May 3, 2017 • 42 mins
Why are women likelier to be vegetarian and vegan? Cristen and Caroline cook up a podcast feast of facts about the history of vegetarianism and what gender has to do with foregoing meat.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And since October is Vegetarian Awareness Month,
let's get aware, Caroline, so aware. Yes, we're gonna talk
(00:24):
about vegetarianism and women. We're not going to focus so
much on veganism for vegans listening, And I know you're listening,
but there is just with vegetarianism alone, there's so much
to talk about. So why don't we kick off though
with some stats, as we often do? How many people
(00:46):
abstained from meat these days? Caroline? Yeah, I was actually
surprised that the numbers were as low as they are.
A twenty twelve Gallop Pole found that five percent of
Americans consider themselves vegetarian, and that breaks down to about
four percent of men pulled and seven percent of women pulled,
versus two percent of Americans who considered themselves vegan. And
(01:08):
I don't maybe I'm just so randomly surrounded by so
many vegetarians, but I thought those numbers would be way higher. Well,
I think I don't have the stat in front of me,
but there are far more people who might not consider
themselves strictly vegetarian, but are at least sort of vegetarian intentional.
They'll eat some fish every now and then, they might
(01:31):
eat they'll they'll eat meat occasionally, but they try to
have a meat limited diet. So maybe, I mean, do
you know just a lot of strict vegetarians. I haven't
have a few. Maybe maybe maybe they're just overrepresented in
certain people I don't know. So well. Stood out to
me though, from this Gallop data, was that it was
(01:53):
more marital status than gender which influenced vegetarianism, or at
least was more strongly correlated to it, because they found
that unmarried adults are more than twice as likely as
married adults to be vegetarians. Total sense, Maybe that's part
of it too, We're just a bunch of unmarried folk
all hanging out. Well, No, I mean, I'm thinking about
(02:15):
this in terms of, like I know that my mother,
I mean, she hates it, but she cooks every night
for both her and my father, and so I know that,
like she just cooks what he'll like and then she
eats it too, right, So that could that could be
a factor at play? Women cooking meat for men. Well,
I'm just so sick of trying to make two different males.
I'm not as short short order cook. And it's a
(02:35):
tale as old as time. I tell you what. When
it comes to veganism, though, the gender gap is much wider.
It's about an eight twenty split, with majority women abstaining
from all animal related products, not just meat. And when
you look bigger when you go global. As of a
two thousand seven European Vegetarian Union poll, the numbers are
(03:00):
not that far off from what they are in America.
Three percent of Australians say they're vegetarian, four percent of
Canadians and just two percent though in the U k.
And then, of course you do have largely vegetarian cultures
like India, which does consume the least amount of meat
per capita than any country around the world, according to
data from the u n Food and Agriculture Organization. And
(03:23):
if we look at the history of vegetarianism, it's pretty
fascinating because today I feel like we associate vegetarianism more
with women. They give it more as like a female diet,
whereas meat is the manly food. Hang about Ron Swanson
on parks in a rack, he who cannot eat enough bacon,
(03:43):
but the early history of it was driven largely by men. Yeah,
So back in uh five b C. Pythagoras of Triangles
and Theorems is born in hired by a Buddha. He
actually became a vegetarian based on his philosophy around animals
(04:05):
having souls and that could be reincarnated as humans, and
so eating animals would therefore be unjust, and so thanks
to his philosophy, later thinkers like Epicurus, Seneca, Plutarch, and
Platinus adopted vegetarian diets of their own. And it's notable
that since Pythagoras is time, we've been debating the ethics
(04:29):
of killing and eating animals because in ancient Greece and Rome,
really only the wealthy could afford to eat meat anyway,
And that's kind of how it's been meat as something
that that's a luxury for the wealthy, has you been
sort of the standard until more far more recent history.
(04:49):
But we've been kind of waffling about, well, is this okay?
That we're actually doing this for a really, really really
long time, And didn't just start with the hippies and
the seven dies, as your parents might try to tell you, right,
and Pythagoras was so tied into this idea of eating
a healthy, vegetable based diet that the name of the
diet was actually just called a Pythagorean diet. And this
(05:13):
especially came about in seventeen forty five, which is when
Englishman Robert Dodsley translated Pythagoras's philosophy on vegetarianism into English. Yeah,
so if you were a vegetarian, they wouldn't call you
a vegetarian at the time, they would simply call you
a Pythagorean. And vegetarian thought in the West in the
(05:35):
eighteenth and nineteenth century was not only influenced by Pythagoras,
but was also influenced by contact with India, where vegetarian
culture there was considered revolutionary. This idea that there could
be this culture where animals were respected and revered and
not simply killed and eaten. And there's also a lot
(05:59):
of spiritual him too, intertwined with early vegetarianism, as it
was often seen as a path toward intellectual enlightenment and
social uplift. If you could abstain from meat, if you
could exercise that kind of manly will power to do
this thing for yourself, then you would be a better human. Yeah,
and uh and poet Percy Shelley's mind. This even applied
(06:22):
to Napoleon. Yeah, he once said, quote, had Bonaparte descended
from a race of vegetable feeders, the Liberator would never
have crowned himself emperor because for a long time, and
we'll talk about this more a little bit later, there
has been this association between the consumption and production of
meat and violence and aggressiveness. Um. One of our founding
(06:48):
fathers who got super into the no meat thing was
Benjamin Franklin. He he tried out this Pythagorean diet. He
he actually I started out right with just water and bread. Yeah,
and he felt very stuff Yeah. There was no whole
foods at the time, so vegetarian diet was pretty and
dense back in his day. But he noticed, you know,
nerd alert. He noticed that the less meat he ate,
(07:11):
the more money he saved, which meant which meant the
more money he could spend on books. Oh man, it's
adorable and I love it. But what broke his meat
fast was seeing a smaller fish in the belly of
a cod that had been caught, and he was like, well, jeez,
all right, if y'all are eating each other, then surely
(07:31):
you won't mind if I eat you so and then yeah,
and then he started eating meat again. But there are
you have a lot of figures like Ben Franklin, of
these leading intellectuals of this time who, if anything at
least dabbled in vegetarianism. It was very I mean it
was I don't want to say that it was in vogue,
but it was definitely far more in existence than we
(07:54):
might realize that it was um today and in pre
Industrial Revolution America we ate very little meat. Again, unless
you had money, you ate very little meat. And for
some reason, Caroline researching for this podcast reminded me so
much of Little House on the Prairie, Like when they
are out, all they have is the only meat they
(08:16):
ever really eat is the salted pork and just mostly
salted fat. So it's not like you open up the
fridge and like, oh do I want chicken to night
or do I want sausage? No meat was mea it
was hard to come by. I still just want the
salted fat, though, I just want a ball of bacon.
That's the perfect thing to say. In our episode on
(08:36):
vegetarians and caroline Um culturally sensitive um. Well. So then
in eight we finally get the term vegetarian coin with
the founding of England's first vegetarian society, and then it
really just takes off. Yeah. Around the same time, the
US establishes its first vegetarian society as well, the American
(08:58):
Vegetarian Society, which was started in eighteen fifty by Sylvester
Graham of Cracker fame, and also William Alcott, who was
the father of Luisa May Alcott, author of Little Women,
and also the co founder I did not know this
of fruit Lands, which was America's first vegetarian commune. Interesting,
(09:20):
and vegetarianism is getting so popular and getting so many
followers followers around this time that by the late nineteenth
century we start getting vegetarian cookbooks popping up, so you
don't have to be like Benjamin Franklin and just rely
on bread and water alone. This is also a key
period in the vegetarian movement when Upton Sinclair in six
(09:42):
publishes The Jungle, which had a huge effect on both
vegetarians people deciding to forego meat, and especially on food
reform movements. To that's when we get the pure food
and Drug Act and the development of the Food and
Drug Administration. Yeah, it was actually in eighteen nine nine
four the U. S Department of Agriculture that John Harvey Kellogg,
(10:03):
he of corn flake fame, invented a meat substitute called Protos.
