Translator: Natalia Batchenkova Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
So, I would like to begin by asking you all a question.
How many of you here are vegetarians or vegans?
Can you please raise your hands?
Alright, yea, quite a few, alright. I won't be trying to count.
Now I have a pathway question.
How many of you -
vegetarian and vegans, that's to you -
how many of you have eaten meat within the last 24 hours?
Okay, but not meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans only.
How many vegetarians and vegans have eaten meat within the last 24 hours?
None? Well, that is actually quite surprising
because surveys tend to find something else.
One such study done in the United States has found
that 60% of vegetarians and vegans
have actually eaten meat within the last 24 hours.
And a similar thing has been found in Canada.
Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, almost 40% of vegetarians say
that whenever they get drunk, they do eat meat.
(Laughter)
So, obviously there is something very powerful about meat
that even some vegetarians and vegans just can not resist.
In the fall of 2015, there was a report released.
It was a report done by WHO - so the World Health Organisation,
one of the most important health organisations out there -
and in the report, they basically took all the research on meat and cancer,
and they have concluded that processed meat,
so the pepperonis and hams and bacon,
that it causes cancer to humans.
And they've put processed meat
in the same category of carcinogenic compounds
as asbestos,
so that is quite serious.
And red meat,
so unprocessed red meat, like pork and beef,
they said it probably causes cancer too.
Their report in North America was all over the media,
so press was saying things like,
"Meat will kill you", "Bacon equals cigarettes",
all these kinds of things.
And, about two months after that report was released,
I was sitting in my office, and I started wondering,
How much such a report would scare people away from eating meat?
How many people will go out and think,
"Maybe it's not worth risking,
maybe at least I'll try to cut down my consumption", right?
So I went to a website run by the producers of beef in North America,
I found the most recent sales report, and I clicked on the report,
and when I saw the data, I just couldn't believe my eyes.
Basically, the sales were up.
Not down.
So after hearing that meat probably causes cancer,
Americans went out and bought more of it!
Well, that kind of meat paradox -
the fact that humans love meat so much
that despite all the consequences,
you know, to our health, the planet, the animals,
we still want more of it -
it's been something that I've been researching for years now,
and I've discovered
that there are two main reasons why we love meat so much.
And both of those reasons,
they go back in time to 2.5 million years ago,
when our ancestors first started eating meat.
So what happened those 2.5 million years ago
was that the climate has changed -
at least on African savannas, where our ancestors were living back then.
The foods that they were relying on, some fruits for example,
became less available, harder to find.
What became more available was meat.
Because there were suddenly more grazing animals,
more predators killing those animals,
and there was just more leftover meat laying around
for our ancestors to scavenge - because we were scavengers at first.
And, most likely by chance, very soon our ancestors discovered
that meat was not only edible, it was actually great food!
It was full of nutrients, you know, protein, calories, vitamins and minerals;
it was really, really good for them.
It was so good that scientists call it "high quality food",
especially when you compare it to other foods they were eating;
those people were eating grass and leaves, for example.
So today, when you are, you know,
feeling like a burger or maybe a steak or whatever you meat eaters eat -
you are probably craving
one of three flavors that are found in meat and that we evolved to crave.
So the first thing is fat.
So the smooth texture of fat in your mouth,
the smells connected to fat,
to our ancestors, it signified that the food was full of calories.
And obviously, calories were very important for survival,
you wanted more of them.
The second thing that we love in the taste of meat is something called umami.
Umami in Japanese means delicious, and it's the fifth basic taste,
so alongside salty, bitter and sweet, it's a basic taste,
and meat is particularly full of umami.
It's full of deliciousness, and this is why we love it.
Because to our taste buds
that signifies that this is a food full of protein.
And to our ancestors, once again,
it was very important to love the umami taste of protein
because other foods didn't have much of it.
So we really had to love it, to evolve to love it.
And the third thing we still love in the taste of meat
is something called the products of the Maillard reaction.
So the Maillard reaction is something that happens,
for example, when you grill a burger.
So you go past the grill,
and then smell this delicious, mouth-watering smell of a grilling burger.
