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In this talk, Joy analyzes the psychology of eating animals. She states that the perception of meat is largely, if not entirely, shaped by our culture and how we learn to decide between species classified as edible and inedible.

Quote from the video:

In meat eating cultures around the world, out of over seven million animal species, people tend to only classify a handful edible, all the rest are inedible and disgusting. This leads to the question: why are we not disgusted by the select species we have learned as to be edible? And why don’t we ever ask why?

Why I recommend this video

This video reinforced my decision to live vegan. It explains in a very understandable way that eating meat (and only a certain type of meat) is rooted deeply in our culture and because of this, people can mentally differentiate between “edible” and “non edible” animals, meaning that they have pity and sympathy with some species while they do not (or much less) with others. I recommend this video to everyone; it is one of the best pro-vegan videos I have seen so far.

About the speaker

Melanie Joy (born 1966), Ph.D., Ed.M., is an American social psychologist and vegan activist, primarily notable for promulgating the term carnism. She is a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, as well as the president of Beyond Carnism, also known as Carnism Awareness & Action Network (CAAN), a non-profit advocacy group which she founded in 2010. She has published two books, Strategic Action for Animals and Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (Source: Wikipedia).

Website: www.carnism.org