And Kellogg actually had been working at the Battle Creek
Sanitarium where he oversaw from nineteen o five the development
of one hundred new health foods, including Protos, which I
(10:26):
want to say sort of tastes like peanut butter. It
has a nutty flavor. Yeah. Something we read was talking
about how many, many, many people have tried to recreate
it just based on like flavor, and they've used peanut
butter and like onion powder and other things don't stick
with tempae and peanut sauce, sawdust and sawdust. Um. Yeah,
(10:49):
but it is it is interesting that at this period
there is so much activity and thought going into food,
Like you said, food reform, how the food is being produced.
This is when you have the era of banting and
the banting diet. This is when we first start thinking about, well,
maybe we shouldn't eat certain things. How does this affect
(11:10):
our health? And vegetarian is m was was relatively hot,
and it was also hot with suffragists. Yeah, and so
up until this point, you know, we've talked a lot
about the men who were leading the charge in vegetarianism
and how a lot of this had to do with
your health and what you ate and feeling better during
the day because of what you ate. But with suffragists,
(11:33):
a lot of suffragists adopting a vegetarian diet, this is
when we start to see arise in ethical vegetarianism, deciding
consciously not to eat meat because of the way that
animals were treated. Yeah, because in addition to the health
rationale that a lot of men adopted for going vegetarian,
there was also a lot of it was kind of
(11:53):
self serving in the sense of like just being a
better human being, more enlightened, etcetera. Whereas with stuffer just
who were early crusaders in the anti vivisection movement, there
was more of a compulsion to not harm the animals
as well. And not to say that all the male
vegetarians just didn't care about animals either, they were just
(12:16):
trying to lose weight or something like that. But there
was a very clear tie between this fight for women's
rights and not necessarily a fight for animal rights, but
rather ending violence and oppression towards animals as well. Yeah,
and a lot of this is coming from a really
interesting essay by Lea Niman from It's called the Awakened
(12:39):
Instinct Vegetarianism and the women's suffrage movement in Britain. And
not to say that, you know, British stuffer just for
the only women who participated, because certainly we had in
the American Vegetarian Society women like Susan b Anthony Lucy Stone,
and Amelia Bloomer who were attending some of those early meetings.
But this essay is a super interesting look at not
(13:01):
only just the issue of ethical vegetarianism and how it
ties in with the feminist movement and the push for
women to be able to vote um, but it also
actually brings the whole thing to life. There's plenty of
really colorful quotes from these women about why they decided
to be vegetarians. One woman, Leonora Cohen, so that even
(13:22):
if vegetarianism weren't the best diet, she would stick with
it because of humanitarian motives. And there were articles, a
lot of articles on vegetarianism published in the eighteen nineties
in the radical suffrage journal Shafts that outlined how to
adopt vegetarian diets, and they didn't delve too much into
(13:44):
the philosophy of you know, kindness towards animal and that
moral aspect of it, but it was more about time
saving in the kitchen and also again this symbolic connection
between handling meat and violence being associated with meat, and
(14:05):
these housewives who would be expected to cook the meat,
usually for their husbands, because if you could afford meat,
you didn't have a lot of income, only could afford
a little bit of meat. The meat would go to
the men of the household. And these women were saying,
I don't want to handle this stuff, but this is
dead flesh and it came to a violent end, and
(14:26):
why should I be the one having to touch this
meat while my husband? Yeah, I mean exactly. Um, And
I think it's interesting, how, you know, because Chris and
I have obviously talked about the suffrage movement on the
podcast before, but vegetarianism among these women doesn't really come
up so much. But at the time, I mean, it
(14:47):
was something that a lot of them were talking about,
to the point where even back in April of seven,
the Vegetarian Society noted quote, it is interesting to see
how vegetarianism becomes related to progressive movements. Quite a number
of the leaders and the women's suffragist movement are vegetarians.
And since this particular paper that we're focusing on also
(15:08):
focused on British suffragists who had more militant fringes among
them and tended to get tossed in jail, I think
a lot more frequently than American suffragists. Um. There are
lots of letters of suffragists from jail talking about how
they were either marveling at how kindly the guards gave them,
(15:32):
you know, vegetarian meals, or how they had to they
were being force fed meat or meat related products, um,
sort of his punishment if they requested vegetarian food. Well,
there was also advice they were writing about, Advice that
was floating around about how, hey, now that you're like
on our team of suffragists people, um, maybe you should
consider a vegetarian lifestyle because you'll get fed way better
(15:55):
in prison. And adding another layer to this, you know,
you not only have prominent suffragists at the time who
were adhering to vegetarian diets and also preaching vegetarianism. In
the late nineteenth century, this field of esoterism called theosophy,
was also very popular among suffragists, and it's sort of
(16:15):
a intersection of mysticism and philosophy, and it overlapped a
lot with vegetarianism. So again, this is such a fascinating
snapshot of time when you have all of these social
movements of foot that are undergirded by a lot of
spiritualism and mysticism, not necessarily what you would think of
(16:37):
for that time in terms of like straight meeting Protestant people. Yeah,
because women definitely at the time, we're noting the overlap
with this whole field of theosophy, sort of like looking
at the mysteries of of being and the mysteries of
nature and how they have to be the quote voice
for the voiceless, the animals, but they're also the voice
(17:00):
of the voiceless for themselves too. Yeah. I think a
lot of them found uplift through theosophy. Um. And it's
also notable too that the vegetarian societies at the time
also gave voice to these women, which I mean, if
if you've listened to our episode a little while back
on women in the abolition movement. Women were not always
(17:24):
welcome to come and speak openly at gatherings, um, but
they were welcome at a lot of vegetarian society gatherings. Yeah,
to the point where in nineteen Canadian stuff Are just
even opened a vegetarian restaurant at their Toronto headquarters. But
there was one one side note to this that Caroline
and I both gotta kick out of, because not only
(17:46):
were some vegetarian suffragists concerned clearly with what they were
putting on the plate for their families to eat, but
also what they were putting on their heads. There was
in nineteen o nine an article in the Votes for
Women journal that alerted female readers to the murderous millinery,
(18:07):
essentially calling out women for wearing hats that were very
fashionable for the day with bird feathers and other animal
parts on them. Are wearing furs. They called it the
inhumane and revolting fashion of using beautiful birds for the
purpose of personal adornments. Yeah, there were a lot of
(18:28):
angry letters flying back and forth about being opposed to
wearing fur and feathers and anything like that, and why
do you have to keep yourself warm under slain animals,
which I think was kind of controversial because some stuffer
just were like, hey, listen, I like my my, my
feathered chap oh, and we'll keep it bestly and and
(18:50):
christ and I I like, I like your imaginary woman's attitude. Uh,
it fits well with an attitude that I picked up
in In the same essay, UM, there were several women
who were discussing in letters and whatnot, the whole theosophy
thing and being the voice of the voiceless. But in
terms of this um, they were talking about basically the
(19:13):
feminization of society. And they know they didn't note at
the time that there was a lot of fear among
men that society was becoming more feminised, and part of
the feminization was vegetarianism, that it was already becoming more
associated with women, because oh, you're seating vegetables, whereas I'm
a manly man and I eat meat. And so I
really what I really appreciated with the attitude of some
(19:34):
of these women who were saying, Okay, you think vegetarianism
is too feminine. You think that we're feminizing society by
pushing for the vote and by pushing for you to
eat less meat. Well, you know what, maybe the world
will be a better place if the world is more
feminized and we do eat less meats. So take that well,
and the idea of vegetarian being a feminine thing. It's
(19:57):
also revisionist history if you go way on back to Pythagoras,
and even I'm sure people before Pythagoras, seems like meet
really more than being a gendered thing. What has remained
so constant is meet as a symbol of status, because
not only did it represent your status socially, if you
(20:19):
could afford it for your whole family, then you were
doing pretty well. But then even if you were a
poor family, the status within the household would be demonstrated
by the guy that the guy, the husband, the father,
getting the choicest cut of whatever meat there was, and
then it trickled down to the wife she essentially, I
(20:43):
mean the wives of this time and probably even today
to eight whatever was left, you know. So it's just
so I wonder if maybe that fear of vegetarianism being
a sign of the world becoming more and I's is
more rooted in the fear of some you know, status
(21:05):
symbol being taken away, then how do you prove your
manliness if you don't have your steak in front of you?
