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> The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided. This seems to presume two things: 1) That vegans and vegetarians are primarily doing it for t

> The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided. This seems to presume two things: 1) That vegans and vegetarians are primarily doing it for the environment. 2) That vegans and vegetarians can't do basic math. To the first point, I'd be fully supportive of plant-based diets even if the only reason was concern over the treatment of the animals themselves. The focus on the environmental benefits is really quite new. Vegetarianism has historically been about animal rights/welfare and/or a commitment to non-violence. The environmental benefits are simply the cherry on the cake. To the second point, you say meat provides "far more" nutritional value than any plant. Maybe, maybe not. (I think "not", but I'm open to being wrong about that.) Nutrition is one of those weird fields in science where there's not a whole lot of agreement about anything. However, the vast majority of nutritionists and doctors are far more concerned with the lack of fruits in vegetables in the popular diet than they are with the lack of meat. The environmental benefits have probably been exaggerated, but growing, distributing, and consuming vegetables is obviously less resource-intensive and less wasteful than meat. I'm somewhat shocked that this could be a controversial statement. I'm NOT saying the benefits are so high as to, say, "save the world" by going veg. There are plenty of people who make this claim, and I'm very suspicious of it. But that's very different from thinking the entire movement is misguided. EVERY movement exaggerates their claims. That doesn't make them misguided, simply prone to hyperbole. (On a side note: I'm not vegetarian. I simply agree with those who are.)

mft_ 6y ago
I'm a fairly recent convert to being mostly (like, >99% of my calories, probably) vegetarian actually due to the health benefits. Environmental and animal welfare concerns are nice bonuses, but weren't enough to make me reach the tipping point, I guess.
- rtx 6y ago
  Was it baby cow GIFs?
  - roberto 6y ago
    I think you mean "empathy"?
fossuser 6y ago
> "On a side note: I'm not vegetarian. I simply agree with those who are." This was my position for a long time until finally making the jump at the beginning of the pandemic (vegetarian, will rarely eat fish sometimes). For me, it was mostly about reducing suffering of other animals. I thought this way before but it's hard to change behavior and I liked hamburgers. I think this is the strongest argument and the environmental or nutritional arguments feel like side issues to avoid just tackling this issue directly. The meat substitutes are nice because they're close enough to satisfy the want at a cook out or something. There's some long reasoning behind it, but basically 'thoughtful local eating of meat' or whatever just felt like a rationalization to me. If an alien came down to earth and loved eating humans, but said they thanked every human they killed and ate or that the humans had a decent 20yrs of life before they killed them (and they only ate local humans), it still wouldn't sit well with me. In the above example I was basically the alien that understood and agreed with all the human arguments, but still ate human because I liked human burger. Being vegetarian makes my actions more consistent with what I think is the right thing to do. In theory, you could draw some line at 'well humans and other more intelligent beings are different because they have dreams and a plan for their future'. Even if humans could draw this line perfectly (which I'm skeptical of), you'd still need to kill the 'lesser' animals in a way without suffering or fear. I just don't think that's logistically possible. It's definitely not the way it's done in practice anyway.
- fastball 6y ago
  Drawing the line at cognizance is not something you do "in theory". That is where the vast majority of people on the planet draw the line. You going one step further doesn't make the line you've drawn any more objective.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    It's not that the line is drawn 'in theory'. It's that they think they've drawn it in the right place (usually humans on one side and everything else on the other). I think this is pretty empirically wrong and I don't think humans are likely to get it right. Even ignoring that, there's still the suffering issue. There is objectivity at drawing the line to the left of neural nets.
NoOneNew 6y ago
>To the second point, you say meat provides "far more" nutritional value than any plant. Maybe, maybe not. (I think "not", but I'm open to being wrong about that.) Every anthropologist: Human brain development skyrocketed and were able to maintain them when meat became a regular staple to their diet. Just pick any documentary or book on the evolutionary development of humans. Any! I'm tired of hearing this same bullshit argument that, "Maybe meat isn't good for us. The science isn't there that it's any good." Yes it is! There's millions of years of scientific evidence that shows meat is what made us the technological masters we are today! Where's the science that meat isn't good for us? I want to see that first. And don't give me the epidemiology of a McDonald's junkie and lay that as claim of "all meat eaters". They're as much of a carnivore as a second rate vulture. Then there's that old study that claimed dietary fat is worse than consuming sugar because, dun dun dun, they were paid off by the sugar industry. Do a fair comparison of some folks that are straight edge (no alcohol, smoking, vices, etc). Some herbivores, some omnivores. It's even better if they grow/raise their own food. That's when you'll see who's right and who's wrong. The one thing I agree with vegans is the fact they want people to get the processed trash out of their diet. The reliance on ultra processed foods for a majority of our diets has been causing more harm than good. These plant based burgers... yea... fruits right off the branch.
- fossuser 6y ago
  I think this is a strawman. It can be true that meat provides a lot of good nutrition. It can be true that the human cooking/eating of meat led to better nutrition and development in ancient times (when people ate less of it). It can also be true that in the modern world you can get that nutrition without meat and there may be other good reasons to do so (animal suffering, environment, ability to feed more people, more easily, potentially fewer heart related diseases). These things don't have to be in conflict. I don't think the comment you replied to was suggesting they were.
  - hirundo 6y ago
    It may be that the extra nutritional benefits of meat can be matched by plant products. But the Beyond Meat offerings do not achieve anything close to that. They are made of highly processed industrial ingredients that are designed to approximate the texture of meat but not the nutritional profile. Pea proteins are not as complete nor bio-available as meat proteins, and the fatty acid profile is very different (and IMHO very inferior). To the extent that your purpose is greater health for yourself rather than less suffering, these products don't provide good value.
hammock 6y ago
.
- LegitShady 6y ago
  like elephants? giraffes? Hippos? I'm not a vegetarian but I can think of lots of large herbivores.
  - hammock 6y ago
    Elephants spend 12-18 hours a day eating,[1] compared to 68 minutes on average for an American human.[2] Is that what you want for me and your children? [1]http://www.nationalelephantcenter.org/learn/#:~:text=Since%20elephants%20are%20so%20large,twigs%2C%20and%20other%20vegetation%20daily http://www.nationalelephantcenter.org/learn/#:~:text=Since%2.... [2]https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/2015/07/guess-how-much-time-you-spend-eating-on-an-average-day#:~:text=The%20Bureau%20of%20Labor%20Statistics%20has%20just%20released%20its%20annual,1%20hour%20and%2017%20minutes%20%E2%80%94 https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/2015/07/guess-how-m...
    - the_gastropod 6y ago
      And lions spend 20 hours a day sleeping... what's your point?
      - hammock 6y ago
        They can sleep 20 hours a day because they only eat once every four days. If they had opposable thumbs they might do something else.
    - LegitShady 6y ago
      How much is that reduced if you cook the vegetables? Or do you eat raw meat? The time spent eating is a function of nutritional density and difficulty to digest. We have plenty of nutritional vegetarian food that doesn't require hours of chewing to extract the nutrition from. It's an interesting counterpoint but not actually proving the point made. There are large herbivores.

