How to coax those around you to eat a little less meat

Movies urging us to cut out meat aren’t new – think What the Health or The Game Changers. But the new US documentary Meat Me Halfway doesn’t demand meat abstinence – it just wants us to eat less. As its narrator, Brian Kateman, co-founder of the Reducetarian movement, says, persuading a lot of meat lovers to reduce their meat intake could have more impact on animal welfare and the environment than getting a small number of people to turn vegan.

The film is a non-preachy look at why it’s so hard for people to eat less meat, the impact of factory farming on the planet – and our acceptance of eating lamb but not a golden retriever. It also raises the touchy issue of getting those closest to you to eat less meat. Kateman himself has been trying to coax his dad to cut down for years and in one of the movie’s opening scenes, tries to convince him that eating less meat can help slow global warming.

“It’s a joke – I don’t think there’s anything to it,” his dad shrugs – yet by the movie’s end he’s eating less meat and has lost weight.

“It happened because my dad rediscovered his love for exercise, and when a trainer told him he was ‘throwing it all away’ with his unhealthy diet, he made a shift,” says Kateman. “In the end, climate change and animal suffering weren’t motivators, but his own health was. After years of me trying to persuade him to eat differently, it was someone else who convinced him – although I like to think I planted the seed.”

So how easy is it to persuade someone close to you that fewer burgers are a win for the planet?

“The worst thing you can do is get into a heated argument. If your too-assertive people get their back up and the message gets lost,” says Shaun McCoy who adopted a mostly plant-based diet after seeing Dominion, the 2018 documentary about factory farming. “It made me realise how unsustainable factory farming is.

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“I do cop some flak when I talk about factory farming but I think people are interested – I work for a car dealership in Melbourne and when I organised a vegan barbecue everyone was on board. My family are willing to try a meatless burger and listen – I try to approach it by offering bits of information and just letting people think about it. ”

Good food helps too. Since swapping her own meat- and- dairy- rich diet for plant food four years ago, Sydney film maker Amelia Foxton has won over many of her friends with her vegan laksas and burritos.