Authors: Luke McGuire, Fatma Sabet, Luciana Torquati, and Natalia Lawrence (2026)
What’s the article about? (At a glance)
Background: Is it typical for people in the UK to consider abstaining from meat when they are young? What percent of young people go on to stop eating meat and why? How many of these young abstainers continue to abstain into adulthood? And what might be some of the reasons why people return to eating meat?
The present research by McGuire, Sabet, Torquati, and Lawrence sampled retrospective reports of 1063 emerging adults (18-26 years old) online, to answer these questions about meat avoidance in childhood. Prolific participants answered a series of questions about their past experiences with meat abstention. An initial screening question identified 461 UK-based participants from among the initial sample who had thought about stopping eating meat before they had finished secondary school. These participants reported if and when they gave up meat, for how long, their reasons for abstaining, and, for those no longer abstaining, their reasons for returning to eat meat. They also answered some questions about their current attitudes.
Key findings:
- Animal-concern focus for contemplating abstention: ‘Animal rights, welfare and concern’ (29%) was reported as the most common reason for considering abstaining from meat in childhood, followed by ‘social influences’ (25%) and ‘media’ (14%).
- Predictors of abstention related to receiving social support: Parental support was the strongest predictor of whether participants were able to stop eating meat, with school support also playing a role.
- Taste preferences and health as reasons for returning: ‘Taste preferences’ (32%) and ‘health’ (31%) were the main reasons for returning to meat, followed closely by ‘social influences’ (25%) and ‘convenience’ (24%).
- Lots of contemplators and plenty of abstainers: About half of the initial pre-screening sample (48.5%; n = 516) had thought about stopping eating meat while growing up. Of the contemplators, another half went on to stop (i.e., about a quarter of the entire sample).
- Length of abstention ranged from days (15.3%) to years (permanently 25.5%).
- Age of abstention: Participants first started to think about stopping at a range of different ages (4 to 21 years); the average age of contemplating fell within late childhood / early adolescence (11-12 years). Average of age of stopping was also within adolescence (M = 13.3 years old; range = 5 to 23).
- Gender divide: Women were more likely than men to have thought about stopping and had stopped.
Implications for advocacy
The research findings have several implications for vegan advocacy. First, they spotlight the high rate of meat-abstention contemplation that occurs in the UK. These rates suggest that there may be more consumers sympathetic to plant-based diets than when focusing only on behavioural indices (e.g., eating behaviour). Some models of behaviour change suggest that contemplation and sympathetic attitudes often precede wider societal uptake of moral innovations. Thus, the relatively high rates of childhood contemplation observed here may be a sign of a wider appetite for change.
However, the results also underscore the need to support current abstainers, as many reported abstainers in the sample returned to eating meat within days to years of stopping. That parental support was an important predictor of abstention maintenance is consistent with other recent work suggesting that social support, particularly support from family, both emotional and practical, is fundamental to the maintenance of plant-forward transitions among young people and emerging adults.
Quick Links
The paper “Early Attempts to Stop Eating Meat: Prevalence, Predictors and Outcomes Among UK Youth” was published in Volume 5 (2026) of the PHAIR journal.
To read the full, open-access paper, go here
Blog post by Jared Piazza for PHAIR
Cover photo by Green Prophet
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