Abstract
Current meat consumption trends are associated with extensive resource use, environmental degradation, and detrimental effects on animal and human health, making meat reduction a core sustainability target. The experiences of meat reducers, often conceptualised as flexitarians, have gradually attracted more academic attention. This literature has shown that in many cases meat reducers do not radically reduce their meat intake and have untangled a complex web of factors contributing to meat consumption, reduction and avoidance. This article contributes to a nuanced understanding of the experiences, approaches and challenges faced by meat reducers. The data was collected through in-depth interviews with 26 self-declared meat reducers in Norway. By framing consumption as embedded in social practices, this article highlights how broader cultural, social and material conditions structure eating and hence meat consumption. A central finding is that through processes of socialisation and habituation, performances of eating often conform to the prevailing conventions inscribed in the socio-material environment in which they are embedded. We thus question the popular depictions of individuals as efficient drivers of dietary changes and highlight the many factors involved in reproducing the ‘normalness’ of meat-intense diets, demonstrating how individual intentions, choices and habits are themselves rooted in, and circumscribed by, prevailing conventions, that is, practices.
Key messages
Projects of meat reduction spread as people conform to collectively shared ideas of meat reduction as an increasingly valued conduct.
Meat-intense standards of eating – historical and current – are infused into bodily dispositions and socio-material sites, which limit pathways for doing meat reduction.
The ambiguity in flexitarianism seem to leave instances of eating more susceptible to the stimulus of normative scripts, compared to veg(etari)anism.
A radical change towards meat-reduced diets seems unlikely without fundamental changes to the social, physical and economic structures that reproduce meat consumption as the appropriate, easy and cheapest way to eat.
Introduction
Current meat consumption trends are associated with extensive resource use, environmental degradation, and detrimental effects on animal and human health (Godfray et al, 2018), making meat reduction a core sustainability target (Parlasca and Qaim, 2022). Meat eating has made its way into public sustainability discourses and has in many ways become a form of ‘contested consumption’ (Keller and Halkier, 2014; Halkier, 2022). However, alongside rapidly increasing meat consumption levels in many emerging economies (Hansen et al, 2021), meat consumption has remained high in affluent societies (Hansen and Syse, 2021). Scholars have explained the stubbornness of meat consumption patterns in relation the ‘meat paradox’, referring to a form of cognitive dissonance where consumers seem ever more concerned about both animal welfare and sustainability while sustaining their meat intake (Loughnan and Davies, 2019). This paradox is arguably upheld by both processes of denial (Bjørkdahl and Lykke, 2023), and various rationalisation strategies concerning the necessity, normality and naturalness of meat eating (and, for some, the nice taste; see Piazza et al, 2015; Joy 2020). Still, there are strong trends towards embracing voluntary meat reduction in many countries, both in affluent societies (for example, Dagevos, 2021) and emerging economies (for example, Korsnes and Liu, 2021). Importantly, findings suggest that while meat reducers, in many cases, do eat less meat than regular meat eaters (Malek and Umberger, 2021; Verain et al, 2022), they often do not radically break with their meat habits (Dagevos, 2021; Halkier and Lund, 2023).
The experiences of meat reducers, often conceptualised as flexitarians,2 have gradually attracted more attention in the literature (Verain et al, 2015; Mylan, 2018; Dagevos, 2021; Kanerva, 2021), alongside considerable attention given to the cultures, practices and histories of veg(etari)anism in recent years (see Spencer, 2016; Twine, 2018). A rich body of research has untangled a complex web of factors that contribute to meat consumption, reduction and avoidance, including attitudes and norms (Verain et al, 2022), ideologies and discourses (Kanerva, 2021), gendered expectations (Kildal and Syse, 2017), food cultures (Volden and Wethal, 2021), social interaction and social occasions (Veen et al, 2023; Wendler, 2023), foodscapes and consumption environments (Bacon and Krpan, 2018; Hansen and Jakobsen, 2020), and the broader political economy of food (Hansen, 2018). Despite this attention, there is, as argued by Halkier and Lund (2023: 1), ‘not much consensus on the combinations of single factors into more comprehensive understandings of facilitators and barriers to meat reduction’.