These are those chemicals.
They are produced when you put certain foods in a hot, dry environment -
so you grill them, you roast them, for example.
This also happens when you bake cookies or you toast bread.
And we've evolved to love those flavors, those smells
because to our ancestors they meant that the food was cooked.
So, you know, it was just basically safer to eat.
It was no longer full of bacteria and parasites, you know,
the way raw meat can be, especially when you eat as scavengers.
So, those that loved those flavors were more likely to survive.
And this is why we love meat so much today:
because it was better for our ancestors.
But a piece of meat is just part of the story.
The second part of the story has to do with our culture and psychology.
And once again, it goes back to almost 2.5 million years ago,
to the African savanna.
So meat is a very unusual food,
especially when you think about the meat our ancestors ate.
It comes in a rather big package in general, like a zebra-sized package,
and it also spoils fast.
So as opposed to other foods that our ancestors were eating,
it was a perfect food for sharing.
If you got some berries or nuts, you can just eat all of them by yourself.
But with meat not really, you don't have a fridge,
it's a food for sharing.
So when a hunter/scavenger brought some meat into the camp,
he had power, he had wealth,
because he had something that everybody else wanted.
And he could decide who will get something,
who will get the best piece,
who will get the smallest piece or maybe get nothing.
So politics began.
And the interesting thing is that our cousins, chimpanzees,
they actually also use meat in politics.
So when an alpha male gets hold of a colobus monkey,
the kind of meat they eat most often,
he'll exchange it for favors.
So kind of,
"If you scratch my back, I'll give you a piece of meat."
So they use it to form coalitions, for example.
Also, in some groups of chimpanzees,
scientists have observed that the males exchange meat for sex with females.
And this connection between sex and masculinity,
it also played for our ancestors.
Obviously, it was usually the men who were scavengers and hunters.
They were just you know, bigger than us women, stronger;
they were hunting and scavenging.
And they could decide
whether women would get any of this meat that everybody wanted,
or maybe they would get nothing.
And very often, they did get nothing.
Even today, in hunter-gatherer tribes,
most meat taboos are directed at women.
So most women are forbidden to eat many meats.
There's one tribe called Hadza, in Tanzania,
in that tribe, women are forbidden from eating meat called epeme;
these are the fattiest, so probably the tastiest pieces of big game.
And the penalty to women for eating that meat is rape or even death.
So those are serious, obviously.
So this connection between power and wealth and masculinity,
it got ingrained in our culture over centuries and millennia.
Another reason for that is something that psychologist Robert Cialdini calls
the Scarcity Principle.
So the Scarcity Principle basically means that the more something is harder to get,
the more we want it.
Marketers know this very well.
For example, when you go to a store,
and you see an ad saying , "Buy now! Only 10 left!"
you suddenly want this thing more because there are only 10 left.
And the same thing was happening with meat.
Because for most of human history, meat was really hard to get.
It was scarce and we wanted it even more.
In medieval Europe, peasants barely ever saw any meat.
Meanwhile, they observed aristocracy
or would hear about aristocracy stuffing their faces with meat.
Sometimes aristocracy in Europe in the Middle Ages ate little but meat.
And so meat became the symbol of wealth once again,
like those white faces of aristocratic ladies,
or their jewelry and their gowns.
It was a symbol of wealth.
And by now, you may be wondering,
How does it all apply to us here,
in the 21st century, in Italy, in the West?
When we have an abundance of meat, we don't have scarcity of meat,
we have as much as we want here in the West,
so why do we still believe in those, you know, power, wealth and masculinity?
Why do we still believe in that?
And there, again, are two reasons for that.
The first one is that the cultures don't change all that fast.
When you think about it,
during the 2nd World War, meat was still scarce in Europe,
and in some countries it was even more recent.
When I was a child in Poland, which wasn't that long ago,
we had such scarcity of meat,
we would wait for hours in long lines with my mother,
waiting to get a piece of a sausage.
So this is really new history.
And the second reason is the meat industry.
So the meat industry plays on this ancient symbolism
and all the old histories and myths that we had about meat
to sell you their products.
