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To each their own. I greatly enjoy the flavor of meat, but feel like a serial killer when I think about the animal suffering and to a lesser extend carbon emiss
by ajmurmann 4y ago
To each their own. I greatly enjoy the flavor of meat, but feel like a serial killer when I think about the animal suffering and to a lesser extend carbon emissions. While I also get a slightly odd feeling in my stomach from Impossible beef (doesn't happen with their cyber chicken), it's a tradeoff I'm excited to make 1-2 a month to get the flavor of a burger without feeling like I just tortured a puppy.
- goda90 4y agoIf you have the money, buy meat directly from a regenerative ag farm you can go visit personally. You'll see animals with plenty of space, given healthcare and protection from predators, and contributing to soil growth and biodiversity.
- agentgumshoe 4y agoYou'd be surprised how many animals die in the process of scaled agriculture and displacement that occurs to create these replacement goods. But they're not the big fluffy animals we anthropomorphise, so it's easy to accept.
- JoyfulTurkey 4y agoI have always wondered just how many accidental casualties occur with harvesting equipment. I guess home garden is the best bet if it’s a concern?
- iforgotpassword 4y agoLook up how olives are harvested. There are big machines that go over rhe tree and vacuum off all the olives. Too bad theres a lot of birds living in there that get sucked in and die. Why don't they fly away? The noise must be a fair warning ahead of time! Well, the harvest is at night because of lower temperatures. The birds freeze in shock when the noise and bright lights get turned on and don't move.
- ajmurmann 4y agoI don't think I'd be surprised. I don't know how to solve that though short of starving myself to death.
- zemvpferreira 4y agoNot to say this is your moral prerogative but it's pretty simple: Eat only hand-picked fruit. It's by far the least death-causing food out there and it's offered to you by the tree to eat. I'm not a vegetarian or fruitarian, I don't generally care about animal death or suffering. But if I did that would be my tactic to minimize pain in the system.
- mathieuh 4y agoIf you did that you would become extremely unhealthy. Veganism has the caveat "as far as is practicable", and a fruitarian diet is not practicable for extended periods of time as you will become malnourished.
- TylerE 4y agoAnd probably at least pre-diabetic. The form of sugar in fruit isn’t quite as bad as some, and all the fiber helps it be absorbed more slowly but there is still a lot of it many. An apple has a much sugar as 6oz of Coke. Lots of nutrients too, but 23g of sugar is… a lot.
- iopq 4y agoReminder that cucumber and avocado are fruits.
- ryanbrunner 4y agoAnd zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, beans, and peas.
- zemvpferreira 4y ago
- mattmanser 4y agoErr, vegetables require less land per calorie than meat for consumption does. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets So your comment makes no sense at all.
- mike_d 4y agoWhich would be very compelling if your body only needed calories to survive. Meat is the most efficient way to deliver proteins and essential amino acids. You should also dig into the concept of bioavailability.
- ianai 4y agoThis is debunked. Tofu is incredibly protein dense - on par or surpassing chicken breast. Without looking it up and subjectively, tofu also seems to be digested very easily. There’s also seitan and the beans. Nuts also exist but have fat/protein ratios that tend toward uncomfortably high. (If what your eating has macros that approach the fat content in nuts to other nutrients that’s pretty high and should be noted.)
- cogman10 4y agoPea protein is also a complete protein. I've honestly never heard of protein being a problem for vegans. The bigger issue is vitamins, in particular B12. But that's easily fixed with a daily multivitamin.
- ianai 4y agoKnew I was leaving things out. Thanks for including peas! I don’t want to know how anybody gets actual, non-supplemented B12 nowadays. Many foods add a B12 in the form of cyanocobalamin. We evolved in a world where bacteria left B12 on nearly every surface left out long enough. But nowadays we clean our food and it shouldn’t be present. People will say they get it from the organ meat of certain animals - because that’s where those animals collect the B12 in their environment. Notably, I avoid cyanocobalamin like the plague. It releases small amounts of cyanide into your liver upon processing. It’s also not particularly bioavailable. There are better B12s and I wish food would leave me to choose it myself.
- Cannabat 4y agoIt sounds like you are suggesting non-animal agriculture kills or displaces more animals than animal agriculture. What do you think the animals humans like to eat, eat? A heck of a lot of grain and other plants. "Animal agriculture" includes the fluffy animals (with whom we may empathize - they ain't robots) and the massive farms that grow their feed. Animal agriculture incidentally kills and displaces far more other creatures than non-animal agriculture simply due to the additional land requirements. It is far easier to accept the less harmful industry.
- rlt 4y agoI don't think they were suggesting that. More something along the lines of "you're likely to be killing animals either way, so just accept that nature is cruel and don't feel guilty about it". There's a wide spectrum of how much you're willing to do to avoid causing suffering: - Nothing, eat meat from the worst factory farms without second thought - Only eat meat from local, ethical, sustainable, etc farmers. - Only eat meat you have personally killed in the most humane way possible - Vegetarianism - Veganism - Fruitarianism - Starve to death?
- pyrale 4y agoIt's kind of bad either way tbh. Imagine going to the funeral for someone else's mother and saying something to the tune of "The old hag was going to die anyway, so don't be sad". Telling people that their principles or feelings are wrong is rarely a great way to convince people, it just makes you look obnoxious in debates.
- headsoup 4y agoThat's just an absurd analogy. On the second point, I agree, if in person I wouldn't make such a statement in that way because reactions are immediate and you're within immediate awkwardness. But on the internet, you read a statement and then you will emotionally react, but can then go research more, ponder, deliberate and choose whether you respond emotionally, matter-of-factly, not at all, etc. I think that's great and in a sense encourages some more provocative honesty that we dance around in the flesh.
- goodpoint 4y agoNo, it's the complete opposite. Plant based diets kill way, way less animals.
