In Episode #112, I sat down with Harvard-educated psychologist and bestselling author Melanie Joy to discuss how we form our beliefs about food and how people on plant-based diets can have healthier, more productive conversations with meat eaters. This is an episode that I believe will be highly enlightening regardless of which diet you follow.
In this episode, Melanie shared her personal journey to studying psychology at Harvard and writing her award-winning book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism. We discussed the carnism ideology, carnistic defence systems, and why our food choices matter. Listen to hear some fascinating insights into effective advocacy for a plant-based lifestyle and better communication with people holding a different opinion to you. While my episodes usually focus on the science of nutrition, I found this exchange fascinating, and I believe that it provides so much insight into communication in general, whether or not it’s related to food choices.
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Enjoy, friends.
Simon
Additional resources:
- Watch the 3-minute video on carnism created by Melanie and her team at Beyond Carnism that I referred to in this conversation.
- Connect with Melanie on Instagram @beyondcarnism.
- Visit the Beyond Carnism website.
- Read Melanie’s Book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism.
- Read The Vegan Matrix – another book written by Melanie exploring what she believes is a serious problem with the vegan movement: unexamined privilege.
- Watch Melanie’s 2015 TEDx Talk ‘Toward Rational, Authentic Food Choices’
- See related episodes – I have done three episodes with animal activists to better understand the way they see the world and why they are so passionate about sharing their message. These are episodes with James Aspey, James Aspey and Carly Taylor, and Seb Alex.