15 ms·

After 15 years of not eating meat, the past 1-2 years have been a golden era of vegetarian options in the grocery store, restaurants, and fast food. Based on a

After 15 years of not eating meat, the past 1-2 years have been a golden era of vegetarian options in the grocery store, restaurants, and fast food. Based on anecdotes and my social circles, the number of people completely avoiding meat hasn't changed. But omnivores adopting a semi-veg lifestyle has increased. If I had to pick one thing, I'd say environmental concerns are the main reason my omnivore friends and colleagues are eating less meat.

janlaureys 7y ago
I'm one of those semi-veg people. I tried it a few years ago as well and I agree it's a lot easier now than it was back then.
Iv 7y ago
For me that's a mix of ethical and environmental concerns. I agree that there is a point in the belief that it is unethical to kill animals. That's not the most unethical thing that is happening in the world, there are a lot of things to argue about, but in general, I agree that in an ideal world, we should not do that. The environmental concerns, I only buy half-heartedly. I don't really believe that land-owners will transform their pastures or soy cultures into rain forest instead of another profitable exploitation, I'd rather have states force responsible production and norms. It is just not practical for me to go full-veg, where I live I would need to cook one hour a day for it, and I am a lousy cook, I have neither the inclination or the motivation for it. But I reduced my consumption more and more. It was surprising to see how my taste changed. I used to be a huge meat eater and now I find eating even a small steak a bit nauseating. I almost eat no beef anymore, little pork but mostly chicken and fish, and even these I eat little.
- everythingswan 7y ago
  What are the constraints based on where you live? I knew someone who grew up heavily on beef since she was from a small, rural country. Is it a similar reason? I'm interested in food insecurity and related things, which is why I ask.
  - strict9 7y ago
    I grew up and lived in a rural area (southern appalachians in the US) and it was not easy. Small town restaurants often have zero options, living near a taco bell was about the best you can hope for. Not even morningstar farms veggie burgers in grocery stores. But that was 10 years ago, things are different now. Whenever I go home for Christmas I'm amazed at what's available.
    - xeromal 7y ago
      Howdie neighbor. I lived in North GA and experienced the same woes. There's still 10 fast food restaurants per 1 wholesome restaurant. I'll know we've made it when waffle house serves veggie sausage. haha.
  - Iv 7y ago
    I live in countryside Japan where it does not cost a lot more to buy a bento than to cook one yourself. Before moving in, I used to think it should be easy to be vegetarian in a Buddhist country but it is not. Japan's culinary habit is that a good meal needs to have a lot of different ingredients in it. From a dietetics point of view, that's great but it often means that even in most salads, you'll have a few pieces of bacon or chicken, a shrimp or some grains of minced meat. That still makes for a very meat-light diet and I would switch to a no-meat-at-all in a heartbeat if those bentos and salads came in vegetarian versions, but that makes it almost impossible to totally avoid meat.
- arcticfox 7y ago
  > The environmental concerns, I only buy half-heartedly. I don't really believe that land-owners will transform their pastures or soy cultures into rain forest instead of another profitable exploitation, I'd rather have states force responsible production and norms. If farmers switch to other exploitative crops, it should drive up the supply and down the price of those crops, reducing the drive to clear more rain forest.
  - SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
    > If farmers switch to other exploitative crops, it should drive up the supply and down the price of those crops, reducing the drive to clear more rain forest. I'd rather not gamble away the rainforest to optimism about humans acting rational. It's already irrational: humans will optimize towards short term gains.
    - xiphias2 7y ago
      It's not just about short term vs long term gains for the farmers: it's about gain for them vs gain for the whole human population (the second involves just a small marginal gain for the farmers).
      - grawprog 7y ago
        You'd be surprised about the shortsighted things people do for small marginal gain. More of a light hearted example. I worked at a grocery store years ago, one summer the 4L ice cream buckets stopped having handles. A lot of people complained, they liked to use them for berry picking and other things. One day I asked the people we ordered the dairy stuff from why. Turns out, some accountant figured out they'd have a marginal gain of 1¢ per ice cream bucket if they removed the handles. In the end though, that year we ended up throwing a lot of them away, whereas the summer before we'd had trouble keeping them in stock. People really liked those bucket handles. I still wonder if the penny savings were worth the loss in sales from people that wanted buckets with handles more than ice cream.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- detcader 7y ago
  I find the ethical-philosophical side of it interesting. In the philosophy of ethics, thought experiments can be helpful (or puzzling), like the trolley problem or the Categorical Imperative. So: Imagine if a wizard finished casting a very complicated and resource-intensive spell and the result is that every living cow, pig, chicken and turkey in the meat industry were replaced with a clone of a dog you've met. In the thousands of crowded compound pens, the millions of tiny cages, on the assembly lines facing captive bolt pistols like the one from No Country for Old Men-- there is now that dog. In that moment, what would be an example of something happening that is more unethical? Of course the answer would be different for each person; some people would have the point that we can't compare apples to oranges. For me I find it hard to imagine a war or a process of exploitation in 2019 that measures up.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    But the ethical base-case is potentially that none of those cows, pigs, chickens or turkeys are ever born. Case by case we couldn't say, but statistically a lot of farm animals are going to be reliant on human logistics, organisation and protection to survive in the numbers that they do. So the question might reasonably be 'are the conditions these animals face worse than never existing?'.
