Meat consumption and vegetarianism among young adults in the UK An empirical study
Alan Beardsworth, Alan Bryman. British Food Journal. Bradford: 1999. Vol. 101, Iss. 4; pg. 289
Beardsworth, Alan / Bryman, Alan 1999. Meat consumption and vegetarianism among young adults in the UK An
empirical study. British Food Journal 101(4): 289-300
Abstract (Summary)
This article is based on a 6-year survey of first-year undergraduates and their meat consumption. The main
focus is vegetarianism and the declining consumption of red meat over the past 2 decades. The levels of
meat consumption and avoidance were analysed by gender, father's occupation, voting intention, and the
reasons given for reduction/avoidance. The results found that the majority of vegetarians were women,
although they were also the majority of the sample. Age, political inclination and social class appear to have
had little bearing on meat consumption. There is also the suggestion that vegetarianism has reached a
plateau. A wide range of further studies is suggested.
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Alan Beardsworth: Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK
Alan Bryman: Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK
Introduction
While it is a truism that meat and meat products enjoy a unique status in the diet of homo sapiens, the role of
this particular class of food items in human nutrition and human culture has attracted wide ranging attention
from nutritionists, physiologists, psychologists, social anthropologists and sociologists. Perhaps no other
group of foodstuffs is both so widely valued and at the same time the focus of so many taboos and
prohibitions. In addition, long-standing controversies have revolved around such issues as the health
implications of meat consumption, the moral dimensions of meat production, and whether meat can be seen
as a "natural" component of a sound dietary regime. High levels of meat consumption are clearly linked to
overall affluence, consumption levels in the developed economies being far higher than those in the Third
World. However, long-term shifts in meat eating in the UK, taking place over several decades, have seen a
general trend away from red meats like lamb and beef, towards white meats like chicken and turkey.
Additionally, there appears to have been an increase in individuals who deliberately avoid certain meat
products, or who have adopted one of the varied forms of vegetarian regimen. Such changes raise
fascinating issues for social scientists, pressing policy issues for the state, and significant commercial
concerns for food producers, processors and retailers. A good deal of attention has already been focused on
such issues by social scientists. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of this material, and
to report the findings of a small scale study of the eating habits of a group of young people, in order to make
a contribution to our understanding of changing patterns of meat consumption and meat avoidance. We will
commence with a selective review of the relevant literature, then go on to describe the methodology and
results of our study, and to discussion of the wider implications of these findings.
Meat, meat avoidance and vegetarianism
The high value placed on meat by many, if not most, human cultures has been analysed in some detail by
social anthropologists (e.g. Harris, 1986; Farb and Armelagos, 1980). The other side of this coin, the
existence of complex religious and cultural prohibitions on certain forms of meat consumption, has also
been analysed by such authors as Simoons (1961), Douglas (1966) and Leach (1982). In addition, the
intricate and ambivalent symbolism of meat has also been the focus of considerable interest (Twigg, 1979a,
1979b; Fiddes, 1991). Of course, in the context of certain eastern cultures, meat avoidance is embodied in
religious precepts (e.g. in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism), and such religions as Islam and Judaism
contain elaborate rituals and exclusions relating to the consumption of animal products. In the context of
Western culture, meat avoidance has, historically, been the minority position of relatively small numbers of
exceptional individuals. This was certainly the case in the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome, where
certain high status individuals practised and advocated meat avoidance on health and ethical grounds
(Spencer, 1993; Dombrowski, 1985). This situation appears to have persisted throughout the medieval
period, although by the Renaissance and the dawn of the early modern period, advocacy of meat avoidance
by intellectuals, artists and moralists had become more public and more explicit (Spencer, 1993; Barkas,
1975). Certainly, by the late seventeenth century in England many of the arguments in favour of a meat free
diet had been formulated and were in the public domain (Thomas, 1983). It is no coincidence that the term
"vegetarian" appears to have been coined in England, and the first formal pressure group to promote this
doctrine, the Vegetarian Society, was set up in Ramsgate, Kent, in 1847.
