How Vegans Navigate Social Situations

0:00We're here because your heightened awareness deserves heightened entertainment. The last show with David Cooper. If you have made the lifestyle decision to go vegan, that's all fine and well. But now you've got to deal with everyone around you who continues to eat meat. And that can be tough. Turns out the hardest part of veganism is not giving up eggs and cheese. It's navigating the social mind field around the dinner table with friends. I'm here with Aya Avalenian who is a marketing professor at HEC Montreal. To discuss this, she's done research in this area. Aya, welcome to the show. Thanks David for the invitation. It's great to be here. So veganism, it sounds simple. You just change your diet. But when you go to do that, a lot of shifts can happen with like your social interactions. Can't they? That's absolutely true. So like vegan, if you ask a vegan about what veganism is, it's not just diet. So it's a lifestyle in general, right? But when I started my research, the most of the things that people wanted to discuss

1:02in terms of like the challenges that they're facing in their lives was not really just the food. Is what happens around the food? Because kind of like if you decide not to refer, that's like a press of decision, right? Like nobody's involved with it. It's your own decision where you shop, how you shop for it. It's like you're not imposing anything on anybody. But most of my interviews, the things that they felt like most compelling that appeared as the most important thing that they wanted to talk about is how hard their social life has been ever since they decided to become vegan to the fact that a lot of them actually stopped at points in times just because of the social life was so hard. They had so many problems going in, especially with immediate family members, like their parents or like their partner, like colleagues at work. So a lot of them with the social pressure decided to like stop being vegans for a period of time. Some of them came back to veganism. Some of them became vegetarians. Other like they're just keeping it for the future. Like I know I want to become vegan one day. So yeah, that's the, that's the biggest challenge. And it's completely understandable.

2:02And you've got to have like social skills that get developed to navigate all that. Like in my family food is big around the holidays. If I go home and I don't eat my mom's brisket, she's going to get annoyed. And that's just one little example, but a dinner party with friends where your friends cooking a meal, Thanksgiving, Christmas, all these parties and social events. You've now got to like, you know, mention your dietary requirements, which can annoy people, even though it shouldn't, it can. Navigating that. What are some of the tricky things that people who go vegan say happen? So let's before how they navigate it, let's just see what they faced, right? So like a lot of the things that they faced probably first was the ununderstanding of people around them. It's not the misunderstanding. It's their inability to understand how they changed, why they changed everything, right? Because when you say your mom's brisket, right? Your mom has been doing that brisket for years. When my mom found out my ex-wife was vegetarian, she's like, oh, so you can eat fish, right? And I'm like, no mom, like you can, or oh, you can eat this thing that has like an animal like chicken stock.

3:05There's no chicken in it. It's just chicken soup. It's just the broth and it's that lack of understanding. So that's one thing, right? So that's the very first thing that they encounter most of the time, right? Like they're unable to understand what do you mean by being vegan. You're not going to eat my turkey. But it's time the last three days prepping that turkey, right? So that's the first shock, right? The second shock is like, why are you doing that, right? And the majority of vegans are doing this for the sake of the animals, right? Because they want to be better in terms of like relationship with them, so on and so forth. So the other thing is like, people felt some of like a threat to them as if like vegans are attacking them morally. That they're becoming more ethically superior. That's, oh, are you judging me because I'm eating like the animal, but like you're, you've been eating animals or your life and this becomes this backlash on discussions. So like that kind of like the beginning of why the vegans wanted or had to develop strategies to navigate that, right? So the very first thing that they would attempt to do on a lot of vegans, like a lot of my interviews would say that they would do that as an anticipation because they knew that it's going to happen

4:06was try to go up armed with facts, right? So like why do we come vegan? Because like we kill this many animals because the response was for this amount of carbon dioxide. So like they become like some sort of armed with the, like the things that they're like statistics and proof. So that like when you throw a question at them, it's just not my personal opinion. It's like research is saying this to find like some sort of like a backbone to go back to, right? Or other than just, oh, it's just my personal opinion, right? It's just like one of the very first things that they do, right? Because they are also trying, they haven't faced like violence or like symbolic violence from the non-vegans yet, right? It's just like their inability to understand. So they're just trying to educate them a little bit. It's funny, like let's suppose I'm atheist and I have dinner with my deeply Catholic friend. We're just not going to talk about religion even though we have these strongly held beliefs that are incompatible. But it feels like when someone says they're vegan, everyone wants to talk about it. They somehow feel attacked in a way that other topics don't. And it kind of sucks for vegans that that happens,