How are you going to have your pudding? If you
don't eat your meat. This is true, you can't have
any pudding, Caroline. Well, so we'll talk about sort of
the modern advancements in society that lad to actually more
meat eating, and then how that ends up tying into
(21:28):
masculinity even more when we come right back from a break.
So it seems like in the history of vegetarianism when
we move into the twentieth century, the Industrial Revolution and
advances in transportation and refrigeration technology reigned on the parade
(21:49):
a bit because it drove up meat consumption because it
made it more available and cheaper for more people. So,
like I said a little while ago in the podcast,
pre Industrial Revolution, meat eating was still relatively scarce, especially
compared to today's meat centric diets that a lot of
(22:11):
Americans and people outside of America, UH follow. But then
it's like, once we have meat at their ready, we
eat it, and vegetarianism falls by the wayside a little bit.
I mean, I think that was true especially in the
early periods of early period of the century but in
there is a bright spot for the veggie community because
(22:33):
Donald Watson, with the founding of the Vegan Society, coins
the term vegan. And then when you get into the
nineteen seventies, we start to see an uptick again in vegetarianism.
This is it's sort of cyclical how it comes and goes.
And around this time you start seeing more cookbooks, just
like we did back when it first became really popular
(22:54):
in the nineteenth century. You start seeing cookbooks that are
addressing the lack of proteins. So you're not just getting
like tear dorble meat substitutes and pro toast and whatever
are going the Brent Franklin route of bread and water, right,
You're actually seeing cookbooks that are finally being like, oh, hey,
here's how to address your lack of protein, not substitute
meet with something weird and gross. And in addition to
(23:16):
giving people the tools for cooking and more easily adhering
to a vegetarian diet, you also have vegetarianism being stimulated
more conceptually as well, particularly with the nineteen seventy one
publication of Francis mor La Paz Diet for a Small Planet,
which keep in mind in the nineteen seventies, only one
(23:38):
percent of Americans or vegetarian. And then in nineteen the
animal rights movement launches with the publication of Animal Liberation
by Peter Singer. So this is why we often today
associate vegetarianism with the seventies. Well, you know, right before
(24:00):
of Liberation came out, in nineteen seventy four, the magazine
Vegetarian Times launched, which is also the same year that
the magazine High Times launched. Lots of social things going
on in the nineteen seven Yeah, the seventies was ripe
for a vegetarian movement, and we got to get back
to feminism as well. In nineteen seventy five, Carol J.
(24:23):
Adams publishes an article that makes the first prominent connection
between feminism and vegetarianism. So she's bringing back the suffrage
thought of by that point yesteryear. And then she publishes
in nineteen ninety where we're skipping forward a bit. But
then in she publishes the landmark sexual Politics of Meat
(24:47):
that really outlines the history of this connection, in which
she also talks about the connections between the suffrage movement
and vegetarianism and just for an idea of what she's
getting at with sexual politics of meat, in which she
really maintains that all oppressions, whether it's oppression toward women,
(25:09):
people of color, animals, they're all connected and essentially revolve
around white patriarchy. So she says people with power have
always eaten meat. Women's second class citizens are more likely
to eat what are considered to be second class foods
in a patriarchal culture, vegetables, fruits, and grains rather than meat.
The sexism in meat eating recapitulates the class distinctions with
(25:33):
an added twist mythology permeates all classes. That meat is
a masculine food and meat eating a male activity. Yeah, well,
because she talks about as do many other writers out there,
talk about the language that surrounds meat and meat eating.
And I mean especially today. If you look at magazines,
(25:56):
for instance, like Popular Culture, Health Advice, a men magazine
is way more likely to be making the Tim Taylor
tool time like wolf noise over cooking a hamburger than
a woman's magazine. A woman's magazine is gonna what tell
you to go eat a salad and a lean chicken
breast at most well, and it's the whole distinction between
(26:16):
women cook then grill. They grilled their meats. And if
you even this is something that Adams focuses on a
lot as well, is how that language that we often
apply to the descriptions of meat, how we eat meat,
how it tastes, is also often applied in sexist terms
to women's bodies. Right, we're we're juicy pieces of meat. Yeah,
(26:41):
but I mean it's it's I think the well, I mean,
I don't think, I know. And Adams points out that, um,
just the idea, the idea of not eating meat is
like threatening to certain perceptions of masculinity. I mean, you know,
there are so many men, especially in sterious, stereotypical pop culture,
who you know, it's not a real meal if you
(27:04):
don't have meat. Just before I came into the studio,
was talking with dude roommate about this topic and when
I said that we were talking about how meat and
meat eating and grilling and cooking is still aligned with masculinity.
He was like, yeah, real men, you know that kind
of thing. Well, there is I mean, some might say, well,
there's the science to it. There's a fact that men
(27:24):
have more muscle mass and we need the animal protein
to bulk up in that way. So there are excuses
that get thrown out, but it's a lot more telling
when you consider the whole social status aspect, at least
in my reading of our sources for this, where of course,
(27:44):
eating meat is a manly thing because since the dawn
of time, since the dawn of grilling meats, it has
been it's been a source of status. Yeah, and so
many studies that we looked at pointed out that men
are much more likely to say that meat eating is fine,
(28:04):
it's good. Um. They don't care so much about how
the animal is gotten, how the animal flesh is procured,
whereas women are not only more likely to say that
they eat less meat, and they're also way more likely
to feel guilty about the meat that they do eat. Yeah.
There was a study by Hank Rothburger that came out
(28:26):
in two thousand twelve, and I think he's since done
a follow up study on this too. And I just
want to read the study title of this, because it's
one of the best study titles I've seen in a
long time. It's called real Men Don't Eat Vegetable Quiche,
Masculinity and the Justification of Meat consumption, And it was
a small study among a group of per usual undergraduate
(28:49):
students almost exclusively white. So grain of salt there, but
it did confirm this connection between just our ideology of
masculinity and meat, and the more that the guys in
the study identified with a different scales of masculinity than
the likelier they were to really espouse meat eatings. And
(29:13):
in the follow up study that he did, he was
looking at whether women even lie about how little meat
they eat, because we now have it so divided, like
we know that meat limited diet is healthier for us
than a meat heavy diet at this point, and so
many women's magazines these days too, are so like vege friendly.
(29:35):
It was just fine, but that he thinks some women
actually you're like, oh no, they distanced themselves, right, But
that ties back into the whole ethical vegetarian is something
because in looking at the levels the amount of meat
that men and women say they eat, uh, they basically
tested this by saying, hey, could you answer this questionnaire
(29:57):
right before we show you this video from EATA about
how animals are abused and uh tortured before they are
turned into the meat on your table. And so then
the questions were about how much meat you eat, So
they were being primed with this idea that you're about
to see something horrific about how animals are slaughtered. The
men the control group, and then the men who were
(30:18):
told they were going to watch the video, it was stable,
basically stable the amount of meat that they reported that
they would eat on a regular basis. But the women
who were told primed by saying you're going to be
watching this horrific video, you awful meat eat person, you
they reported eating so much less meat because they felt guilty.
Oh yeah. Well. Side note though, on PETA and women,
(30:42):
they are a constant offender when it comes to they're
overtly sexist advertising, which completely plays into exactly what Carol J.
Adams is talking about in terms of the descriptions of
meat being used in the descriptions of women's bodies. Because
most our listeners are probably I've probably seen one of
(31:03):
these ads where women naked usually are pretending to be
meet in some kind of way, and there was even
a Super Bowl ad. I believe that NBC said no,
we're not going to show that because it was kind
of trying to cheekly debunk the idea that if you're
(31:25):
a vegan guy, then you're gonna lose putency in the bedroom.
So the whole ad was showing this woman who was
in like a neck brace and looking like she had
been beaten up because her vegan boyfriend was such a
you know, rock star now and apparently violent in the
(31:46):
bedroom because you'd gotten rid of meat that she got
all beat up in the process. It's like, what why
are you doing this, Peter, very very kind of questionable
marketing strategies in terms of like, you know, Devil's Advocate.
