I think vegans need to push hard on the idea of manliness.
The strongest identity pull towards meat is that it’s manly.
However, it’s pretty clear that if manliness means anything positive, it would include being a defender of the innocent, which is what veganism is fundamentally about.
But we need some good messaging around this to get around the meat industry propaganda. I’ve always thought something like a #mennotmonsters hashtag along with images/videos of what happens in the meat industry might be an effective way to push this idea.
Thanks for this post. The old/lingering approach -- hopefully being pushed out -- drove a vicious cycle.
Publication bias (only 'inter-ocular-trauma big results' with high statistical significance were published) --> People believed that these things had huge effects --> Researchers ran low powered studies (and p-hacked) --> These only were 'significant and published' where effects were by chance very large --> People believe these things have huge effects...
But I think/hope we're moving to environments where the full picture of results are reported and enter the scientific record.
I'd be curious what you think about how nudges compare to full swaps, like Meatless Mondays. My impression is that something like Meatless Monday could make a big difference since meat is being taken totally off the table. Maybe people will eat more meat during their other meals still, but it seems like a bigger shift.
Hi Zachary, I generally think that meatless Mondays are counterproductive on average because they cause backlash. Many folks at schools I’ve talked to said some version of, well we tried meatless Mondays but that was really unpopular so then we went to defaults. There’s been a learning process here on institutions’ part that led to the equilibrium we observe. I’d also say meat free days seem to cause a lot of people to up and leave. Here’s a nice paper on the subject with some careful measurement and modeling: https://arxiv.org/html/2504.02899v1
Ah, that's unfortunate. I'm going to have to stop recommending Meatless Monday as an institutional strategy, but I'm glad there's at least some decent research out there on it.
You mentioned convenience as another potential strategy when paired with identity. When I think of convenience, I think of making sure that there are decent vegan options widely available at restaurants and other settings. Is that what you're envisioning as well or is there some other form of convenience?
Yep that's right! convenience can be a bit slippery when we're talking about the price/taste/convenience paradigm (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666325004544) --we might all have slightly different ideas in mind -- but broadly i think people basically mean wide availability, not more work to seek out, etc.
I hope you don’t mind that I’m reaching you via comments. Substack has limited my direct messages today to notify you that I’ve included you in my post.
I’ve included the Regressiontothemeat page in my new post listing over 200 vegan resources on Substack. I hope you like it! I’m hoping to help readers discover more of the vegan publishing community here.
Please let me know if you’d like any updates or edits to your entry. If you feel this guide is useful, you’re welcome to share or restack so others can find it too. But no worries if not. Thanks for doing everything you do! Have a wonderful day.
Stellar post but this confirms my priors so I might not be the best judge.
What doesn’t confirm my priors is that defaults are a good candidate for increasing convenience, though I hold this weakly. Intuitively i agree with the premise that convenience is a big deal in my experience personally and socially as a vegan living outside of a liberal bubble.
However, why do defaults deserve a seat at the table? And instead go without it and exclusively focus on other choice-arch options like, simply making the vegan options taste better (something you have previously noted), have actual proteins (looking at you jackfruit and eggplant), have more options (consumers love variety!), perhaps balanced protein options (I’m more bullish on this than you), or a better ratio of plant-based options to animal-based ones -- and not in addition to defaults, but these and just skip the defaults.
Convenience and defaults pros and cons in my eyes:
CON: Seems to give normies the ick. Even though it is supposed to offer them an olive branch by still giving them a choice, in the studies that attempt to account for spillover effects about ~20% seem to go elsewhere. A decently clear sign that either (A) waiting for them to bring an animal-based option is too much to bear or (B) they don’t know they can ask for an animal based option. This makes it less likely to be a candidate to bring harmony to the vegans and the normies. If my normie friend is going to be annoyed, I’m less inclined to invite him to a default spot.
PRO: If it is salient, which somewhat goes against the best practices of defaults, then it sends a signal that hopefully with enough exposures over time metabolizes into “plant-based proteins are normal, tasty and acceptable.” And that would be huge because very few currently think that.