Two somewhat overlapping but different holistic approaches to sustainable consumption and behaviour change have become popular in research on meat reduction. First, in studies of behavioural change, the COM-B framework has been suggested as an alternative to the dominance of purely motivational perspectives on meat in that field (Graça et al, 2019; Sijtsema et al, 2021). The framework emphasises how individual motivation (reflective and automatic processes), capabilities (knowledge and skills) and opportunities (social and material context) should be understood as ‘intertwined’ components influencing food choices (Sijtsema et al, 2021). Second, (re-)emerging from a long history of social theory and depicting shared, social conventions as the basis of action instead of individual choices (Shove et al, 2012), social practice theory (SPT) has gained popularity in studies of meat reduction and avoidance (Mylan, 2018; Twine, 2018; Kanerva, 2021; White et al, 2022; Wendler, 2023; Wendler and Halkier, 2023). While the two approaches both have their merits, and also intersect significantly (see Halkier and Lund, 2023 for discussion), they do come with quite different ontologies. Simply put, the former centres on individual choice as the foundation of action and factors in socio-material settings, while the latter depicts shared social convention as the basis of action. Influenced by the starting point of understanding individuals as participants in shared patterns of behaviour, that is, social practices (SPT) (for example, Warde, 2016; 2017), we employ a practice-theoretical framework in this article. In further emphasising the conditioning impact of specific social sites, we combine SPT with theorisation on socio-material scripting.
The theoretical apparatus outlined is employed to analyse voluntary meat reduction efforts in Norway. Historically, Norwegians have eaten less meat than other European countries, due to a large supply of fish and fish-related products. However, per capita meat consumption more than doubled between 1960 and the 2010s. After levelling out in the 2010s, national data show that meat consumption reached an all-time high in 2021 (Animalia, 2022).3 Red meat is responsible for more than half of agricultural emissions in Norway (Vatn et al, 2022), and substituting red meat with fish or plant-based sources of protein has been highlighted as a primary measure to reduce Norway’s greenhouse gas emissions (Miljødirektoratet, 2020). However, although an increasing number of consumers are apparently on board with the idea of cutting back on meat eating (Bugge and Alfnes, 2018), previous research demonstrates that Norwegian consumers continue to display a strong pro-meat culture, relatively weakly influenced by climate concerns (Vatn et al, 2022). This has been connected to consumers’ uncertainty regarding what constitutes climate or environmentally friendly food (Austgulen et al, 2018), but also a lack of motivation for changing food consumption patterns for sustainability reasons (Austgulen et al, 2018), or lack of belief in its effects (Milford and Kildal, 2019). Opposition to meat reduction interventions is understood as rooted in meat’s associations with protein, masculinity and comfort (Kildal and Syse, 2017; Milford and Kildal, 2019), whereas affordable pricing, high trust in animal welfare, good taste and product variety continue to make meat a convenient and desirable food choice for many (Ueland et al, 2022). Additionally, Norwegian consumers show little interest in meat replacements (Varela et al, 2022), which are found to support successful meat reduction in other cases (see, for example, Twine, 2018). Together, these studies bring important insights into the Norwegian context for meat consumption and reduction, but we know less about the experiences, efforts and struggles of committed meat reducers. In this article, we seek to contribute to filling this knowledge gap by studying how Norwegian consumers engage with the challenges and negotiations involved in meat reduction when navigating Norway’s meat-intensive food environments.
The article is structured as follows; we first present our theoretical framework using practice theory and expanding on the notion of scripting. We then explain the methods used for collecting and analysing data. The analysis first presents the Norwegian context for meat production, consumption and debates around meat reduction. The subsequent parts first focus on how our informants perceive of and explain their engagements in meat reduction, analysed in relation to notions of bounded creativity. We then analyse the challenges our participants experienced across material, social and bodily dimensions of practices. The article ends with a concluding discussion.
Theorising meat reduction as embedded in social practice
In consumption research, practice theory has been developed partly as a critique to models of sovereign consumers and expressive individuals, arguing that consumption is rarely a result of deliberate decision-making, but rather derived from highly routinised and habituated performance of social practices (Warde, 2017). It has proved specifically productive at providing insight into how consumption takes place as moments in the ordinary, yet resource-intensive, activities that make up the fabric of everyday life, such as eating (Warde, 2016). Common among practice theorists is to conceptualise practices as routinely made up of bodily, social and material components depicting practices as ‘enduring [socio-material] regimes of activity’ (Nicolini, 2012: 227).
Bringing a practice theoretical understanding to the domain of food rests on the idea that carrying out food-related practices requires specific ways of consuming and dealing with foodstuff. Located at the intersection of numerous integrative practices – for example, cooking, grocery shopping and social meal occasions –Warde (2013: 24) argues that eating is a particularly complex practice. Moreover, given its mundane and routinised nature, Warde (2016) notes that eating presents itself as a particularly habituated performance, instigated by signals in the extant environment triggering and guiding rehearsed bodily routines.
With a strong focus on habits, routines and infrastructure, practice-theoretical approaches to consumption have been criticised for downplaying the role of individuals as active decision-makers (for example, Welch et al, 2020). But recognising that we often ‘eat in a state of distraction’ (Warde, 2016: 102) need not exclude people’s capacity to reflect on and actively re-interpret their ways of eating. Moreover, when food consumption is publicly contested – as with meat eating – routine ways of eating might become accessible for negotiation and personal revision (Halkier, 2022). In order to capture how this re-interpretation takes place through embodied capacities unique to the individual actor but also how these capacities are limited by socio-material circumstances and horizons of intelligibility qualified by practice, Nicolini (2012) conceptualises the agency of individuals in practices as ‘bounded creativity’.
