
Adding a metre between meals boosts vegetarian appeal – study - hhs
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/adding-a-metre-between-meals-boosts-vegetarian-appeal-study
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avdempsey
The temporal dimension is just as important as space. Adding a year between
eating meat and a plant-based diet also makes the alternatives more appealing.

After being meat and dairy free for awhile my cravings changed. I guess our
brains are plastic? I ate (and loved!) meat for 28 years, but today I don't
even crave it, and can report I enjoy food just as much as I used to. If being
plant-based required will-power, I don't think I'd be able to do it.

I think it's actually easier to go all the way, and avoid meat completely,
than it is to cut back. If meat is a regular, if limited, part of your diet
the craving never goes away.

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loceng
I eat high fat, high quality steak and kale - that's all. It's pretty easy. I
find it odd that meat is being described as or associated with a craving
though. I've never craved plants or other foods.

I'm at 67 hours of a planned 72 hour water fast and I'm not craving food, nor
hungry, it's easy once you get past the first day or two to continue for 5-10+
days so long as supplementing for electrolytes.

I'm curious what else you changed in your diet or eating behaviours when you
stopped eating meat? Did you reduce your sugar and carbohydrates? The quality
(processed or not, organic or not) and type of meat you eat as well - as
people can have sensitivities and discomfort by eating specific types of meat;
chicken and duck bother me some, pork bothers me more, beef is fine.

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cik2e
Did you have any trouble with a longer fast on your first attempt? I do
intermittent fasting and have gotten to 24 bracketed by evening meals. I can’t
seem to fall asleep when I am hungry but find it very easy to skip breakfast
and lunch. It’s true for me that after like 12 hours the hunger goes away and
it becomes easy to go past the 16 hours that’s prescribed for IF. But the
problem is that I start to get jittery from the adrenaline which is what
ultimately gets me to eat in the evening even if I’ve done for 20 hours
leading into that and don’t actually feel hungry.

Any tips from others who have the same issue around hunger impeding sleep
would be appreciated.

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marcyb5st
Hey, I have been doing OMAD since January. I usually eat around noon +-1h
depending on meetings.

I faced the same issues and for me what really helped is drinking a lot of
Camomille (0.5L) sweetened with sugar alcohols. I guess it does two things.
Camomille has some calming effects, especially when warm. This immediately
gets my stomach rumblings to stop. Secondly, the sugar alcohols might trick
your brain in releasing some dopamine since it has a sweet taste (not sure,
that's my theory). This helps me soldier through the adrenaline and hunger
spikes.

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tito
A pound of meat isn't the same as a pound of carrots.

In case you're wondering about climate impact per _calorie_ instead of per
pound/kg, here's an interesting article from the Washington Post:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/vegetarian-
or-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/vegetarian-or-omnivore-
the-environmental-implications-of-
diet/2014/03/10/648fdbe8-a495-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_story.html)

I see a lot of these charts that a pound of beef vs carrots. Just seems dumb,
I would have to eat far more than a pound of carrots to match the calories of
a pound of beef. Most data/infographic stuff in a climate world bugs me
because it's just not well presented. The overall conclusion is the same --
eating meat is a huge carbon footprint compared to vegetables. Climate change
has a marketing problem.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Calorie counts are better, but still gloss over all the nutritional
differences between e.g. beef and carrots. Comparing ingredients piecemeal
when they aren't nearly perfect substitutes doesn't make very much sense. If
you reduced your meat intake by 1kg of beef per week or month, what would you
replace it with to sustain your nutrition?

It seems like it would be a fairer comparison to drum up reasonable examples
of complete vegetarian, vegan, and omnivorous diets and work out a carbon
footprint (or whatever ecological impact measure you prefer) of each
backwards, from the plated food back to the source. Then look at the complete
diets that have the lowest impact. I would still expect that vegan, vegetarian
and very low-meat diets would do better than the typical diet in the US.

~~~
tito
To that point you could simplify since both diets would have a lot in common.
A salad, steak, and potatoes meal becomes salad, mushroom, and potatoes. So
it's important to talk about what "substitutes" are.

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AnonHP
> “All cafeterias and restaurants have a design that ‘nudges’ people towards
> something. So it is sensible to use designs that make the healthiest and
> most sustainable food options the easiest to pick without thinking about
> it,” she said.

Hopefully such designs also produce lower quantities of the less desirable
options, since food waste has a huge impact on climate change (according to
drawdown’s list).

> “We know that information alone is generally not enough to get us to change
> damaging habits. More research is needed on how to set up our society so
> that the self-interested default decision is the best one for the climate.”

This I agree wholeheartedly with. Expecting people to change their behaviors
is an exercise in futility. Defaults and convenience matter a lot more.

