I’ve long been fascinated by the demographics of vegetarianism. I’m an omnivore, but one who eats a lot less meat than my peers, so they confuse my insistence that we order a vegetable dish (when eating out family style) with an unwillingness to consume animal flesh.
In the UK, it seems that vegetarians are smarter:
… those who were vegetarian by [age] 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10. [Link]
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p>Although this study is flawed by its overly broad definition of vegetarian:
Twenty years after the IQ tests were carried out in 1970, 366 of the participants said they were vegetarian – although more than 100 reported eating either fish or chicken. [Link]
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Unfortunately, they don’t report adjusted scores, so really what they’re talking about here is an unwillingness to eat beef, which makes them … well, like many Hindus I know.
With the definitional caveat, in general, this is what they find about veggies:
Vegetarians were more likely to be female, to be of higher occupational social class and to have higher academic or vocational qualifications than non-vegetarians. [Link]
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p>Researchers find something similar in India, where vegetarians are more likely to be female and of higher social status.
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p>Vegetarianism is declining in India, to the point where vegetarians are now a minority, with only 40% of the population. This is apparently a major shift from the recent past.
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p>The older generation remains more vegetarian than the younger, women more so than men, Brahmins more than other castes, and religious Hindus more than non-religious Hindus, Muslims, or Christians.
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p>This is a seismic cultural shift for India. While India will remain far more veg friendly than the US or UK for a long time to come, I’m wondering about the cultural ramifications that accompany the situation where vegetarianism is associated with a narrow minority. Once upon a time, you could not get meat on the streets of Ahmedabad, now the road by IIM is lined with little 3 wheelers selling chicken.
What happens to Indian society and culture when it undergoes a fundamental shift in its eating habits? How will it change?
Building on shiva’s comment, as far as I know not one of the major Hindu texts calls for a vegetarian diet.
Not true. See Thirvalluvar; Manu.
Relevant verses from the Tamil sage Valluvar:
Verse 251 How can he practice true compassion Who eats the flesh of an animal to fatten his own flesh?
Verse 252 Riches cannot be found in the hands of the thriftless, Nor can compassion be found in the hearts of those who eat meat.
Verse 253 Goodness is never one with the minds of these two: One who wields a weapon ad one who feasts on a creatures’ flesh.
Verse 254 If you ask, “What is kindness and what is unkind?” It is not killing and killing. Thus, eating flesh is never virtuous.
Verse 255 Life is perpetuated by not eating meat. The clenched jaws of hell hold those who do.
Verse 256 If the world did not purchase and consume meat, There would be none to slaughter and offer meat for sale.
Verse 257 When a man realizes that meat is the butchered flesh Of another creature, he must abstain from eating it.
Verse 258 Perceptive souls who have abandoned passion Will not feed on flesh abandoned by life.
Verse 259 Greater then a thousand ghee offerings consumed in sacrificial fires Do not do sacrifice and consume any living creature.
Verse 260 All that lives will press palms together in prayerful adoration Of those who refuse to slaughter and savor meat.
My understanding, and someone please correct me if I’m wrong, was that Hinduism adopted vegetarianism to differentiate itself from the Mughals and at the same time deal with the increasing popularity of Bhuddism, which did call for a vegetarian diet.
Correct me if I am wrong, but did Buddhism not die out before the time of the Mughals, except in Bengal, and wasn’t vegetaranism adopted a long time before the advent of the Mughals, a long time before, when there was an competition between Buddhism and Hinduism for the heart and soul of adherents, which was when, Hinduism co-opted vegetarianism, and a ban on animal sacrifice, the concept of ahimsa, or noninjury to animals, n order with theological matters?
But would Valluvar a sacred text of Hinduism? I was thinking more along the lines of the Vedas, Gita, etc. I don’t ask this to be sarcastic, I just don’t know.
I meant to say, along with some theology
I read somewhere that vegetarianism became more popular in India due to the Jain and Buddhist movements. There were a lot Jain kings who could impose the morals of vegetarianism on their subjects (that’s just my analysis and might just be a minor factor). As for hindus eating meat 1000s of year ago, we were all hunter gatherers at some point.
