When people explain why they could never stop using animal products, the conversation often turns to food.
Christmas dinner. Sunday roasts. Their grandmother’s cooking. A dish their parents made when they were children.
The meal everyone eats when the family gets together. These are powerful memories. But new research suggests something interesting. People may not actually be as attached to the animal products as they think they are. They may be attached to everything surrounding them.
Researchers from the University of Stirling interviewed 24 people who regularly consume animal products about food, nostalgia and how they would feel about adopting a vegan lifestyle. The resulting study found that participants’ attachments to traditional foods were often rooted in family gatherings, cultural traditions and collective memories rather than simply eating particular ingredients. In other words, sometimes it isn’t really the turkey. It’s Christmas.
Food Is More Than Food
Think about what makes a childhood meal nostalgic. Is it really the precise ingredients? Or is it sitting around the table with your family? The smell coming from the kitchen? Your parents cooking? Seeing relatives you only saw at particular times of year? Feeling safe, comfortable and at home?
Participants repeatedly described food in exactly these terms. One spoke about their mother’s cooking making them feel safe and returning them to childhood. Another described traditional cooking as a connection with their family and roots.
This helps explain why changing what we eat can feel much bigger than changing what appears on a plate. Replacing an animal product can be interpreted as replacing part of someone’s childhood. But those are not actually the same thing.
The researchers found that many participants ultimately placed greater importance on the experiences surrounding food than the food itself. People talked about preparation, celebrations, family and context. One participant explicitly said their most valuable food memories were about occasions that brought people together, with the context remaining consistent rather than the food.
Perhaps the clearest example involved Christmas turkey. One participant admitted that turkey was always disappointing and that nobody particularly liked it. She still cooked one.
Why? Because they always had.
There is something almost perfect about that example. An animal continues to be killed for a tradition surrounding a food nobody particularly enjoys. At that point, what exactly are we preserving?
Traditions Can Change Without Disappearing
Tradition is often presented as though changing one ingredient destroys the entire thing. But traditions change constantly while retaining their emotional meaning.
The study suggests another possibility: recreate familiar dishes using plant-based ingredients and preserve what people actually value about them.
The family can still gather.
Granddad can still tell the same story everyone has heard 20 times. The same plates can come out of the cupboard. The same argument can erupt over who forgot something. The same people can sit around the same table on the same day. We don’t have to sacrifice the memories simply because we stop sacrificing animals.
The researchers describe familiar plant-based versions of traditional dishes as a potential bridge between past and future identities. Instead of treating dietary change as severing someone’s connection with their past, familiar meals can evolve while retaining their cultural and emotional significance.
Their conclusion goes further. New versions of traditional meals can eventually create their own memories and customs for future generations.
Today’s change becomes tomorrow’s tradition.
Sometimes The Barrier Is Other People
The study also found an important difference between friends and family.
When participants imagined becoming vegan, socialising with friends generally seemed manageable. They expected friends and restaurants to accommodate them.
Family was different.
Some anticipated relatives struggling to accommodate them at home. One participant imagined being ostracised at Christmas and effectively told to sit in the corner.
This suggests that what looks like attachment to food may sometimes actually be fear of social consequences.
People don’t necessarily fear losing meat. They fear losing belonging. And yet, when participants were actually asked to imagine themselves becoming vegan, the majority acknowledged that doing so was feasible, often contradicting their initial reaction.
The impossible suddenly looked possible once they seriously considered what it would involve.
Veganism Is NOT a Diet
Interestingly, the researchers encountered this misconception repeatedly themselves. Participants frequently used “vegan diet” and “vegan lifestyle” interchangeably and often appeared to understand veganism exclusively through food. The researchers explicitly describe this as incomplete because veganism extends beyond dietary choices. So nostalgia around food may help explain one barrier to adopting plant-based eating. It cannot explain veganism in its entirety.
Veganism concerns our relationship with animals. But this research does reveal something useful about one of the excuses standing in the way.
We can keep the Sunday.
We can keep Christmas.
We can keep the recipes, adapting them where necessary.
We can keep the laughter, arguments, smells, kitchens, rituals and stories.
We can remember the people who are no longer sitting around the table.
None of those memories require an animal to die. Traditions belong to us.
Animal bodies don’t.