Empathy & Diet

There is preliminary evidence that vegans & vegetarians experience more empathy in the face of human & animal suffering compared to omnivores. At the very least, the areas of the brain implicated in empathy "light up" more when vegan/vegetarians are exposed to suffering. This data will need to be replicated & some sort of causal timeline would have to be established for this to be particularly interesting. It could be, for example, a case of cognitive dissonance. They've chosen a restrictive lifestyle, and there has to be a good reason for that, so they actually sensitize themselves to the suffering of animals. Who knows.