    - Vinnl 7y ago
      For a lot of them, the answer is most certainly yes, and if humans were in their positions, they'd say so too.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - detcader 7y ago
      Then I think the natural follow-up experiment would be to imagine if a dog you know was born for dogfighting, and that you can be sure it will never escape. Would we rather it just not be born? If not, we just need to argue that being bred to dogfight is preferable to, or on-par with, being bred to be trapped in a cage and eaten.
    - 7y ago
- nicoburns 7y ago
  > It is just not practical for me to go full-veg, where I live I would need to cook one hour a day for it, Why does eating meat mean you can cook less?
  - ebiester 7y ago
    In some areas, the only option is to cook 100% of meals if one wants to be vegetarian. In others, it is still possible to go out to eat. Further, the prepackaged vegetarian options are only available in some options.
  - zeveb 7y ago
    Meat is remarkably easy to cook: apply heat to meat, done. Vegetables take preparation, require more-complex treatment, need to be managed well (I have no problem eating a quick meal of just a steak or chicken breast; I really would hate eating a quick meal of only carrots or just onions). Meat's convenient in a way that vegetables aren't.
    - phonypc 7y ago
      This is the opposite of reality in my experience. Most vegetables can be quickly steamed, boiled, stir fried etc. Legumes or tubers take longer, but require little active participation. Meat on the other hand is greatly benefited by things like marination, mechanical tenderizing, monitoring temperature as it cooks. You can whip up a steak pretty quick, but probably not any faster than you could stir fry some veggies.
      - cferr 7y ago
        If we're talking steak in particular, it's going to be faster than any palatable vegetable based dish every time. Total cook time is about five minutes, and prep is less than a minute. Also in particular, stir frying isn't a great example of a vegetable preparation which is fast. Prep is usually at least twice the amount of time as the frying. Peanut butter celery sticks would be a better example I think.
- Woberto 7y ago
  Even without new vegetarian options at grocery stores, I've been okay with cooking once a week for 2 or 3 hours. Breakfast is an egg casserole/quiche with veggies and chorizo spices or hashbrown. Lunch and dinner might be a lentil "meat"loaf, bean chili, or Indian style meals which are typically vegan. Lots of easy recipe options here, but it does help that I don't mind repeating meals for a week.
- rhn_mk1 7y ago
  > That's not the most unethical thing that is happening in the world I'm just going to refer to the factory farming article from 80000hours: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/factory-farming/ https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/factory-farming/ Considering that "Each year, 50 billion animals are raised and slaughtered in factory farms globally. Over a billion animals live in factory farms at any point of time in the United States. Most experience serious levels of suffering.", I would argue that it's hard to find anything comparable in magnitude to that tragedy if one allows that farmed animals are even a 1/100th fraction as conscious as humans. I would... probably not enjoy being proven wrong this time :S
  - yters 7y ago
    Do the animals experience more suffering than if they lived in the wild? Is industrial slaughter more or less traumatic than death in the wild? Are there any benefits animals experience living in captivity vs living in the wild? Is there anything positive about more such animals getting to live in the first place due to demand for meat?
    - Half_pint 7y ago
      People rarely seem to ask these questions when it comes to dogfighting. Somehow we agree it's bad to breed dogs in captivity to suffer when it's a behavior we don't engage in... but when it requires personal change everyone is suddenly Descartes asking the deep questions.
    - rhn_mk1 7y ago
      Those are good questions, but about a different topic (except the last one). The choice here is not between raising animals for eating in factories as opposed to raising them in the wild. It's between raising them in factories versus not bringing them to life at all. Wild animal suffering is a different beast altogether. Your last question is on the point though. Do the animals raised for meat have lives worth living?
      - yters 7y ago
- Vinnl 7y ago
  > But I reduced my consumption more and more. It was surprising to see how my taste changed. I experienced the same, which was really odd. I guess you can learn to like (or dislike) a taste. The other thing I noticed that concerns about suffering started to weigh far stronger for me once the environmental concerns made me stop eating meat. I think that I subconsciously ignored or trivialised a lot of the information I got about what was and is actually happening in that sector.
  - aoeusnth1 7y ago
    Same, I switched for environmental reasons and only then stopped poo-poohing the animal suffering. There's arguably motivated reasoning on both sides - when I was a meat eater, I was motivated not to care, and now that I'm not, I am motivated to justify my lifestyle.
  - MisterBastahrd 7y ago
    I once went on a low carb diet and stuck to it steadfast for about 6 months. One of my favorite candies is Reece's Peanut Butter cups. When I came off the diet, I decided to have one. It tasted exactly the same as you would expect those ultra-low-cost off-brand peanut butter cups that they sell in budget grab bags. Took me weeks to be able to taste the difference.
