Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices

Alicorn

17 Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices

3rd May 2009

2 min read

17

I have noticed that among philosophers, vegetarianism of one form or another is quite common. In fact, I became a vegetarian (technically a pescetarian) myself partly out of respect for an undergraduate philosophy professor. I am interested in finding out if there is a similar disproportion in the Less Wrong community.

I didn't request that this go into Yvain's survey because I want more information than just what animal products you do or don't eat; I'd also like to see nuances of the reasons behind your diet. There are a lot more shades than carnivore/vegetarian/vegan - if you want to be a vegetarian but are allergic to soy and gluten, that's a compelling reason to diversify protein sources, for instance. I'd also like to hear about if you avoid any plant foods (if you think they're farmed in a way that's environmentally destructive or that hurts people or if you have warm fuzzy feelings for plants, maybe). Here are some questions that come to mind:

What foods, if any, do you normally avoid for reasons other than pure culinary taste, cost, individual health concerns (allergies, diabetes, etc.) or ease of preparation? (Avoiding foods that are considered revolting or just non-food in your culture of origin, like balut or fried locusts, counts as "culinary taste".)
What are your reasons for avoiding those foods?
How strictly do you avoid them? For instance, will you eat them if you are served them while a guest at a meal, or if you are hungry and there is nothing else available? Do you check to see if they're in potentially questionable dishes at restaurants (and if so, do you trust what the server says?)
If you have children or plan to have children, will you expect or encourage them to avoid the same foods?
Do you try to convince your friends and family members to make dietary choices similar to yours? If so, have you ever succeeded?
If you avoid a class of foods with valuable nutritive content (as opposed to Twinkies), what do you replace it with to get complete nutrition?
What are your attitudes to people who are more restrictive in their diets than you are? Less restrictive?
What is the timeline of your dietary restrictions? (Transitions, lapses, increases or decreases in restrictiveness, etc.)
If you have not avoided these foods for your entire life, how much did you enjoy them when you ate them, and do you still sometimes want to eat them?
Is there anything else about your choice of diet that might be relevant or interesting?

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17 Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices

by Alicorn

3rd May 2009

2 min read

244

17

What foods, if any, do you normally avoid for reasons other than pure culinary taste, cost, individual health concerns (allergies, diabetes, etc.) or ease of preparation? (Avoiding foods that are considered revolting or just non-food in your culture of origin, like balut or fried locusts, counts as "culinary taste".)
What are your reasons for avoiding those foods?
How strictly do you avoid them? For instance, will you eat them if you are served them while a guest at a meal, or if you are hungry and there is nothing else available? Do you check to see if they're in potentially questionable dishes at restaurants (and if so, do you trust what the server says?)
If you have children or plan to have children, will you expect or encourage them to avoid the same foods?
Do you try to convince your friends and family members to make dietary choices similar to yours? If so, have you ever succeeded?
If you avoid a class of foods with valuable nutritive content (as opposed to Twinkies), what do you replace it with to get complete nutrition?
What are your attitudes to people who are more restrictive in their diets than you are? Less restrictive?
What is the timeline of your dietary restrictions? (Transitions, lapses, increases or decreases in restrictiveness, etc.)
If you have not avoided these foods for your entire life, how much did you enjoy them when you ate them, and do you still sometimes want to eat them?
Is there anything else about your choice of diet that might be relevant or interesting?

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Kevin16y30

I guess the inconsistency that I still can't resolve is:

We agree that animal suffering is bad and I accept the point about the expected utility of one person becoming a vegetarian.

Why is animal suffering just bad enough that you are willing to settle for the expected utility of saving the lives of the number of animals you yourself do not eat? I think my problem is that I have convinced myself that the animal suffering problem is bad enough that I should be an animal rights campaigner or something. I'm not going to do that, and the marginal impact of me becoming a vegetarian still just seems so marginal compared to the impact I could have if I actually focused my energy on activism.

Or, if I become a vegetarian for reasons mostly related to animal suffering, I would want to judge others more harshly for not being vegetarians, which is very poor form in conventional social interactions.

If a shift away from factory farming does occur, I don't think it's going to come from more people like me becoming vegetarians. Cheap, delicious meat grown in vats will have a much greater social effect. Once that happens, I'll become a vegetarian, maybe an annual or semi-annual eater of premium, non-factory farmed meat.

Paul Crowley16y20

Or, if I become a vegetarian for reasons mostly related to animal suffering, I would want to judge others more harshly for not being vegetarians, which is very poor form in conventional social interactions.

Judging others is about making predictions on their future actions in morally challenging situations. If they eat meat, it's a good predictor that they will eat meat in future, but it doesn't say much about whether they'll jump into the canal to save a drowning child.

28SarahNibs16y

Consistency is what we build into FAIs, not what we require of ourselves before changing what we would do. If animal suffering is bad enough that we should be an animal rights campaigner, but we nevertheless unethically choose to not become a campaigner, that does not make the decision to eat exactly as much meat as always suddenly an ethical decision. Is it futile to eat a side of asparagus with your steak rather than a side of calamari? Not at all, we have still saved expected squid equivalent to one side of calamari. Would it be better to not have the steak? Sure, maybe, but the squid doesn't actually care about our inconsistency. I recently (gradually over the last half-year or so) became a fair-weather vegetarian. I ate pepperoni pizza today, and it would have been more than negligible cost to do otherwise. But the last time I bought groceries I did not purchase any meat. I find that I can forgo something like 90% of the meat I used to eat with positive marginal happiness, since most of the time it's fairly trivial to switch to a non-meat idea instead and I still get more pleasure from the decision to switch than unpleasantness from the switching costs.

7Alicorn16y

Conditional on the fact that you will never become an animal rights campaigner, the largest impact you can make would be to simply become a vegetarian yourself. Neglecting that because another, in-practice unavailable behavior would be dramatically superior is foolish. [...] Yes, it is advisable not to be a jerk about it. I manage this temptation by making liberal allowances for the fact that people in general do not have the force of personality to make an unconventional self-restricting choice. By ought-implies-can, those people do not in fact have a moral obligation to become vegetarians.

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