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Can anyone get us to give up meat? Or at least drastically reduce our consumption? I still enjoy a good burger once in a while and a side of bacon with Sunday

Can anyone get us to give up meat? Or at least drastically reduce our consumption? I still enjoy a good burger once in a while and a side of bacon with Sunday breakfast is a slice of bliss. But I find myself the exception; most people I know expect to have meat with at least one, if not two, meals a day. Animal based food products are not as easy to scale up as vegetable based proteins. Interesting work has been going into lighting systems whose spectrum is optimized for photosynthesis and is being used to grow lettuce in great quantities indoors[0]. We can make this happen for hybrid plants with the specific nutrient and protein properties we need. We can even grow bugs at scale and harvest the meal... but beef? pork? chicken? Seems to be an intractable problem. [0] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/japanese-plant-experts-produce-10000-lettuces-a-day-in-led-lit-indoor-farm-9601844.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/japanese-plant-exp...

zaphar 11y ago
Third world countries with starving children aren't going to turn down mostly vegetarian food. It's actually a good opportunity to create a larger market for vegetarian food options. First World countries are another matter though. Meat is often a staple. I'm not sure how to fix that one.
- pjc50 11y ago
  In the third world, meat is going to be an aspirational good. It's also more likely to be locally produced from your own or neighbour's animals.
- adrianN 11y ago
  Passing laws that prohibit factory farming of animals and thus raising the price of meat quite a bit would probably go a long way.
  - latch 11y ago
    From a pure market point of view, I'd prefer they got rid of subsidies (direct and indirect) first.
  - zaphar 11y ago
    You have a catch-22 though. Such a law is probably politically untenable. Due to lobbying and the simple fact that Americans love their meat. In order to pass you you probably have to win a culture war first.
    - hga 11y ago
      And one should think twice about engaging in a war, cultural or other, with the people who supply your food. There are many ugly ways that could end very poorly.
- dspillett 11y ago
  > First World countries are another matter though. Meat is often a staple. Heck, some consider it a God given right rather than just a staple! Meat in some places is considered a status symbol: being able to afford the biggest and/or the best quality steak being a sign of wealth and therefore success. This is one of the reasons why meat consumption in some eastern countries which previously had a much more veg/fruit/carb optimised diet is shooting up: partly because the overall price of meat is falling relative to their earnings so they can afford more of it more often, and partly because of certain western influences spreading the status symbol thing making people want it more than they otherwise might. I eat quite a lot of meat (mainly chicken as it a relatively lean and inexpensive protein source) for four reasons: 1. I like it. 2. I'm told that we process most animal-sourced protein (including eggs and the whey that comes from milk production and ends up in the bars I have to refuel after a a long run or gym session) more effectively than that which comes to us in vegetable matter. 3. Many of the non-animal protein sources, if I eat them in larger quantities, go straight through me like a dose of salts which limits their use as a source of nutrition. 4. I really like it, particularly the varieties that come from pigs.
  - agentultra 11y ago
    What if 6+ billion people around the world had access to the same dietary choices you're able to make tomorrow? We want people to be able to make those choices. How can we if our expectations are to have a meat product be included in every meal? My intuition says that it's rather difficult to raise that many chickens.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
But I see 'artificial meat' articles every month on HN. Surely we're only a year or two away from a major change here. Its nowhere near an intractable problem.
gearhart 11y ago
You're mixing moral intentions (we should reduce our consumption of meat) with pure market forces (it's hard to scale, so it will become more expensive). It seems to me that the former is unnecessary - it will just go away if we make sure that any environmental damage from meat farming is properly factored into taxation. Your solutions are really interesting though, couple that with something like Impossible Foods or Soylent and I can viably see the price of a reasonable meal dropping even as population increases. http://impossiblefoods.com/ http://impossiblefoods.com/ http://soylent.com http://soylent.com
Retric 11y ago
I love meat, but I did go accidentally vegan while just eating Soylent. The other approach is to use meat as a garnish. Consider the classic BLT does not take a lot of bacon to really change the taste, but doubling up does not make a huge difference. I think most people could generally limit themselves to 2oz of meat a meal and not really notice. PS: I also think tasteless mass market fruits and vegies have a lot to do with meat consumption. Meat is simply one of the few things left that really has flavor. A good orange works as desert, but most supermarket oranges taste like vaguely orange flavored pulp.
- beat 11y ago
  In the modern world, fruits and vegetables are mostly about low cost of production, and robustness for transportation, and finally consistent appearance. Local, seasonal, "heirloom" vegetables are a whole different ballgame. But they're seasonal, they're not always pretty, they don't travel, and they aren't cheap.
  - Retric 11y ago
    You can grow arbitrary veggies locally in a greenhouse for year round consumption. It's not as cheap, but compared to unsubsidized meat prices it's less costly than you might think. PS: http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/greenhouse/hydroponics/economics.html http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/greenhouse/hydroponics/ec... Suggests an extra ~17 - 37c/lb for tomatoes.
    - beat 11y ago
      Sure, if you don't mind gardening and have space. But at commercial scale? Much harder. Our CSA farm has commercial greenhouses for their tomatoes and cucumbers, so they can have a good supply of those even when weather becomes a problem. They seem to build a new greenhouse every years. But scale? That's a handful, a little ten acre farm selling directly to consumers.
- PerfectElement 11y ago
  - "Meat is simply one of the few things left that really have flavor" That's an odd statement, considering the fact that most foods (including meat) are seasoned with herbs and spices. Meat without any seasoning has a pretty weak taste. What gives bacon its taste is the sweet/salty seasoning and the smoked fat, which has been reproduced remarkably well in some plant-based commercial foods. As far as I'm concerned, the taste problem has already been solved (it will keep improving, of course), but it will just take time to change, due to the sheer size and influence of the animal industry.
beat 11y ago
The problem isn't meat - it's factory farming. For traditional small, diverse farms, meat is an essential part of the biocycle. Animals consume parts of the plants that are inedible by humans, create fertilizer, even manage treelines. But when food is raised in a factory environment, isolated from the rest of the cycle, distortions can happen.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  That's true. However, you have to take into account quantity too. A small single farmer Saskatchewan farm can grow enough wheat to feed 10,000 people. Or it can grow barley instead to feed to pigs and feed 1,000 people. Or it can grow the wheat to feed 10,000 people and also raise a few cows, pigs and chickens in a complementary fashion as you described. That would provide enough calories to feed another 100 people or so.
  - beat 11y ago
    The quantity thing isn't about famine-level food, though - it's about industrial scale cost. The cost of food relative to income has plummeted worldwide for over a century. With it, the labor requirements of farming plummeted. In today's world, anyone going hungry is a political problem, not a supply problem. So the answer of growing yet more food, using yet more industrialization, is absolutely the wrong solution. We need to get less efficient, closer to the food again.
    - bryanlarsen 11y ago
      Less efficient means more expensive. And as the article noted, more expensive food triggered wars which killed tens of thousands of people. But that small mixed farm is more efficient than the large factory farm in many ways. They're wasting less food, they're using fewer resources, they're more sustainable in the long term. But they lose in terms of "economies of scale", which translates into labour and capital. And since those are by far the greatest expenses on a farm, they're not as "efficient". The solution? Proper pricing of externalities, eliminating distorting subsidies, and further technological development. Monocultures are a technological problem -- they're much less efficient land usage, but they allow the use of large machines. What if we could replace those expensive large machines with lots of cheap small robots that could harvest all the corn in a field without harming the squash, to give an example of a traditional biculture.
marcosdumay 11y ago
What? Animals do not require much land area if you don't count the space needed to grow their food. They'll scale just as well as your indoor lettuce (that is not at all). You seem to be trying to solve the wrong problem.
- fader 11y ago
  But you can't discount the space needed to grow animals' food -- that's a major reason that raising animals as food is so inefficient compared to eating the plants directly. It's a bit like saying that coal isn't all that bad for the environment if you don't count all the pollutants that are released in burning it.
bluedino 11y ago
We need to eat more insects.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

