Not Really

This kind of nudge just doesn’t work on me.

Tilting menus towards plant-based meals significantly cuts the amount of meat eaten, according to new research.

The experiments in work and university cafeterias showed making it easier to choose meat-free food can be effective and could be a more acceptable approach than other proposals, such as taxing meat or banning it on certain days.

I’ll look at a menu and choose what takes my fancy. Rarely will it be a plant based option – although, I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out completely. They can tilt it all they like, I’ll still choose what I want or go to a venue that provides what I want. I will not be nudged. Indeed, as soon as I detect it, I dig my heels in.

Meat production is an important driver of the climate crisis…

Fuck off.

24 Comments

  1. Some of them will have to improve their veggie offerings.
    A few years ago I was a patient in a NHS hospital. One day I decided to try the vegetarian option: it’s a hospital, they’ll make the “healthy” option nice and tasty, won’t they? No. It was so bad I left half of it and went hungry until the next meal. I didn’t make that mistake again.

    • Yeah, I’ve made that mistake. It’s so often inedible. I once stayed with relatives and as they had veggie guests staying, we have vegetarian lasagne inflicted upon us. I will never eat that again. Ever.

  2. I always equate Veganism with being mentally ill. Why on earth would you not want the delights of British meat and dairy ?

  3. I went meat free and more or less fat free in january,, the flatulence was epic! everything was passing through me at the speed of sound pun intended…soon as i had some fat it all calmed down

    • Well, Bryan, today is the final day of that “Veganuary” crap. Perhaps now there will be fewer of those irritating TV adverts with their oxymorons such as “meat-free meat” and “the vegetarian butcher”. If you are a “butcher” who handles vegetables and not meat, then you are not a butcher.

  4. Buffalo Bill and his pals were eco warriors ahead of their time.
    By slaughtering all those bison they managed to delay the end of the Little Ice Age by up 10 minutes.
    His image should be the World Wild Life ( or whatever their name is this week) symbol instead of that flatulence Panda.

  5. I’ve tried some of the vegan stuff on offer in Tesco and the flatulence is epic. Worse than eating beans in curry (a student favourite of mine when I was young and broke). The flavouring of vegan and vegetarian options tends to be all over the place because the food itself is pretty bland so there’s lots of things added to pep it up a bit. This also adds to the calorific value making even small vegan options quite high compared to an equivalent portion of chicken, pork or beef.

    As for the various forms of “fake meat”, they’re all weird tasting and NO – it doesn’t taste like “chicken” or “bacon” or whatever, it tastes like “chicken” flavoured mushrooms…and the bacon tastes of bacon flavoured plastic.

    If I want a tasty, healthy meal I’ll stick with chicken and quick fried vegetables or a nice steak with a side-serving of garlic loaded spinach. Far better and far healthier with no farting required.

  6. There’s definitely a significant proportion of the public on whom this “nudge” business doesn’t work, and I don’t think the nudgers have any idea how large it is.

    Mind you, I don’t have much regard for the psychology profession as a whole. Having encountered a few in the course of their business some years back, the one thing that struck me was how poor they seemed to be at the basics of what you might call “everyday” psychology. One practice left me hanging for six months and lost all my records. It was a bit like finding dentists with bad teeth and grime all over their instruments, or a motor mechanic who doesn’t drive.

    JG: “I’ve tried some of the vegan stuff on offer in Tesco and the flatulence is epic.”

    In fairness, some of Tesco’s normal stuff is pretty awful. How on God’s green earth do you make carbonara sauce without eggs?

    • I don’t think the nudgers have any idea how large it is.

      This is because for all their self belief, they lack self awareness or any understanding of how people actually think or behave. To me, they are completely transparent.

  7. The making it easier to choose meat free usually becomes making it harder to choose meat – as that “nudge” is needed for it to be effective.

  8. From what I’ve seen of them, anyone in the psych business, whether -iatrist or -ologist seems to be a bit of a nutter. Probably why they go in for it in the first place.

  9. As someone who didn’t have a fully functioning cooker for the past 4 1/2 years, and having obtained one a week ago, I say they can fuck off. I’m heading out at the weekend to buy all the bacon in Tesco.

  10. Well I certainly won’t be listening to a bunch of nudge packers.

    I really would like to round up a bunch of vegans and either give them a truth drug or a lie detector. The question of course – do you genuinely like this insipid shite?

    It would be a genuinely interesting exercise to see how deep self deception can actually go.

    There are plenty of vegetable/fruit etc dishes which are very pleasant and tasty, but all this “vegetarian butcher” type over processed ersatz crap?

    “Chicken” flavoured mushrooms? I can well believe it (my curiosity so far has not been sufficient to actually try any).

    If you want to be a vegetarian/vegan, just be one. You don’t need to bore normal people to tears with your sanctimonious “saving the planet”. And of course, we all know you’d much rather have a succulent ribeye than a lump of chemically flavoured fuck knows what.

    If only farting like a cart horse was the only downside! I can only assume some as yet unidentified vitamin that can only be found in meat is necessary to prevent terminal self righteousness.

  11. “If you want to be a vegetarian/vegan, just be one. You don’t need to bore normal people to tears with your sanctimonious “saving the planet”.”

    This is pretty much what I wanted to say. These people are so tiresome. Why not just live your life and leave other people to live theirs? Maybe we need to start nudging people to do that, if it’s not too much of a contradiction.

  12. No-one’s explained why they went from meat-eating to full on veganism, by-passing vegetarianism on the way, or is it just people misusing language?

  13. I must confess I don’t actually know the difference between vegan and being a vegetable. I believe one can eat fish?

    Regardless, every now and again. I’ll try something to see if I like it. Tried the McPlant last week. Very bland and tasteless. Luckily I had bought the BBQ Bacon Stack as a back up.

  14. Veganism involves eating no animal products at all, not even honey. It seems a bit inconsistent to fret about bees being exploited and then not worrying about the need for insecticides to grow vegetables but there lies a problem. Once you start to unpick the various moral arguments for not killing sentient creatures for food you find yourself going down a very labyrinthine rabbit hole indeed.

  15. Once you start to unpick the various moral arguments for not killing sentient creatures for food you find yourself going down a very labyrinthine rabbit hole indeed.

    Not if you’re a vegan you don’t. Might scare the rabbits and that’s not allowed.

  16. The only vegan I know adheres quite strictly to the principle. She then toddles off every week to Holland & Barrett (probably qualifying for frequent-farter points) to stock up on a shed-load of over-priced pseudo-pharmaceutical supplements to attempt to make up for what she’d have eaten for free with a friggin’ steak. They’re all as mad as a box of frogs.

Comments are closed.