To my mind, the main arguments for other choice-arch options are:
-- Normie pov: they are not as invasive or weird which I assume would mean they would give less normies the ick (though I haven’t looked into the literature about this so could be wrong)
-- Administration pov: they seem like a less demanding and easier ask to food providers, and thats a big deal
Curious to hear why you see this differently if you got the time
1. IMO defaults are a great choice for hospitals. It's probably prohibitive to opt out by walking away if someone is delivering a meal to your room; you actually need to go through the work of saying to someone, no thank you, I'd like the meat instead. But if you catch people after they've had enough of a health scare to need a hospital stay, I think probably a lot of them are thinking about diet and lifestyle in a new light. It's a great time to push plant-based.
2. In schools, IDK. Defaults are what the movement has settled on and I am involved in two ongoing evaluations. Typically I just want a lot of detail about implementation to know what's going on. I'd really like more documentary evidence, e.g. a video of someone going through the line, looking through the options, and asked for the meat option, but I think that would raise a lot of IRB-related privacy concerns. The next best thing is a detailed description of how the default worked and looked. Otherwise you might bring a different theory to the table about what actually drives changes, e.g. visual salience or quantity of options.
3. I am not sure how much normies _dislike_ the plant-based option being made the default at some station for some week. And in most cases we're talking about US-college students, how normal _are_ they?
4. another thing I'd want context on to form beliefs about defaults vs. any other plant-based promotion is, like, what kind of initiatives has a dining hall run before and are they well-perceived by students at large. I have a cousin in college and impression of dining-student relations was really different than the impression I got from dining services. But if relations are good, I'm more willing to buy that people will be open to initiatives in general.
5. In terms of ease for administrators, the simplest one is just adding some darn adjectives to the plant-based options that make them sound appealing. But then, what if they're not actually good and you make people think that vegan food is typically false advertised 😃 So really I have no idea.
Thanks, I very much agree! Credit for this idea to Jennifer Channin, who is a big believe in defaults but doesn't want us to forget how food and identity are closely related, and how we can make that work for us by connecting plant-based diets to pre-existing commitments.
Identity is key I think.
I think vegans need to push hard on the idea of manliness.
The strongest identity pull towards meat is that it’s manly.
However, it’s pretty clear that if manliness means anything positive, it would include being a defender of the innocent, which is what veganism is fundamentally about.
But we need some good messaging around this to get around the meat industry propaganda. I’ve always thought something like a #mennotmonsters hashtag along with images/videos of what happens in the meat industry might be an effective way to push this idea.
Thanks for this post. The old/lingering approach -- hopefully being pushed out -- drove a vicious cycle.
Publication bias (only 'inter-ocular-trauma big results' with high statistical significance were published) --> People believed that these things had huge effects --> Researchers ran low powered studies (and p-hacked) --> These only were 'significant and published' where effects were by chance very large --> People believe these things have huge effects...
But I think/hope we're moving to environments where the full picture of results are reported and enter the scientific record.
I'd be curious what you think about how nudges compare to full swaps, like Meatless Mondays. My impression is that something like Meatless Monday could make a big difference since meat is being taken totally off the table. Maybe people will eat more meat during their other meals still, but it seems like a bigger shift.
Hi Zachary, I generally think that meatless Mondays are counterproductive on average because they cause backlash. Many folks at schools I’ve talked to said some version of, well we tried meatless Mondays but that was really unpopular so then we went to defaults. There’s been a learning process here on institutions’ part that led to the equilibrium we observe. I’d also say meat free days seem to cause a lot of people to up and leave. Here’s a nice paper on the subject with some careful measurement and modeling: https://arxiv.org/html/2504.02899v1
Ah, that's unfortunate. I'm going to have to stop recommending Meatless Monday as an institutional strategy, but I'm glad there's at least some decent research out there on it.
You mentioned convenience as another potential strategy when paired with identity. When I think of convenience, I think of making sure that there are decent vegan options widely available at restaurants and other settings. Is that what you're envisioning as well or is there some other form of convenience?
Yep that's right! convenience can be a bit slippery when we're talking about the price/taste/convenience paradigm (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666325004544) --we might all have slightly different ideas in mind -- but broadly i think people basically mean wide availability, not more work to seek out, etc.
Hi Seth,
I hope you don’t mind that I’m reaching you via comments. Substack has limited my direct messages today to notify you that I’ve included you in my post.
