        10 months ago

        Yeah, who can afford meat anymore? Not sure if poverty is a win…

        • DigitalAudio ( DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz ) 
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          10 months ago

          I mean, I can afford it (I’m not American or anything) but I just don’t find it essential. There are other things I eat far more often and that I enjoy more as well.

    • VitoRobles ( VitoRobles@lemmy.today ) 
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      All those food recalls in the last two decades has made me eat more vegetables, or find meat alternatives.

      Also, rising prices. It’s like $10 a lb for quality burger meat. Or I can buy vegetarian burgers.

      • ngdev ( ngdev@lemmy.zip ) 
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        10 months ago

        dont forget whats going on with the fda lol its a risk but i sous vide so theres practically zero risk

    • Clent ( Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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      10 months ago

      It’s also bad data analysis, young people outgrow veganism. There is nothing in the base study that indicates any change in this trend.

  • Geth ( Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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    10 months ago

    Interesting. I’ve noticed the hype dying down in recent years and some of my favorite vegan products disappearing off the shelves or changing recipe and then dying a slow painful death. I blamed it on people and companies treating it as just a fad, so reporting that it’s still a thing people do is surprising to me.

    It’s true there are still more vegan products than before, but the dedicated sections in my local supermarkets are tiny.

    • Resonosity ( Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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      10 months ago

      Subsidies for the animal agriculture industry are still lopsided against veganism, and the Far Right escalation in social media awarded by algorithms favors carnism over veganism.

      I like to think that veganism is more of a grass roots (pun intended) movement focused on whole foods in favor of processed foods.

      All these things may contribute to veganism’s seeming decline in the last few years, although I may be wrong (and that decline may just be a lack of reporting)

    • PrimeMinisterKeyes ( PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.space ) 
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      10 months ago

      Anecdotally, this is not the case where I live. Vegan ice cream has taken a hit, but the other sections seem to be expanding year after year.

  • Resonosity ( Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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    10 months ago

    Vegans rise up! Nobody in any Imperial Core countries should have to eat animals, as there are so many plant-based options today. It’s so easy these days, and I’m happy to say that my family’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners this year were and will be mostly vegan!

    I hope all of this Gen Z momentum translates into political will on the policy level, where we see more and more animal sanctuaries both on and off shore.

    But of course our impact doesn’t just stop at the Imperial Core. We need a global movement of veganism if we should ever want to change what we do to the natural world

    • Teppichbrand ( Teppichbrand@feddit.org ) 
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      10 months ago

      Agreed, JOIN US
      1000008258

  • grrgyle ( grrgyle@slrpnk.net ) 
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    10 months ago

    Yay! 🥕🐇

  • Druid ( v4ld1z@lemmy.zip ) 
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    10 months ago

    • whoisearth ( whoisearth@lemmy.ca ) 
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      10 months ago

      Imma eat my friends because they’re delicious.

  • Sailor Anarres ( theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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    10 months ago

    Not enough can’t stop till no animal is enslaved and exploited.

    • altphoto ( altphoto@lemmy.today ) 
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      10 months ago

      Not yet

  • callmechiko ( callmechiko@lemmy.zip ) 
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    10 months ago

    Love to see it!

  • MagnificentSteiner ( MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip ) 
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    10 months ago

    highest rate of veganism in history

    India says hello

    • Jim East ( wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net ) OP
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      10 months ago

      The massive dairy industry with a stranglehold on Indian culture and politics says hello.

      • MagnificentSteiner ( MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip ) 
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        10 months ago

        OK, India still has the highest rate of Veganism in the world.

        • PrimeMinisterKeyes ( PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.space ) 
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          10 months ago

          Also the highest rate of vegetarianism, by far, if this link is to be believed.

      • stray ( stray@pawb.social ) 
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        10 months ago

        There are also other issues that I don’t care to get into because it’s depressing, but I’ll share some links for anyone interested in learning. Ignore this shit if you want to have a nice day.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stray_cattle_in_India

        https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/07/14/422592127/egg-wars-india-s-vegetarian-elite-are-accused-of-keeping-kids-hungry

    • stray ( stray@pawb.social ) 
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      10 months ago

      India has the same percentage of vegans as Mexico.

      https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/veganism-by-country

      • spacesatan ( spacesatan@leminal.space ) 
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        10 months ago

        There really isn’t good data on rates of veganism, especially globally. I’d be surprised if 50% of Mexicans could actually accurately describe veganism. There is no way in hell 1 in 10 are actually vegan. I know reddit is gross but this thread echoes my sentiment with some more context.

        • stray ( stray@pawb.social ) 
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          10 months ago

          https://nielseniq.com/global/es/insights/report/2016/8-de-cada-10-mexicanos-afirma-seguir-algun-tipo-de-dieta-restrictiva/

          The original page mentioned specific ingredients like milk and eggs, and it separates out vegetarianism, flexitarianism, and veganism.

          Why do you think the anecdotal opinions of Redditors is better data than this?

          • spacesatan ( spacesatan@leminal.space ) 
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            10 months ago

            Because it’s a single mediocre poll producing a wildly outside expectation result that hasn’t been reproduced. Every time a poll doesn’t rely on self-identification and instead asks more explicit questions like “do you avoid consuming ___ for moral reasons” or “are you willing to eat ___ if it is freely offered” the numbers drop like a brick.

  • BeigeAgenda ( BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca ) 
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    10 months ago

    It’s nice with a good selection of vegan options, makes it easier to eat less meat.

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