Or maybe they’ve learned how their meat is packaged and processed in the U.S. Unless you can afford that fancy schmancy organic free-range business, my gut reaction to the meat industry in the U.S. is, “That can’t be good for you.” I mean, no medical studies to back me up here, but with all the growth hormones and feeding meat to vegetarian animals (e.g. cows), paired with how animals are kept (super unsanitary), it just seems gross.
Also, for the “social/world hunger” angle, I think there are much better ways to get your protein that are more environmentally friendly.
This is def. true, but there are so many great veggie/vegan cookbooks nowadays that make this a bit easier. Maybe I am a snob, but I think “American” cuisine is generally flavorless and boring anyway 🙂 I also think it’s easier to be veg if you live somewhere where there is more of a “hippie lifestyle” or a place with a lot of lactose intolerant people. Just living in the Bay, it has been like night and day to watch the number of veggie/vegan health food products available sky-rocket and also just taste better. Try being a Punjabi allergic to dairy products. It really sucks 🙁
Also, my understanding of the scripture was that, along with ahimsa, or noninjury of animals, people believed that some of the characteristic of animals were transferred (mystically?) to people who eat meat. That is, baser tendencies tend to arise more easily if one eats meat. That was the explanation I was given in my family, and this explanation was also what I encountered in the Hare Krishna meeting I went to last time. If someone wants to correct me on this, please do so.
I am curious to find out if there’s any other place where the concept of vegetarianism arose like in India
yes. see the pythogoreans or essenes, though some might assert this is the influence of indian gymnosophists.
But would Valluvar a sacred text of Hinduism? I was thinking more along the lines of the Vedas, Gita, etc. I don’t ask this to be sarcastic, I just don’t know.
I would say so. There is an orthodox understanding which preferences shruti (the Vedas) over smriti (like the Mahabharata, Manu, and Ramayana). Pragmatically, the Kural is held in sacred esteem. Its often referred to as Tamil Veda.
Also, most “injunctions” in Hindu texts tend to be descriptive rather than prescriptive in any case.
even within the organic faction – there are two schools of thought – one believes in a ‘factory-like’ large scale production and the other in a holistic way of life – practice water recycling, compost generation etc.
organic is not fancy schmancy – the concept of factory farming is just morally repugnant to me. there’s no non-cruel way of killing animals for meat but … to detach from the process of killing is something i can not stomach . and frankly i make enough money to pay ten times what i would pay for meat – so why the heck should i support the slaughterhouses. .. more later. got to run.
The problem with the “we got it from Buddhism” argument is that the Buddha never prohibited meat. Pragmatist that he was, only prohibited monks from accepting meat offerings slaughtered specificaly for them. There is more merit, imo, in influence coming from Sam Harris’s favorite religion.
OTOH, the only place to get pure vegetarian food in China is from Buddhist monasteries.
It was more from Jainism.
In my city (and my former cities) I have usually lived amongst other carribean/south american folks who, smack in the middle of the inner city might have a veggie garden, several chickens and a goat. This actually kind of relates to Siddhartha’s Venkatesh post in that part of our ‘underground economy’ was the trade or sale of eggs, chickens, rabbits and goat milk/meat, etc. during the warmer months.
My neighbors next door are from the west indies. They say they are vegetarians but they eat fish. They have rabbits, chickens and nine dogs in their yard, along with four non-working cars, vegetable garden and a thriving sewing business/auto mechanic. It may not sound sanitary but I just wash the eggs before breaking them. The neighbors down the way sell goats milk products. I’m suspicious of the milk but I eat the cheese.
So there you go, come on down and get yer fresh cheap protein from my block, no factory farming and you support the underground economy to boot!
Anyone heard of Dr. Peter Singer? He was on the Colbert Report the other day talking about his new book The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter.
Thought it would be relevant to topic being discussed.
another random moral conundrum.
so i am shopping for bhindi (okra) – and this being canada, the only option is to get it in the frozen foods section. i pick up this pack – it says ‘product of india’ – and i go hmmm… i really want to have the bhindi tonite… but i dont feel good about the transportation baggage. i will always buy local if i have the option. let me look around… and there’s another pack.. it says packaged in canada, but product of guatemala. now i’m really at a moral impasse… ultimately i ended up getting the indian bhindi because it was packaged whole.