Schatzki refers to the specific contexts ‘where things exist and events happen’ as ‘social sites’ (Schatzki, 2002: 63). The idea of social sites emphasises that acts are rarely qualified by just one practice – albeit one specific practice often takes centre stage – but are the outcome of an intricate interplay between multiple practices. For instance, what a person eats for dinner could be shaped by practices such as ‘grocery shopping’ and ‘cooking’ but also by practices such as ‘parenting’, which may entail ways of putting together a meal appropriate to ensure the health of children. We build on the concept of social sites to analyse how meat reduction is enabled and complicated by the socio-material contexts in which food is acquired, prepared and eaten. In doing so, we also draw inspiration from science and technology studies and the idea of scripts. Scripts generally refer to how the material world and material artefacts in different ways mediate human action (Akrich, 1992; Latour, 1992; Verbeek, 2006). While individuals have bounded creativity in re-interpreting practices, these scripts make specific performances more likely than others. The concept of scripts has mainly been used with reference to ‘scripted materialities’, accentuating how artefacts, technologies and infrastructures encourage and enable specific action and performances (Fuentes and Fuentes, 2022). While scripted materialities may involve social aspects, we highlight these social elements through the concept of scripted social sites. These scripts take form as ‘frameworks of actions’ (Akrich, 1992), including both material cues and social expectations of appropriate, acceptable and convenient behaviour in particular sites and situations (see also Rouse, 2007; Fuentes and Fuentes, 2022).
Methods
This research makes part of the larger research project ‘MEATigation – mitigating climate change through meat’.4 The data material analysed in this article consists of in-depth household interviews, photos and food diaries with 26 purposively sampled, self-declared meat reducers across four geographical contexts in Norway. The urban areas are represented by the capital Oslo (and the greater Oslo region), and the third largest city Trondheim, the rural areas by inland Ottadalen and coastal Søre Sunnmøre. Despite targeted efforts in the sampling process, the data material is heavily weighted towards urban meat reducers (20 versus 6), which may reflect the fact that meat reduction is more widespread in urban areas, with both meat reduction being more widely accepted and meat-free alternatives more available compared to rural areas in Norway.
The participating meat reducers were interviewed between 2019 and 2021. The sample is predominantly made up of females (19 of 26), most informants can be considered highly educated, with age ranging from 22 to 76 (see further details in Table 1). Interviews were semi-structured, conducted digitally through Zoom or in person, and lasted between one and two hours. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Quotes employed in the article have been translated from Norwegian by the authors, all of whom are native speakers. Although interviews are a popular method for studying social practices (Hitchings, 2012; Halkier, 2017), they do involve a distance to actual performances. As part of the interview process, but also to bridge some of the gap between ‘sayings’ and ‘doings’, we employed two additional methods: nine of the interviewees filled out a one-week food diary, more accurately labelled as structured ‘solicited diary’ accounts; that is, accounts produced by the informant(s) on request (Bell, 1998). Informants were asked to log (1) every meal occasion, (2) every instance of cooking, and (3) every food purchase throughout seven consecutive days (one week) and provide details on the foodstuffs used. The remaining 17 interviewees participated in autophotography, where they, before the interviews, were asked to photograph 10–15 food situations. They were given considerable freedom, but were asked to include photos of breakfast, lunch and dinner situations, grocery shopping, and cooking situations, as well as pictures inside fridges and freezers. The photos and diaries were mainly used as conversation starters and as a way to approach and discuss food practices during the interviews.