  - Iv 7y ago
    The animal suffering aspect kind of was the start for me. I quickly recognized the counter-arguments were very poor. The only two lines of arguments that one may defend are "Animals don't suffer" or "It is natural for humans to exploit animals". I don't hold any of these opinions and therefore I could not defend meat production ethically.
- sixstringtheory 7y ago
  Regardless of your food selection, I’d encourage you to try bulk cooking if you haven’t before. Cook 4-5 days worth of food on Sunday, takes about 2 hours. You can eat dinner afterwards and package up a plate for every weeknight. When you get home from work during the week, turn on oven, put meal in immediately, take a shower or browse HN for 20 minutes, and you’re g2g. If you start to feel more handy with a frying pan you can store each part of your meal separately in the fridge and reheat a full dish in 5-10 minutes. Microwaves and toaster ovens will also shorten the wait time. Side note: in my time in kitchens, I learned that the art of storing/reheating food is just as important as from-scratch preparation. I understand parent is not motivated to learn it, but I encourage them to rethink it, and I leave this message for everyone else. Personally, cooking has been an incredibly fulfilling and freeing life skill to acquire.
  - Iv 7y ago
    I know how to do it. I don't like it and I have better use of 2 hours of my precious sunday time.
nicoburns 7y ago
At least in London, there has been a big uptick in veganism in the last year or so. Helped by mainstream supermarkets and restuarants adding vegan options en mass.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  London was also the epicentre of Atkins, eating lots of meat at every meal. It can change overnight. You can’t extrapolate from London whimsy to any long term trend.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  If you don't buy a lot of ready-made meals you notice that supermarkets have always had plenty of vegetarian and vegan options.
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    The new thing is the number of ready-made meals that are also vegetarian, and directly from the distributor brand. And for me the biggest marker is that it's now advertised on the package. Not just the small vegan logo, there is big lettering like "suitable for vegetarians" or "meat-free" or whatever. It must have become a selling point.
dfxm12 7y ago
I guess I'm lucky to have grown up in an area where restaurants almost always had some vegan options just as a matter of course. Tomato pie vs pepperoni pizza, pasta places with spaghetti so good, it doesn't matter if you get pomodoro or carbonara, dry fried szechuan string beans that sounds like "just a side" but eats like a meal, tacos with chicken, pork or veggies. Veg/vegan food was always just food to me, so all this hub bub about it is bizarre to me.
- okmokmz 7y ago
  That's definitely not the norm. I'm in Seattle, and while it isn't hard to find restaurants with vegan options, you certainly won't "almost always" find vegan options if you just go into a random restaurant. I found the same thing to be the case in LA, lots of vegan options but they definitely were not in every restaurant. Perhaps you just self-select vegan friendly restaurants?
  - dfxm12 7y ago
    Perhaps you just self-select vegan friendly restaurants? No. I've eaten pretty much everywhere around. Italian, Chinese and Mexican places in particular have built in vegan options pretty much by default. I'm surprised there aren't such Chinese or Mexican options in LA (although when confronted with something like "gan bian si ji dou" or even "dry fried green beans" on a menu, it's not immediately obvious if it's vegan or not). I spent a bit of time in Seattle over a decade ago. I was trying to save money at the time, so I didn't order out much, but I do remember burritos from Taco Del Mar being fine no matter what is (or isn't) in them. There was a great place for fries called Frites which appears to be closed now and a bunch of Indian places, too. I also remember a hot dog place near the Lenin statue with all kinds of options, but any mention of that place seems to be wiped off the net, so I might have just imagined it. :) I wasn't trying to say what is or isn't the norm, just that I don't understand why people make a such a big deal about what they, or others, are eating.
schnevets 7y ago
To me, it's less about new products and more about people's tastes. People are eating very different things now because of new popularity in some cuisines (Indian, Thai, and Mexican come to mind) and the popularity of "superfoods" (Avocado, Acai berry... ever notice there are never any animal-based superfoods?).
- simonsarris 7y ago
  > ever notice there are never any animal-based superfoods? In my circles it's tallow, A2 milk, and beef liver that are huge in popularity but I agree mainstream goes for coconut water, oat milk, etc. Those are a function of big ag ad dollars I imagine, more than decisive tastes or the actual super-ness of any food.
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    > Those are a function of big ag ad dollars I imagine, more than decisive tastes or the actual super-ness of any food. Perhaps, but when you look at what's behind "A2 milk" (I hadn't heard of it before), it's basically a single company promoting their brand with largely BS statements. The Wikipedia article has plenty of details: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_milk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_milk
- SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
  > ever notice there are never any animal-based superfoods? This must be a marketing gimmick; eating animals is very nutritious—it's just not sufficient. However, this is the same as Avacado/acai berry/whatever. I have heard milk referred to as a superfood quite a bit.
  - YinglingLight 7y ago
    Lean meat like chicken is has an INSANE protein ratio and vitamin B content /per calorie.
  - geddy 7y ago