I see what they're doing, right, They're counteracting the deeply
entrenched cultural idea that to be a true masculine man
(32:10):
that involves eating bacon every day and a steak every
night and objectifying women, right, and and so they're trying
to be like, hey, no, look, you can still get
a sexy woman over here. Look at how she's naked
because she doesn't want you to wear fur and stuff like,
you can still get that sexy woman if you're vegan. Yeah,
it's just uh to me, it goes about it in
(32:31):
the totally wrong way to where I would find it
really challenging to be uh an ethical vegetarian feminist and
also be like, yeah, Peter, I want to give my
money to you because some of that money is going
to go to marketing. Yeah, no, not so not so
I'm bored about that. But we do need to acknowledge
that when it comes to vegetarianism, and maybe even more
(32:55):
so veganism today because it's become more popularized than ever before.
While there are so many who do it for ethical
reasons they are ethical vegetarians, there is also this other
side to it where vegetarianism and veganism sometimes get intertwined
(33:16):
with disordered eating. And sure, there definitely is a connection
for a lot of people between just plainal health, being healthy,
and being a vegetarian, which is great. Yeah, and so
there was a one study that showed that more than
just over half of Americans who are vegetarian say that
they are so because of animal welfare reasons and to
(33:36):
improve their health. Just under half site weight loss and
environmental concerns. So that health and weight loss thing definitely
is an aspect of certain vegetarians decisions to to participate
in that lifestyle. But like Kristen said, there's like also
this darker stereotype of vegetarianism just being an excuse to
(33:58):
solely lose weight and nothing else right, And it is
worth addressing because there was a two thousand twelve study
published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and
Dietetics which found that women suffering from eating disorders are
four times likelier to be vegetarian than women without eating disorders.
And on top of that, there was a research project
(34:21):
out of the University of Minnesota that looked at eating
and weight related behaviors and adolescence among thirty one Minneapolis schools,
and of the six percent of students who reported being
vegetariantent did so to lose weight, and of those who
did so to lose weight, they were likelier to be
(34:41):
involved in or to use I should say a series
of unhealthy weight control behaviors. Now, now that we've cited that,
we should definitely say vegetarianism. We're not saying it all
the vegetarianism causes eating disorders or becoming a vegetarian makes
you think about food in a disorder way. It's the opposite.
(35:02):
It's that some people who already have a disordered relationship
with food end up pursuing vegetarianism for slightly different reasons.
And we don't want to sensationalize these study findings because
by the same token, there is this trope that you
see a lot, at least that I've noticed a lot
(35:23):
on the screen of the teenage vegetarian girl who's a
bit of a pest and her parents always poop poo,
the fact that she won't eat the meat that the
mom's cooking, and no, she'll grow out of it one day,
and their vegetarian concerns are often trivialized. But I think
it's also important too to remember that vegetarianism veganism should
(35:46):
still be a part of a healthy diet. There's still
an unhealthy in other words, way to be vegetarian and vegan, right,
because I mean, if we're talking about health and being
a vegetarian. Some studies have found core relations between low fat,
vegetarian or vegan diets and altered menstrual cycles. But there
are so many different lifestyle factors that complain into that.
(36:08):
You might be an extreme athlete, you might have a
lot of stress in your life that could contribute to
irregular periods. Yeah, I mean essentially all of the studdy.
There have been a number of studies actually on menstrual
cycles and vegetarian diets, looking at things like soy. If
you're eating a bunch of soy and getting those estrogen
like compounds in your body, whether that's going to throw
(36:29):
things off. Um, but it's almost so challenging to completely
isolate the impact of a healthy, balanced vegetarian diet that really,
as long as it's exactly that a healthy, balanced vegetarian diet,
you should be fine and your periods should be as
normal as periods really are. Which what is that? Well, yeah, exactly,
(36:51):
And I mean I think there's obviously a difference between
someone who is quote unquote vegetarian and just eats like
Derrito's all day and somebody who actually is pursuing uh
doritos and protas, or or someone who is actually going,
you know, making sure that they are pursuing a healthy
lifestyle that includes exercise, it includes enough protein and vitamins
(37:13):
and minerals and things like that. Yeah. But what is
not worthwhile at all that that I noticed online just
in the process of researching for this episode, are these
back and forth kind of just jabs made at vegetarian
women as caring too much. Go eat some bacon already,
Go eat a hamburger. You know that. That's why don't
(37:36):
vegetarian shame someone. If that's what you want to eat
and you're healthy about it, what's wrong with that? It's
healthier than me eating a bacon sandwich. Bacon? Is that
just bacon between two bacon's. I was thinking like a
b LT, but with heavier on the b. I was
just thinking bacon's lots of bacons. There's there's a lot
(37:59):
of room for interpreting and that, but you know it
is also good? Is uh t LT with some tempe
bacon interesting? I'd be happened. I'd be open to it
anytime you want to make that for me Christmas and
some vegan Manni's good girl. Well, vegetarian listeners, now it's
time to hear from you. What are all your thoughts
(38:21):
on all of this mom stuff? At House Stuffworks dot
Com is where you can reach us. You can also
tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook.
And Caroline, do you do you have any questions for
our vegetarian listeners? Well, first of all, I'd like to
apologize for the number of times I just said bacon,
But no, I I want to know how many ethical
(38:42):
vegetarians we have out there versus maybe health related. I know,
I know people who have chosen vegetarian lifestyle for both reasons. Um,
but I also want to know what kind of flak
you've caught. I feel like vegetarians can't catch a break
from people who are so judge. Yeah, yeah, we're I mean,
we're living in a very bacon centric world right now.
Let's be honest, So let us know your thoughts again, Mom,
(39:02):
seven House, stepworks dot com is our email address, or
tweet us, Facebook us, just get in touch, and we've
got a couple of letters to share with you right now.
So I have a letter here from romy and subject
line pronunciation of Japanese words. She writes, Hey, ladies, great
(39:24):
podcast is always I was listening to your podcast on
cosplay and I have just one little tiff. You guys
are totally mispronouncing the word, which is spelled k A
w A I I. The way you're pronouncing it makes
it sound like kauai, which means scary or fear. I
(39:46):
understand that you are not Japanese speakers, but as a
Japanese woman, it makes me cringe every time I hear
the word being mispronounced, although it's kind of funny that
the way you guys say it makes it sound like kauai,
which means scary. She says, thank you again for the
great podcast and keep up the good work. So Romy,
here you have it me pronouncing kawaite, am I saying
(40:09):
it correctly. Let's hope, So thanks Romi. Okay, I have
a letter here from Kathleen who has something very good
to point out. Um, she says. First of all, I've
been listening to your podcast for a while now and
I thoroughly enjoy it, So thank you, Kathleen. She says,
I just have a quick question for you. I just
listen to your most recent podcast on late night TV
(40:29):
and the lack of female hosts and writers. You mentioned
women that hosted late night shows Joan Rivers, will be Goldberg,
Chelsea Handler, but I don't think you mentioned the comedian Monique.
I believe she had a late night show, although it
was short lived around two thousand nine or so on
b et. If you did mention her, I apologize. There
have been so few women hosting late night talk shows.
I just wanted to make sure I'll receive some mention.
(40:51):
Please don't apologize, Kathleen, we owe you and our listeners
and apology. We did not mention Monique, and so Monique,
we we owe you an apology as well. Yeah, yeah,
so they're at another one. One more to the still
very short list of women who opposed You could basically
fit them all into one office cubicle. Still, so that's
(41:11):
unfortunate for women, but but thank you for adding Monique
to the lift. Indeed, and speaking of letters about our
late night episode, one of our listeners wrote in to
recommend Pete Holmes, who had a late night show. He
doesn't anymore, but apparently he has a hilarious podcast called
You Made It Weird that she really likes, and she
(41:33):
said she might even describe him as feminist. So if
you're looking for a new podcast to try out, Pete
Holmes is You Made It Weird has been recommended by
stuff Mom Never Told You listener, So if you have
any recommendations, vegetarian thoughts, all of those things, you can
send them to us at stuff Mom Never Told You
at how stuff works dot com and if you want
(41:54):
to find links to all of our social media's as
well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts, which
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There's one place to go, and it's Stuff Mom Never
told you dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, does it, How stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline. And since October is Vegetarian Awareness Month,
let's get aware, Caroline, so aware. Yes, we're gonna talk
(00:24):
about vegetarianism and women. We're not going to focus so
much on veganism for vegans listening, And I know you're listening,
but there is just with vegetarianism alone, there's so much
to talk about. So why don't we kick off though
with some stats, as we often do? How many people
(00:46):
abstained from meat these days? Caroline? Yeah, I was actually
surprised that the numbers were as low as they are.
