7 ms·

You are being downvoted, but I think that you are totally right. For an awful lot of people, eating meat is a matter of status; it's similar to why many people

You are being downvoted, but I think that you are totally right. For an awful lot of people, eating meat is a matter of status; it's similar to why many people prefer having big cars even if they are less environmentally friendly. There is also the fact that plant based diets are still associated to certain ideologies and because of that they will keep being scoffed at by people from opposing ideologies. Sure, you don't have to lean left to be vegan, but the vast majority of vegan people, or people seriously trying to reduce their meat consumption, do lean left (continuing with the car analogy: remember the rolling coal fad). Dietary choices go way beyond their nutritional value. People feel attached to what they eat, and they will resist change. So, yes, a strong economic incentive is needed, and even worse, it might not be enough.

SllX 7y ago
As someone who isn’t considering giving up my ways, red blooded meat eating American that I am, I actually appreciate vegans to some degree. As long as there are an appreciable number of them, I will enjoy a greater variety of dishes and ingredients available to me, and oftentimes fresher ingredients too. Insofar as they are making choices that benefit them, they also make choices that benefit me. Where they lose me, and this isn’t all vegans, but the ones that lose me are the ones that try to convince me that I am a bad person for the dietary choices I make. Maybe I am, but I don’t think so. The ones that make me want to go out and eat two steaks just to stick it to them are the ones that want to take away my choices or introduce sin taxes onto meat. I’m cool with carbon/GHG taxes that make no exceptions, if the cost of my choices goes up because of a tax that applies to all levels of society in fair measure, I can live with that. I would argue such a fair tax is entirely theoretical, but in theory, it could work out. The ones that want to punish me specifically are the ones I can’t abide. When someone introduces me to an entirely vegetarian dish or vegan dish that I like, I’ll probably add it to my menu and start making it myself, and I usually don’t modify it to add any additional protein. Good food is good food and I actually like tofu and some of those veggie patties on the market. I like them for that they are, not for what they pretend to be. It come down to making a different choice as to what to eat for dinner, rather than making a compromise. Today, January 1st 2020, I’m not even thinking about lab grown meat. Maybe I’ll prefer it on January 1st, 2030, or maybe I’ll be paying a premium for my steak, or maybe the price of my premium cut steak will actually fall after checking against inflation and I’ll be eating even more steak. Maybe I’ll even lose my taste for meat, I mean I lost my taste for shrimp once upon a time, and I gained a taste for eggs in my early twenties. Vegans that practice veganism for dogmatic, ideological and religious reasons certainly aren’t going to win me over in ten or a hundred years by preaching to me though. I make choices. Vegans make choices. Everyone makes choices. I think that’s a pretty good state of affairs.
- terryf 7y ago
  This is probably the most balanced comment about meat-eating I've ever read. I think the tax thing is key - I eat meat and I fly a lot. I know both of those things contribute to the climate crisis - therefore I'd be completely ok with paying some more money as tax that goes towards offsetting the environmental damage from those activities. Lots of people think we needs to go back in development of technology and stop enjoying the things humanity has worked for a long time to achieve. Instead we should think about how we can make technology work better together with the environment and enable even more comfort and prosperity. Not force us to go back, rather find ways of moving even further forward.
  - lwhi 7y ago
    I think the main issue is that money alone won't stop the greenhouse gasses from entering the atmosphere. We just need to stop flying so much, and stop eating as much meat. It's unfortunate and inconvenient.
    - SllX 7y ago
      Increased price pressure would incentivized a bit more ingenuity. There’s a number of things that are cheaper to purchase a replacement for than to maintain and repair. That has its pluses and minuses, but you could change up the cost equation, and plow the extra revenue into reforestation and artificial reef construction.
- tluyben2 7y ago
  There are so many nice dishes that don't have or need meat. I think a large thing is that people don't experiment much with their food. I have to travel a lot for work and especially in Asia and Africa, there are tons of dishes which are easy to make but very rich in flavour and much more 'refined' (in my opinion) than having a slab of meat on my plate. I sometimes think I want a steak, but after 2 bites I start thinking how much better that would've been 1/3 of it in an Indian curry (which of course is blasphemy but I'm not religious or from India) or in a thai curry dish. And once you properly make it into a dish which is one melange of integrated tastes, the 'real meat' thing becomes far less pressing. Same with meat in potato oven dishes, Lasagna or Pizza => unless you are into those overkill hard tastes (which I personally don't like), you can learn to cook them without meat while they still have the texture and taste for (open minded) meat eaters. A slab of meat like steak will be many years before that comes from a lab for a decent price. But worked into a nice curry or some usages for sausages etc, I say we are close or even there already.
cortesoft 7y ago
