We've sort of got a culture, in America anyway, of self-deprivation mixed with self-indulgence, and even at times self-indulgent self-deprivation. So I think some do it because they want to deprive themselves of something, or maybe just want something to do. But I think one major reason a lot of people don't really want to talk about it is because it's viewed as a sort of moral pretentiousness, and you find meat-eaters will automatically feel challenged by it, or at the least awkward. I never really tell people unless they ask, even when offered food I usually just say no thanks. It's not that I don't want to get into a discussion about it, but that it's hard to have one where at least one of the persons doesn't go straight to the defensive, and I can see from either side why one would. It's difficult to have a balanced discussion, if such a thing exists.
Here's a sort of comic example of what I mean:
I guess what I'm saying is I think Scruton's theory, as I understand it, has some validity but it also seems to dismiss the notion that anyone could possibly have legitimate ethical concerns. People do it for all sorts of reasons, especially now that all the health information is coming out on meat, but I think it's at least reasonable to suggest that the mind of a human could feel uncomfortable about it, with its capacity for empathy, whether one agrees or not. It sounds like he's suggesting it's a sort of strange religious need, he says people have a need for animals to be treated with reverence, rather than respect. There are many that use vegetarianism as a boycott--that is, don't see eating meat as fundamentally wrong, but that our way of killing the animals is. I myself would probably never go back to eating meat, but at the same time there are some other animals that are obviously carnivorous, and I can't say with certainty that eating meat is wrong. It's just a choice I've made based on how I feel, as I suppose most decisions are. I don't know, like all theories that try to explain a very complex issue in some form of vague psychoanalysis, there's some truth in what he says, but it doesn't really hold up as a rule.