Humans have long wrestled with their conscience about killing and eating animals. The “meat paradox” (the conflict between people’s preference for meat and their concern for animals) may have inspired cave paintings from 37,000 years ago. Since then, many leading thinkers have eschewed meat, including Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci, Mary Shelley and Mahatma Gandhi.
Today, half of US adults and three-quarters of UK adults oppose the factory farming that produces almost all of their meat, yet only about one in ten follow a meat-free diet.
Plant-based diets are increasingly tasty and cheap in many countries. Adopting them would spare the lives of over 80 billion animals a year and cause 75% less environmental damage than meaty diets.