The founding of the Vegetarian Society marked a key phase in the emergence of vegetarianism as something
approaching a coherent social movement (Dietz et al., 1995). Indeed, Fiddes (1991) has argued that the
spread of vegetarianism in the developed societies is symptomatic of a fundamental shift in the way in
which the relationship between society and the natural world is conceptualised. This shift is seen as entailing
a move away from the view that the natural world is to be exploited, towards a view that humans have a
responsibility of stewardship towards nature. In a similar vein, Twigg (1979a, 1979b) sees contemporary
vegetarianism as an inversion of the conventional food hierarchy (with red meat, imbued with power, at its
pinnacle, and vegetables as its least desirable items). This inversion entails equating meat with decay and
corruption, and equating vegetables with life and vigour. This argument is taken several steps further by
feminist writers like Adams (1990) who sees the consumption of meat (and red meat in particular) as
synonymous with the exercise of male power over women. Hence the adoption of vegetarian foodways by
women comes to be seen as a challenge to male dominance.
Within the modern food system, vegetarianism takes many forms, and can be seen as ranged on a continuum
from most strict (i.e. veganism) to much less strict forms which many entail the routine consumption of
animal products like milk and eggs, and occasionally even fish and white meat (Beardsworth and Keil,
1992). However, while in many ways vegetarianism can be seen as representing a challenge to conventional
values and customary foodways, it has also been argued that the drive for profit in capitalist food systems
rapidly moves to reincorporate such challenges in the form of valuable niche markets. In a sense, what is
initiated as a "radical" dietary regimen becomes just one more option within a pluralist range of food choices
(Beardsworth and Keil, 1993).
A considerable amount of evidence is available concerning trends in meat consumption in the UK over
several decades, some of it based upon sophisticated large-scale surveys (see, for example, Ministry of
Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 1991, 1994). A long-term decline in red meat consumption, beginning
around 1960, has been clearly documented, along with a decline in pork and pork products beginning around
1980. In contrast, poultry consumption has risen steadily from the mid-1950s onwards (Beardsworth and
Keil, 1997, pp. 196-8). However, at the same time, the consumption of meat in the form of processed
products like ready-made meals has also increased significantly, and the market has become an increasingly
complex and segmented one (Fine et al., 1996, pp. 201-17).
Likewise, in recent decades, discernible trends in meat avoidance and meat rejection have emerged from a
range of surveys (although, of course, such results should be seen as estimates rather than as definitively
accurate measures). For example, a survey carried out by researchers at the Institute of Food Research,
Reading found that 28 per cent of its sample of 1,018 UK residents considered themselves to be reducing
meat consumption (Richardson et al., 1993). A series of surveys carried out by Gallup between 1984 and
1995 suggest that over that period, the proportion of vegetarians in the UK population rose from around 2.1
per cent to 4.5 per cent, with the proportion of respondents avoiding red meat rising from 1.9 per cent to 6.5
per cent between 1984 and 1993 (Beardsworth and Keil, 1997, p. 224). A survey carried out for the
Vegetarian Society in 1991 by researchers from Bradford University found that 8 per cent of its 11-18-year-
old respondents claimed to be vegetarian (the figure for the sample as a whole being 7 per cent), and that
female respondents indicated a higher rate of vegetarianism than males, at 10 per cent compared to 4 per
cent (Beardsworth and Keil, 1997, p. 224). The later 1995 Gallup survey also suggested that women
vegetarians outnumbered their male counterparts by approximately 2:1 (Beardsworth and Keil, 1997, p.
224). Interestingly, data from the USA suggest a similar picture, with estimates of the proportion of
vegetarians ranging from 3 per cent to 7 per cent (Beardsworth and Keil, 1997, p. 225). However, a study by
Dietz et al. (1995), based on a telephone survey in Fairfax County, Virginia, while indicating a vegetarian
percentage of 7.2 (95 per cent confidence interval 4.0-11.8 per cent), found little or no influence from such
variables as age and gender. What they did find, on the other hand, was that values held by respondents were
crucial, with those holding "traditional" values less likely to be vegetarian, and those holding "altruistic"
values more likely to be vegetarian (Dietz et al., 1995, pp. 538-9). This latter finding is broadly in line with
evidence from a number of studies which suggests that, while a range of motives are behind conversion to
vegetarianism (health, taste, ecological, etc.), moral or ethical considerations tend to predominate
(Beardsworth and Keil, 1992; Neale et al., 1993; Santos and Booth, 1996; Maurer, 1995).
The preceding brief overview of the literature highlights a number of issues which have emerged as focuses
of research, and which certainly deserve further attention. These issues can be conveniently formulated as a
series of questions. For example:
- Is vegetarianism increasing?
