Ought Implies Can Part II: Food and Morality

In class we have talked about physical health and financial situations that would make it hard for someone to be a vegetarian. Something we haven't spoken about yet is psychological reasons for not becoming a vegetarian. When someone is recovering from an eating disorder they are often told not to restrict their diet. Having "off-limits" food can lead people back into eating disorder habits. Even for someone who has completely recovered from an eating disorder, they might have to follow this rule for the rest of their lives to avoid a relapse. For many people with eating disorders/disordered eating habits, they become a vegetarian or vegan, not for ethical reasons, but as a way to control their lives or as a form of self-punishment. Since many people have eating disorders (8 million Americans*), people who have psychological reasons for not eating meat are not a small exception; they are a large portion of the population. When we talk about people being "morally obligated" to adopt a certain diet, we are implying that people can be "good" or "bad" depending on what they eat. Our society has a tendency to assign morality to food and people who eat certain foods. For example, how often do we hear someone say "I was so bad last night. I ate a piece of chocolate" or "I need to be good for the rest of the week and only eat X amount of calories". Why is a person "good" or "bad" because of what they eat? Obviously, consuming animals has moral implications, but we should blame the industries that mistreat their animals, not regular people who are eating something that they have been exposed to their whole lives.

*http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm