Increasingly, people are shifting to vegetarian, plant-based, or vegan diets. This shift is having profound effects on our social interactions, and this is the focus of this book. Becoming a vegetarian or vegan involves more than just changing your diet. It can change how you socially and emotionally connect with family, friends and the broader community, shape your outlook on life, and open up new worlds and contacts. It can also lead to uncomfortable situations, if dietary choices involving a rejection of meat are read by others as an ethical and moral judgement on mainstream dietary choices. This book adopts an innovative narrative approach, and draws on stories across the globe to consider how the food choices we make in our everyday lives can lead to complex, and sometimes life changing, social consequences. The narratives cover a range of topics, including the moral reasons behind some individuals' decision to change their diets, the religious or ecological considerations, and the potential health and social ramifications. To date, the social consequences of selecting a plant-based diet have been sorely overlooked in favour of texts that have documented the benefits of such diets, and usually focus on health, animal welfare and/or environmental issues, with the aim of persuading readers to give up meat, and change to a 'healthy' and/or 'sustainable' diet. Cultural studies texts considering vegetarianism or veganism have typically targeted academic audiences with analyses of how identity is constructed through food and dietary choices. In contrast, this book offers a unique window onto how our social lives are implicated in our food choices, and is critical in understanding the importance of diet as embedded in complex social processes.
FOREWORD By Charlotte J. S. De Backer INTRODUCTION By Charlotte J. S. De Backer and Maryanne L. Fisher 1 AUSTRALIA: Vegans, Vegetarians, and Australia By Lelia Green 2 AUSTRALIA: Experiences of a Vegan in the Australian Jewish Community By Talia Raphaely and Asher Myerson 3 AUSTRIA: Wiener Schnitzel versus Plant-based Food. The Transition of Meat-based Regional Austrian Food to Vegan Products By Elisabeth Oberzaucher, Ulrike Atzmuller-Zeilinger, and Helmut Jungwirth 4 BELGIUM: Exceptional or Common? Vegetarianism and Veganism in Belgium By Laurence Verheijen and Sara Erreygers 5 BRAZIL: Brazil and Its Vegan and Vegetarian Diets By Anthonieta Looman Mafra 6 CANADA: The Canadian Context on Vegetarian and Vegan Diets By Maryanne L. Fisher and Joanne C. Fisher 7 FINLAND: The Unselfish Vegan By Mari Niva, Annukka Vainio, and Piia Jallinoja 8 GERMANY: I Eat Honey Also-Sometimes . . .Marita's Story about Her Vegan Diet By Pamela Kerschke-Risch 9 IRELAND: Meat Avoidance Diets in Ireland: How Food Choices Influence the Way We Are Perceived by Others and the Ways in Which We Interact with Others By Maeve Henchion 10 ISRAEL: The Israeli Context on Vegetarian and Vegan Diets By Sigal Tifferet 11 ITALY: Fond of Veg-Food: Tradition, Transition,Transformation By Alessandra Micalizzi 12 THE NETHERLANDS: Vegetarianism in the Dutch Polder By Hans Dagevos 13 SOUTH AFRICA: Vegan and Vegetarian Communities in South Africa By Yandisa Ngqangashe 14 TURKEY: Do Worldviews Change through Eating Habits? Incarnation of a Turkish Vegan By Ilkay Kanik 15 UNITED KINGDOM: I Am Not Awkward, I Am Just a Vegetarian. Trials and Tribulations of a Vegetarian in the UK By Chrysostomos Apostolidis 16 UNITED STATES: Experiences as a Vegan in the United States: The Effects of Diet, Identity, and Morality on Social Relations By Daniel L. Rosenfeld CONCLUSION By Charlotte J. S. De Backer and Maryanne L. Fisher INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHORS
