Cover image: Aleksey Melkomukov
Recently, at the PHAIR Society Animal Advocacy Conference, Devon Docherty (DD) gave a brilliant talk on the psychology of egg and dairy consumption. Since her talk, Devon and her colleague, Dr. Carol Jasper (CJ), have had their work published in Appetite, with their paper alluding to a “Cheese Paradox” among vegetarians (a nod to the well-known “Meat Paradox” experienced by omnivores). With our interest piqued, we approached Devon and Carol, who kindly agreed to be interviewed. We were interested to know more about how vegetarians reason about their egg and dairy consumption and the wider implications for the study of animal-product consumption and vegan advocacy. Here is what they had to say.
Devon and Carol, could you briefly introduce yourselves?
DD: My name is Devon Docherty and I am a writer and animal rights activist. I have a master’s degree in Human-Animal Interactions from the University of Stirling wherein I studied human-farmed animal relations and animal consumption from a social psychological perspective. I’m especially passionate about dairy and egg consumption and reduction strategies, which I feel are somewhat neglected areas compared to meat. Outside of academia, I work with Surge Activism and Earthling Ed to produce original and engaging content about veganism. I’m also super interested in rewilding.
CJ: I’m Dr Carol Jasper, I’m a lecturer in Social Psychology and Qualitative Research Methods at Stirling University. I’m currently working on several projects trying to understand more of the psychology of veganism, particularly some of the barriers faced. For example, we’re collecting data at present looking at the role of nostalgia in dietary choices and investigating another potential paradox! Outside of vegan research, I am also interested in subcultures which proliferate on social media, particularly incel communities and conspiracy theorism.
You recently published a paper describing “The Cheese Paradox” in the journal Appetite. Could you briefly explain what you did, and some of your key findings.
DD: In this paper we interviewed a group of people who identified as vegetarian to understand how they perceived non-meat animal products (NMAPs) like eggs and dairy, and their reasons for consuming them. We thought this was an important topic because these products entail the same – and perhaps even worse – ethical issues as meat, yet virtually all research exploring vegetarians’ motivations has focused on the exclusion of meat, rather than the inclusion of NMAPs.
We found that all participants acknowledged that NMAPs implicated ethical issues, but they found it easier to simply forgo meat while reaping the personal benefits of NMAPs, which they related to health and nutrition, convenience, and taste. Participants’ consumption of eggs and dairy appeared to constitute a social negotiation, in the sense that the inclusion of these products in social settings acted as a compromise between the priorities of avid meat-eaters and vegetarians. The presence of cognitive dissonance was also strongly supported by the data and we explored possible strategies they used to resolve it.
Could you explain for our readers, what the cheese paradox is?
DD: Vegetarians articulated that they felt more ethical conflict about consuming liquid milk than cheese, despite the two products originating from the same source. We use the term ‘the cheese paradox’ to refer to this paradoxical thinking about cheese vs. milk. We also use this term more generally to refer to the tension arising from people’s consumption of NMAPs, despite knowing the harmful consequences they entail.
How do you see the cheese paradox as relating to the meat paradox (Loughnan et al., 2010)?
DD: The perspective of meat-eaters often revolves around considering meat as a foundational component of their diet, while individuals who consume dairy and eggs (but not meat) tend to acknowledge that these items aren’t absolute necessities in their diet, viewing them as significant yet supplementary components.
In addition, it seems that people who eat meat often use the argument that it’s natural to do so. However, we observed a distinct absence of ‘natural’ justifications for eating NMAPs, perhaps due to the inherent unnaturalness of consuming products like cheese, which are essentially the processed secretions of another species meant for their own offspring.
Consequently, vegetarians seem to exhibit a heightened conscious awareness of their dietary choices and the resulting ethical impacts, leading to complex relationships with animals and nuanced manifestations of cognitive dissonance.
We know that many current vegans often go through a period of being vegetarian on their journey to veganism. Do you see the cheese paradox as something that is a motivating force for vegetarians contemplating veganism?
CJ: I would suggest that cheese is a significant barrier to vegetarians moving to veganism. The fact that our participants were able to articulate animal harm, and acknowledge their role in that process, but still reconcile their cheese consumption creates some difficult questions for activism, advocacy, and food manufacturers alike. Advocates could make the link between cheese and milk more salient, to tap into the disgust our participants expressed about the cow-like qualities of liquid milk. Consumers also need to be educated more about the explicit harm to animals used to produce cheese.
You noted that vegetarians in your sample displayed a “willingness to compromise their moral values to enhance social coordination”. Is this social flexibility something that might benefit or hinder vegetarians in terms of their ability to garner other people’s respect or influence the food choices of others?
CJ: In other research, not currently published, we discovered that vegans are more likely to be people who, throughout their life course, had been prepared to challenge social norms. That could be in terms of their appearance, their subculture identities, or political activism. People who remain vegan may be more likely to be prepared to accept the social consequences of not compromising their moral values to ‘fit in’. In other words, committed vegans might be less socially flexible than the rest of the population. But this is an idea which requires further investigation.
At present, there is a discrepancy across the literature in how we treat vegetarian and vegan samples. Some researchers recognise these groups as distinctly different and treat them separately. Others collapse the two groups and use the label “veg*ns”, mostly to address concerns of small samples. What can researchers in the field learn from your paper, about how we treat vegan and vegetarian samples?
CJ: I can see the merit in both approaches. ‘Veg*n’ as a catch-all term is useful for broad brush meat-reduction strategies, especially when considering animal agriculture as a driver of anthropogenic climate change. For explorative or investigative qualitative work, however, I think the findings are more powerful when more distinctive terms are used. For example, we have recently conducted a similar project with pescatarians, which has been just as insightful and richly detailed. By interrogating specific beliefs and dietary rationales we can effectively target each dietary group’s specific attitudes and value systems in debates about harm reduction or consumer marketing strategies.
DD: The ‘veg*n’ label is something that I don’t find beneficial to research nor activism – people who are vegetarian, pescatarian, flexitarian, vegan, etc., have different diets, identities, and needs, and should be treated as such. They also tend to have different views on human-animal relations and the world. We can learn far more from treating them as distinct categories and studying their nuances in depth. If that means smaller sample sizes – so be it! Qualitative research in particular can produce rich and illuminating insights from just a handful of participants, which hopefully we have shown in our paper. This does mean that we may have to surrender any claims to generalisability, but in doing so we will uncover a more comprehensive understanding of the topics at hand and produce effective, tailor-made reduction strategies.
How can our readers get in touch with you both?
Carol Jasper (CJ): Email (carol.jasper@stir.ac.uk), Twitter (@DrCarolJasper)
Devon Docherty (DD): Twitter (@devonmdocherty)
PHAIR editors: Rebecca Gregson and Jared Piazza
PHAIR Society 