Understanding the reasons for and barriers to becoming vegetarian in prospective vegetarians and vegans
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Vegetarian and vegan diets reduce animal suffering and are good for the environment. When well-planned, they are healthful and nutritionally adequate for all stages of the life cycle, and may be used to prevent and treat diseases that cause significant morbidity and mortality in Canada. Interest in vegetarian diets is prevalent, but little research has been conducted to understand what prevents interested individuals from making this lifestyle change.The purpose of my research is to provide a rich, detailed description of the lived experience of considering vegetarianism. I hope to shed light on the contemplation process, specifically, the reasons for and barriers to becoming vegetarian. This research is the first to explore the perspectives of prospective vegetarians—people who are not vegetarian, but are in the midst of considering it. Interpretive phenomenology is a qualitative research approach that endeavours to understand the ways in which people make sense of their experiences. Phenomenology was used because the topic is exploratory in nature, and rich, in-depth accounts of the phenomenon of transitioning to vegetarianism were sought. Findings revealed that many prospective vegetarians have a multitude of reasons for considering vegetarianism. Their motives are often part of a larger worldview that embodies philosophical and ideological commitments to the wellbeing of other people, other animals, and the broader environment. The barriers faced by those seeking to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle are numerous and decidedly interconnected. Becoming vegetarian requires the attainment of knowledge, skills, and abilities that differ from those beneficial to being non-vegetarian. Changing deeply-ingrained habits and patterns is difficult in its own right, and becoming vegetarian entails these challenges. Yet it further involves resisting social norms and becoming part of a minority group that is not always valued or understood. At its core, becoming vegetarian is challenging because normative societal eating patterns are dominated by animal products.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".