    > I have heard milk referred to as a superfood quite a bit. Might have something to do with the billions spent on marketing meat and dairy. Pretty big industries with pretty big financial contributions to our wonderful politicians, for decades now.
gwbas1c 7y ago
My stomach, ect, feel better when I eat less meat. But: I rarely order vegan in a restaurant. I find it's much easier to do vegan at home. Why? Mostly food safety and storage. After cooking vegan for a few weeks, when I cooked meat, I realized just how much of a pain in the *$$ maintaining food safety is.
- coldpie 7y ago
  > ect I keep seeing this. Where are people picking this up from?
  - miles 7y ago
    I notice more people are putting ect. instead of etc. Why? https://www.quora.com/I-notice-more-people-are-putting-ect-instead-of-etc-Why https://www.quora.com/I-notice-more-people-are-putting-ect-i... ect. | Common Errors in English Usage and More https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/25/ect/ https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/25/ect/
  - EForEndeavour 7y ago
    Simple: incorrect attempts to spell "etc." annoy you, so you remember them unusually strongly.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  >> when I cooked meat, I realized just how much of a pain in the *$$ maintaining food safety is. Because you live in the west. In most of the world, plants can be just as dangerous as meat, sometimes more so. Google "pork tapeworm". You can get it from eating undercooked pork or, more commonly, from poorly-washed vegetables grown anywhere near pigs. Do you wash your salads in chlorinated water? I doubt it. You can only get away with that because, in the west, we have physically separated farm animals from crops.
cies 7y ago
> the number of people completely avoiding meat hasn't changed. We have numbers from actual research on that: https://plantproteins.co/vegan-plant-based-diet-statistics/ https://plantproteins.co/vegan-plant-based-diet-statistics/ https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-of-vegetarians-and-vegans-in-the-u-s-increasing/ https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-o... So, yes it increases, and quite fast even.
hanniabu 7y ago
I'd wager a general healthy eating movement has a lot to do with it too. More people just want to eat healthier food without going full vegetarian.
Lndlrd 7y ago
Anecdotally, yes, I eat less meat now for environmental reasons, and I think you're right to generalize. Especially in progressive cities and circles, meat and oil are in the same class. It's hip to eat veg, socially conscious.
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  But if you dig on vegan food Well come over to my work I’ll have them cook you something that you’ll really love "Bohemian Like You", Dandy Warhols (2000) It's always been trendy in certain circles, I think the expansion now is partly environmentalism and partly "mainstreaming of hipsterness".
pesmhey 7y ago
For me, it’s variety. I value novelty and creativity in food, so the availability of different types of meals is great.
dorchadas 7y ago
I'm doing the semi-veg lifestyle. Trying to avoid meat more days than not. It was totally environmentally based for me. I want to transition to full veg, but need to work on my prepping skills and planning better.
- mattl 7y ago
  Is semi-veg, semi-vegetarian or semi-vegan?
  - dorchadas 7y ago
    Vegetarian for me.
YinglingLight 7y ago
If you're in Canada, it's 100% due to meat prices yet rationalized by ethical or environmental concerns.
slothtrop 7y ago
Also, health and nutrition. Among health nuts many who consume meat advocate reducing intake whilst increasing legumes and veg. Even aping the popular aggregate "blue-zone" diets and the Mediterranean diet (the most researched of all) will lead to more restricted meat consumption than the standard western diet permits. For those who like to heavily politicize diet, this is a perspective that gets buried by absolutists who like to identify as either pro/anti-meat. Silly.
- deevolution 7y ago
  Avoiding meat consumption eliminates all dietary cholesterol intake, which is awesome for heart health.
  - UnpossibleJim 7y ago
    A lot of that has been debunked with regular exercise. Many of the plaques and fatty deposits can be linked directly to high carbohydrate and high processed sugar diets in combination with sedentary lifestyles. That's been shown with the prevalence of putting type one diabetics on cholesterol medications in their upper thirties or lower fourties, as a practice, regardless of any other factors due to free sugars in their blood streams. Dietary cholesterol hasn't shown much of a spike in cardiovascular cholesterol at all, on recent studies, to be honest.... let me see if I can find the studies and I'll try and link it, if it wasn't behind a paywall. It might have been a Johns Hopkins, and I think they are paywalled.
    - slothtrop 7y ago
      There is a new-ish study that made waves which suggests dietary cholesterol does have a link to heart disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30874756 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30874756 I take a middle view that too much cholesterol is probably best avoided but I don't think it demands being dispensed with. And just because we "don't need it" doesn't mean there aren't benefits, like a testosterone boost.
  - UnpossibleJim 7y ago
impostir 7y ago
As a someone who falls into the semi-veg bucket, I would say I agree. It is mostly from an environmental concern, but I am also uncomfortable with factory farming. The thing that surprised me the most is that I don't really crave meat. Anecdotally, I now feel sluggish and tired after eating meat.
mywittyname 7y ago
For me, the biggest reason I've become semi-veg is that restaurants actually make decent meat-free meals. Most places used to relegate meat-free options to salads and side dishes. But today, most restaurants treat vegetarian dishes as first-class options. This has given me more ideas on what to cook without meat besides, Indian food or pasta.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
I've definately been eating less meat, but not for environmental/ethical concerns. I do it because of Health concerns.