I don't think they necessarily eat meat and drive big cars because of the need to signal their ideology. I agree that their ideology means they don't care about their impact on the environment, which means they don't have the incentive not to drive a big car or eat meat; since they don't have disincentive, the positive reasons to do those two things win out.
jka 7y ago
I think you're absolutely right that the status symbol aspect of meat consumption is going to be a large factor in people's decision-making. That said, there are inflection points at which certain products switch from being seen as status symbols into more questionable signals - wearing fur springs to mind as one example. I don't think it's at all guaranteed that traditional meat would end up in that category; it's a long way from it currently. But it's within the realm of possibility.
- wolco 7y ago
  Fur is a fashion meat is a core pillar in many cultures and changing that will take longer than 10 years.
  - lsc 7y ago
    >Fur is a fashion meat is a core pillar in many cultures and changing that will take longer than 10 years. I think you are probably right... but I want to bring up the counterexample of smoking. I mean, smoking was never as widespread as eating meat, but I feel like there was a tipping point in the '90s, where it went from something almost every red blooded american would do to something very rude and even forbidden in most indoor spaces. Smoking became... divorced from manhood. I remember as a kid I had an IT job; sort of an internship type deal fixing computers for the local county department of public health. I got credit for going to this job instead of taking the last two classes of the day in high school; There was nobody else in the building who wasn't old enough to be my parent. It was so much fun. I remember when the city passed the 'no smoking in bars' ordinance. The office was super excited. a few people (who I'm pretty sure never went to bars) said they were going to the bar after work. (I was maybe 16, and not invited) I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but now that I'm old, I go to bars, too... and you know? I probably wouldn't if they smelled the way they smelled walking past them in the '90s.
    - KozmoNau7 7y ago
      Some friends and I ran a weekly poker game at a local bar for a few years in the mid-00s, before an indoor smoking ban was implemented here. Every night when I came home, my clothes absolutely reeked of smoke, I couldn't even hang them inside my apartment.
wincy 7y ago
It doesn’t help that I get headaches when I eat my garden grown tomatoes. No such reaction to eating a ribeye. How tall will my children grow up to be on a plant based diet? I want my children to grow up to be stronger than those around them.
- yesenadam 7y ago
  >How tall will my children grow up to be on a plant based diet? I want my children to grow up to be stronger than those around them. Well, oxen manage to be strong as an ox on a 100% plant-based diet. Giraffes get pretty tall too.
  - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
    Lions, sharks and polar bears are also very strong, on a carnivorous diet. What does that says about human nutrition? Absolutely nothing.
    - zaphirplane 7y ago
      How about gorillas they are 4-9 times stronger than a human on a vegetarian diet (some termites and ants) and they are pretty close to humans genes wise
      - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
        We’re also about 60% similar to bananas by genome.
    - jpmoral 7y ago
      I think you reinforced their point.
  - balt_s 7y ago
    > oxen manage to be strong as an ox on a 100% plant-based diet What an absurd analogy; cheetahs eat a 100% meat-based diet and they're very fast.
Supermancho 7y ago
> eating meat is a matter of status Chicken mcnuggets are barely chicken. The market already demonstrated that "real meat" is a matter of availability and marketing, not a matter status chasing (not that there aren't exceptions, which are a statistical minority). I'm not sure why anyone thinks this is a compelling argument. SMH
- sumedh 7y ago
  I think the OP is taking about beef and pork for making his point. Does raising chickens even have the same impact as raising cattle on the climate?
  - gordaco 7y ago
    Yes, I was thinking mostly about beef. Which seems to be the most environmentally impactful meat, by the way. Pork is less impactful and poultry is even less. Obligatory wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
    - chii 7y ago
      and insect protein is even less than that! but you'd be hard pressed to find people who would substitute their animal protein with insect protein.
      - Semaphor 7y ago
        Not sure if it’s the brand, but I tried frozen patties based on insect protein here (in Germany, IIRC the producer was dutch). I was excited to try it, but besides being more expensive than beef, it tasted bland. Now with beef, it’s neither frozen not pre-assembled into patties, so that might also be a difference, but for now I’m holding out for lab-grown meat.
    - D_Alex 7y ago
      >...beef... the most environmentally impactful meat... Pork is less impactful and poultry is even less This is largely because pork is raised in factory-farming conditions that are awful for the animals, and poultry even more so. Environmental "benefits" are countered by animal welfare drawbacks. Here is a good analysis, you need to scroll around a bit to find pork and poultry info: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-net-harm/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-n...
aerodude 7y ago
I'd go even further than that and argue that the reason vegan and vegetarian diets have taken off as much as they have is because they became status symbols in the 90s / 2000s.