Overview and background information, informants
| Name | Gender | Age | Occupation | Place of residence | Household |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sigrid | Female | 38 | Researcher | Oslo | Partner and two kids, age 6 and 3 |
| Ylva | Female | 29 | Jurist | Drammen | Husband and his two kids; age 7 and 5 |
| Aurora | Female | 35 | Jurist | Oslo | Husband and two kids, age 1 and 4 |
| Anna | Female | 26 | Master’s student | Oslo | Husband and two kids; age 3 and 4 |
| Emma | Female | 27 | Jurist | Oslo | Lives alone |
| Mikkel | Male | 22 | Bachelor’s student | Recently moved to Bergen, from the greater Oslo area | With two friends |
| Sverre | Male | 40 | Consultant in human resources | Oslo | Wife |
| Nina | Female | 76 | Retired food researcher | Oslo | Husband |
| Egil | Male | 62 | Retired economist | Oslo | Wife |
| Teodor | Male | 39 | Chief officer on a ship | Oslo | Partner |
| Rune | Male | 43 | Youth worker and actor | Ottadalen | Partner and 1 child |
| Agne | Other | 38 | Unemployed | Trondheim | Partner |
| Tina | Female | 30 | Works in the publishing industry | Oslo | Partner |
| Elisa | Female | 37 | Editor | Oslo | Husband and two kids; age 3 and 5 |
| Edel | Female | 68 | Retired teacher | Ottadalen | Partner |
| Maiken | Female | 52 | Researcher | Ottadalen | Partner |
| Sylvi | Female | 40 | Teacher | Sunnmøre | Partner and three kids; 10, 12, 15 |
| Målfrid | Female | 51 | Researcher | Trondheim | Lives alone |
| Yvonne | Female | 33 | Key account manager | Trondheim | Lives alone |
| Hedvig | Female | 58 | Working in sales | Oslo | Partner and one child; age 17 |
| Arnstein | Male | 30 | Social worker and musician | Oslo | Partner |
| Hulda | Female | 61 | Psychologist | Oslo | Partner |
| Vigdis | Female | 57 | Teacher | Sunnmøre | Partner, and sometimes with grown-up children |
| Elida | Female | 69 | Retried teacher | Sunnmøre | Partner |
| Sunniva | Female | 53 | Self-employed, public relations | Trondheim | Partner and one child; age 13 |
| Gry | Female | 34 | Civil engineer | Trondheim | Partner and two kids; age 1 and 3 |
The following discussion will analyse the interviewees’ experiences with meat reduction through a practice-theoretical lens. We first discuss our participants’ motivations, knowledge of and approaches to meat reduction, before focusing attention to how scripted social sites and habituated bodies co-shape the ways in which meat reduction is performed in everyday life.
Performing meat reduction in a meat-intensive society
In Norway, meat was considered expensive, consumed sparsely and saved for special occasions until the 1970s. As both production and purchasing power increased, meat became more available and cheaper, contributing to a steep increase in consumption levels (Bugge, 2019; Ueland et al, 2022), with meat from pork and poultry representing the largest market increase over the last decades (Animalia, 2022). Such developments were paralleled by changes in the labour market: with more women entering the labour market and the average available cooking time decreasing, demand for products requiring minimal preparation increased. Alongside this, meat industry actors introduced and promoted more convenient meat products through cookbooks, food magazines and commercials, particularly since the 1980s (Bjørkdahl and Lykke, 2023). Today, convenient processed meat products such as sausages or minced meat make up a significant part of the total meat consumed in Norway (Ueland et al, 2022). Moreover, prices on meat have increased at a much slower pace than other food categories (Mittenzwei et al, 2017), and meat is far more frequently advertised than, for example, fruit and vegetables (Rosenberg and Vittersø, 2014). Additionally, technological developments in processing, packaging and storage have contributed to distancing the ‘ingredient meat’ from its animal origin, arguably making it easier for consumers to continue their high meat intake without reflecting considerably on the role of animals (Bjørkdahl and Lykke, 2023). Political priorities have helped promote meat consumption through agricultural regulations and substantial subsidies to meat producers, resulting in cheaper meat on the market (Vittersø and Kjærnes, 2015).
Meat consumption has become a controversial topic in the Norwegian public debate, but there is little political consensus on what environmentally friendly meat consumption entails (Austgulen et al, 2018). Rather, the topic of meat appears caught in the crossfire between different agricultural policy considerations, sparking polemic debates across class and rural–urban divides. For instance, agricultural organisations tend to portray Norwegian meat production as ‘green’ compared to more industrialised meat production abroad, thus arguing for increased meat production in Norway (Austgulen et al, 2018). Although debated (see, for instance, Mittenzwei et al, 2017), reduction in meat consumption is often feared to have devastating effects on activity in the Norwegian countryside, lower food sovereignty, and create even more unfavourable conditions for Norwegian farmers (Hidle, 2022). Consequently, there have been few attempts to regulate or change either Norwegian production or consumption of meat (Kildal and Syse, 2017; Austgulen et al, 2018), largely leaving the responsibility for defining sustainable meat consumption to the consumer (Austgulen et al, 2018). It is within this context our informants seek to carve out space for meat reduction efforts, which we turn to next.
Recruited to meat reduction
‘I feel like it’s a very established point of view among my friends, to eat less meat; it’s more or less a mainstream concept. It’s not necessarily a radical change, but rather an ideal to strive for. To think we shall – and want to – cook more meatless dinners at home. It is something that people are doing and talking about.’ (Sigrid, 39, Oslo)
Informants seemingly noticed clues and cues in their socio-material environment that increasingly convey meat-reduced eating as something to strive for. For instance, they mentioned increased emphasis on the burdens of meat eating in media accounts, pro-vegan documentaries, increased availability of veg(etari)an eateries or a more elusive sense of a pro-meat-reducing zeitgeist – ‘the word on the street’ (Nina, 76, Oslo). Hence, our informants’ meat-reduction projects can be understood as participation in a ‘collective venture’, rather than primarily being about personal deliberation and self-determination (Warde, 2016: 145). Moreover, as illustrated in the following, the organisation of practice denotes and guides the specific forms that projects of meat reduction may take.