janlaureys 7y ago

I'm one of those semi-veg people. I tried it a few years ago as well and I agree it's a lot easier now than it was back then.

Iv 7y ago

For me that's a mix of ethical and environmental concerns. I agree that there is a point in the belief that it is unethical to kill animals. That's not the most unethical thing that is happening in the world, there are a lot of things to argue about, but in general, I agree that in an ideal world, we should not do that. The environmental concerns, I only buy half-heartedly. I don't really believe that land-owners will transform their pastures or soy cultures into rain forest instead of another profitable exploitation, I'd rather have states force responsible production and norms. It is just not practical for me to go full-veg, where I live I would need to cook one hour a day for it, and I am a lousy cook, I have neither the inclination or the motivation for it. But I reduced my consumption more and more. It was surprising to see how my taste changed. I used to be a huge meat eater and now I find eating even a small steak a bit nauseating. I almost eat no beef anymore, little pork but mostly chicken and fish, and even these I eat little.

everythingswan 7y ago
What are the constraints based on where you live? I knew someone who grew up heavily on beef since she was from a small, rural country. Is it a similar reason? I'm interested in food insecurity and related things, which is why I ask.
- strict9 7y ago
  I grew up and lived in a rural area (southern appalachians in the US) and it was not easy. Small town restaurants often have zero options, living near a taco bell was about the best you can hope for. Not even morningstar farms veggie burgers in grocery stores. But that was 10 years ago, things are different now. Whenever I go home for Christmas I'm amazed at what's available.
  - xeromal 7y ago
    Howdie neighbor. I lived in North GA and experienced the same woes. There's still 10 fast food restaurants per 1 wholesome restaurant. I'll know we've made it when waffle house serves veggie sausage. haha.
- Iv 7y ago
  I live in countryside Japan where it does not cost a lot more to buy a bento than to cook one yourself. Before moving in, I used to think it should be easy to be vegetarian in a Buddhist country but it is not. Japan's culinary habit is that a good meal needs to have a lot of different ingredients in it. From a dietetics point of view, that's great but it often means that even in most salads, you'll have a few pieces of bacon or chicken, a shrimp or some grains of minced meat. That still makes for a very meat-light diet and I would switch to a no-meat-at-all in a heartbeat if those bentos and salads came in vegetarian versions, but that makes it almost impossible to totally avoid meat.
arcticfox 7y ago
> The environmental concerns, I only buy half-heartedly. I don't really believe that land-owners will transform their pastures or soy cultures into rain forest instead of another profitable exploitation, I'd rather have states force responsible production and norms. If farmers switch to other exploitative crops, it should drive up the supply and down the price of those crops, reducing the drive to clear more rain forest.
- SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
  > If farmers switch to other exploitative crops, it should drive up the supply and down the price of those crops, reducing the drive to clear more rain forest. I'd rather not gamble away the rainforest to optimism about humans acting rational. It's already irrational: humans will optimize towards short term gains.
  - xiphias2 7y ago
    It's not just about short term vs long term gains for the farmers: it's about gain for them vs gain for the whole human population (the second involves just a small marginal gain for the farmers).
    - grawprog 7y ago
      You'd be surprised about the shortsighted things people do for small marginal gain. More of a light hearted example. I worked at a grocery store years ago, one summer the 4L ice cream buckets stopped having handles. A lot of people complained, they liked to use them for berry picking and other things. One day I asked the people we ordered the dairy stuff from why. Turns out, some accountant figured out they'd have a marginal gain of 1¢ per ice cream bucket if they removed the handles. In the end though, that year we ended up throwing a lot of them away, whereas the summer before we'd had trouble keeping them in stock. People really liked those bucket handles. I still wonder if the penny savings were worth the loss in sales from people that wanted buckets with handles more than ice cream.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
detcader 7y ago
I find the ethical-philosophical side of it interesting. In the philosophy of ethics, thought experiments can be helpful (or puzzling), like the trolley problem or the Categorical Imperative. So: Imagine if a wizard finished casting a very complicated and resource-intensive spell and the result is that every living cow, pig, chicken and turkey in the meat industry were replaced with a clone of a dog you've met. In the thousands of crowded compound pens, the millions of tiny cages, on the assembly lines facing captive bolt pistols like the one from No Country for Old Men-- there is now that dog. In that moment, what would be an example of something happening that is more unethical? Of course the answer would be different for each person; some people would have the point that we can't compare apples to oranges. For me I find it hard to imagine a war or a process of exploitation in 2019 that measures up.
- roenxi 7y ago
  But the ethical base-case is potentially that none of those cows, pigs, chickens or turkeys are ever born. Case by case we couldn't say, but statistically a lot of farm animals are going to be reliant on human logistics, organisation and protection to survive in the numbers that they do. So the question might reasonably be 'are the conditions these animals face worse than never existing?'.
  - Vinnl 7y ago
    For a lot of them, the answer is most certainly yes, and if humans were in their positions, they'd say so too.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - detcader 7y ago
    Then I think the natural follow-up experiment would be to imagine if a dog you know was born for dogfighting, and that you can be sure it will never escape. Would we rather it just not be born? If not, we just need to argue that being bred to dogfight is preferable to, or on-par with, being bred to be trapped in a cage and eaten.