SllX 7y ago

As someone who isn’t considering giving up my ways, red blooded meat eating American that I am, I actually appreciate vegans to some degree. As long as there are an appreciable number of them, I will enjoy a greater variety of dishes and ingredients available to me, and oftentimes fresher ingredients too. Insofar as they are making choices that benefit them, they also make choices that benefit me. Where they lose me, and this isn’t all vegans, but the ones that lose me are the ones that try to convince me that I am a bad person for the dietary choices I make. Maybe I am, but I don’t think so. The ones that make me want to go out and eat two steaks just to stick it to them are the ones that want to take away my choices or introduce sin taxes onto meat. I’m cool with carbon/GHG taxes that make no exceptions, if the cost of my choices goes up because of a tax that applies to all levels of society in fair measure, I can live with that. I would argue such a fair tax is entirely theoretical, but in theory, it could work out. The ones that want to punish me specifically are the ones I can’t abide. When someone introduces me to an entirely vegetarian dish or vegan dish that I like, I’ll probably add it to my menu and start making it myself, and I usually don’t modify it to add any additional protein. Good food is good food and I actually like tofu and some of those veggie patties on the market. I like them for that they are, not for what they pretend to be. It come down to making a different choice as to what to eat for dinner, rather than making a compromise. Today, January 1st 2020, I’m not even thinking about lab grown meat. Maybe I’ll prefer it on January 1st, 2030, or maybe I’ll be paying a premium for my steak, or maybe the price of my premium cut steak will actually fall after checking against inflation and I’ll be eating even more steak. Maybe I’ll even lose my taste for meat, I mean I lost my taste for shrimp once upon a time, and I gained a taste for eggs in my early twenties. Vegans that practice veganism for dogmatic, ideological and religious reasons certainly aren’t going to win me over in ten or a hundred years by preaching to me though. I make choices. Vegans make choices. Everyone makes choices. I think that’s a pretty good state of affairs.

terryf 7y ago
This is probably the most balanced comment about meat-eating I've ever read. I think the tax thing is key - I eat meat and I fly a lot. I know both of those things contribute to the climate crisis - therefore I'd be completely ok with paying some more money as tax that goes towards offsetting the environmental damage from those activities. Lots of people think we needs to go back in development of technology and stop enjoying the things humanity has worked for a long time to achieve. Instead we should think about how we can make technology work better together with the environment and enable even more comfort and prosperity. Not force us to go back, rather find ways of moving even further forward.
- lwhi 7y ago
  I think the main issue is that money alone won't stop the greenhouse gasses from entering the atmosphere. We just need to stop flying so much, and stop eating as much meat. It's unfortunate and inconvenient.
  - SllX 7y ago
    Increased price pressure would incentivized a bit more ingenuity. There’s a number of things that are cheaper to purchase a replacement for than to maintain and repair. That has its pluses and minuses, but you could change up the cost equation, and plow the extra revenue into reforestation and artificial reef construction.
tluyben2 7y ago
There are so many nice dishes that don't have or need meat. I think a large thing is that people don't experiment much with their food. I have to travel a lot for work and especially in Asia and Africa, there are tons of dishes which are easy to make but very rich in flavour and much more 'refined' (in my opinion) than having a slab of meat on my plate. I sometimes think I want a steak, but after 2 bites I start thinking how much better that would've been 1/3 of it in an Indian curry (which of course is blasphemy but I'm not religious or from India) or in a thai curry dish. And once you properly make it into a dish which is one melange of integrated tastes, the 'real meat' thing becomes far less pressing. Same with meat in potato oven dishes, Lasagna or Pizza => unless you are into those overkill hard tastes (which I personally don't like), you can learn to cook them without meat while they still have the texture and taste for (open minded) meat eaters. A slab of meat like steak will be many years before that comes from a lab for a decent price. But worked into a nice curry or some usages for sausages etc, I say we are close or even there already.

cortesoft 7y ago

I don't think they necessarily eat meat and drive big cars because of the need to signal their ideology. I agree that their ideology means they don't care about their impact on the environment, which means they don't have the incentive not to drive a big car or eat meat; since they don't have disincentive, the positive reasons to do those two things win out.