zaphar 11y ago

Third world countries with starving children aren't going to turn down mostly vegetarian food. It's actually a good opportunity to create a larger market for vegetarian food options. First World countries are another matter though. Meat is often a staple. I'm not sure how to fix that one.

pjc50 11y ago
In the third world, meat is going to be an aspirational good. It's also more likely to be locally produced from your own or neighbour's animals.
adrianN 11y ago
Passing laws that prohibit factory farming of animals and thus raising the price of meat quite a bit would probably go a long way.
- latch 11y ago
  From a pure market point of view, I'd prefer they got rid of subsidies (direct and indirect) first.
- zaphar 11y ago
  You have a catch-22 though. Such a law is probably politically untenable. Due to lobbying and the simple fact that Americans love their meat. In order to pass you you probably have to win a culture war first.
  - hga 11y ago
    And one should think twice about engaging in a war, cultural or other, with the people who supply your food. There are many ugly ways that could end very poorly.
dspillett 11y ago
> First World countries are another matter though. Meat is often a staple. Heck, some consider it a God given right rather than just a staple! Meat in some places is considered a status symbol: being able to afford the biggest and/or the best quality steak being a sign of wealth and therefore success. This is one of the reasons why meat consumption in some eastern countries which previously had a much more veg/fruit/carb optimised diet is shooting up: partly because the overall price of meat is falling relative to their earnings so they can afford more of it more often, and partly because of certain western influences spreading the status symbol thing making people want it more than they otherwise might. I eat quite a lot of meat (mainly chicken as it a relatively lean and inexpensive protein source) for four reasons: 1. I like it. 2. I'm told that we process most animal-sourced protein (including eggs and the whey that comes from milk production and ends up in the bars I have to refuel after a a long run or gym session) more effectively than that which comes to us in vegetable matter. 3. Many of the non-animal protein sources, if I eat them in larger quantities, go straight through me like a dose of salts which limits their use as a source of nutrition. 4. I really like it, particularly the varieties that come from pigs.
- agentultra 11y ago
  What if 6+ billion people around the world had access to the same dietary choices you're able to make tomorrow? We want people to be able to make those choices. How can we if our expectations are to have a meat product be included in every meal? My intuition says that it's rather difficult to raise that many chickens.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