mft_ 6y ago

I'm a fairly recent convert to being mostly (like, >99% of my calories, probably) vegetarian actually due to the health benefits. Environmental and animal welfare concerns are nice bonuses, but weren't enough to make me reach the tipping point, I guess.

rtx 6y ago
Was it baby cow GIFs?
- roberto 6y ago
  I think you mean "empathy"?

fossuser 6y ago

> "On a side note: I'm not vegetarian. I simply agree with those who are." This was my position for a long time until finally making the jump at the beginning of the pandemic (vegetarian, will rarely eat fish sometimes). For me, it was mostly about reducing suffering of other animals. I thought this way before but it's hard to change behavior and I liked hamburgers. I think this is the strongest argument and the environmental or nutritional arguments feel like side issues to avoid just tackling this issue directly. The meat substitutes are nice because they're close enough to satisfy the want at a cook out or something. There's some long reasoning behind it, but basically 'thoughtful local eating of meat' or whatever just felt like a rationalization to me. If an alien came down to earth and loved eating humans, but said they thanked every human they killed and ate or that the humans had a decent 20yrs of life before they killed them (and they only ate local humans), it still wouldn't sit well with me. In the above example I was basically the alien that understood and agreed with all the human arguments, but still ate human because I liked human burger. Being vegetarian makes my actions more consistent with what I think is the right thing to do. In theory, you could draw some line at 'well humans and other more intelligent beings are different because they have dreams and a plan for their future'. Even if humans could draw this line perfectly (which I'm skeptical of), you'd still need to kill the 'lesser' animals in a way without suffering or fear. I just don't think that's logistically possible. It's definitely not the way it's done in practice anyway.