jka 7y ago

I think you're absolutely right that the status symbol aspect of meat consumption is going to be a large factor in people's decision-making. That said, there are inflection points at which certain products switch from being seen as status symbols into more questionable signals - wearing fur springs to mind as one example. I don't think it's at all guaranteed that traditional meat would end up in that category; it's a long way from it currently. But it's within the realm of possibility.

wolco 7y ago
Fur is a fashion meat is a core pillar in many cultures and changing that will take longer than 10 years.
- lsc 7y ago
  >Fur is a fashion meat is a core pillar in many cultures and changing that will take longer than 10 years. I think you are probably right... but I want to bring up the counterexample of smoking. I mean, smoking was never as widespread as eating meat, but I feel like there was a tipping point in the '90s, where it went from something almost every red blooded american would do to something very rude and even forbidden in most indoor spaces. Smoking became... divorced from manhood. I remember as a kid I had an IT job; sort of an internship type deal fixing computers for the local county department of public health. I got credit for going to this job instead of taking the last two classes of the day in high school; There was nobody else in the building who wasn't old enough to be my parent. It was so much fun. I remember when the city passed the 'no smoking in bars' ordinance. The office was super excited. a few people (who I'm pretty sure never went to bars) said they were going to the bar after work. (I was maybe 16, and not invited) I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but now that I'm old, I go to bars, too... and you know? I probably wouldn't if they smelled the way they smelled walking past them in the '90s.
  - KozmoNau7 7y ago
    Some friends and I ran a weekly poker game at a local bar for a few years in the mid-00s, before an indoor smoking ban was implemented here. Every night when I came home, my clothes absolutely reeked of smoke, I couldn't even hang them inside my apartment.

wincy 7y ago

It doesn’t help that I get headaches when I eat my garden grown tomatoes. No such reaction to eating a ribeye. How tall will my children grow up to be on a plant based diet? I want my children to grow up to be stronger than those around them.

yesenadam 7y ago
>How tall will my children grow up to be on a plant based diet? I want my children to grow up to be stronger than those around them. Well, oxen manage to be strong as an ox on a 100% plant-based diet. Giraffes get pretty tall too.
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  Lions, sharks and polar bears are also very strong, on a carnivorous diet. What does that says about human nutrition? Absolutely nothing.
  - zaphirplane 7y ago
    How about gorillas they are 4-9 times stronger than a human on a vegetarian diet (some termites and ants) and they are pretty close to humans genes wise
    - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
      We’re also about 60% similar to bananas by genome.
  - jpmoral 7y ago
    I think you reinforced their point.
- balt_s 7y ago
  > oxen manage to be strong as an ox on a 100% plant-based diet What an absurd analogy; cheetahs eat a 100% meat-based diet and they're very fast.

Supermancho 7y ago

> eating meat is a matter of status Chicken mcnuggets are barely chicken. The market already demonstrated that "real meat" is a matter of availability and marketing, not a matter status chasing (not that there aren't exceptions, which are a statistical minority). I'm not sure why anyone thinks this is a compelling argument. SMH

sumedh 7y ago
I think the OP is taking about beef and pork for making his point. Does raising chickens even have the same impact as raising cattle on the climate?
- gordaco 7y ago
  Yes, I was thinking mostly about beef. Which seems to be the most environmentally impactful meat, by the way. Pork is less impactful and poultry is even less. Obligatory wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
  - chii 7y ago
    and insect protein is even less than that! but you'd be hard pressed to find people who would substitute their animal protein with insect protein.
    - Semaphor 7y ago
      Not sure if it’s the brand, but I tried frozen patties based on insect protein here (in Germany, IIRC the producer was dutch). I was excited to try it, but besides being more expensive than beef, it tasted bland. Now with beef, it’s neither frozen not pre-assembled into patties, so that might also be a difference, but for now I’m holding out for lab-grown meat.
  - D_Alex 7y ago
    >...beef... the most environmentally impactful meat... Pork is less impactful and poultry is even less This is largely because pork is raised in factory-farming conditions that are awful for the animals, and poultry even more so. Environmental "benefits" are countered by animal welfare drawbacks. Here is a good analysis, you need to scroll around a bit to find pork and poultry info: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-net-harm/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-n...

aerodude 7y ago

I'd go even further than that and argue that the reason vegan and vegetarian diets have taken off as much as they have is because they became status symbols in the 90s / 2000s.