#flexitarier — Public Fediverse posts

I get your point, but looking at the bigger picture, it gets ... complicated.

Take Germany, for example. The reduction of meat consumption over several years surpassed any predictions.
Over 5 years, from 60 kg per year to just over 51 kg. While this is still way too much, this decrease represents thousands of animals that were not tortured and slaughtered. And that is impressive.
The direct driver of the change was not the vegan population. Sure, their number is growing constantly, but vegans still represent just 1,5 % of the overall population [1].
Way more important was the trend of flexitarians. If 20 % of the population halves their meat consumption, that's a huge impact in terms of numbers.
Thus I think that it is not a successful strategy to put pressure on these people that are already on the right path.
When a critical mass in the population demands vegetarian and vegan dishes, this changes the entire food culture and paves the way for others to become vegan. Understand it as a first step and as a community effort instead of individual responsibility and puritanism.

Sure, there is always an important role for the pioneers who fought and fight hard and with a lot of stamina to make new room in carnivore-dominant societies.
But for realpolitik reasons, I see that we need to see the flexitarians as allies, not as enemies to make fun of with memes. (although of course, criticism of hypocrisy is important).

1: https://veganivore.de/anzahl-veganer-statistiken-fakten/

@ambiguous_yelp @Ruth_Mottram

#Ernaehrungswende #MeatConsumption #Fleischkonsum #Flexitarier