5 ms·

Is that intellectually honest, to hide from the truth you know about your food?

mark_edward 9y ago
It's not, I feel the same way, but it's hard to be intellectually honest. I will be a vegetarian soon I think, it's been getting harder and harder to manage the dissonance since I got a dog.
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  It’s funny; that’s never a problem with a cat since they’re natural hunters and carnivores.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    Dogs are natural hunters and carnivores, too. I don't see how they are different from cats.
    - ComputerGuru 9y ago
      Because household dogs don’t retain that behavior in the same way cats do.
      - omegaham 9y ago
        Yep. My dog will chase things, but he wouldn't know what to do with a prey animal if he caught one. He's good at attacking the food bowl, and that's about it.
        zaarn 9y ago
        This kind of reminds me of my dog. He was quite happy with chasing birds whenever they landed in the garden. One day he caught one and killed it. Then he kinda ignored the corpse for about week because he didn't know what to do with it and then we removed it from the garden (since we found it by then) The bird was probably sick anyway since my dog is one of the worst hunting dogs I've seen. I'm pretty sure it's due to the domestic upbringing, if he had grown up on a farm and actually had to hunt small rodents then he'd probably know how to eat them.
    - fbarred 9y ago
      Many dogs are natural hunters, but like bears, pigs, and humans, but unlike cats, dogs are omnivores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnivore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnivore.
      - stevenwoo 9y ago
        Breeds that were selectively bred in areas without carb sources for humans cannot digest starch effectively - they still are in a way genetically closer to wolves which can only minimally digest starch. (Siberian Huskies/Alaskan Malemutes that we commonly associate with Northern native peoples like the Eskimo off the top of my head)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Danihan 9y ago
  If it helps, becoming vegetarian simply helps contribute to more human over-population. Any efficiency gleaned in food production is simply eaten up with billions of new mouths to feed within decades. I'd prefer an "inefficiently" managed planet with 6B people, versus a "very efficiently" managed planet with 20B vegetarians.
Turing_Machine 9y ago
Probably not any more dishonest than someone who knows that a lot of "organic" food is grown with manure, but would prefer not to see (or worse, smell) the animals actually defecating, with the feces then being applied to something they're going to eat.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Manure is widely used as a fertiliser for non-organic food as well. And there's no need for the scare quotes, because using manure is perfectly congruent with organic farming. The manure is also applied before seeding, months before harvest. Together with rinsing, and sometimes peeling or boiling, there's really no need for the scaremongering. If you want to be afraid of faeces, manure is the least of your problems. Foxes and other wild animals shit on every field, and they often carry parasites.
  - roel_v 9y ago
    "Foxes and other wild animals shit on every field, and they often carry parasites." I've wondered about this. Fox tapeworm is very common (30% of all foxes in many areas in North-West Europe carry it last time I checked) and (the scary part) for humans, it can cause lethal liver failure 10 years after infection. Not 'lethal' is in 'flu lethal' - like 'might cause you to die in specific circumstances, when untreated, and when you were unhealthy already anyway' - but rather 'will certainly kill you in a painful way, very difficult to diagnose, no known effective treatment'. So the advise is 'don't eat berries or mushrooms that grow in the wild below waist height'. However, many/most fruit farms have fruit growing at that height, and the standard cleaning procedures don't remove worms (e.g. vaccinium isn't washed at all, too fragile). I know for a fact foxes (sometimes) enter these farms, I've seen some with my own eyes. How does this work from an epidemiological point of view? When devising health warnings, are there separate measurements for incidents caused by fruit picked in the wild, and from farms? Or is this just one of those things where everybody shrugs and says 'we don't have a better solution' and hope for the best? On the off chance anyone doing epidemiology research is reading this, this sort of situation must be common; how is that dealt with?
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
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Simon_says 9y ago
I struggled with this. I suppose it's not intellectually honest, but I learned intellectual honesty is not my highest priority.
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  That explains your intellectually dishonest statement that "Nothing about the joke is homophobic." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15764612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15764612

It's not, I feel the same way, but it's hard to be intellectually honest. I will be a vegetarian soon I think, it's been getting harder and harder to manage the dissonance since I got a dog.