- Is the reduction of meat in the diet, or meat avoidance, on the increase?
- Do factors like class and gender play significant roles in vegetarianism and meat avoidance/reduction?
- Are vegetarianism and meat avoidance linked to other values (e.g. political)?
- What forms of motivation lie behind food choice in general, and meat avoidance/reduction and
vegetarianism in particular?
It is to such questions that the empirical study reported in this paper addresses itself.
Sample and methodology
In each of the six years from 1992 to 1997 the authors have asked a group of first-year sociology and social
policy students at Loughborough University to complete a brief self-administered questionnaire of eight
questions. Over the six years, a total of 350 students have completed the questionnaire. The numbers of
students answering in each year has varied only slightly, with the smallest number being 54 and the largest
being 64. The students were taking a course in quantitative data analysis and computing and used the data
from the class for an exercise in processing and analysing responses. The questionnaire, which was
completed at the end of the first teaching session, included two questions which relate to diet and food and
afforded the opportunity to examine trends in meat consumption and variables with which it might be
associated.
The students represent a convenience sample and have not been sampled through a random process. The
sample cannot be considered a representative one and therefore no inferential statistics are employed in the
analysis. While the lack of representativeness might be considered detrimental to any consideration of the
broader substantive significance of the findings, the sample can be considered a critical one because it is
made up of people who are, in a sense, most likely to be relatively susceptible to vegetarianism. As such the
findings are highly germane to this article's substantive focus. The sample may be considered critical
because it is well educated, predominantly female (80.3 per cent), young (mean age = 20.91 years with 69.9
percent aged either 18 or 19), and middle class (64.5 per cent defined their fathers as working in non-manual
occupations). On the basis of existing findings, such a group might be expected to contain a concentration of
individuals whose intellectual background and underlying attitudes would predispose them to meat
avoidance and vegetarianism, although, as we will see later, the role of social class is somewhat equivocal.
Results
Figure 1 provides a representation of levels of meat consumption and avoidance in the sample. Students
were asked about their level of meat consumption and were asked to identify themselves as eating more
meat, less meat, or the same amount of meat compared to the previous year, or as vegetarians or vegans. The
level of vegetarianism in this sample was considerably higher than for the population as a whole, with 15.7
per cent describing themselves as vegetarian. No members of the sample described themselves as vegan.
We turn now to the specific questions posed above. First, is there any evidence from our findings suggesting
that vegetarianism is increasing and that the level of meat consumption is declining? When levels of meat
consumption across the six cohorts are compared, no consistent linear pattern of levels of meat eating or of
vegetarianism appear (Table I). Thus, we could find no evidence of an increase in vegetarianism or meat
avoidance.
Second, how far is meat avoidance related to gender, age and class? Females were considerably more likely
to be vegetarians and to be eating less meat; males were more likely to be eating more or the same amount
of meat (Table II). There was little evidence of a relationship with age, perhaps because the sample exhibits
little variation in this respect. Levels of meat consumption were found to be largely unrelated to father's
occupation (Table III), a finding which contrasted sharply with a clear association among members of the
sample between father's occupation and voting intention (Table IV).
Our data only allow us to touch on the issue of whether vegetarianism and meat avoidance are related to
other values, in that we were able to examine their association with voting intention. We find a slight
tendency for those who intended to vote Conservative to be more likely than other respondents to be eating
more meat. Also, there was a tendency for students who would vote Liberal Democrat to be eating less meat.
However, the results in this connection do not allow clear general patterns linking meat
consumption/avoidance to voting intention to be identified.
Levels of meat consumption were found to be associated with answers to a question concerning influence on
eating habits (Table V). The question asked respondents to choose what was for them the most important of
four possible influences: the tastiness of food; the healthiness of food; the familiarity of food; and whether
the food was produced in a morally acceptable manner. Most respondents (63.1 per cent) opted for the first
of these influences. However, the importance of this influence varied by level of meat consumption. It was
particularly prevalent among respondents eating the same amount of meat (51.6 per cent). Among those
stipulating the importance of food being healthy, nearly one-half of respondents (47.3 per cent) were eating
less meat and a further 22 per cent were vegetarians. Similarly, 57.9 per cent of those indicating that the
familiarity of food was important to them were eating less meat. The vast majority of those students (78.9
per cent) who indicated that the moral acceptability of food was important to them were vegetarians.