  - 7y ago
nicoburns 7y ago
> It is just not practical for me to go full-veg, where I live I would need to cook one hour a day for it, Why does eating meat mean you can cook less?
- ebiester 7y ago
  In some areas, the only option is to cook 100% of meals if one wants to be vegetarian. In others, it is still possible to go out to eat. Further, the prepackaged vegetarian options are only available in some options.
- zeveb 7y ago
  Meat is remarkably easy to cook: apply heat to meat, done. Vegetables take preparation, require more-complex treatment, need to be managed well (I have no problem eating a quick meal of just a steak or chicken breast; I really would hate eating a quick meal of only carrots or just onions). Meat's convenient in a way that vegetables aren't.
  - phonypc 7y ago
    This is the opposite of reality in my experience. Most vegetables can be quickly steamed, boiled, stir fried etc. Legumes or tubers take longer, but require little active participation. Meat on the other hand is greatly benefited by things like marination, mechanical tenderizing, monitoring temperature as it cooks. You can whip up a steak pretty quick, but probably not any faster than you could stir fry some veggies.
    - cferr 7y ago
      If we're talking steak in particular, it's going to be faster than any palatable vegetable based dish every time. Total cook time is about five minutes, and prep is less than a minute. Also in particular, stir frying isn't a great example of a vegetable preparation which is fast. Prep is usually at least twice the amount of time as the frying. Peanut butter celery sticks would be a better example I think.
Woberto 7y ago
Even without new vegetarian options at grocery stores, I've been okay with cooking once a week for 2 or 3 hours. Breakfast is an egg casserole/quiche with veggies and chorizo spices or hashbrown. Lunch and dinner might be a lentil "meat"loaf, bean chili, or Indian style meals which are typically vegan. Lots of easy recipe options here, but it does help that I don't mind repeating meals for a week.
rhn_mk1 7y ago
> That's not the most unethical thing that is happening in the world I'm just going to refer to the factory farming article from 80000hours: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/factory-farming/ https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/factory-farming/ Considering that "Each year, 50 billion animals are raised and slaughtered in factory farms globally. Over a billion animals live in factory farms at any point of time in the United States. Most experience serious levels of suffering.", I would argue that it's hard to find anything comparable in magnitude to that tragedy if one allows that farmed animals are even a 1/100th fraction as conscious as humans. I would... probably not enjoy being proven wrong this time :S
- yters 7y ago
  Do the animals experience more suffering than if they lived in the wild? Is industrial slaughter more or less traumatic than death in the wild? Are there any benefits animals experience living in captivity vs living in the wild? Is there anything positive about more such animals getting to live in the first place due to demand for meat?
  - Half_pint 7y ago
    People rarely seem to ask these questions when it comes to dogfighting. Somehow we agree it's bad to breed dogs in captivity to suffer when it's a behavior we don't engage in... but when it requires personal change everyone is suddenly Descartes asking the deep questions.
  - rhn_mk1 7y ago
    Those are good questions, but about a different topic (except the last one). The choice here is not between raising animals for eating in factories as opposed to raising them in the wild. It's between raising them in factories versus not bringing them to life at all. Wild animal suffering is a different beast altogether. Your last question is on the point though. Do the animals raised for meat have lives worth living?
    - yters 7y ago
Vinnl 7y ago
> But I reduced my consumption more and more. It was surprising to see how my taste changed. I experienced the same, which was really odd. I guess you can learn to like (or dislike) a taste. The other thing I noticed that concerns about suffering started to weigh far stronger for me once the environmental concerns made me stop eating meat. I think that I subconsciously ignored or trivialised a lot of the information I got about what was and is actually happening in that sector.
- aoeusnth1 7y ago
  Same, I switched for environmental reasons and only then stopped poo-poohing the animal suffering. There's arguably motivated reasoning on both sides - when I was a meat eater, I was motivated not to care, and now that I'm not, I am motivated to justify my lifestyle.
- MisterBastahrd 7y ago
  I once went on a low carb diet and stuck to it steadfast for about 6 months. One of my favorite candies is Reece's Peanut Butter cups. When I came off the diet, I decided to have one. It tasted exactly the same as you would expect those ultra-low-cost off-brand peanut butter cups that they sell in budget grab bags. Took me weeks to be able to taste the difference.
- Iv 7y ago
  The animal suffering aspect kind of was the start for me. I quickly recognized the counter-arguments were very poor. The only two lines of arguments that one may defend are "Animals don't suffer" or "It is natural for humans to exploit animals". I don't hold any of these opinions and therefore I could not defend meat production ethically.
sixstringtheory 7y ago
Regardless of your food selection, I’d encourage you to try bulk cooking if you haven’t before. Cook 4-5 days worth of food on Sunday, takes about 2 hours. You can eat dinner afterwards and package up a plate for every weeknight. When you get home from work during the week, turn on oven, put meal in immediately, take a shower or browse HN for 20 minutes, and you’re g2g. If you start to feel more handy with a frying pan you can store each part of your meal separately in the fridge and reheat a full dish in 5-10 minutes. Microwaves and toaster ovens will also shorten the wait time. Side note: in my time in kitchens, I learned that the art of storing/reheating food is just as important as from-scratch preparation. I understand parent is not motivated to learn it, but I encourage them to rethink it, and I leave this message for everyone else. Personally, cooking has been an incredibly fulfilling and freeing life skill to acquire.
- Iv 7y ago
  I know how to do it. I don't like it and I have better use of 2 hours of my precious sunday time.