~~~
loceng
It's also why convenience stores turned into mostly low quality foods and
sugar factories, higher profits, in part to subsidize ever increasing cost of
rents to pay rent-seeking landlords; the problem persists to larger grocery
chains for some degrees, however food overall would be cheaper if people
didn't have access to so much "yummy" processed foods where people are
habituated to sugary and saltier food.

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maxharris
Stop trying to nudge me. Focus instead on cultured meat, because that actually
solves the fundamental problem.

~~~
coderintherye
I'm curious if you've tried Beyond Meat? Not saying it is comparable, but it
is quite good in my opinion, much better than the old veggie burger options.
Just interested in subjective opinions of people of how close it gets to being
a viable alternative to people who currently eat meat.

~~~
loceng
Comparing high quality meat with a highly processed "meat alternative"
shouldn't be judge on taste, and they're not comparable otherwise.

Beyond Meat burger ingredients: Water, Pea Protein*, Expeller-Pressed Canola
Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Rice Protein, Natural Flavors, Cocoa Butter, Mung
Bean Protein, Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Apple Extract, Pomegranate
Extract, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Vinegar, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Sunflower
Lecithin, Beet Juice Extract (for color).

Many of these things are not good for many people, and many if not the
majority of people aren't connected to their body properly, conditioned by ego
mind disconnecting them. Personally I can't do pea protein, canola oil,
coconut oil, rice, bean, potato, apple, vinegar, lemon, or lecithin. Those all
agitate my GI tract causing different levels of discomfort or pain.

What you find in meat however is the same as what's naturally in humans, it's
the animal concentrating the plants they eat into nutrients, protein, etc -
and high fat red meat like beef has exactly what your body and brain needs and
in the right portions.

I'm not trying to argue it's not possible to make a comparable option, however
it's highly unlikely. I do wonder if a cultured meat substitute is possible as
well, as the highest quality meat are from animals in their natural
environment under natural environmental stress conditions, it's more likely to
create a comparable product though; getting cost down and texture will be the
biggest challenges.

~~~
Jolter
> Many of these things are not good for many people

Irrelevant. They are fine for the absolute majority of people. For almost
everyone in the world, eating Beyond Meat burgers would be better than meat
burgers.

You should eat according to your body’s needs, but just because you have GI
issues does not devalue innovations in food technology.

~~~
loceng
Curious what your background and life experience is to make such statements?
You're quite dismissive and claiming all of those foods are fine for the
absolute majority of people is quite the grand statement, along with the
statement that Beyond Meat burgers would be better than real meat burgers.

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notatoad
i'd be really curious to see a follow-up on this in a year - will this effect
continue, or is it only occuring because the meat dishes being so far away is
unexpected, and once people get used to the location of the meat dishes
they'll skip to them.

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jmpman
That bacon tray is always at the end of the buffet. You regret all the stuff
on your plate. What am I doing with all this worthless fruit? I should have
waited! If I had known you were here, I would have waited. I would eat only
you bacon...

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war1025
> Meat-heavy diets not only risk our health but that of the planet, as
> livestock farming on a massive scale destroys habitats and generates
> greenhouse gases.

Well that's a bit over the top...

Seems like they could have stuck with the "vegetables are good for you" line
and had just as relevant of an article.

~~~
kqr
Is it? As a rule of thumb, each layer of indirection in the food chain retains
only 10% of the energy from the previous layer.

If we eat the stuff we give to cows (which is what vegetarians do) then we
would need only 10% of the land to farm it.

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gvjddbnvdrbv
Being pedantic. If we eat the stuff they feed to the cows I eat we would die.
Grass is not human digestible.

My point being the problem is not meat which is a natural part of our diet
(and is traditionally raised on land not well suited to crops) but the crazy
frankenmeat many are reduced to eating due to overpopulation.

~~~
Ma8ee
And as you well know, no one is suggesting that, so why is it worth to
mention?

~~~
jiofih
Pretty sure the parent comment was suggesting that. Hé even said “it’s what
vegetarians do”.

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astura
Cows raised for beef are almost always fed corn and soy in feedlots, not let
out to pasture to graze on grass.

~~~
jiofih
Indeed, it’s a shame since grass-fed tastes much better and is more
environmentally friendly.

Either way, we can’t just “eat what the cows eat” directly and there are a lot
more variables to consider.

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temporallobe
This just comes across as manipulative. Meat eaters don’t want to be “nudged”
into eating less meat or becoming vegetarian any more than vegetarians want to
be “nudged” into eating meat (even occasionally).

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legerdemain
Today I learned that the British meter is 181 centimeters.

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neonate
They _added_ a meter. FTA:

 _The difference: almost a metre of added distance between the vegetarian and
meat options, with an 85cm gap in the first college compared to a 181cm gap in
the second_

~~~
legerdemain
Thanks!

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supernova87a
How about they just go ahead and put a sign on the meat dishes saying
"recently sneezed on by someone with Covid" to make the veggie option more
appealing?