Doing meat reduction as bounded creativity
‘Typically, you would use a pack of minced meat, or two, if there are several people. Just split it in half and add something else. It feels very satisfying, because then I know that this “piece of meat” is enough for two dinners, and not one. Then you have halved your meat consumption.’ (Aurora, 35, Oslo)
Second, informants tried to avoid particular types of meat. This was either connected to health issues, for example, trying to avoid processed meat, or sustainability concerns, for example, avoiding meats with larger environmental footprints such as cattle. In one of the rural field sites, hunting emerged as an alternative meat practice: “We try to buy locally, or to buy game meat. … So I try to avoid ‘industrial food’. Or industrial meat, that is” (Maiken, 52, Ottadalen).
This typology is not mutually exclusive, as people would combine approaches, even in the same meal. For instance, Gry (34, Trondheim) reduced the amount of minced meat in tacos by substituting some of the meat with beans, thus both replacing meat and engaging in frugal use of meat.
Our informants’ approach to meat reduction mainly focused on the meal occasion of dinner. Moreover, performances of meat reduction occurred within familiar patterns of eating, with typically minor adjustments rather than radical change. Ways of reducing meat were often tacitly structured by understandings of proper eating, and the available bodily procedures people carried in terms of dish-repertoire or cooking skills. Hence, for some participants, using so-called meat substitutes represented a convenient way to recraft dishes by relying on their competencies and established dish repertoires. However, this was not a particularly popular approach. Regarded as highly processed food, the use of meat substitutes conflicted with shared understandings of ‘proper eating’, which emphasise healthy and clean eating, that is, whole foods instead of processed (see also Collier et al, 2021). Rather, substituting meat with fish, legumes or vegetables and reducing the amount of meat within a well-known recipe; or increasing the preparation of already familiar vegetarian or fish-based dishes, were the most popular approaches because they aligned with understandings of proper and healthy eating.
Furthermore, participants re-interpreted eating while embedded and bounded by particular scripted social sites, which qualified different ways of doing meat reduction as more or less doable, attractive and convenient. Successful meat avoidance was often described as enabled by the socio-material environment in which eating was implemented. Participants retold stories of successful meat avoidance empowered by pro-vegetarian colleagues and cafeteria menus at work; encouraged by tasty vegetarian restaurant menus or mandated by the visit of a vegetarian daughter or friend. Comparing concerted meat-reduction efforts across different household constellations illustrate the effects of more and less powerful scripting across social sites, resulting in variable outcomes in terms of meat reduction. Being single and/or living alone enabled greater temporal and social freedom to experiment and implement new ways of eating compared to living in multi-person households. While the single informants seemed more inclined to reduce meat eating at home, the opposite holds true for participants in more complex household constellations, particularly those with kids. Following Nicolini (2012), we suggest that the informants’ meat-reduction projects can be understood as performances of ‘bounded creativity’, where their agency is shaped and constricted by embodied procedures and understandings, and the context in which these dispositions are carried out. In the following section, we analyse in detail how these factors together complicate meat-reduction efforts.
Complicating meat reduction
In our informants’ accounts, certain moments of consumption came across as elucidating examples of how meat reduction was complicated by co-constitutive material, social and bodily elements. In the following, we zoom in on how specific food environments, social meal occasions and bodily dispositions co-shape eating practices.
Meat-inducive food environments
‘He had been to American Grill & Bar, and he said that we have to go there together and try it. I say “Sure, but do they have anything vegetarian there?” [and my dad replied] “They probably have salad or something similar”. It is a meat restaurant though, so you just don’t ask for a vegetarian dish there. … These are restaurants that advertise meaty dishes. Meat is, sort of, their thing.’
As suggested in this excerpt, when meat eating is signalled as appropriate, vegetarian eating might be disregarded as a sensible enactment despite availability. Our interview with Emma (27, Oslo), adds to this observation and further accentuates the influence of socio-material scripts. Despite previously working in an environmental organisation where meat eating was ‘frowned upon’, she had recently adapted to meat-intense lunches at her new workplace, despite the availability of vegetarian alternatives: “[My colleagues] appreciate cold meats, so its vastly available … when I see them prepare a sandwich with meat, it’s easy to just imitate that.”