Their favorite one is "meat equals masculinity".
So basically, they tell guys that they need meat to be real men.
And in North America, most major chains of burgers, pizzas, tacos,
they did advertisements like that, saying
"If you're a real guy, you need to eat meat."
There was even one advertisement for giant SUV cars in the US.
And in that advertisement, you see a vegetarian guy in a store,
he buys himself some tofu, veggies, and all the stuff like that.
Suddenly, he stumbles on another guy,
who has a cart full of ribs and steak, all those bloody meats.
And you can see the vegetarian kind of cringe and get smaller and smaller,
and suddenly he notices the ad for the car,
and he goes to the car salon, buys himself this massive car,
and then you see him driving away, all happy now, munching on a carrot,
and the original caption said, "Restore your manhood".
Basically, if you're a guy and you're vegetarian,
you need a giant SUV to feel manly again.
And another myth that the meat industry plays on,
something that still connects to all this ancient human history we had with meat,
is something called the "protein myth".
So basically, they keep telling us that just like our ancestors
who needed meat for its protein content, we still do.
But the problem with this theory is that, unlike our ancestors,
we have abundant foods for our proteins.
We have lentils, we have beans, we have veggies, we have grains.
We are really not short on protein here; we are not eating grass and leaves.
Actually, North Americans
eat about twice as much protein as they should, on average,
and it's not good for their health.
Even vegetarians, once again, are not immune.
There's a study in Poland which showed
vegetarians are eating four times as much protein as they should be.
So there's a question I get often asked at this point:
So what has happened?
Why suddenly, meat, which was such a great food for our ancestors,
you know, this high-quality, nutritious thing,
suddenly became something that's bad for us?
We should be reducing consumption because it damages our health, what happened?!
And the thing that happened is that our priorities have changed.
For our ancestors, the priority was to survive from one day to the next.
They didn't want to starve, and meat was great for them,
especially when they didn't have much choice.
We have different priorities.
We want to live long,
we want to to have long retirements when we cruise around the globe.
And the diseases that meat is connected with,
they usually come out later in life.
Our ancestors they didn't have to worry about diabetes at the age of 40
or a heart attack at the age of 50
or cancer at 70.
They didn't worry about it; they worried about survival.
So our priorities have changed,
but our taste-buds, well, they didn't get the memo, really.
They didn't get it.
Our brains, they also didn't really get it.
The meat industry definitely did get it,
but they still want to sell you their products.
One thing, though, that we should learn from our ancestors is how to adapt.
When the climate changed in the past, they changed their diets.
And the climate is changing once again, so we should also change our diets.
And we should reduce our meat consumption.
Consider just one thing: If everybody on this planet
today said, "We are no longer eating meat, everyone becomes vegetarian,"
from a climate change perspective, it would be equivalent
to all transportation disappearing from the face of the Earth.
So no more cars, no more planes, no more scooters, no more buses,
no more trucks, absolutely nothing.
Just imagine the impact.
But we don't want to do that
because giving up meat is really, really hard.
In a way, it's harder than inventing electric cars or other technology,
it's really, really hard.
But I believe that if we understand how meat keeps us hooked;
how all this ancient expired symbolism plays us
and tricks us into believing that we have to eat meat;
how the meat industry plays on those tunes,
telling men, to be real guys, real men, they have to eat meat,
maybe it'll be easier for us to change, maybe just a little bit.
If we understand how the taste-buds are tricking us into eating meat,
maybe it'll also be a little bit easier to change.
If you feel like you're craving a burger,
maybe what you are really craving is protein.
Maybe you are craving something fatty
or maybe you are craving those delicious scents of the Maillard reaction,
and maybe, for example,
a toast with some creamy avocado and melted cheese on top of it will do?
So if we understand, how meat fills us, how it tricks us in a way,
maybe it'll be easier to change our diets, even a little bit.
Maybe try meatless Mondays,
or meatless Sunday afternoon as long as it's not raining - whatever works for you.
And maybe, you know, just maybe,
even vegetarians and vegans will finally stop eating meat.
Thank you.
(Applause).