nicoburns 7y ago

At least in London, there has been a big uptick in veganism in the last year or so. Helped by mainstream supermarkets and restuarants adding vegan options en mass.

goatinaboat 7y ago
London was also the epicentre of Atkins, eating lots of meat at every meal. It can change overnight. You can’t extrapolate from London whimsy to any long term trend.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
If you don't buy a lot of ready-made meals you notice that supermarkets have always had plenty of vegetarian and vegan options.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  The new thing is the number of ready-made meals that are also vegetarian, and directly from the distributor brand. And for me the biggest marker is that it's now advertised on the package. Not just the small vegan logo, there is big lettering like "suitable for vegetarians" or "meat-free" or whatever. It must have become a selling point.

dfxm12 7y ago

I guess I'm lucky to have grown up in an area where restaurants almost always had some vegan options just as a matter of course. Tomato pie vs pepperoni pizza, pasta places with spaghetti so good, it doesn't matter if you get pomodoro or carbonara, dry fried szechuan string beans that sounds like "just a side" but eats like a meal, tacos with chicken, pork or veggies. Veg/vegan food was always just food to me, so all this hub bub about it is bizarre to me.

okmokmz 7y ago
That's definitely not the norm. I'm in Seattle, and while it isn't hard to find restaurants with vegan options, you certainly won't "almost always" find vegan options if you just go into a random restaurant. I found the same thing to be the case in LA, lots of vegan options but they definitely were not in every restaurant. Perhaps you just self-select vegan friendly restaurants?
- dfxm12 7y ago
  Perhaps you just self-select vegan friendly restaurants? No. I've eaten pretty much everywhere around. Italian, Chinese and Mexican places in particular have built in vegan options pretty much by default. I'm surprised there aren't such Chinese or Mexican options in LA (although when confronted with something like "gan bian si ji dou" or even "dry fried green beans" on a menu, it's not immediately obvious if it's vegan or not). I spent a bit of time in Seattle over a decade ago. I was trying to save money at the time, so I didn't order out much, but I do remember burritos from Taco Del Mar being fine no matter what is (or isn't) in them. There was a great place for fries called Frites which appears to be closed now and a bunch of Indian places, too. I also remember a hot dog place near the Lenin statue with all kinds of options, but any mention of that place seems to be wiped off the net, so I might have just imagined it. :) I wasn't trying to say what is or isn't the norm, just that I don't understand why people make a such a big deal about what they, or others, are eating.

schnevets 7y ago

To me, it's less about new products and more about people's tastes. People are eating very different things now because of new popularity in some cuisines (Indian, Thai, and Mexican come to mind) and the popularity of "superfoods" (Avocado, Acai berry... ever notice there are never any animal-based superfoods?).

simonsarris 7y ago
> ever notice there are never any animal-based superfoods? In my circles it's tallow, A2 milk, and beef liver that are huge in popularity but I agree mainstream goes for coconut water, oat milk, etc. Those are a function of big ag ad dollars I imagine, more than decisive tastes or the actual super-ness of any food.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  > Those are a function of big ag ad dollars I imagine, more than decisive tastes or the actual super-ness of any food. Perhaps, but when you look at what's behind "A2 milk" (I hadn't heard of it before), it's basically a single company promoting their brand with largely BS statements. The Wikipedia article has plenty of details: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_milk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_milk
SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
> ever notice there are never any animal-based superfoods? This must be a marketing gimmick; eating animals is very nutritious—it's just not sufficient. However, this is the same as Avacado/acai berry/whatever. I have heard milk referred to as a superfood quite a bit.
- YinglingLight 7y ago
  Lean meat like chicken is has an INSANE protein ratio and vitamin B content /per calorie.
- geddy 7y ago
  > I have heard milk referred to as a superfood quite a bit. Might have something to do with the billions spent on marketing meat and dairy. Pretty big industries with pretty big financial contributions to our wonderful politicians, for decades now.

