Three things:
First, people eat meat because it tastes good and is widely available. You can’t make it not taste good, but we can insist on better regulatory requirements that might make meat more expensive or less ubiquitous. Every person seeks validation for the behaviors they choose every day. That’s human nature, and that’s why it’s easy to false equivalences like avocados are worse than beef. People want to believe it because it’s easier than changing. We’re not going to save the planet by changing everybody. People need to be forced to change by law or by circumstance.
Second, this is terrible journalism. The author probably wanted to be a novelist, but nobody wanted to publish a young adult series about a girl who discovers she can talk to farm animals and is whisked away to a private school for animal talkers.
News articles, even editorials, don’t require suspense. You don’t build tension by slowly revealing information. This article is five paragraphs in before they get to anything resembling a point, and it’s several more paragraphs of slowly revealing the findings of the study like a detective walking through the crime scene, discovering new clues along the way.
Third, the author is exactly the sort of smarmy, “told-ya-so” douchebag that carnists assume of all vegans. “… have you considered that vegans are annoying?” Yes. You are very annoying, and it undercuts the points you’re trying to make.
We should be looking at the results of this study and trying to determine how to overcome the daily hurdles people face and disinformation campaigns of the meat industry. Calling people stupid for being fallible in ways all humans are is just mean-spirited and counterproductive.
From what I can surmise, most vocal vegans aren’t really interested in changing minds so much as they want to put others down for not making their same choices. They’re bitter and jaded, and globally harmful dietary choices are a really easy lightning rod for all the pent up scorn. I’m sure they’re great IRL, but this space is for smug self satisfaction and out group shaming, not for civil discourse with the enemy.
I wouldn’t say “most.” I just think the loudest voices are the assholes, and that applies to every group across all ideologies. That’s not unique to vegans, but so much industry is built on suffering and has deficated time and effort to painting all vegans with the same brush. And it’s not just animal suffering. Every capitalist knows, and fears, that if consumers begin caring about animal rights, human rights are a natural extension.
I’m pretty perpetually broke, all my family and friends eat meat, and I live in good ol’ purple state Pennsylvania (not Philly or Pittsburgh).
In my personal experience, being at the very least vegetarian IS easy, even in my far-from-ideal conditions. I want to take people at their word when they say it would be hard for them, but it’s kind of incomprehensible to me. I even still eat at restaurants! Honestly I don’t even really cook that much, 'cause I’m lazy and don’t have a lot of free time. When eating out, you just try to do your due diligence to avoid getting any hidden meat, and if you wind up with some anyway, well at least you tried. I will admit it’s somewhat harder when I’m visiting rural Alabama, but not even by that much really. More on the level of minor inconvenience than anything. It’s not even more expensive, meat costs a fortune compared to like… beans.
