By all accounts flawlessly balanced and perfectly constructed, the Popeyes chicken sandwich was billed “a gift from the heavens.” Selling for a paltry $3.99, it sparked a feeding frenzy in the U.S. this summer. Roughly 50 billion chickens are slaughtered each year to satisfy our massive global appetite for wings, nuggets, strips and the slabs of breast at the heart of the chicken sandwich wars. Second only to drug addicts in terms of the stigma they face, the BBC reports, vegans are increasingly under fire. ‘If all of us are doing something bad, it can’t really be that bad, right?’In choosing not to eat meat, the authors write, vegans are rejecting a core tenet of American culture. This disconnect between our actions and beliefs leads to another key concept in understanding the emotions tied to eating meat: cognitive dissonance.

Source: National Post February 06, 2020 13:07 UTC