Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices

Alicorn

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?

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?

it seems like it would be a bit too convenient if a comprehensive cost benefit analysis came out with the answer 'become a vegetarian'

Convenient for people who are vegetarians on other grounds, perhaps; not so much for me.

In any event, I don't think anyone was suggesting that vegetarianism is the single best way to reduce your carbon footprint. (The specific suggestion being made was presumably that becoming vegetarian was likely to be more effective than buying an equivalent tonnage of offsets. I think this was true when I became vegetarian, but perhaps the certification mechanisms for offsets have now improved enough that the real issue is cost.)

Whether vegetarianism could be the single best way for any given individual to reduce their carbon footprint will depend heavily on: (a) what margin you're working at (e.g. if you already don't drive or fly much, but eat a lot of red meat and dairy then it's more likely to have a large percentage impact); and (b) the relative value you place on the activities that you could scale back on (which will also vary from person to person).

To get somewhat more precise, the paper I linked to in my previous comment concludes:

a person consuming a mixed diet with the mean American caloric content and composition causes the emissions of 1485 kg CO2-equivalent above the emissions associated with consuming the same number of calories, but from plant sources. Far from trivial, nationally this difference amounts to over 6% of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Individual mileage will vary of course. Because my carbon footprint was already pretty low (around 1/4 to 1/3 of the US average), I estimated the reductions I could achieve by eliminating meat and dairy at somewhere around 20%. (Which pretty much did make it the best single option I had.)

FWIW, I'm a little unsure about the value of buying local for a couple of reasons.

Variation in production efficiency can swamp transport costs. The classic example here is that it's apparently more energy efficient to ship lamb from New Zealand than to produce it in the UK. (Though much of this apparently comes down to coal vs. hydro electricity generation, and won't apply to all forms of production.) More broadly, I worry that increasing demand for local products because they are local could incentivise inefficient production.
Large supermarket chains actually have pretty efficient distribution systems, and, as I understand it, most of the emissions from food transport tend to enter at the point-of-sale to front-door stage anyway.

(Not convinced it's bad, either. Just unsure about the size of the benefits.)

FWIW, I'm a little unsure about the value of buying local for a couple of reasons.

I'm not particularly advocating buying local as a better option, it was just an example of the kinds of factors that one might need to consider.

I tend to think that if there is a significant negative externality to carbon emissions that is not currently reflected in prices, the optimal solution would be to impose some kind of carbon tax to reflect that hidden cost. This would avoid the need for individuals to try and make complex cost benefit calculations for themselves o... (read more)

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Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices

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Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices

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