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 needs to reduce emissions more effectively than other equally costly options.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but this still seems inaccurate to me. If there is a more effective yet equally costly option O, but the total benefit of O+Vegetarian is still greater than the total cost of O+Vegetarian, then Vegetarian is still worth it (as is O). Your framing seems to deny this.

My original question was an attempt to ascertain whether the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions was truly your primary reason for choosing vegetarianism

Yes. It was, and is. I guess there's an added benefit in terms of cost, but given that I don't care about the animals themselves, I really don't have any other reasons for it.

The (seemingly) more common animal welfare justification for vegetarianism seems more directly linked to the particular decision to not eat meat than does a carbon emissions argument.

Sure. But it would hard to get a more direct link than the animal welfare argument, so that's not saying much. Something in the order of 20% of global GHG emissions can be attributed to livestock, so it's not like the link between meat and emissions is weak.

I guess the complication is that there's a reasonable amount of variation in emissions depending on what meat you're talking about. Ruminants (cows, sheep) are especially bad (because of the methane), as is dairy (for the same reason). Farmed and deep sea fish are pretty bad too, but other fish are probably OK. Chicken (and especially eggs) aren't so bad either (and are probably better the worse you treat the chickens).

Ultimately, I figured that it would be easier (and therefore more effective) to have a clear no meat rule than to try to make too many case-by-case calls that I might then be tempted to weasel out of. Nonetheless, in an effort to become slightly more consistent, I've made a deal with myself that I can start eating (OK) fish again if/when I manage to completely ditch the dairy (given that the latter is almost certainly worse from a GHG perspective). Haven't quite managed it yet though.

If there is a more effective yet equally costly option O, but the total benefit of O+Vegetarian is still greater than the total cost of O+Vegetarian, then Vegetarian is still worth it (as is O).

You've got to consider opportunity cost and marginal utility. If you valued reducing carbon emissions above all else then your best course of action would probably be suicide. Assuming some upper limit on the cost you're willing to pay to reduce carbon emissions, your best strategy is to choose the option that provides the greatest reduction for the least persona... (read more)

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Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices

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Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices

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