You can have all the reasons in the world to stop eating animals. Then dinner happens. Someone else in the house wants meat. Your friends are ordering burgers. The meal everyone normally eats suddenly requires you to be the person doing something different.
We like to pretend food choices happen inside individual heads. Learn the facts. Make a decision. Exercise enough willpower. Done.
Except humans do not eat in isolation.
New research suggests the people around us can make changing what we eat considerably easier, or harder.
Researchers from Brighton and Sussex Medical School studied people involved with Meat Free Monday, following participants over one month to investigate what predicted more meat-free days. Excluding people who were already vegetarian or vegan, 594 people completed the initial survey and 334 completed the follow-up. And some of the strongest predictors were not simply about knowing why someone should eat differently. They were about their environment.
Your dinner table is social
People recorded more meat-free days when they did not live with meat-eaters.
That finding shouldn’t really be surprising. Eating is social. We shop together. Cook together. Eat together. Go to restaurants together. Develop routines together. The researchers note that previous studies have found people are less likely to change their diet when others in their household are unwilling or unable to change too. They describe this through the concept of social undermining, where the behaviour of people around us can intentionally or unintentionally interfere with our attempts to change. Nobody has to stand over you demanding that you eat meat. Sometimes merely having meat remain the household default creates another barrier. But influence works in both directions.
The researchers also point out that someone reducing their meat consumption may influence the people they live with to change theirs. That makes every changed meal potentially social rather than merely individual.
Support actually works
The study found 4 significant predictors of having more meat-free Mondays and more meat-free days overall: having a less meat-eating identity, perceiving fewer barriers, expecting meat-free days to be less difficult, and having been involved with Meat Free Monday for longer. People who viewed the campaign’s support more positively also recorded more meat-free Mondays.
In other words, information matters. But so does feeling that changing is achievable. And so does having people around you who make that change easier rather than harder.
Previous research suggests that pairing people together for mutual support and accountability can increase the likelihood of behaviour change. A broader sense of community can help too. Research into other challenges found that simply knowing other people were doing the same thing could increase motivation, while hearing their stories provided encouragement. That should change how we think about helping people move away from eating animals.
Stop treating this as a willpower problem
When someone struggles to change, the easiest conclusion is that they simply don’t care enough, and for some of us that makes total sense. But imagine 2 people trying to make exactly the same change.
One lives with people doing it too. Their meals are compatible. Nobody questions their choices. They have recipes, encouragement and a community reinforcing the change.
The other lives in a house where meat remains normal, encounters it at every meal and has to repeatedly negotiate something everyone else takes for granted.
Are we really surprised if their outcomes differ? Behaviour-change models discussed by the researchers increasingly recognise exactly this problem. Motivation alone is not enough. People also need the capability and opportunity to change, while wider social influences can include everything from household behaviour and social norms to markets, policies and legislation. Our choices may be personal. The conditions in which we make them are not.
Be the person who makes change easier
There is an obvious lesson here for anyone who wants fewer animals being eaten. Don’t just ask what someone believes. Ask what surrounds them.
If someone you know is trying to stop eating meat, you can make their decision harder, or you can make it normal. Eat with them. Try the same food. Share recipes. Stop treating every meat-free meal as an unusual event requiring explanation. And if you’re the one trying to change, finding other people doing the same may be more useful than simply trying harder alone.
One meat-free Monday does not make someone vegan. Veganism is about our relationship with animals, not completing a weekly dietary challenge. But behaviour does not exist in a vacuum.
If we want people to stop eating animals, then perhaps one of the most powerful things we can do is create homes, friendships and communities where doing so no longer feels like swimming against the current.