’twas a foul predicament but we made it across.
hairy_d, If you lived down here you’d get your $2 chicken from your neighbors down the alley and the moral conundrum of transportation baggage would be erased. Of course, you’d have to kill and pluck it yourself. 😉 My grandma taught me how.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s why I am a vegetarian.
This is a fascinating article by a quebec vet mulling over our disconnect between pets and livestock.
she makes sense. do read it over if you get the chance.
hairy_d: what you said.
vinay: I am reading this book now. I think Singer is pretty interesting and have been following his work for a few years now. He is a pretty controversial guy (not in an Ann Coulter kind of way) and, in my opinion, a tremendous status quo pushing thought leader and philosopher.
Have you read Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Mathew Scully (New York: St. MartinÂ’s Press, 2002)? For those who dismiss Peter Singer as a way out contrarian leftie, Dominion is a provokative call for humans to discover their moral responsibilities for animalkind (Scully is a religious conservative and the former senior speechwriter for George W. Bush).
His overall argument is a bit slippery to handle with ease and it goes a little something like this–Scully starts off by saying animals don’t have any rights, per se (as in legal rights; and although humans can be punished in a court of law for animal abuse, it isn’t because the rights of the animal have been compromised, it’s because the human has been beastly) and goes on to develop “powerful arguments behalf of animalsÂ’ “moral claims” and humankindÂ’s corresponding responsibility to animals. “Laws protecting animals from mistreatment, abuse, and exploitation are not a moral luxury or sentimental afterthought to be shrugged off,” he says. “They are a serious moral obligation.” Refuting the idea that morality is a mere matter of “culture,” “opinion,” and “choice,” castigating the caprice that allows us to treat animals whom we know with some decency while condemning animals in farms and laboratories to “lives of ceaseless misery,” he declares that “the moral claims of other creatures are facts about those creatures, regardless of when or where or whether it pleases us to recognize them.”
Please go to (www.satyamag.com/mar03/davis2.html) to read the rest of this review. Warning: the review and the book are not easy reads. You might get sick, you might cry, you might get sick and cry. Tissues.
and hairy_d: Eggsactly. No seriously, exactly. Dominion gets to this very place as well. Thanks for linking this I will check it out.
Heh. Don’t get me started on how people treat their pets. I’ve read enough instances of people preferring their pets to their children. I don’t want animals to suffer unnecessary cruelty but I don’t want to treat them like little humans either. They’re not.
If you did that, though, we would also have to talk about the prevalence of domestic animal abuse and its indicator of future violence against humans 🙂
Hey now, Americans can just as easily subscribe to Walrus. Some other Canadian mags I would like to promote to intellectual American macacas: This Magazine, and Taddle Creek.
What im curious to know is how many meat-eaters would be willing to slaughter their dinner themselves? Sometimes seems hypocritical to me, when people balk at the sight of animal slaughter but drool at a steak on a platter. The detachment from the act of killing, how it makes life simpler for meat-eaters and armchair war wagers. If I could stand the taste of meat, I’m sure I’d find solace in the “its dead anyway” argument.
I should stay out of this thread since my previous omnivorous comments really grossed out ANNA.
So my alternate two cents: why do people assume that carnivores don’t like veggies? Sri Lankan veg dishes are a delight, and now that I’ve got two curry plants (yeah, that’s right. potted in my apartment. I feel your envy) I can go nuts making beetroot and snake gourd and yellow dahl and okra and all those yummy, fragrant, deeelishes veg curries.
It’s just a shame that Americans don’t know how to cook vegetables. It’s getting better, as many already pointed out, but damn…how do you vegetarians eat when on a road trip or in a small-town diner? You don’t have much besides some form of potato (fries, hash, baked, au gratin) or fruit. The America vegetarians I’ve known had horrible diets – they seemed to subsist on fries, carrot sticks, cheese, cereal and pudding cups.
You’d have to fire up that stove and cook first 😛
[ducking]
Yes, I agree and somewhat addressed the issue here.