fastball 6y ago
Drawing the line at cognizance is not something you do "in theory". That is where the vast majority of people on the planet draw the line. You going one step further doesn't make the line you've drawn any more objective.
- fossuser 6y ago
  It's not that the line is drawn 'in theory'. It's that they think they've drawn it in the right place (usually humans on one side and everything else on the other). I think this is pretty empirically wrong and I don't think humans are likely to get it right. Even ignoring that, there's still the suffering issue. There is objectivity at drawing the line to the left of neural nets.

NoOneNew 6y ago

>To the second point, you say meat provides "far more" nutritional value than any plant. Maybe, maybe not. (I think "not", but I'm open to being wrong about that.) Every anthropologist: Human brain development skyrocketed and were able to maintain them when meat became a regular staple to their diet. Just pick any documentary or book on the evolutionary development of humans. Any! I'm tired of hearing this same bullshit argument that, "Maybe meat isn't good for us. The science isn't there that it's any good." Yes it is! There's millions of years of scientific evidence that shows meat is what made us the technological masters we are today! Where's the science that meat isn't good for us? I want to see that first. And don't give me the epidemiology of a McDonald's junkie and lay that as claim of "all meat eaters". They're as much of a carnivore as a second rate vulture. Then there's that old study that claimed dietary fat is worse than consuming sugar because, dun dun dun, they were paid off by the sugar industry. Do a fair comparison of some folks that are straight edge (no alcohol, smoking, vices, etc). Some herbivores, some omnivores. It's even better if they grow/raise their own food. That's when you'll see who's right and who's wrong. The one thing I agree with vegans is the fact they want people to get the processed trash out of their diet. The reliance on ultra processed foods for a majority of our diets has been causing more harm than good. These plant based burgers... yea... fruits right off the branch.

fossuser 6y ago
I think this is a strawman. It can be true that meat provides a lot of good nutrition. It can be true that the human cooking/eating of meat led to better nutrition and development in ancient times (when people ate less of it). It can also be true that in the modern world you can get that nutrition without meat and there may be other good reasons to do so (animal suffering, environment, ability to feed more people, more easily, potentially fewer heart related diseases). These things don't have to be in conflict. I don't think the comment you replied to was suggesting they were.
- hirundo 6y ago
  It may be that the extra nutritional benefits of meat can be matched by plant products. But the Beyond Meat offerings do not achieve anything close to that. They are made of highly processed industrial ingredients that are designed to approximate the texture of meat but not the nutritional profile. Pea proteins are not as complete nor bio-available as meat proteins, and the fatty acid profile is very different (and IMHO very inferior). To the extent that your purpose is greater health for yourself rather than less suffering, these products don't provide good value.

hammock 6y ago

LegitShady 6y ago
like elephants? giraffes? Hippos? I'm not a vegetarian but I can think of lots of large herbivores.
- hammock 6y ago
  Elephants spend 12-18 hours a day eating,[1] compared to 68 minutes on average for an American human.[2] Is that what you want for me and your children? [1]http://www.nationalelephantcenter.org/learn/#:~:text=Since%20elephants%20are%20so%20large,twigs%2C%20and%20other%20vegetation%20daily http://www.nationalelephantcenter.org/learn/#:~:text=Since%2.... [2]https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/2015/07/guess-how-much-time-you-spend-eating-on-an-average-day#:~:text=The%20Bureau%20of%20Labor%20Statistics%20has%20just%20released%20its%20annual,1%20hour%20and%2017%20minutes%20%E2%80%94 https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/2015/07/guess-how-m...
  - the_gastropod 6y ago
    And lions spend 20 hours a day sleeping... what's your point?
    - hammock 6y ago
      They can sleep 20 hours a day because they only eat once every four days. If they had opposable thumbs they might do something else.
  - LegitShady 6y ago
    How much is that reduced if you cook the vegetables? Or do you eat raw meat? The time spent eating is a function of nutritional density and difficulty to digest. We have plenty of nutritional vegetarian food that doesn't require hours of chewing to extract the nutrition from. It's an interesting counterpoint but not actually proving the point made. There are large herbivores.