I’ve included the Regressiontothemeat page in my new post listing over 200 vegan resources on Substack. I hope you like it! I’m hoping to help readers discover more of the vegan publishing community here.
Here’s the link if you’d like to take a look:
https://plus.shovelandcrunch.com/p/vegan-substack-resources-guide-a
Please let me know if you’d like any updates or edits to your entry. If you feel this guide is useful, you’re welcome to share or restack so others can find it too. But no worries if not. Thanks for doing everything you do! Have a wonderful day.
Shell
Looks great, thanks!
Thanks, Seth! I love our community. I’m glad to be connected with you! ❤️
Stellar post but this confirms my priors so I might not be the best judge.
What doesn’t confirm my priors is that defaults are a good candidate for increasing convenience, though I hold this weakly. Intuitively i agree with the premise that convenience is a big deal in my experience personally and socially as a vegan living outside of a liberal bubble.
However, why do defaults deserve a seat at the table? And instead go without it and exclusively focus on other choice-arch options like, simply making the vegan options taste better (something you have previously noted), have actual proteins (looking at you jackfruit and eggplant), have more options (consumers love variety!), perhaps balanced protein options (I’m more bullish on this than you), or a better ratio of plant-based options to animal-based ones -- and not in addition to defaults, but these and just skip the defaults.
Convenience and defaults pros and cons in my eyes:
CON: Seems to give normies the ick. Even though it is supposed to offer them an olive branch by still giving them a choice, in the studies that attempt to account for spillover effects about ~20% seem to go elsewhere. A decently clear sign that either (A) waiting for them to bring an animal-based option is too much to bear or (B) they don’t know they can ask for an animal based option. This makes it less likely to be a candidate to bring harmony to the vegans and the normies. If my normie friend is going to be annoyed, I’m less inclined to invite him to a default spot.
PRO: If it is salient, which somewhat goes against the best practices of defaults, then it sends a signal that hopefully with enough exposures over time metabolizes into “plant-based proteins are normal, tasty and acceptable.” And that would be huge because very few currently think that.
To my mind, the main arguments for other choice-arch options are:
-- Normie pov: they are not as invasive or weird which I assume would mean they would give less normies the ick (though I haven’t looked into the literature about this so could be wrong)
-- Administration pov: they seem like a less demanding and easier ask to food providers, and thats a big deal
Curious to hear why you see this differently if you got the time
Thanks! A frew thoughts.
1. IMO defaults are a great choice for hospitals. It's probably prohibitive to opt out by walking away if someone is delivering a meal to your room; you actually need to go through the work of saying to someone, no thank you, I'd like the meat instead. But if you catch people after they've had enough of a health scare to need a hospital stay, I think probably a lot of them are thinking about diet and lifestyle in a new light. It's a great time to push plant-based.
2. In schools, IDK. Defaults are what the movement has settled on and I am involved in two ongoing evaluations. Typically I just want a lot of detail about implementation to know what's going on. I'd really like more documentary evidence, e.g. a video of someone going through the line, looking through the options, and asked for the meat option, but I think that would raise a lot of IRB-related privacy concerns. The next best thing is a detailed description of how the default worked and looked. Otherwise you might bring a different theory to the table about what actually drives changes, e.g. visual salience or quantity of options.
3. I am not sure how much normies _dislike_ the plant-based option being made the default at some station for some week. And in most cases we're talking about US-college students, how normal _are_ they?
4. another thing I'd want context on to form beliefs about defaults vs. any other plant-based promotion is, like, what kind of initiatives has a dining hall run before and are they well-perceived by students at large. I have a cousin in college and impression of dining-student relations was really different than the impression I got from dining services. But if relations are good, I'm more willing to buy that people will be open to initiatives in general.
5. In terms of ease for administrators, the simplest one is just adding some darn adjectives to the plant-based options that make them sound appealing. But then, what if they're not actually good and you make people think that vegan food is typically false advertised 😃 So really I have no idea.
Thanks, I very much agree! Credit for this idea to Jennifer Channin, who is a big believe in defaults but doesn't want us to forget how food and identity are closely related, and how we can make that work for us by connecting plant-based diets to pre-existing commitments.