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Not OP, but as someone who is not vegetarian/vegan and is from a country with a cuisine that revolves heavily around meat (Mexican) I have to agree with OP. >

by aylmao 6y ago

Not OP, but as someone who is not vegetarian/vegan and is from a country with a cuisine that revolves heavily around meat (Mexican) I have to agree with OP. > If you want to get people to switch to meat alternatives, you have to keep everything that's great about meat (taste, texture, proteins), while removing everything that's bad about meat (slaughter, livestock industry). I think one thing is making sure it's great, and another thing is making sure it's the same, and you can have something that's great and heavily impacts the market without having it be the same. Just thinking of a random example where this worked; MDF is very much not wood, but it's pretty great for most things. People still buy a lot of wooden furniture, surfaces, etc but for a lot of use-cases MDF does just fine. MDF isn't trying to have the same weight, the exact same texture, or be as solid as wood. It's another material and it's marketed as another material, not as "replacement wood" or something along those lines. Thinking of an example where this hasn't worked; Stadia. Google is very much trying to replace consoles and is focusing on AAA games, but the thing is, as it stands today, Stadia is not a console replacement. The way google is positioning Stadia though puts it in the eyes of hardcore gamers who care about the details: the latency, the streaming resolution, etc. Perhaps if they weren't trying to sell it as your next AAA-game console, they would attract a section of the population that just wants to play games easily, and don't care so much about the specifics. The goal here is to not fully replace the market, but shrink it. Another point worth making is that it's hard to imagine we can reverse the trend in global warming keeping excessive consumer habits— people need to change too. Sure, electric cars will consume less CO2 and they are an easy short-term solution in a car-centric society, but cities need to be planned better so car use in general decreases. Sure, recycled plastics can reduce or plastic waste, but we shouldn't be producing so many water bottles in the first place. Plant-based "meat" are likewise a step in the right direction, but it's also the case meant consumption is just very high. Trying to offer solutions that don't tackle the underlying problem make hard to guarantee long-term sustainability.

henrikschroder 6y ago
> Trying to offer solutions that don't tackle the underlying problem make hard to guarantee long-term sustainability. Maybe, but solutions that go against human nature are doomed to fail in the first place. Asceticism doesn't work. Asking people to do the right thing only has a tiny marginal effect. The only solution to get long-term sustainability is to offer people a better, greener, more sustainable alternative, that doesn't inconvenience people. To overcome the force of habit, your alternative has to be both better and cheaper if you want to see mass adoption. Otherwise you'll just get niche adoption, which is pretty much useless on the grand scale of things.
- aylmao 6y ago
  > Maybe, but solutions that go against human nature are doomed to fail in the first place. I disagree on two fundamental points. Firstly, current levels of meat consumption, I'd argue, are very much not "human nature". It's more to do with advertisement, and cultural trends which are artificial. Secondly, I'd argue "human nature" has been _modified_ or _overcome_ plenty of times before. In short-term thinking, yeah, finding a replacement is the straightforward solution. In the long term, the only certain and the most sustainable solution is to address the consumption problem.
- runarberg 6y ago
  Since when was eating meat in almost every meal in the human nature? AFAIK this level of meat eating is limited a minority population in a very short period of the history of our species. What you say might be true of the wolf nature—hence you shouldn’t feed your dog with vegetarian diet. But humans are not dogs, and only insular population of us living in harsh climates such as the arctic have historically eaten meat as our primary diet. And even then, plant based food is brought to these populations, people there very much consume it. If there is any human nature that rules our eating habits it is the fact that we are omnivores and eat what is available.
  - nec4b 6y ago
    >Since when was eating meat in almost every meal in the human nature? All the nomadic tribes, people living in mountainous areas, hunter gatherer societies in temperate climates,... Though the question itself is pretty meaningless or misleading, since on average people today do not eat meat in almost every meal at all.
    - runarberg 6y ago
      Like I said “only insular population of us living in harsh climates”. I doubt that hunter gatherers in temperate climate ate 100 kg of meat per year. This kind of meat consumption only existed were plant based diet wasn’t available at all. To contextualize, 100 kg (average yearly USA meat consumption per person) is around 2 kg per week, that is around 150 grams per meal (given 14 meals per week). I would say that qualifies as meat in almost every meal.

by aylmao 6y ago

henrikschroder 6y ago

> Trying to offer solutions that don't tackle the underlying problem make hard to guarantee long-term sustainability. Maybe, but solutions that go against human nature are doomed to fail in the first place. Asceticism doesn't work. Asking people to do the right thing only has a tiny marginal effect. The only solution to get long-term sustainability is to offer people a better, greener, more sustainable alternative, that doesn't inconvenience people. To overcome the force of habit, your alternative has to be both better and cheaper if you want to see mass adoption. Otherwise you'll just get niche adoption, which is pretty much useless on the grand scale of things.

aylmao 6y ago
> Maybe, but solutions that go against human nature are doomed to fail in the first place. I disagree on two fundamental points. Firstly, current levels of meat consumption, I'd argue, are very much not "human nature". It's more to do with advertisement, and cultural trends which are artificial. Secondly, I'd argue "human nature" has been _modified_ or _overcome_ plenty of times before. In short-term thinking, yeah, finding a replacement is the straightforward solution. In the long term, the only certain and the most sustainable solution is to address the consumption problem.
runarberg 6y ago
Since when was eating meat in almost every meal in the human nature? AFAIK this level of meat eating is limited a minority population in a very short period of the history of our species. What you say might be true of the wolf nature—hence you shouldn’t feed your dog with vegetarian diet. But humans are not dogs, and only insular population of us living in harsh climates such as the arctic have historically eaten meat as our primary diet. And even then, plant based food is brought to these populations, people there very much consume it. If there is any human nature that rules our eating habits it is the fact that we are omnivores and eat what is available.
- nec4b 6y ago
  >Since when was eating meat in almost every meal in the human nature? All the nomadic tribes, people living in mountainous areas, hunter gatherer societies in temperate climates,... Though the question itself is pretty meaningless or misleading, since on average people today do not eat meat in almost every meal at all.
  - runarberg 6y ago
    Like I said “only insular population of us living in harsh climates”. I doubt that hunter gatherers in temperate climate ate 100 kg of meat per year. This kind of meat consumption only existed were plant based diet wasn’t available at all. To contextualize, 100 kg (average yearly USA meat consumption per person) is around 2 kg per week, that is around 150 grams per meal (given 14 meals per week). I would say that qualifies as meat in almost every meal.