‘If I buy meat, it is usually as take-away [referring to eating on-the-go], not dinner but for lunch or a snack. For me that’s the most difficult situation to get hold of something meat-free. When I stop by 7-Eleven for a baguette, or I’m at an airport, I feel that all options include meat.’ (Ylva, 29, Drammen)
Supermarkets can also be considered meat-inducive, given their supply and promotion of cheap and convenient meat products. For instance, Tina (30, Oslo) explained: “I have a tendency to buy meat on sale. I like sales. … If it is on sale, I will buy it.” Or as summarised by Mikkel (22, Bergen), “eating meat is so easy, that’s how it works in today’s society. I mean, there is meat on sale all the time. Two packages of minced meat for 20 kroner (approximately 1.7 Euro), it’s easy to just go for that”. These accounts illustrate how the material environment may script meat eating as the appropriate, acceptable and convenient behaviour, consequently nudging informants towards meat eating. However, in many contexts, the material environment was only part of the equation, with scripts further strengthened by social expectations or competing social goals, which we elaborate in the following.
Social meal occasions
‘[When having guests] we often serve something locally made, and some game meat, maybe a stew, often roasted lamb shank, ... we have had a lot of that for, Christmas and Easter, many different sorts of celebratory meals … it is often automatically meat in those occasions, a habit I guess.’ (Rune, 43, Ottadalen)
‘[T]here was one guest that didn’t drink milk … and then there was a mother who did not eat meat. And then, there are always adults and children at birthday parties, so I made vegan pizza rolls, cut up lots of vegetables. We also had hotdogs, because that’s what the kids want and that’s what’s always served at birthday parties … practically speaking, I feel like I have very little choice.’ (Anna, 26, Oslo)
As Anna’s excerpt illustrates, many meal occasions come with strong expectations, where the logic behind the different occasions seemed to influence the set-up and content of the meal significantly, creating powerful scripts that become difficult to challenge in practice.
Concerning meat reduction when being a guest and served food, the informants revealed remarkably similar sayings and doings. Only few would ask family or friends to cater for their wish to eat vegetarian when served food away from home, but rather eat what was served. When informants were asked what they would do if served meat as guests, most answers aligned with Aurora’s (35, Oslo) response: “[W]hat else are you going to eat? … It would be completely inappropriate to ask someone to cook up something different, or to bring something with you.” Hence, the success of meat reduction in instances of hosting and guesting seemed largely dependent on the dispositions and expectations of others.
Household negotiations and synchronisations
‘I think it’s an easy way to get a lot [of nutrients] at once. I don’t know enough about nutrition to feel confident that I … alone would manage to put together a balanced diet for the children … would the children, who are developing, get everything they need if they did not eat any meat – I just don’t know enough to dare to do it.’
Convenience also plays a central part in such negotiations. Elisa (37, Oslo) emphasised a combination of convenience and getting her kids to eat, when explaining why they would usually bring hotdogs when grilling outdoors or with other people: “It’s quite simply because the kids eat it, without even thinking. And it’s easily accessible, everywhere, wherever you are.”
‘We do talk about [meat reduction]. He is also determined to decrease his meat consumption, but practises it to a lesser extent than I do. … He sometimes cooks up … lasagne and pasta [with meat], and in those cases, I don’t feel that I can comment on it. I may mention it when we talk more generally about [meat], but not when he cooks dinner for me when I arrive home [from work]. That would make me look very ungrateful.’
For Sigrid, negotiating meat reduction with her partner at a more general level seemed appropriate, but commenting on particular behaviours was considered socially unacceptable. This touches on some essential understandings that several informants shared, not wanting to tell their partner what to do and, hence, join them in their more meat-intense ways. The influence of a partner’s dispositions were perhaps most evident in instances where former vegetarians had taken on flexitarian diets to accommodate their partner: “[E]arly in our relationship … I really wanted him to consider vegetarianism, in my mind I wasn’t willing to settle with someone who wasn’t vegetarian … I felt quite strongly about it back then … [now] we make compromises, he will only buy ethically produced meat” (Yvonne, 33, Trondheim).
In this section, we have discussed how family dynamics and accountabilities may push people towards cooking and eating meat, despite this contradicting their motivations to eat less meat. Interestingly, the hypothetical solution of cooking both meat and non-meat dishes for the same meal was rejected for practical reasons – i.e. more time-consuming and less convenient – and on social grounds. In practice theoretical terms, doing meat reduction by means of cooking several dishes can be interpreted as going against the ‘normative accountability’ (Rouse, 2007) of family dining – for example, the social significance of sharing (the same meal) and attached associations of commonsality and feelings of harmony – and thus tacitly or explicitly rejected. Consequently, the informants’ enactments of eating at home were largely synchronised with that of the broader household.
Habituated eating: meat-accustomed bodies
Our informants carried a set of tacit understandings related to proper eating and cooking that further complicated meat reduction, for instance reflections around meat as essential, or at least beneficial, for health and vigour. This partly echoes findings from psychological research on the meat paradox, where meat consumption is commonly justified in relation to it being necessary for human health (see, for instance, Joy, 2020). It was further coupled with worries about not having the necessary competence to stay healthy on a diet low in meat. As Mikkel (22, Bergen) told us, “I don’t have sufficient knowledge about what I should eat to get all the right nutrients. … I sometimes eat liver-pate for breakfast to ensure that I consume iron.” As illustrated previously, this was also evident in the context of caring for children. The uncertainty associated with removing meat from kids’ diets, and the self-described lack of competence in serving a full-fledged and appropriate non-meat diet, inhibited them from doing so. Importantly, this point illustrates how social roles and bodily competencies conjointly complicate meat reduction.