A twenty twelve Gallop Pole found that five percent of
Americans consider themselves vegetarian, and that breaks down to about
four percent of men pulled and seven percent of women pulled,
versus two percent of Americans who considered themselves vegan. And
(01:08):
I don't maybe I'm just so randomly surrounded by so
many vegetarians, but I thought those numbers would be way higher. Well,
I think I don't have the stat in front of me,
but there are far more people who might not consider
themselves strictly vegetarian, but are at least sort of vegetarian intentional.
They'll eat some fish every now and then, they might
(01:31):
eat they'll they'll eat meat occasionally, but they try to
have a meat limited diet. So maybe, I mean, do
you know just a lot of strict vegetarians. I haven't
have a few. Maybe maybe maybe they're just overrepresented in
certain people I don't know. So well. Stood out to
me though, from this Gallop data, was that it was
(01:53):
more marital status than gender which influenced vegetarianism, or at
least was more strongly correlated to it, because they found
that unmarried adults are more than twice as likely as
married adults to be vegetarians. Total sense, Maybe that's part
of it too, We're just a bunch of unmarried folk
all hanging out. Well, No, I mean, I'm thinking about
(02:15):
this in terms of, like I know that my mother,
I mean, she hates it, but she cooks every night
for both her and my father, and so I know that,
like she just cooks what he'll like and then she
eats it too, right, So that could that could be
a factor at play? Women cooking meat for men. Well,
I'm just so sick of trying to make two different males.
I'm not as short short order cook. And it's a
(02:35):
tale as old as time. I tell you what. When
it comes to veganism, though, the gender gap is much wider.
It's about an eight twenty split, with majority women abstaining
from all animal related products, not just meat. And when
you look bigger when you go global. As of a
two thousand seven European Vegetarian Union poll, the numbers are
(03:00):
not that far off from what they are in America.
Three percent of Australians say they're vegetarian, four percent of
Canadians and just two percent though in the U k.
And then, of course you do have largely vegetarian cultures
like India, which does consume the least amount of meat
per capita than any country around the world, according to
data from the u n Food and Agriculture Organization. And
(03:23):
if we look at the history of vegetarianism, it's pretty
fascinating because today I feel like we associate vegetarianism more
with women. They give it more as like a female diet,
whereas meat is the manly food. Hang about Ron Swanson
on parks in a rack, he who cannot eat enough bacon,
(03:43):
but the early history of it was driven largely by men. Yeah,
So back in uh five b C. Pythagoras of Triangles
and Theorems is born in hired by a Buddha. He
actually became a vegetarian based on his philosophy around animals
(04:05):
having souls and that could be reincarnated as humans, and
so eating animals would therefore be unjust, and so thanks
to his philosophy, later thinkers like Epicurus, Seneca, Plutarch, and
Platinus adopted vegetarian diets of their own. And it's notable
that since Pythagoras is time, we've been debating the ethics
(04:29):
of killing and eating animals because in ancient Greece and Rome,
really only the wealthy could afford to eat meat anyway,
And that's kind of how it's been meat as something
that that's a luxury for the wealthy, has you been
sort of the standard until more far more recent history.
(04:49):
But we've been kind of waffling about, well, is this okay?
That we're actually doing this for a really, really really
long time, And didn't just start with the hippies and
the seven dies, as your parents might try to tell you, right,
and Pythagoras was so tied into this idea of eating
a healthy, vegetable based diet that the name of the
diet was actually just called a Pythagorean diet. And this
(05:13):
especially came about in seventeen forty five, which is when
Englishman Robert Dodsley translated Pythagoras's philosophy on vegetarianism into English. Yeah,
so if you were a vegetarian, they wouldn't call you
a vegetarian at the time, they would simply call you
a Pythagorean. And vegetarian thought in the West in the
(05:35):
eighteenth and nineteenth century was not only influenced by Pythagoras,
but was also influenced by contact with India, where vegetarian
culture there was considered revolutionary. This idea that there could
be this culture where animals were respected and revered and
not simply killed and eaten. And there's also a lot
(05:59):
of spiritual him too, intertwined with early vegetarianism, as it
was often seen as a path toward intellectual enlightenment and
social uplift. If you could abstain from meat, if you
could exercise that kind of manly will power to do
this thing for yourself, then you would be a better human. Yeah,
and uh and poet Percy Shelley's mind. This even applied
(06:22):
to Napoleon. Yeah, he once said, quote, had Bonaparte descended
from a race of vegetable feeders, the Liberator would never
have crowned himself emperor because for a long time, and
we'll talk about this more a little bit later, there
has been this association between the consumption and production of
meat and violence and aggressiveness. Um. One of our founding
(06:48):
fathers who got super into the no meat thing was
Benjamin Franklin. He he tried out this Pythagorean diet. He
he actually I started out right with just water and bread. Yeah,
and he felt very stuff Yeah. There was no whole
foods at the time, so vegetarian diet was pretty and
dense back in his day. But he noticed, you know,
nerd alert. He noticed that the less meat he ate,
(07:11):
the more money he saved, which meant which meant the
more money he could spend on books. Oh man, it's
adorable and I love it. But what broke his meat
fast was seeing a smaller fish in the belly of
a cod that had been caught, and he was like, well, jeez,
all right, if y'all are eating each other, then surely
(07:31):
you won't mind if I eat you so and then yeah,
and then he started eating meat again. But there are
you have a lot of figures like Ben Franklin, of
these leading intellectuals of this time who, if anything at
least dabbled in vegetarianism. It was very I mean it
was I don't want to say that it was in vogue,
but it was definitely far more in existence than we
(07:54):
might realize that it was um today and in pre
Industrial Revolution America we ate very little meat. Again, unless
you had money, you ate very little meat. And for
some reason, Caroline researching for this podcast reminded me so
much of Little House on the Prairie, Like when they
are out, all they have is the only meat they
(08:16):
ever really eat is the salted pork and just mostly
salted fat. So it's not like you open up the
fridge and like, oh do I want chicken to night
or do I want sausage? No meat was mea it
was hard to come by. I still just want the
salted fat, though, I just want a ball of bacon.
That's the perfect thing to say. In our episode on
(08:36):
vegetarians and caroline Um culturally sensitive um. Well. So then
in eight we finally get the term vegetarian coin with
the founding of England's first vegetarian society, and then it
really just takes off. Yeah. Around the same time, the
US establishes its first vegetarian society as well, the American
(08:58):
Vegetarian Society, which was started in eighteen fifty by Sylvester
Graham of Cracker fame, and also William Alcott, who was
the father of Luisa May Alcott, author of Little Women,
and also the co founder I did not know this
of fruit Lands, which was America's first vegetarian commune. Interesting,
(09:20):
and vegetarianism is getting so popular and getting so many
followers followers around this time that by the late nineteenth
century we start getting vegetarian cookbooks popping up, so you
don't have to be like Benjamin Franklin and just rely
on bread and water alone. This is also a key
period in the vegetarian movement when Upton Sinclair in six
(09:42):
publishes The Jungle, which had a huge effect on both
vegetarians people deciding to forego meat, and especially on food
reform movements. To that's when we get the pure food
and Drug Act and the development of the Food and
Drug Administration. Yeah, it was actually in eighteen nine nine
four the U. S Department of Agriculture that John Harvey Kellogg,
(10:03):
he of corn flake fame, invented a meat substitute called Protos.
