28 SCIENCE NEWS | May 7, 2022 & May 21, 2022CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT (ALL VIA GETTY IMAGES): KCLINE/E+; SAVANY/ISTOCK;
BERNJUER/ISTOCK; RONDAKIMBROW/ISTOCK; YULIIA KORZHAN/ISTOCK; WESTEND61; YALCINSONAT1/ISTOCK; JENA ARDELL/MOMENT; PIDJOE/ISTOCK; DIANAZH/ISTOCKTHE FUTURE OF FOODW
hen my friend Julie Babulski was a
freshman in high school in the mid-
1990s, she decided to stop eating
meat. “I loved animals. I couldn’t
see them suffering,” Babulski says. “The fact that
it pissed off my mom was an added, happy bonus.”
For her meat-loving family of Polish immigrants,
meals frequently featured kielbasa or bacon,
Babulski says. Even the sauerkraut had meat. With
such limited food options at home, teenage Babulski
initially subsisted on starches and salads. Her mom,
she says, thought she “was going to straight up die.”
Babulski, now a biologist at Monroe
Community College in Rochester, N.Y., eventuallylearned to eat a more balanced vegetarian diet,
including beans, whole grains and the occasional
neon orange veggie dog. But, Babulski remembers,
her mom still wished she’d give up the madness.
Mom was probably reacting to the fact that eat-
ing is a social activity, uniting family, friends and
even strangers. Her daughter could no longer enjoy
the turkey at Thanksgiving, the traditional Polish
meal of fish on Christmas Eve or even the family’s
“lazy pierogies” — dumplings filled with noodles,
mushrooms and bits of bacon.
On a societal level, the decision by Babulski and
others to go vegetarian can feel threatening to
those who view eating animals as quintessentially
American. Eating meat is the norm in the United
States, says social psychologist Gregg Sparkman
of Princeton University. “It’s literally the center of
that Norman Rockwell painting.”
Yet Rockwell’s vision of meat as the star of
the American meal has big drawbacks. BesidesHow to get people to
want to be part of
the low-meat future
By Sujata Gupta