Absolutely. That's why my second-level manager made her underling lay people off instead of doing it herself. It's easier when you're removed from it.

I find myself being very aware of this process in food choices, as you mentioned. It's harder for me to eat something that looks like what it originally was (ie shrimp vs ground beef) and I think it's a combination of two elements: one is that more shrimp die to create a shrimp meal (30 lives instead of one - whether the lives are equal is another interesting question) but sadly enough the bigger thing for me is that it's hard to eat something when I've got such a stark visual reminder in front of me of what it was.

After many years of not being able to eat chicken wings or drumsticks, I eventually realized that's why - chicken strips are processed enough that I can avoid thinking about where they came from, but drumsticks have tendons and ligaments and biological details that are hard to avoid thinking about when you're picking them out of your teeth.

Apologies to the vegetarians reading this, who are probably retching right about now.