Furthermore, many informants were drawn to meat because it fulfilled bodily, sensual cravings such as a corporeal desire for the feeling of satiety or fullness. Moreover, many informants recalled the satisfying taste of meat as a justification for continuing to eat meat, a taste that non-meat alternatives could not match (see also Piazza et al, 2015). Special occasions, specific material contexts or temporal prompts cued such cravings: “[I]f I eat a late meal, I often feel like eating some meat … something salty, cured ham. It is this salty taste that seems difficult to replace … the specific salty taste. So, in the evenings I may eat some cold meats” (Sigrid, 38, Oslo). Many informants also tied positive emotions to eating a specific meaty dish, e.g. a Christmas dinner. The nostalgia, craving and taste of meat often overpowered the ‘want’ to reduce meat consumption.
Eating in a state of distraction
‘It runs on automaticity, I do not actively think about it, but we have, say, ten dishes that we alternate between, of which three are meaty dishes; meatballs, pizza and spaghetti bolognese … oh, and sausages … so four. It’s not like we invent the wheel every week, it is what it is.’ (Aurora, 35, Oslo)
This suggests that people routinely buy and prepare the same meals. Many of these routinised ways of eating were meat-dependent and breaking away from them proved challenging. It seems to make sense for the informants to reproduce familiar and socially verified ways of cooking because they ensure ‘mundane effectiveness’ (Warde, 2016: 126), saving mental capacity and time. Repeating (meaty) meals were of particular significance for parents – whose main concern was to feed their children – in safeguarding flow and ease in everyday life. However, the findings also suggest less deliberate enactments of meat eating. This was perhaps most evident in the food diary method. Taking the time to reflect on and track their eating through diary entries, informants sometimes voiced surprise over the high amount of meat they consumed. Furthermore, there were several inconsistencies when comparing diary entries with interview transcripts. For instance, Egil (62, Oslo) explained having stopped eating hotdogs ‘on-the-go’, yet he did so twice the week he kept a food diary. Moreover, while preoccupied with reducing the use of processed meat, Sigrid’s (38, Oslo) diary revealed that she only consumed processed meats in the course of a week. Such inconsistencies may simply demonstrate a recollection bias or twisting of truth, that is, methodological issues, but may also imply that some meat consumption goes under the radar of conscious thought. The findings suggest that meat eating, despite understood as problematic, might still go unchecked.
Concluding discussion
In this article we have analysed how self-designated meat reducers perform meat reduction in everyday life and how scripted social sites and bodily dispositions may structure this performance by together often ‘multidimensionally qualify[ing]’ (Schatzki, 2002: 230) meat eating as both normal and necessary (Joy, 2020). Following the observation that the normalisation of meat eating is inscribed in the socio-material environment and dispositioned bodies, the process of intentionally changing meaty routines is seemingly faced with a double challenge: on the one hand, fighting personal dispositions, not easily amendable by conscious alteration, and on the other, going against a socio-material environment that persistently encourages meat eating. To make matters more complicated, the intricate, recursive relationship between body and environment that theories of practice postulate, highlights the tacit reproduction of normality continuously pushing people towards normative ways of doing. More precisely, meat-accustomed bodies and meat-inducive environments reproduce each other, keeping performances of meat eating ‘in check’.
One of the more explicit findings was the significance people placed on not challenging other people’s eating performances. Such negotiations arose inside households, but were most evident when people were either hosts or guests, concerned with mounting performances appropriate with the ‘normative accountability’ (Rouse, 2007) of practice across a diverse set of social sites (see also discussion in Wendler, 2023). At home, the informants conformed to the normative accountability of family dining, the role of ‘parenting’ and/or being partner. When taking the role as host, they would tailor servings to please guests. The informants seemed preoccupied with doing the expected to avoid any risk of social reproach that comes with not aligning action with ‘shared understandings of normality’ (Evans et al, 2012: 116), although this often presented itself as a tacit and intuitive capacity. Informants seemingly knew what meal servings were appropriate to specific social sites and their intuition exhibited detailed sensibility to context. In line with theories of practice, this innate capacity reflects the habituation of normative ways of doing. Indeed, many performances of eating present themselves as the mindless and tacit re-enactment of normative scripts. Notably, despite intending to eat less meat, informants retold stories of habituating to meat-inducive food environments. The normalisation of non-meat and meat eating existed side-by-side in our informants’ everyday life, who tacitly adapted their performance accordingly without much cognitive distress or ambivalence. Their doings fit with the practice theoretical notion of behaviour as driven by ‘passive monitoring’ rather than ‘calculated acts’ (Warde, 2016: 130) where behaviour often routinely and tacitly follows normative scripts as instigated by environmental cues.