Discussion
A clear difference between males and females in vegetarianism and meat reduction was discerned in the
findings, a result which parallels a number of other studies. Because of the female-dominated nature of our
sample, it is not feasible to use our results to explore gender differences in any detail. However, a number of
authors have speculated that what appear to be the higher levels of vegetarianism and meat avoidance among
women are attributable to the cultural association between the consumption of meat (and particularly red
meat) with masculinity and male dominance. In this sense, then, the avoidance of meat eating by some
women has been seen as a challenge to or rejection of the "macho" aspects of masculinity (see, for example,
Adams, 1990).
One of the most interesting findings of the study is the complete absence of vegans in the response group. It
might be supposed that if vegans were to be found clustered in significant numbers in any particular social
category it might have been anticipated that a group composed largely of well-educated and predominantly
middle-class young women would be an ideal location. This might not necessarily be the case, however,
since it may well be that the vegan emphasis on animal rights issues may not be as salient for these
predominantly younger respondents as the animal welfare issues which have greater prominence for
vegetarians. Nevertheless, the fact that not one respondent labelled herself (or himself) as vegan does seem
to point to the rarity of this exacting and uncompromising form of meat avoidance. This finding is supported
by the results of a recent study which came across no vegans in a sample of over 400 adults (Goode et al.,
1996). Such empirical evidence as is available concerning the implications of attempting to adopt a vegan
regime (see, for example, Beardsworth and Keil, 1992) suggests that this is a difficult dietary option to
maintain in the longer term, for a range of practical and social reasons, quite apart from the nutritional
controversies involved. Hence, for the vast majority of those individuals who define themselves as
vegetarian, it would appear that animal-derived food products continue to play, to a varying extent, a role in
the diet.
The fact that the tastiness of food was selected by the majority of respondents as the single most important
influence of their food choices is, in itself, hardly surprising. However, the "tastiness factor" seems to be
clearly related to the maintenance of existing levels of meat consumption. This raises the question of
whether the gustatory appeal of meat really is a crucial factor in the persistence of meat eating. While it has
been argued that meat eating reflects an innate human taste for this particularly rich source of nutrients, a
taste which has an evolutionary and adaptive basis (Harris, 1986; Aiello and Wheeler, 1995), there exists an
alternative argument. This argument (which has an ancient pedigree) maintains that meat consumption is
unnatural for humans, and is, essentially, a dietary aberration whose origins are largely cultural and
ideological (Fiddes, 1991; Dambrowski, 1985; Amato and Partridge, 1989). However, for these respondents
at least, the priority assigned to gustatory gratification does appear to be associated with a reluctance to
reduce meat intake. In contrast, those respondents who allocate priority to the healthiness of food do seem to
be the meat reducers and meat avoiders. It may well be that such reduction and avoidance are, in part, a
response to a series of official campaigns aimed directly at changing dietary patterns in the population in
line with current thinking on healthy eating (see, for example, Department of Health, 1994). Any evidence
of dietary changes related to such health education campaigns, however indirect, is worthy of note. This is
particularly so, given other evidence which suggests that while most members of the public are aware of
such campaigns, there exists a variety of reasons why many individuals do not incorporate such ideas into
their own nutritional choices and practices (see, for example, Goode et al., 1996).
On the other hand, while the healthy eating issue clearly has an appeal for many vegetarians (as well as for
meat reducers) the study's results do appear to confirm findings from a range of other studies concerning the
fundamental importance for vegetarians of ethical issues related to the use of animals as food sources. Of
course, requiring respondents to select only their most important influence on food choice, while having the
advantage of simplicity and straightforward response, is a strategy which cannot cope with the ways in
which motivations and influences are interlinked, mutually reinforcing and even sometimes contradictory.
The lack of any clear indication in the results of any increase in vegetarianism and meat avoidance over the
six years of the study is particularly noteworthy. There is, of course, always the possibility that the absence
of any consistently changing patterns in the data is merely a methodological artefact resulting from the
relatively small number of respondents involved. However, once again, it seems plausible to suggest that if
vegetarianism and meat reduction were increasing significantly overall in the UK, this response group,
predominantly female, young and well educated, ought to be a particularly sensitive indicator of such
changes.
Thus, while these results are to be seen, at best, as clues or hints in relation to current trends, they do raise an
interesting possibility. It could well be the case that the increases in the numbers of people reducing or
avoiding meat, which seem to have occurred over the last two decades or so, are actually coming to an end.
