David Attenborough reveals why he's given up meat

Previously Sir David has admitted that despite spending decades observing animals in the wild, he is not an animal lover. Photo / Getty Images

Sir David Attenborough has stopped eating meat because he "doesn't care for it", he has admitted for the first time.

He told the Radio Times: "I've given up meat, not for ideological reasons, I just don't care for it too much. I do eat fish. Poor fish."

Back in June he told Louis Theroux in an interview that he was cutting back on meat to become "increasingly vegetarian".

When asked whether the decision was for health or ethical reasons, he replied: "A bit of both. I just don't like the taste of it very much.

He added that he found farming practices which makes animals into machines "depressing". Previously Sir David has admitted that despite spending decades observing animals in the wild to make award-winning documentaries, he is not an animal lover.

He said at the time: "Animal lover means sentiment; a cloying, anthropomorphising sentiment. I don't love earth worms or spiders. They're rivetingly interesting and they give me huge intellectual pleasure. And aesthetic pleasure, I suppose. But that's a different thing altogether."

The comments come ahead of the launch of Blue Planet II, which will tell the story of the world's dying oceans.

Asked whether he hopes people will stop eating fish after watching it, he said: "Let's get it clear, this wasn't done as an axe-grinding series, a political series. It was done because our responsibility in the Natural History Unit is to illuminate the natural history of the world, including marine."

"It will just raise people's awareness of the sea, the complexity and the responsibility. The only cheerful note is that you know how resilient these things are. Given half a chance, the ocean's capacity for regeneration is quite extraordinary. We should take advantage of that."