It’s news the vegetarians of the world may not be too happy to hear but meat-eaters have spoken and they think their veggie counterparts are simply going through “a phase.”
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Well, one in five of them do — and they have plenty of other strong opinions about those who choose not to eat meat.
According to Huffington Post, Voucher Cloud surveyed 2,316 U.K. adults — half meat-eaters, half vegetarians — to discover what the two groups really think of each other.
Almost one third of meat-eaters (29 percent) said that vegetarians are “starving themselves of vital nutrients,” while more than one quarter of them (26 percent) declared that “going without meat is unnatural for the human body.”
Of the vegetarians who took part in the survey 78 percent of them used to be meat-eaters and the most common reason for making the change was that they didn’t “believe in killing animals for meat.”
It may come as a shock to hear that 39 percent of vegetarians admitted they are unlikely to abstain from eating meat for the rest of their life.
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One fifth of meat-eating respondents had attempted vegetarianism once in their lives but most had gone back to eating meat because they “didn’t like vegetarian substitutes as much as real meat,” “craved meat all the time” or struggled to cope with the “physical effects of not eating meat,” such as energy slumps and fatigue.
“I went back to eating meat after a decade of vegetarianism,” mum-of-three Kristen told SheKnows. “I had such strong red meat cravings during my last pregnancy that I just had to eat it. My daughter is a year old now — and I’m still eating bacon sandwiches. I have more energy when I include meat in my diet, but I do feel a little embarrassed explaining to people that I’m no longer vegetarian.”
Just over one quarter of the people surveyed (26 percent) said they thought that meat-eating was “barbaric,” while the vast majority (71 percent) agreed that it is “unsustainable.”
Four out of five vegetarian respondents (79 percent) also stated that “eating meat is unhealthy,” while a further 11 percent felt that eating meat is “bad karma.”
According to research commissioned by the Vegetarian Society and carried out by Britain’s leading independent social research institute, NatCen, almost three in 10 people in the U.K. have reduced their meat consumption in the past 12 months.
“This report very much reflects what we see every day in our work: that there is an increasing awareness of the issues relating to our food choices, and that has resulted in a large number of people reducing the amount of meat they eat or cutting it out altogether,” said Lynne Elliot, Chief Executive of the Vegetarian Society. “Vegetarian options are an easy, healthy and tasty way to eat — and it’s clearly an option being enjoyed by a large section of the population.”
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