WasteOfTheDay: $340K Study to Understand Vegetarians

In 1979, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was given a Golden Fleece award for spending $90,000 — $340,000 in 2021 dollars — on a two-year study to understand vegetarianism as a lifestyle.

Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, gave the awards to wasteful and nonsensical spending, in this case for the study “Behavioral Determinants of Vegetarianism.”