When I think of how my personal food choices have been affected by social norms, I automatically pinpoint my upbringing on a small rural farm in Ohio. Much like in the videos and papers we engaged with in Module 6, my family’s average plate included a large portion of meat, usually red meat, and a small portion of a vegetable, along with potatoes. My childhood “meat and potato” diet was a diet found in almost all the rural homes I knew nearby. My family produced beef on a small farm and so our diet mainly consisted of this product. My family’s diet wasn’t a conscious choice, but one that grew out of a social norm. Often, I would hear residents tell one another that they looked “too skinny,” “needed to fatten up,” or needed to get some “meat and potatoes” in their diet. The expectation to eat a diet mainly based on red meat and provide for a desirably thick physical aesthetic was a pervasive social norm where I grew up and it continues today.

Having a meat-based diet puts a strain on the environment. The long shadow of livestock was alive and well in our small community. Often, there would be news articles about groundwater contamination and the op-ed pages were filled with complaints about the painful stench of nearby farms. My hometown was also near the industrial farming of the Ohio Egg Farm, which is notorious for the mistreatment of animals, waste runoff, and air pollution that we learned of in this lesson. Nutrition was also lacking in the community. When I return to Ohio still today I am amazed by the shape of the human body and the ignorance of the bodily harm that can come from eating a diet based solely on meat. I would recommend changing this dietary social norm and improve the community’s knowledge of both personal health and environmental health that could be produced from changing their diet to include 50% produce instead of 75% meat.