A plausible conclusion might be that vegetarianism and reduced meat diets may have reached a kind of
plateau, a situation in which they have ceased to expand. Rather they may have become "stabilized" dietary
patterns among a plurality of other dietary and lifestyle options in an increasingly fragmented and nicheoriented system of consumption. If such stabilization has indeed occurred, the reasons behind this
phenomenon clearly warrant further empirical research.
The apparent absence of an association between respondents' social class (as measured by the proxy of
father's occupation) and meat consumption choices is rather less surprising. Findings from previous studies
are rather ambiguous on this point, and suggest there may be no clear link (for a discussion of such findings,
see, for example, Beardsworth and Keil, 1997, p. 224). Such a view is in line with wider arguments within
the social sciences which suggest that traditional social class differentiation may be declining in significance
in some areas of consumption and lifestyle choices. Indeed, the effects of such changes have led some
market research organisations to switch emphasis away from the use of more orthodox socio-economic
classifications of consumers towards classifications more attuned to lifestyle orientations which cut across
such boundaries. If, indeed, social class affiliation is not a good predictor of the lifestyle and food choices
among younger, better educated consumers (given, of course, the persisting link between educational
attainment and social class), then this important market segment may well need to be understood and
analysed in rather different terms. In a sociological sense, we may need to move away from theories which
see consumption patterns and "taste" primarily as devices to emphasize class based difference and distance
(as argued classically by authors like Veblen (1925), and more recently by Bourdieu (1984)). In such
circumstances the argument put forward by Mennell (1985) seems much more plausible. What Mennell
suggests is that, hand in hand with the ever-increasing variety of available foodstuffs, the contrasts between
social strata, in terms of tastes and nutritional standards, have been steadily diminishing (Mennell, 1985, pp.
317-31).
However, it is certainly not the case that this group of respondents is completely "homogenized" in class
terms. The fact that the results show a strong connection between father's occupation and voting intention
suggests that for these undergraduates class affiliation is still a good predictor of political preferences and
beliefs. This finding seems to support an important proposition: while social class position may continue, to
some extent, to be associated with "traditional" political loyalties, lifestyle choices and aspirations (in this
case, those related to food) may be increasingly detached from class identity. The fact that, in the study, food
choices are related to voting intention only weakly (if at all) seems also to support the view that cultural and
ideological factors which cut across class boundaries may be at work here. However, such links as do appear
to exist in the data seem to add weight to the suggestion earlier that maintaining meat intake is related to
more "conservative" and "traditional" stances.
Conclusions
As has been emphasized above, the small scale of the study reported here, and the opportunistic nature of the
sample upon which it is based, mean that in no sense can these findings be generalized automatically to
wider populations. However, these "critical case" respondents do give up some important clues to the foodrelated tastes and preferences of the younger consumers who are likely in the not too distant future to be
members of an affluent, demanding and discerning segment of the food industry's national market.
Additionally, of course, such clues, while fascinating in themselves, do highlight the need for well designed,
larger scale longitudinal studies which can effectively explore both the far-reaching changes and the
underlying continuities which characterise the food systems of complex, late modern societies. What is
more, of course, the quantitative approach used in this study can only highlight certain aspects of the issues
involved, and a range of complementary qualitative studies would also provide valuable additional insights
into the social and cultural processes which guide individuals' meat consumption choices.
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[Illustration]
Caption: Table I.; Levels of meat consumption and avoidance by cohort; Table II.; Levels of meat
consumption and avoidance by gender; Table III.; Levels of meat consumption by father's occupation; Table
IV.; Voting intention by father's occupation; Table V.; Levels of meat consumption and avoidance by
influence; Figure 1.; Levels of meat avoidance and consumption in this sample
Indexing (document details)
Subjects:
Consumer behavior, Diet, Vegetarianism, Young adults, Social conditions & trends
Classification
Codes
1220 Social trends & culture, 9175 Western Europe, 7100 Market research
Locations:
United Kingdom, UK
Author(s):
Alan Beardsworth, Alan Bryman
Document types:
Feature
Publication title:
British Food Journal. Bradford: 1999. Vol. 101, Iss. 4; pg. 289
Source type:
Periodical
ISSN:
0007070X
ProQuest
document ID:
115726943
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