5:07even if they just want to keep their reasons private. That's very true. That's, I'm totally, I'm totally on board with that. The other thing as well is because the majority that people we talk to were non-vegans, right? So they were raised on the wars then they came into existing circles, like they are their current family. And all of a sudden you decided, oh, I decided to be this, right? I decided to become vegan. So then the questioning appears, right? So your example is a little bit different because you're two friends who got to know each other, each with their own beliefs and then came together and each of you respecting the differences, right? It's different than, oh, I'm an atheist. I decided to embrace a certain religion and now you're declaring to your friend who has also been an atheist or have also been following another religion that's changed, right? Then the justification kind of follows. Interesting. Okay, so that explains why this happens. So, okay, so having to explain your choices, this is a new social thing. Are there any other new things that come up in social situations for vegans that they got to navigate? So aside from that, that there are other strategies

6:07that they try to do to solve the problems, right? So there's something that we call decoupling, which they try to do, like they're gathering away from the food. So they eat before they go, right? So that when they are on the dinner table, like the mom doesn't have to prep something different, right? You don't have to really ask whether the salad has cheese in it, like you don't have to navigate that, right? Or that the soup has broth or whatever. You're just, you're full. You're just there for the social life, right? There are people who would like bring a dish that they prepped and like they have to make this fascinating so that everybody would understand a little bit that vegan food is actually nutritious. It's healthy, it's nice, it's delicious, it's everything. And we can co-exist in the same place, right? It's like you with your own dish, me with mine, sort of thing. And these are like the more on, I wanna preserve the relationship, right? Like you're important to me, you're my mom, you're my husband, you're whatever. Like you're important, so I'm gonna keep you. What about withdrawing from social situations? Like I can imagine those are kind of pro social, I don't know if I'm using that phrase, right?

7:08But I imagine some vegans end up not going to the dinner party at the friends house. And actually, there are some vegans who would what we call it a paper divest, which is like cut off the family members that they're causing them problems, they cut off their parents, they cut off their partners, they wouldn't go to the mother's house if a certain uncle was there because he always picks up on them. So it's, it becomes kind of lonely too, right? So it's like you're forced to make a choice between the people that you used to love for a period of time and now that you have to like kind of get rid either of doing things that you like with them and actually being the same space, there are people who are actually, there are others who are like, okay, I'm gonna meet my family members with away from food. So like they search for other activities. So food is no longer shared, I eat by myself, but I go out with them to the cinema or I go out with them to play bowling, whatever, right? So that's another thing that they try to do is like, and there's like a tie that I know within vegan communities is not really regarded as vegan, which we call chameleoning, which is kind of like mimicking whatever the approach is.

8:08So like if you are in a vegan circle, you eat vegan because or if you're alone, you eat vegan because it's just the way that you do. But if you are in the non-vegan circle, you'd eat the least problematic item on the dinner, but you would not ask the host to do something for you. But then that can go against the moral choice you've made. That was kind of like how I was with my ex-wife. Like we were vegetarian at home, and then when we went out, I would just do whatever. Exactly. So that, but within the vegan community, because like so far we've been discussing the problems within the omniverse world, right? But we have not been discussing the problems within the vegan world because they also have problems there. And like if you are chameleoning, you do have a problem with other vegans or like more strikes or like divest from relationships because like it's not the right way to live your life. Like these people do not respect animals, they don't respect the planet. So you have to kind of like convince them to be otherwise. Right? So the fact that you're mimicking their behavior gets you backlash within the vegan community too. Could these dynamics play with things like electric cars or sustainable living or even like, I don't know, your family has these really strong political beliefs

9:09and you've all of a sudden changed yours. Can these dynamics play out in other areas? 100%. That's what we actually are trying to discuss at the end of the paper is that the paper applies not only on vegans, but like on anybody who decided to take a moral stand that is different from the way they were, like they've been brought up their entire lives. Aya, Abel onion is a marketing professor at HEC Montreal. Aya, I've enjoyed the chat. Thanks for sharing your research with me. And thank you David for the invitation. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd, or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in. With a full lineup of non-alcoholic beer styles, you can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stuck the fridge for tip off with a variety of non-alcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online at athleticbrewing.com. Near beer, fit for all times.