gwbas1c 7y ago

My stomach, ect, feel better when I eat less meat. But: I rarely order vegan in a restaurant. I find it's much easier to do vegan at home. Why? Mostly food safety and storage. After cooking vegan for a few weeks, when I cooked meat, I realized just how much of a pain in the *$$ maintaining food safety is.

coldpie 7y ago
> ect I keep seeing this. Where are people picking this up from?
- miles 7y ago
  I notice more people are putting ect. instead of etc. Why? https://www.quora.com/I-notice-more-people-are-putting-ect-instead-of-etc-Why https://www.quora.com/I-notice-more-people-are-putting-ect-i... ect. | Common Errors in English Usage and More https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/25/ect/ https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/25/ect/
- EForEndeavour 7y ago
  Simple: incorrect attempts to spell "etc." annoy you, so you remember them unusually strongly.
sandworm101 7y ago
>> when I cooked meat, I realized just how much of a pain in the *$$ maintaining food safety is. Because you live in the west. In most of the world, plants can be just as dangerous as meat, sometimes more so. Google "pork tapeworm". You can get it from eating undercooked pork or, more commonly, from poorly-washed vegetables grown anywhere near pigs. Do you wash your salads in chlorinated water? I doubt it. You can only get away with that because, in the west, we have physically separated farm animals from crops.

cies 7y ago

> the number of people completely avoiding meat hasn't changed. We have numbers from actual research on that: https://plantproteins.co/vegan-plant-based-diet-statistics/ https://plantproteins.co/vegan-plant-based-diet-statistics/ https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-of-vegetarians-and-vegans-in-the-u-s-increasing/ https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-o... So, yes it increases, and quite fast even.

hanniabu 7y ago

I'd wager a general healthy eating movement has a lot to do with it too. More people just want to eat healthier food without going full vegetarian.

Lndlrd 7y ago

Anecdotally, yes, I eat less meat now for environmental reasons, and I think you're right to generalize. Especially in progressive cities and circles, meat and oil are in the same class. It's hip to eat veg, socially conscious.

semi-extrinsic 7y ago
But if you dig on vegan food Well come over to my work I’ll have them cook you something that you’ll really love "Bohemian Like You", Dandy Warhols (2000) It's always been trendy in certain circles, I think the expansion now is partly environmentalism and partly "mainstreaming of hipsterness".

pesmhey 7y ago

For me, it’s variety. I value novelty and creativity in food, so the availability of different types of meals is great.

dorchadas 7y ago

I'm doing the semi-veg lifestyle. Trying to avoid meat more days than not. It was totally environmentally based for me. I want to transition to full veg, but need to work on my prepping skills and planning better.

mattl 7y ago
Is semi-veg, semi-vegetarian or semi-vegan?
- dorchadas 7y ago
  Vegetarian for me.

YinglingLight 7y ago

If you're in Canada, it's 100% due to meat prices yet rationalized by ethical or environmental concerns.

slothtrop 7y ago

Also, health and nutrition. Among health nuts many who consume meat advocate reducing intake whilst increasing legumes and veg. Even aping the popular aggregate "blue-zone" diets and the Mediterranean diet (the most researched of all) will lead to more restricted meat consumption than the standard western diet permits. For those who like to heavily politicize diet, this is a perspective that gets buried by absolutists who like to identify as either pro/anti-meat. Silly.

deevolution 7y ago
Avoiding meat consumption eliminates all dietary cholesterol intake, which is awesome for heart health.
- UnpossibleJim 7y ago
  A lot of that has been debunked with regular exercise. Many of the plaques and fatty deposits can be linked directly to high carbohydrate and high processed sugar diets in combination with sedentary lifestyles. That's been shown with the prevalence of putting type one diabetics on cholesterol medications in their upper thirties or lower fourties, as a practice, regardless of any other factors due to free sugars in their blood streams. Dietary cholesterol hasn't shown much of a spike in cardiovascular cholesterol at all, on recent studies, to be honest.... let me see if I can find the studies and I'll try and link it, if it wasn't behind a paywall. It might have been a Johns Hopkins, and I think they are paywalled.
  - slothtrop 7y ago
    There is a new-ish study that made waves which suggests dietary cholesterol does have a link to heart disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30874756 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30874756 I take a middle view that too much cholesterol is probably best avoided but I don't think it demands being dispensed with. And just because we "don't need it" doesn't mean there aren't benefits, like a testosterone boost.
- UnpossibleJim 7y ago

impostir 7y ago

As a someone who falls into the semi-veg bucket, I would say I agree. It is mostly from an environmental concern, but I am also uncomfortable with factory farming. The thing that surprised me the most is that I don't really crave meat. Anecdotally, I now feel sluggish and tired after eating meat.

mywittyname 7y ago

For me, the biggest reason I've become semi-veg is that restaurants actually make decent meat-free meals. Most places used to relegate meat-free options to salads and side dishes. But today, most restaurants treat vegetarian dishes as first-class options. This has given me more ideas on what to cook without meat besides, Indian food or pasta.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

I've definately been eating less meat, but not for environmental/ethical concerns. I do it because of Health concerns.