And Kellogg actually had been working at the Battle Creek
Sanitarium where he oversaw from nineteen o five the development
of one hundred new health foods, including Protos, which I
(10:26):
want to say sort of tastes like peanut butter. It
has a nutty flavor. Yeah. Something we read was talking
about how many, many, many people have tried to recreate
it just based on like flavor, and they've used peanut
butter and like onion powder and other things don't stick
with tempae and peanut sauce, sawdust and sawdust. Um. Yeah,
(10:49):
but it is it is interesting that at this period
there is so much activity and thought going into food,
Like you said, food reform, how the food is being produced.
This is when you have the era of banting and
the banting diet. This is when we first start thinking about, well,
maybe we shouldn't eat certain things. How does this affect
(11:10):
our health? And vegetarian is m was was relatively hot,
and it was also hot with suffragists. Yeah, and so
up until this point, you know, we've talked a lot
about the men who were leading the charge in vegetarianism
and how a lot of this had to do with
your health and what you ate and feeling better during
the day because of what you ate. But with suffragists,
(11:33):
a lot of suffragists adopting a vegetarian diet, this is
when we start to see arise in ethical vegetarianism, deciding
consciously not to eat meat because of the way that
animals were treated. Yeah, because in addition to the health
rationale that a lot of men adopted for going vegetarian,
there was also a lot of it was kind of
(11:53):
self serving in the sense of like just being a
better human being, more enlightened, etcetera. Whereas with stuffer just
who were early crusaders in the anti vivisection movement, there
was more of a compulsion to not harm the animals
as well. And not to say that all the male
vegetarians just didn't care about animals either, they were just
(12:16):
trying to lose weight or something like that. But there
was a very clear tie between this fight for women's
rights and not necessarily a fight for animal rights, but
rather ending violence and oppression towards animals as well. Yeah,
and a lot of this is coming from a really
interesting essay by Lea Niman from It's called the Awakened
(12:39):
Instinct Vegetarianism and the women's suffrage movement in Britain. And
not to say that, you know, British stuffer just for
the only women who participated, because certainly we had in
the American Vegetarian Society women like Susan b Anthony Lucy Stone,
and Amelia Bloomer who were attending some of those early meetings.
But this essay is a super interesting look at not
(13:01):
only just the issue of ethical vegetarianism and how it
ties in with the feminist movement and the push for
women to be able to vote um, but it also
actually brings the whole thing to life. There's plenty of
really colorful quotes from these women about why they decided
to be vegetarians. One woman, Leonora Cohen, so that even
(13:22):
if vegetarianism weren't the best diet, she would stick with
it because of humanitarian motives. And there were articles, a
lot of articles on vegetarianism published in the eighteen nineties
in the radical suffrage journal Shafts that outlined how to
adopt vegetarian diets, and they didn't delve too much into
(13:44):
the philosophy of you know, kindness towards animal and that
moral aspect of it, but it was more about time
saving in the kitchen and also again this symbolic connection
between handling meat and violence being associated with meat, and
(14:05):
these housewives who would be expected to cook the meat,
usually for their husbands, because if you could afford meat,
you didn't have a lot of income, only could afford
a little bit of meat. The meat would go to
the men of the household. And these women were saying,
I don't want to handle this stuff, but this is
dead flesh and it came to a violent end, and
(14:26):
why should I be the one having to touch this
meat while my husband? Yeah, I mean exactly. Um, And
I think it's interesting, how, you know, because Chris and
I have obviously talked about the suffrage movement on the
podcast before, but vegetarianism among these women doesn't really come
up so much. But at the time, I mean, it
(14:47):
was something that a lot of them were talking about,
to the point where even back in April of seven,
the Vegetarian Society noted quote, it is interesting to see
how vegetarianism becomes related to progressive movements. Quite a number
of the leaders and the women's suffragist movement are vegetarians.
And since this particular paper that we're focusing on also
(15:08):
focused on British suffragists who had more militant fringes among
them and tended to get tossed in jail, I think
a lot more frequently than American suffragists. Um. There are
lots of letters of suffragists from jail talking about how
they were either marveling at how kindly the guards gave them,
(15:32):
you know, vegetarian meals, or how they had to they
were being force fed meat or meat related products, um,
sort of his punishment if they requested vegetarian food. Well,
there was also advice they were writing about, Advice that
was floating around about how, hey, now that you're like
on our team of suffragists people, um, maybe you should
consider a vegetarian lifestyle because you'll get fed way better
(15:55):
in prison. And adding another layer to this, you know,
you not only have prominent suffragists at the time who
were adhering to vegetarian diets and also preaching vegetarianism. In
the late nineteenth century, this field of esoterism called theosophy,
was also very popular among suffragists, and it's sort of
(16:15):
a intersection of mysticism and philosophy, and it overlapped a
lot with vegetarianism. So again, this is such a fascinating
snapshot of time when you have all of these social
movements of foot that are undergirded by a lot of
spiritualism and mysticism, not necessarily what you would think of
(16:37):
for that time in terms of like straight meeting Protestant people. Yeah,
because women definitely at the time, we're noting the overlap
with this whole field of theosophy, sort of like looking
at the mysteries of of being and the mysteries of
nature and how they have to be the quote voice
for the voiceless, the animals, but they're also the voice
(17:00):
of the voiceless for themselves too. Yeah. I think a
lot of them found uplift through theosophy. Um. And it's
also notable too that the vegetarian societies at the time
also gave voice to these women, which I mean, if
if you've listened to our episode a little while back
on women in the abolition movement. Women were not always
(17:24):
welcome to come and speak openly at gatherings, um, but
they were welcome at a lot of vegetarian society gatherings. Yeah,
to the point where in nineteen Canadian stuff Are just
even opened a vegetarian restaurant at their Toronto headquarters. But
there was one one side note to this that Caroline
and I both gotta kick out of, because not only
(17:46):
were some vegetarian suffragists concerned clearly with what they were
putting on the plate for their families to eat, but
also what they were putting on their heads. There was
in nineteen o nine an article in the Votes for
Women journal that alerted female readers to the murderous millinery,
(18:07):
essentially calling out women for wearing hats that were very
fashionable for the day with bird feathers and other animal
parts on them. Are wearing furs. They called it the
inhumane and revolting fashion of using beautiful birds for the
purpose of personal adornments. Yeah, there were a lot of
(18:28):
angry letters flying back and forth about being opposed to
wearing fur and feathers and anything like that, and why
do you have to keep yourself warm under slain animals,
which I think was kind of controversial because some stuffer
just were like, hey, listen, I like my my, my
feathered chap oh, and we'll keep it bestly and and
(18:50):
christ and I I like, I like your imaginary woman's attitude. Uh,
it fits well with an attitude that I picked up
in In the same essay, UM, there were several women
who were discussing in letters and whatnot, the whole theosophy
thing and being the voice of the voiceless. But in
terms of this um, they were talking about basically the
(19:13):
feminization of society. And they know they didn't note at
the time that there was a lot of fear among
men that society was becoming more feminised, and part of
the feminization was vegetarianism, that it was already becoming more
associated with women, because oh, you're seating vegetables, whereas I'm
a manly man and I eat meat. And so I
really what I really appreciated with the attitude of some
(19:34):
of these women who were saying, Okay, you think vegetarianism
is too feminine. You think that we're feminizing society by
pushing for the vote and by pushing for you to
eat less meat. Well, you know what, maybe the world
will be a better place if the world is more
feminized and we do eat less meats. So take that well,
and the idea of vegetarian being a feminine thing. It's
(19:57):
also revisionist history if you go way on back to Pythagoras,
and even I'm sure people before Pythagoras, seems like meet
really more than being a gendered thing. What has remained
so constant is meet as a symbol of status, because
not only did it represent your status socially, if you
(20:19):
could afford it for your whole family, then you were
doing pretty well. But then even if you were a
poor family, the status within the household would be demonstrated
by the guy that the guy, the husband, the father,
getting the choicest cut of whatever meat there was, and
then it trickled down to the wife she essentially, I
(20:43):
mean the wives of this time and probably even today
to eight whatever was left, you know. So it's just
so I wonder if maybe that fear of vegetarianism being
a sign of the world becoming more and I's is
more rooted in the fear of some you know, status
(21:05):
symbol being taken away, then how do you prove your
manliness if you don't have your steak in front of you?