There is something primitive about eating meat. I think we need to face it and not try to dress it up by deboning or reshaping. It’s hypocritical to coo at little bunny wabbits or scream at people who wear fur or put your little doggie in a $200 sweater while happily tearing into a steak. For me, it’s more about not wasting anything. So yeah I’d support more humane ways of rearing chickens and cattle, etc. and I think it would be more cost effective if we produced less meat and use/eat all the parts of already killed animals. The “its dead anyway” doesn’t make sense to me, since they killed it in the first place because you’ll eat it. If you need to justify it, don’t eat it. But if you do, don’t waste. Don’t be a picky eater.
I agree completely (except for the fact Cicatrix that carnivores by definition don’t like veggies and you meant to use the term omnivore :). I eat meat but I love ALL veggies and most fruits. I can’t think of a single vegetable I won’t eat. I can think of plenty of meats I won’t eat however. Sometimes when I go to my favorite Thai restaurant I order tofu because I want to and not because I am trying to be nice and not offend my vegetarian dinner companions (like they assume). End rant.
er, that previous comment was supposed to sign off with
/aunty cicatrix>
Ennis, you’d better duck! All the slowly rotting veggies I bought but never cooked are being aimed at your head right now!
Sometimes when I go to my favorite Thai restaurant I order tofu because I want to and not because I am trying to be nice and not offend my vegetarian dinner companions (like they assume).
I never get offended when people eat meat around me. I figure it’s none of my business and I really don’t have the energy/give a shit what they eat. Most people who know me don’t even realize I don’t eat meat. I am 100% anti-evangelical. I just won’t go somewhere that doesn’t have food for me or I’ll eat before.
Besides, everybody would rather come to my house ‘cuz I can cook my ass off.
I vote for a meetup at Coach Diesel’s house. We can eat her good veggie food, see the livestock in her neighborhood, and comment on the underground economy.
That’s a faulty argument to begin with. Do you expect a vegetarian to first go in knee deep muddy waters in the paddy fields and then prepare his beloved idli/dosa. Meat-eaters can easily get squeamish on seeing animals slaughtered, the same way as a vegetarian (like me) can get squeamish just by looking at the gobi concoction that my roommate used to cook. 🙂
Link
SenaX, that’s the same study that this post is about 🙂
Ditto brown_fob
Udit:What im curious to know is how many meat-eaters would be willing to slaughter their dinner themselves?
Hey Udit, done that..at me grandma’s place. The Chicken was easy. The goat with my friends on Bakri-Id, now that needed some getting used to.
Another pet peeve of mine is when people think (often out aloud) that because I’m a vegetarian I try my best to resist the temptation to eat meat. The fact is I’m a vegetarian because I find meat rather disgusting. And yes, I agree with several of the previous posts about the quality of vegetarian food in the US. That’s one of the reasons why people here wonder what vegetarians eat. Actually, I have often wondered what American vegetarians ate, since they have very little choice here.
mmmm dosa. mmm.. idli
point taken. one can extrapolate this as ensuring everyone understands semiconductor physics before attempting to use an LCD monitor. 🙂 that being said, i feel an awareness of where food (any food) comes from should be essential to one’s education. as an aside, for those who’ve read mccourt’s ‘angela’s ashes’ will recall the passage where the author and his brother come across some critters in an irish meadow and ask their dad about them – ‘they’re sheep son’. getting back, … i just think, knowledge of where food comes from leads one to appreciate the delicate relationship humanity has with nature. to tell you the truth, i’m not the evangelical kind either, much like coach above, but just knowing what’s under the covers leads to a sensitivity in such matters. I have another sidebar here from ultrabrown.
People often find it odd that I am vegetarian and work with lab animals. They instantly ask “do you have to kill them?? how could you kill the cute little mice? Do you have to dissect them?!” Well yes. Yes I do. I don’t see how that has anything to do with the food I eat. I just don’t want to eat meat…the rest of my family eats it, I just have an aversion to it now. But that doesn’t stop me from doing my job.
