Vegetarians feel the same way about eating meat as about eating poop or human flesh, a new study from the University of Oxford has confirmed.
A study of 252 vegetarians and 57 meat-eaters investigated whether this difference had anything to do with whether the foods were from plants or animals.
First, the participants were shown a series of commonly disliked vegetables – raw onion, green olives, sprouts, beetroot and aubergine – and asked to imagine eating them. Vegetarians and meat-eaters both reacted to vegetables they didn’t like with ‘distaste’, meaning it was the taste or texture which put them off.
They were then shown cooked chicken, bacon and steak. Here, the vegetarian group had a very different reaction. They felt nausea, stated ideological objections and reported they would dislike anything that had even touched the meat.
These were the same ‘disgust’ reactions elicited when they were asked to imagine eating human faeces, or human or dog flesh (which was actually just normal meat labelled as such – no dogs were harmed in the study, though several humans were seriously grossed out).
“Distaste is an evolutionarily old mechanism that can be observed in various species and is a very simple response to ‘bad’ tastes – mostly bitter and sour,” said study lead Dr Elisa Becker from the University of Oxford to BBC Science Focus.
“Disgust, on the other hand, is (probably) uniquely human and is triggered by something much more complex – the idea of what a food is or represents.”
The difference between the two probably lies in our evolutionary history. While distaste helped early humans avoid toxic plants with unpleasant flavours, disgust evolved as a more sophisticated response to the invisible dangers posed by meat, which can carry pathogens and parasites.
“Disgust is not triggered by taste but by meat and any animal products – including our own body products – all of which are perfect vectors for pathogens,” says Becker. “The function of distaste is to keep us safe from toxins, disgust keeps us safe from disease.”
Such understandings could aid in initiatives to move people towards more sustainable diets by altering the way they view certain foods.
“It could be used to help people who want to eat less meat or more vegetables,” said Becker. “New, more sustainable and healthy forms of meat (insects, lab-grown meat) are often met with disgust. Understanding this response could help us overcome it.”
About our expert
Elisa Becker is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. She researches behavioural change interventions that can help people reduce their meat intake, including the emotional processing of meat–eating and why certain interventions work.
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