ComputerGuru 9y ago
It’s funny; that’s never a problem with a cat since they’re natural hunters and carnivores.
- yorwba 9y ago
  Dogs are natural hunters and carnivores, too. I don't see how they are different from cats.
  - ComputerGuru 9y ago
    Because household dogs don’t retain that behavior in the same way cats do.
    - omegaham 9y ago
      Yep. My dog will chase things, but he wouldn't know what to do with a prey animal if he caught one. He's good at attacking the food bowl, and that's about it.
      - zaarn 9y ago
        This kind of reminds me of my dog. He was quite happy with chasing birds whenever they landed in the garden. One day he caught one and killed it. Then he kinda ignored the corpse for about week because he didn't know what to do with it and then we removed it from the garden (since we found it by then) The bird was probably sick anyway since my dog is one of the worst hunting dogs I've seen. I'm pretty sure it's due to the domestic upbringing, if he had grown up on a farm and actually had to hunt small rodents then he'd probably know how to eat them.
  - fbarred 9y ago
    Many dogs are natural hunters, but like bears, pigs, and humans, but unlike cats, dogs are omnivores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnivore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnivore.
    - stevenwoo 9y ago
      Breeds that were selectively bred in areas without carb sources for humans cannot digest starch effectively - they still are in a way genetically closer to wolves which can only minimally digest starch. (Siberian Huskies/Alaskan Malemutes that we commonly associate with Northern native peoples like the Eskimo off the top of my head)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Danihan 9y ago
If it helps, becoming vegetarian simply helps contribute to more human over-population. Any efficiency gleaned in food production is simply eaten up with billions of new mouths to feed within decades. I'd prefer an "inefficiently" managed planet with 6B people, versus a "very efficiently" managed planet with 20B vegetarians.

Turing_Machine 9y ago

Probably not any more dishonest than someone who knows that a lot of "organic" food is grown with manure, but would prefer not to see (or worse, smell) the animals actually defecating, with the feces then being applied to something they're going to eat.

matt4077 9y ago
Manure is widely used as a fertiliser for non-organic food as well. And there's no need for the scare quotes, because using manure is perfectly congruent with organic farming. The manure is also applied before seeding, months before harvest. Together with rinsing, and sometimes peeling or boiling, there's really no need for the scaremongering. If you want to be afraid of faeces, manure is the least of your problems. Foxes and other wild animals shit on every field, and they often carry parasites.
- roel_v 9y ago
  "Foxes and other wild animals shit on every field, and they often carry parasites." I've wondered about this. Fox tapeworm is very common (30% of all foxes in many areas in North-West Europe carry it last time I checked) and (the scary part) for humans, it can cause lethal liver failure 10 years after infection. Not 'lethal' is in 'flu lethal' - like 'might cause you to die in specific circumstances, when untreated, and when you were unhealthy already anyway' - but rather 'will certainly kill you in a painful way, very difficult to diagnose, no known effective treatment'. So the advise is 'don't eat berries or mushrooms that grow in the wild below waist height'. However, many/most fruit farms have fruit growing at that height, and the standard cleaning procedures don't remove worms (e.g. vaccinium isn't washed at all, too fragile). I know for a fact foxes (sometimes) enter these farms, I've seen some with my own eyes. How does this work from an epidemiological point of view? When devising health warnings, are there separate measurements for incidents caused by fruit picked in the wild, and from farms? Or is this just one of those things where everybody shrugs and says 'we don't have a better solution' and hope for the best? On the off chance anyone doing epidemiology research is reading this, this sort of situation must be common; how is that dealt with?
- Turing_Machine 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

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deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Simon_says 9y ago

I struggled with this. I suppose it's not intellectually honest, but I learned intellectual honesty is not my highest priority.

DonHopkins 9y ago
That explains your intellectually dishonest statement that "Nothing about the joke is homophobic." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15764612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15764612