But I see 'artificial meat' articles every month on HN. Surely we're only a year or two away from a major change here. Its nowhere near an intractable problem.

gearhart 11y ago

You're mixing moral intentions (we should reduce our consumption of meat) with pure market forces (it's hard to scale, so it will become more expensive). It seems to me that the former is unnecessary - it will just go away if we make sure that any environmental damage from meat farming is properly factored into taxation. Your solutions are really interesting though, couple that with something like Impossible Foods or Soylent and I can viably see the price of a reasonable meal dropping even as population increases. http://impossiblefoods.com/ http://impossiblefoods.com/ http://soylent.com http://soylent.com

Retric 11y ago

I love meat, but I did go accidentally vegan while just eating Soylent. The other approach is to use meat as a garnish. Consider the classic BLT does not take a lot of bacon to really change the taste, but doubling up does not make a huge difference. I think most people could generally limit themselves to 2oz of meat a meal and not really notice. PS: I also think tasteless mass market fruits and vegies have a lot to do with meat consumption. Meat is simply one of the few things left that really has flavor. A good orange works as desert, but most supermarket oranges taste like vaguely orange flavored pulp.

beat 11y ago
In the modern world, fruits and vegetables are mostly about low cost of production, and robustness for transportation, and finally consistent appearance. Local, seasonal, "heirloom" vegetables are a whole different ballgame. But they're seasonal, they're not always pretty, they don't travel, and they aren't cheap.
- Retric 11y ago
  You can grow arbitrary veggies locally in a greenhouse for year round consumption. It's not as cheap, but compared to unsubsidized meat prices it's less costly than you might think. PS: http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/greenhouse/hydroponics/economics.html http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/greenhouse/hydroponics/ec... Suggests an extra ~17 - 37c/lb for tomatoes.
  - beat 11y ago
    Sure, if you don't mind gardening and have space. But at commercial scale? Much harder. Our CSA farm has commercial greenhouses for their tomatoes and cucumbers, so they can have a good supply of those even when weather becomes a problem. They seem to build a new greenhouse every years. But scale? That's a handful, a little ten acre farm selling directly to consumers.
PerfectElement 11y ago
- "Meat is simply one of the few things left that really have flavor" That's an odd statement, considering the fact that most foods (including meat) are seasoned with herbs and spices. Meat without any seasoning has a pretty weak taste. What gives bacon its taste is the sweet/salty seasoning and the smoked fat, which has been reproduced remarkably well in some plant-based commercial foods. As far as I'm concerned, the taste problem has already been solved (it will keep improving, of course), but it will just take time to change, due to the sheer size and influence of the animal industry.

beat 11y ago

The problem isn't meat - it's factory farming. For traditional small, diverse farms, meat is an essential part of the biocycle. Animals consume parts of the plants that are inedible by humans, create fertilizer, even manage treelines. But when food is raised in a factory environment, isolated from the rest of the cycle, distortions can happen.

bryanlarsen 11y ago
That's true. However, you have to take into account quantity too. A small single farmer Saskatchewan farm can grow enough wheat to feed 10,000 people. Or it can grow barley instead to feed to pigs and feed 1,000 people. Or it can grow the wheat to feed 10,000 people and also raise a few cows, pigs and chickens in a complementary fashion as you described. That would provide enough calories to feed another 100 people or so.
- beat 11y ago
  The quantity thing isn't about famine-level food, though - it's about industrial scale cost. The cost of food relative to income has plummeted worldwide for over a century. With it, the labor requirements of farming plummeted. In today's world, anyone going hungry is a political problem, not a supply problem. So the answer of growing yet more food, using yet more industrialization, is absolutely the wrong solution. We need to get less efficient, closer to the food again.
  - bryanlarsen 11y ago
    Less efficient means more expensive. And as the article noted, more expensive food triggered wars which killed tens of thousands of people. But that small mixed farm is more efficient than the large factory farm in many ways. They're wasting less food, they're using fewer resources, they're more sustainable in the long term. But they lose in terms of "economies of scale", which translates into labour and capital. And since those are by far the greatest expenses on a farm, they're not as "efficient". The solution? Proper pricing of externalities, eliminating distorting subsidies, and further technological development. Monocultures are a technological problem -- they're much less efficient land usage, but they allow the use of large machines. What if we could replace those expensive large machines with lots of cheap small robots that could harvest all the corn in a field without harming the squash, to give an example of a traditional biculture.

marcosdumay 11y ago

What? Animals do not require much land area if you don't count the space needed to grow their food. They'll scale just as well as your indoor lettuce (that is not at all). You seem to be trying to solve the wrong problem.

fader 11y ago
But you can't discount the space needed to grow animals' food -- that's a major reason that raising animals as food is so inefficient compared to eating the plants directly. It's a bit like saying that coal isn't all that bad for the environment if you don't count all the pollutants that are released in burning it.

bluedino 11y ago

We need to eat more insects.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]