At meditation retreats, vegetarian food is served because it facilitates the meditative process. Establishing optimal conditions for meditation may be one motivation for being a vegetarian. There are many others.

French women´s magazine Madame Figaro in March printed an article with the title “Vegetarian or carnivore – should we resist the appeal of the flesh?”. The introduction to the article said:

Vital for some, criminal for others (…), meat is the object of an intense debate.”

The article discusses the reasons of a vegetarian diet, mentioning both that industrial meat production is the source of 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and that it causes animal suffering, food shortages, overweigth and cancer. In an attempt to describe the French people, it states that “our relation to meat has changed”. For the last 10 years, the French people´s consumption of meat has decreased steadily.

Another French magazine, Psychologies, also raises the same issue.

So will gourmet French restaurant soon expand their vegetarian offerings, and producers of traditional foie gras go bankrupt? Most likely not, as French people are generally very attached to their traditions and rather reluctant to change. But small changes could be underway.