How are you going to have your pudding? If you
don't eat your meat. This is true, you can't have
any pudding, Caroline. Well, so we'll talk about sort of
the modern advancements in society that lad to actually more
meat eating, and then how that ends up tying into
(21:28):
masculinity even more when we come right back from a break.
So it seems like in the history of vegetarianism when
we move into the twentieth century, the Industrial Revolution and
advances in transportation and refrigeration technology reigned on the parade
(21:49):
a bit because it drove up meat consumption because it
made it more available and cheaper for more people. So,
like I said a little while ago in the podcast,
pre Industrial Revolution, meat eating was still relatively scarce, especially
compared to today's meat centric diets that a lot of
(22:11):
Americans and people outside of America, UH follow. But then
it's like, once we have meat at their ready, we
eat it, and vegetarianism falls by the wayside a little bit.
I mean, I think that was true especially in the
early periods of early period of the century but in
there is a bright spot for the veggie community because
(22:33):
Donald Watson, with the founding of the Vegan Society, coins
the term vegan. And then when you get into the
nineteen seventies, we start to see an uptick again in vegetarianism.
This is it's sort of cyclical how it comes and goes.
And around this time you start seeing more cookbooks, just
like we did back when it first became really popular
(22:54):
in the nineteenth century. You start seeing cookbooks that are
addressing the lack of proteins. So you're not just getting
like tear dorble meat substitutes and pro toast and whatever
are going the Brent Franklin route of bread and water, right,
You're actually seeing cookbooks that are finally being like, oh, hey,
here's how to address your lack of protein, not substitute
meet with something weird and gross. And in addition to
(23:16):
giving people the tools for cooking and more easily adhering
to a vegetarian diet, you also have vegetarianism being stimulated
more conceptually as well, particularly with the nineteen seventy one
publication of Francis mor La Paz Diet for a Small Planet,
which keep in mind in the nineteen seventies, only one
(23:38):
percent of Americans or vegetarian. And then in nineteen the
animal rights movement launches with the publication of Animal Liberation
by Peter Singer. So this is why we often today
associate vegetarianism with the seventies. Well, you know, right before
(24:00):
of Liberation came out, in nineteen seventy four, the magazine
Vegetarian Times launched, which is also the same year that
the magazine High Times launched. Lots of social things going
on in the nineteen seven Yeah, the seventies was ripe
for a vegetarian movement, and we got to get back
to feminism as well. In nineteen seventy five, Carol J.
(24:23):
Adams publishes an article that makes the first prominent connection
between feminism and vegetarianism. So she's bringing back the suffrage
thought of by that point yesteryear. And then she publishes
in nineteen ninety where we're skipping forward a bit. But
then in she publishes the landmark sexual Politics of Meat
(24:47):
that really outlines the history of this connection, in which
she also talks about the connections between the suffrage movement
and vegetarianism and just for an idea of what she's
getting at with sexual politics of meat, in which she
really maintains that all oppressions, whether it's oppression toward women,
(25:09):
people of color, animals, they're all connected and essentially revolve
around white patriarchy. So she says people with power have
always eaten meat. Women's second class citizens are more likely
to eat what are considered to be second class foods
in a patriarchal culture, vegetables, fruits, and grains rather than meat.
The sexism in meat eating recapitulates the class distinctions with
(25:33):
an added twist mythology permeates all classes. That meat is
a masculine food and meat eating a male activity. Yeah, well,
because she talks about as do many other writers out there,
talk about the language that surrounds meat and meat eating.
And I mean especially today. If you look at magazines,
(25:56):
for instance, like Popular Culture, Health Advice, a men magazine
is way more likely to be making the Tim Taylor
tool time like wolf noise over cooking a hamburger than
a woman's magazine. A woman's magazine is gonna what tell
you to go eat a salad and a lean chicken
breast at most well, and it's the whole distinction between
(26:16):
women cook then grill. They grilled their meats. And if
you even this is something that Adams focuses on a
lot as well, is how that language that we often
apply to the descriptions of meat, how we eat meat,
how it tastes, is also often applied in sexist terms
to women's bodies. Right, we're we're juicy pieces of meat. Yeah,
(26:41):
but I mean it's it's I think the well, I mean,
I don't think, I know. And Adams points out that, um,
just the idea, the idea of not eating meat is
like threatening to certain perceptions of masculinity. I mean, you know,
there are so many men, especially in sterious, stereotypical pop culture,
who you know, it's not a real meal if you
(27:04):
don't have meat. Just before I came into the studio,
was talking with dude roommate about this topic and when
I said that we were talking about how meat and
meat eating and grilling and cooking is still aligned with masculinity.
He was like, yeah, real men, you know that kind
of thing. Well, there is I mean, some might say, well,
there's the science to it. There's a fact that men
(27:24):
have more muscle mass and we need the animal protein
to bulk up in that way. So there are excuses
that get thrown out, but it's a lot more telling
when you consider the whole social status aspect, at least
in my reading of our sources for this, where of course,
(27:44):
eating meat is a manly thing because since the dawn
of time, since the dawn of grilling meats, it has
been it's been a source of status. Yeah, and so
many studies that we looked at pointed out that men
are much more likely to say that meat eating is fine,
(28:04):
it's good. Um. They don't care so much about how
the animal is gotten, how the animal flesh is procured,
whereas women are not only more likely to say that
they eat less meat, and they're also way more likely
to feel guilty about the meat that they do eat. Yeah.
There was a study by Hank Rothburger that came out
(28:26):
in two thousand twelve, and I think he's since done
a follow up study on this too. And I just
want to read the study title of this, because it's
one of the best study titles I've seen in a
long time. It's called real Men Don't Eat Vegetable Quiche,
Masculinity and the Justification of Meat consumption, And it was
a small study among a group of per usual undergraduate
(28:49):
students almost exclusively white. So grain of salt there, but
it did confirm this connection between just our ideology of
masculinity and meat, and the more that the guys in
the study identified with a different scales of masculinity than
the likelier they were to really espouse meat eatings. And
(29:13):
in the follow up study that he did, he was
looking at whether women even lie about how little meat
they eat, because we now have it so divided, like
we know that meat limited diet is healthier for us
than a meat heavy diet at this point, and so
many women's magazines these days too, are so like vege friendly.
(29:35):
It was just fine, but that he thinks some women
actually you're like, oh no, they distanced themselves, right, But
that ties back into the whole ethical vegetarian is something
because in looking at the levels the amount of meat
that men and women say they eat, uh, they basically
tested this by saying, hey, could you answer this questionnaire
(29:57):
right before we show you this video from EATA about
how animals are abused and uh tortured before they are
turned into the meat on your table. And so then
the questions were about how much meat you eat, So
they were being primed with this idea that you're about
to see something horrific about how animals are slaughtered. The
men the control group, and then the men who were
(30:18):
told they were going to watch the video, it was stable,
basically stable the amount of meat that they reported that
they would eat on a regular basis. But the women
who were told primed by saying you're going to be
watching this horrific video, you awful meat eat person, you
they reported eating so much less meat because they felt guilty.
Oh yeah. Well. Side note though, on PETA and women,
(30:42):
they are a constant offender when it comes to they're
overtly sexist advertising, which completely plays into exactly what Carol J.
Adams is talking about in terms of the descriptions of
meat being used in the descriptions of women's bodies. Because
most our listeners are probably I've probably seen one of
(31:03):
these ads where women naked usually are pretending to be
meet in some kind of way, and there was even
a Super Bowl ad. I believe that NBC said no,
we're not going to show that because it was kind
of trying to cheekly debunk the idea that if you're
(31:25):
a vegan guy, then you're gonna lose putency in the bedroom.
So the whole ad was showing this woman who was
in like a neck brace and looking like she had
been beaten up because her vegan boyfriend was such a
you know, rock star now and apparently violent in the
(31:46):
bedroom because you'd gotten rid of meat that she got
all beat up in the process. It's like, what why
are you doing this, Peter, very very kind of questionable
marketing strategies in terms of like, you know, Devil's Advocate.