I haven’t been vegetarian for long (I stopped eating meat towards the end of college), but I discovered that the availability of good vegetarian food definitely varies depending on where you are. Over here in the San Francisco area, it’s fine…but in Texas? Ugh, they seem to think that all vegetarian people eat is salad!
Not sure if this is a wider trend but a lot of people from my extended family who live in Bangalore, gave up meat in their middle ages some for religious reasons and others for health reasons because they were eating it too often. Also, for me, it has a lot to do with the quality of the chicken. Cheaper varieties tend to be a lot softer which turns me off. I had almost given up completely till I found a frozen variety at Costco which tastes really good. A lot of it probably has to do with availability too. I can’t eat chicken more than a couple times a week or I end up getting an uneasy feeling in my stomache. Anyone else have that problem?
Mathematically IMPOSSIBLE.
There’s no way that India’s vegetarian population can be anywhere NEAR 40%. Brahmins are only 55% and the next highest concentration of vegetarians is 28% Even if EVERY non-Brahmin group were considered 28% vegetarian, Brahmins would have to be 45% of the Indian population (solve .55x + .28(1-x) = .4). And if non-Brahmins are lower than 28% vegetarian, the Brahmin population of India would be in excess of 45%.
Does no one look at the numbers to see if they make sense??? This is supposed to be an Indian forum, right?
Moreover, I see the percentage of vegetarians only declining based on the usda.gov report stating “Indians are vegetarian by tradition; moreover, many can only afford a vegetarian diet.” As many Indians stop being vegetarian out of necessity, we’ll see how many actually want to be vegetarian.
Another way to dice the numbers to show how inconsistent the report is: Even if we pick the lower value of 31% vegetarian (based on the Men and Women %vegetarian = 28 and 34, which jives with the “who don’t eat eggs” criterion), Indians who are neither Brahmin nor even upper-caste are at most 15% vegetarian based on the same chart. However, Indians who are neither Brahmin nor even upper-caste are at least 40% of India. That means that the group of Brahmins and other upper-castes are at least 42% vegetarian (solve .4.15 + .6x = .31) which means that Brahmins outnumber all other upper-castes (at least 52% of total upper-castes, solve .55x + .28(1-x) = .42) — another absurdity based on that nonsensical hindu.com chart.
THE CHART IS RUBBISH.
SST – the caste section may be rubbish, or it may not be complete.
Where they provide a complete breakdown of groups – for example, Men and Women – the numbers are plausible. I ignored the actual numbers in terms of caste, and just looked at some of the relative information contained therein.
Ennis,
The caste section is definitely the bone of contention. Even if it were more complete, say with the inclusion of non-Dalit non-upper-castes with a %vegetarian that’s significantly higher than 15% but bounded by 28%, the math still doesn’t work. What would make the math work is to have a much higher %vegetarian among Brahmins and perhaps other upper-castes as well. As someone stated earlier, I suspect 55% is an under-reporting or a mis-interpretation by the reporter. 55% of vegetarians in India being Brahmin makes much more sense, but, alas, that caste-chart isn’t a demographic breakdown of vegetarians (since the numbers sum to 121 even while omitting non-Dalit non-upper-castes).
I think it’s dangerous to accept the rest of that hindu.com chart while knowing full well how horrendously blundered the caste section is. Even while the non-caste portions of the chart look plausible, the way math was butchered in the caste section casts doubt over quality of the entire chart (which doesn’t provide references or describe methodology for collecting statistics).
Al Mujahid for debauchery,
ANNA: You have never dated a Muslim boy or a boy born to Muslim parents? You are missing out on some of the finer things in life!
Have you ever dated a Muslim boy or a boy born to Muslim parents?
Ennis,
P.S. I love the photo of you inside the Chicago Bean.
Have you ever dated a Muslim boy or a boy born to Muslim parents?
I am one!
Mary Moon, she’s a vegetarian (Mary Moon, Mary Moon, Mary Moon) Mary Moon will outlive all the septaugenarians (Mary Moon, Mary Moon, Mary Moon) Oh she loves me so, she hates to be alone She don’t eat meat but she sure like the bone
Al Mujahid for debauchery
You’re avoiding answering the question.