A practice theoretical approach acknowledges people’s capacity to reflect on and revise their doings when conditions that enclosed previously appropriate performances change (Warde, 2016: 142–6). Indeed, the informants reviewed their past performances of eating and planned to change them as meat consumption is increasingly problematised and veg(etari)an eating increasingly valued. However, carrying ‘flexitarian’ dispositions, meat consumption infrequently seemed to represent a strong enough discrepancy to produce a rupture or ‘break’ in the stream of conduct. Rather, mundane enactments of meat eating often followed without much introspection. Indeed, it seems that, for our informants, the ‘flex’ in flexitarian allowed for the performances of eating to effortlessly and effectively follow the normative scripting of both non-meat and meaty practices. Perhaps, then, the ambiguity in ‘flex’ leaves instances of eating even more susceptible to the stimulus of normative scripts, compared to veg(etari)ans. Given that our study explicitly focuses on meat reducers, it would be interesting for future research to explore how veg(etari)ans experience and negotiate the scripting of different social sites, and further understand the differences between successfully managing a veg(etari)an diet and struggling with maintaining a meat reduced diet. Another interesting avenue for future studies would be to investigate the role of provisioning actors in developing and reproducing such scripts.
The findings indicate that the dynamics facilitating and complicating meat reduction share similar origins. Our informants struggle to avoid meat when the social site scripts meat eating as appropriate, whereas pro-vegetarian sites effectively enable meat avoidance. This attributes a dual significance to the conventions ingrained in the socio-material environment. First, they help recruit individuals to engage in meat reduction; second, they play a crucial role in shaping the success of this endeavour. Whether bodily dispositions and socio-material scripting restrict or enable non-meat eating depends largely on present and past conventions. Indeed, norms are internalised and carried by individual bodies and scripted into socio-material environments and systems of provision, which they once helped shape. This highlights processes of normalisation and standardisation – how collective conventions are established, reproduced and sustained (Shove, 2003). By emphasising the significance of conventions, these findings contribute important insight into what enable and complicate concerted efforts of dietary change, hence shedding light on why meat reducers may struggle to break radically with their meat habits (Dagevos, 2021; Halkier and Lund, 2023). More research is needed to unveil the processes that lead to different degrees of strong and weak flexitarianism (Dagevos, 2021; Kanerva, 2021).
From a practice theoretical perspective, conventions cannot be separated from individuals (Shove 2010: 1279), treated as mere context or ‘external constraints on consumer choice’ (Austgulen 2014: 49). Instead, conventions are largely embodied and implicitly reproduced by individual carriers of practice. Consequently, eating depend on dimensions well beyond personal choice. Hence, efforts to change social norms and conventions appear crucial to facilitate a broader shift towards less meat-intensive diets (Macdiarmid, Douglas, and Campbell 2016), to enable a reinterpretation of practice so that new habituations may form (Stoll-Kleemann and Schmidt, 2017). While our findings are largely in line with results from other studies accentuating the need to facilitate the right capabilities and opportunities for flexitarian consumer choices (Sijtsema et al, 2021), we question the depictions of individuals as efficient drivers of this change. By highlighting the many factors involved in reproducing the ‘normalness’ of meat-intense diets, we demonstrate how individual intentions, choices and habits are themselves rooted in, and circumscribed by, prevailing conventions, that is, practices. As Isenhour (2010) points out, surely, consumers cannot be regarded as the primary agents ensuring sustainability if there are obstacles even the more committed fail to overcome.
Notes
Corresponding author.
In this article, we use meat reducers and flexitarians interchangeably, referring to people who intend and attempt to reduce their consumption of meat. Thus, we do not distinguishing between strong and weaker forms of meat reduction/flexitarianism (see Dagevos, 2021; Kanerva, 2021 for discussions).
According to international comparative data, at 67.24kg per capita, Norwegians today on average still eat considerably less meat than the European average of 75.51kg, but far more than the global average of 42.76kg (2020 food supply numbers, FAO, 2023).
The research was carried out as part of work package two, Eating meat, in the research project MEATigation – mitigating climate change through meat. For more information, see https://meatigation.no/. Parts of this research build on and have been adapted from Sundet (2021).
Funding
This research is part of the research project MEATigation and the research centre Include, both funded by the Research Council of Norway (no. 303698 and no. 295704).
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank participants at the ESA RN5 – Midterm Meeting of the Research Network of Sociology of Consumption, September 2022, for insightful comments and suggestions, as well as contributory discussions in Include – a research centre for socially inclusive energy transitions. We also want to express our gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments contributed to significantly strengthening the manuscript.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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