I see what they're doing, right, They're counteracting the deeply
entrenched cultural idea that to be a true masculine man
(32:10):
that involves eating bacon every day and a steak every
night and objectifying women, right, and and so they're trying
to be like, hey, no, look, you can still get
a sexy woman over here. Look at how she's naked
because she doesn't want you to wear fur and stuff like,
you can still get that sexy woman if you're vegan. Yeah,
it's just uh to me, it goes about it in
(32:31):
the totally wrong way to where I would find it
really challenging to be uh an ethical vegetarian feminist and
also be like, yeah, Peter, I want to give my
money to you because some of that money is going
to go to marketing. Yeah, no, not so not so
I'm bored about that. But we do need to acknowledge
that when it comes to vegetarianism, and maybe even more
(32:55):
so veganism today because it's become more popularized than ever before.
While there are so many who do it for ethical
reasons they are ethical vegetarians, there is also this other
side to it where vegetarianism and veganism sometimes get intertwined
(33:16):
with disordered eating. And sure, there definitely is a connection
for a lot of people between just plainal health, being healthy,
and being a vegetarian, which is great. Yeah, and so
there was a one study that showed that more than
just over half of Americans who are vegetarian say that
they are so because of animal welfare reasons and to
(33:36):
improve their health. Just under half site weight loss and
environmental concerns. So that health and weight loss thing definitely
is an aspect of certain vegetarians decisions to to participate
in that lifestyle. But like Kristen said, there's like also
this darker stereotype of vegetarianism just being an excuse to
(33:58):
solely lose weight and nothing else right, And it is
worth addressing because there was a two thousand twelve study
published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and
Dietetics which found that women suffering from eating disorders are
four times likelier to be vegetarian than women without eating disorders.
And on top of that, there was a research project
(34:21):
out of the University of Minnesota that looked at eating
and weight related behaviors and adolescence among thirty one Minneapolis schools,
and of the six percent of students who reported being
vegetariantent did so to lose weight, and of those who
did so to lose weight, they were likelier to be
(34:41):
involved in or to use I should say a series
of unhealthy weight control behaviors. Now, now that we've cited that,
we should definitely say vegetarianism. We're not saying it all
the vegetarianism causes eating disorders or becoming a vegetarian makes
you think about food in a disorder way. It's the opposite.
(35:02):
It's that some people who already have a disordered relationship
with food end up pursuing vegetarianism for slightly different reasons.
And we don't want to sensationalize these study findings because
by the same token, there is this trope that you
see a lot, at least that I've noticed a lot
(35:23):
on the screen of the teenage vegetarian girl who's a
bit of a pest and her parents always poop poo,
the fact that she won't eat the meat that the
mom's cooking, and no, she'll grow out of it one day,
and their vegetarian concerns are often trivialized. But I think
it's also important too to remember that vegetarianism veganism should
(35:46):
still be a part of a healthy diet. There's still
an unhealthy in other words, way to be vegetarian and vegan, right,
because I mean, if we're talking about health and being
a vegetarian. Some studies have found core relations between low fat,
vegetarian or vegan diets and altered menstrual cycles. But there
are so many different lifestyle factors that complain into that.
(36:08):
You might be an extreme athlete, you might have a
lot of stress in your life that could contribute to
irregular periods. Yeah, I mean essentially all of the studdy.
There have been a number of studies actually on menstrual
cycles and vegetarian diets, looking at things like soy. If
you're eating a bunch of soy and getting those estrogen
like compounds in your body, whether that's going to throw
(36:29):
things off. Um, but it's almost so challenging to completely
isolate the impact of a healthy, balanced vegetarian diet that really,
as long as it's exactly that a healthy, balanced vegetarian diet,
you should be fine and your periods should be as
normal as periods really are. Which what is that? Well, yeah, exactly,
(36:51):
And I mean I think there's obviously a difference between
someone who is quote unquote vegetarian and just eats like
Derrito's all day and somebody who actually is pursuing uh
doritos and protas, or or someone who is actually going,
you know, making sure that they are pursuing a healthy
lifestyle that includes exercise, it includes enough protein and vitamins
(37:13):
and minerals and things like that. Yeah. But what is
not worthwhile at all that that I noticed online just
in the process of researching for this episode, are these
back and forth kind of just jabs made at vegetarian
women as caring too much. Go eat some bacon already,
Go eat a hamburger. You know that. That's why don't
(37:36):
vegetarian shame someone. If that's what you want to eat
and you're healthy about it, what's wrong with that? It's
healthier than me eating a bacon sandwich. Bacon? Is that
just bacon between two bacon's. I was thinking like a
b LT, but with heavier on the b. I was
just thinking bacon's lots of bacons. There's there's a lot
(37:59):
of room for interpreting and that, but you know it
is also good? Is uh t LT with some tempe
bacon interesting? I'd be happened. I'd be open to it
anytime you want to make that for me Christmas and
some vegan Manni's good girl. Well, vegetarian listeners, now it's
time to hear from you. What are all your thoughts
(38:21):
on all of this mom stuff? At House Stuffworks dot
Com is where you can reach us. You can also
tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook.
And Caroline, do you do you have any questions for
our vegetarian listeners? Well, first of all, I'd like to
apologize for the number of times I just said bacon,
But no, I I want to know how many ethical
(38:42):
vegetarians we have out there versus maybe health related. I know,
I know people who have chosen vegetarian lifestyle for both reasons. Um,
but I also want to know what kind of flak
you've caught. I feel like vegetarians can't catch a break
from people who are so judge. Yeah, yeah, we're I mean,
we're living in a very bacon centric world right now.
Let's be honest, So let us know your thoughts again, Mom,
(39:02):
seven House, stepworks dot com is our email address, or
tweet us, Facebook us, just get in touch, and we've
got a couple of letters to share with you right now.
So I have a letter here from romy and subject
line pronunciation of Japanese words. She writes, Hey, ladies, great
(39:24):
podcast is always I was listening to your podcast on
cosplay and I have just one little tiff. You guys
are totally mispronouncing the word, which is spelled k A
w A I I. The way you're pronouncing it makes
it sound like kauai, which means scary or fear. I
(39:46):
understand that you are not Japanese speakers, but as a
Japanese woman, it makes me cringe every time I hear
the word being mispronounced, although it's kind of funny that
the way you guys say it makes it sound like kauai,
which means scary. She says, thank you again for the
great podcast and keep up the good work. So Romy,
here you have it me pronouncing kawaite, am I saying
(40:09):
it correctly. Let's hope, So thanks Romi. Okay, I have
a letter here from Kathleen who has something very good
to point out. Um, she says. First of all, I've
been listening to your podcast for a while now and
I thoroughly enjoy it, So thank you, Kathleen. She says,
I just have a quick question for you. I just
listen to your most recent podcast on late night TV
(40:29):
and the lack of female hosts and writers. You mentioned
women that hosted late night shows Joan Rivers, will be Goldberg,
Chelsea Handler, but I don't think you mentioned the comedian Monique.
I believe she had a late night show, although it
was short lived around two thousand nine or so on
b et. If you did mention her, I apologize. There
have been so few women hosting late night talk shows.
I just wanted to make sure I'll receive some mention.
(40:51):
Please don't apologize, Kathleen, we owe you and our listeners
and apology. We did not mention Monique, and so Monique,
we we owe you an apology as well. Yeah, yeah,
so they're at another one. One more to the still
very short list of women who opposed You could basically
fit them all into one office cubicle. Still, so that's
(41:11):
unfortunate for women, but but thank you for adding Monique
to the lift. Indeed, and speaking of letters about our
late night episode, one of our listeners wrote in to
recommend Pete Holmes, who had a late night show. He
doesn't anymore, but apparently he has a hilarious podcast called
You Made It Weird that she really likes, and she
(41:33):
said she might even describe him as feminist. So if
you're looking for a new podcast to try out, Pete
Holmes is You Made It Weird has been recommended by
stuff Mom Never Told You listener, So if you have
any recommendations, vegetarian thoughts, all of those things, you can
send them to us at stuff Mom Never Told You
at how stuff works dot com and if you want
(41:54):
to find links to all of our social media's as
well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts, which
included our sources so that you can follow along with us.
There's one place to go, and it's Stuff Mom Never
told you dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, does it, How stuff works dot com
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