The aim is to continue reducing until you are mostly vegan, but retain the option to eat animal products on special occasions, if you like. Being a reducetarian means embracing impurity: trying to reduce rather than eliminate your consumption of animal products-for starters, eating meat only for dinner or only on weekends. This is admirable, but it’s hard to sustain for some and alienating for many others. Kumar: Vegetarians and vegans are purists who eliminate all meat or all animal products from their diets. The Brink: In a recent WBUR op-ed with Joshua May, you describe some of the benefits of becoming a “reducetarian.” What does this lifestyle entail, and how does it differ from being a vegetarian or vegan? According to one recent analysis, animal agriculture causes over one-sixth of global greenhouse gas emissions. But the most serious environmental harm is its contribution to climate change, via animal waste and food transportation. It contributes to water and air pollution, along with habitat destruction through deforestation. Kumar: The meat industry harms the environment in many ways. The Brink: How does meat consumption harm the environment?
And you don’t need to break the bank either-for example, beans and lentils are very cheap sources of protein. Of course, there are unhealthy vegetarians, just as there are unhealthy omnivores, but it’s possible to get all the calories, proteins, and nutrients humans need through a plant-based diet. Meat is tasty, sure, but there are tons of delicious vegetarian and vegan meals-so much that you’d never run out. Kumar: Many people think that giving up meat and other animal products is unpleasant, unhealthy, and expensive. The Brink: What are some of the biggest misconceptions about leading a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle? Most people need a community: friends and family who provide social proof that a plant-based diet is worthwhile and feasible. However, as my colleague Joshua May and I argue in a recent journal article, this is generally not sufficient to adopt a plant-based diet. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are uncomfortable with the way animals are used in the food industry. Kumar: People want to be healthy and they also want to live up to their moral values. Q &A with Victor Kumar The Brink: From your perspective, what attracts people to a plant-based diet?
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The Brink spoke with Kumar-who also recently coauthored the book, A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How it Made us Human (Oxford University Press, 2022)-about his findings and recommendations, the impacts and ethics of plant- and animal-based diets, what it means to lead a “reducetarian” lifestyle, and how to make veggie alternatives more accessible for all. He and coauthor Joshua May, an ethicist and cognitive scientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, also outlined ways to convince people to switch to plant-based alternatives. Kumar, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of philosophy and head of the BU Mind and Morality Lab, examined the psychological mechanisms that allow carnivores to ignore ethical arguments against meat. An expert on morality and moral progress, he recently coauthored a paper in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association that looked at the psychology of reducing meat consumption. Philosopher Victor Kumar has been studying why it’s so hard to shake people from their T-bones and Big Macs. Victor Kumar, a CAS assistant professor of philosophy and head of the BU Mind and Morality Lab, has studied how people are able to ignore the ethical arguments for eating less meat.
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