- parski 4y agoApart from the problems with the point you're implying (see the other replies) you raise an important problem with industrial agriculture.
- xorfish 4y agohttps://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets If everyone were to switch to a vegan diet, global agriculture land use would be reduced by 75%.
- TylerE 4y agoWater and pesticide usage is way more problematic than land usage.
- pintxo 4y agoWe can safely assume there is a relationship between land-use and total water and pesticide usage.
- TylerE 4y agoCan we? Vertical farms are starting to be a thing, and they use water way beyond what you'd expect for the area.
- akiselev 4y agoNo one is using vertical farms for the kind of calorie dense food that would replace meat, and certainly not at any kind of scale.
- TylerE 4y agoI've seen a number of reports of large farms being planned in places like the middle east. Dubai opened one about 6 months ago capable of producing over a million kg of leafy greens a year, the largest vertical farm in the world by some margin, and that's just a pilot project.
- akiselev 4y agoA million kg of the most calorie dense leafy green (parsnip or kale at 50-60 kcal/100 grams) would be equivalent to about 167,000 kg of wheat (~360 kcal/100 grams). A bushel of wheat is about 27kg and the US produces about 50 bushels per acre [1] or 1,350 kg of wheat per acre. To produce the caloric equivalent of a million kg of leafy greens you would need about 130 acres (167,000/1350) of wheat. The average farm in the US is over 400 acres in size [2]. There are over two million farms in the US alone. The “largest vertical farm in the world by some margin” produces less calories than a tiny family farm that can barely afford its own tractor. The largest wheat farm in Canada is over 35,000 acres which means it produces just as much food per day as the largest vertical farm produces per year. That wheat farm isn’t even in the list of top 10 largest farms in North America. We’re comparing pebbles to continents. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/190356/wheat-yield-per-harvested-acre-in-the-us-from-2000/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/190356/wheat-yield-per-h... [2] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic... Edit: I made a slight mistake in my math. A 60 lbs bushel of wheat when processed doesn’t yield exactly 60 pounds of usable food, but it doesn’t change the overall picture (360 kcal => 240 kcal, 130 acres => 180 acres) Edit 2: That vertical farm cost $40 million to build. Our hypothetical wheat farm would cost under $2 million for the land, fertilizer, seeds, and machines.
- johnnymorgan 4y agoGo organic, with inflation the premium on organics isn't barely there now. It's a better quality of product and doesn't send their cows to feedlots. I've seen industrial farming and it's not pretty, but more than anything it products a pretty crappy product now compared to organic. You eat a lot less as the quality leaves you satisfied.
- marliechiller 4y agoThat doesnt solve the problem of slaughtering a sentient being for 5 minutes of taste pleasure which I think he was trying to avoid
- johnnymorgan 4y agoLol, ok bud have fun with your veggie cult.
- marliechiller 4y agoHappily, I see your original comment has been downvoted. Im not sure how wanting to reduce suffering is cult-like but each to their own...
- johnnymorgan 4y agoReally.. Is that what you are doing, seems more like you just want to be violent toward others and have built yourself a causi belli to engage that way. > wanting to reduce suffering Bullshit, you don't give 2 shits about that, you want to increase suffering in actual sentient beings. Which a cow is not. Hence you are in a cult because what else would you call that position?? You are not a moral agent and you don't get to define what others can and can't do when it comes to food production. Organics is a fantastic way to go, it just shows how full of shit you are to go against that. Liar.
- ryanbrunner 4y agoI don't think any organic certifications regulate the method of slaughter. If you go to a local farmer, maybe there's a more humane method of slaughter (although the vast, vast majority of even local farmers will contract out slaughter and butchery), but organic at Walmart is probably going to be processed more or less identically to other meat.
- oblio 4y agoThe thing is... this is not a solved problem, by far. You forget all that leather used in a myriad of products, that leather comes from cows. Or feathers and down from various birds. Or the other million side products of animal husbandry, that I'm not even aware of. I think almost every part of a cow is used in an industrial process, not much is wasted. Plus, this needs a totally vegan solution and you're wiping out any and all dairy products: cheeses (all 100 million of them), yogurt, regular milk, sour milk, sour cream, whey, etc.
- nextaccountic 4y agoThere's synthetic leather too. And there's vegan cheese https://www.reddit.com/r/vegancheesemaking https://www.reddit.com/r/vegancheesemaking and of course vegan yogurt etc. (you can make yogurt with coconut milk for example)
- quelltext 4y ago> There's synthetic leather too. ...and it sucks as a replacement for genuine leather.
- jbuhbjlnjbn 4y agoIt doesn't have to, Alcantara is extremely robust and a great replacement for leather, just as one example. But the synthetic leather in cheap products aiming to look like real smooth leather, I think this is the one you mean, time and time again is so inferior it's almost a scam. Shoes will fall apart quickly, sofas, clothing will peel off after 2-3 years when the softener has gassed out.
- HideousKojima 4y ago>vegan cheese My old boss was vegan (or rather his wife was and he was very accommodating of her diet, he would still eat meat outside the home). He would always mention that the fanciest, most expensive vegan cheese option out there set itself apart from the rest with the tagline "It melts!" on the packaging. Vegan cheese has to come a long way to be anywhere comparable to real cheese. The same applies to synthetic leather, by the way.
- nixpulvis 4y agoI'm sorry. I really tried to just lurk this thread, but. What in the flying fuck is "cyber chicken". I'm assuming this is a joke, right!?
- TheNewsIsHere 4y agoNew from Tesla Foods, of course.
- ajmurmann 4y agoSorry, I prefix plant-based/meat-substitute products with "cyber" instead of one of the more boring options because it makes me giggle. I shouldn't have used it with people not familiar with my in-joke.
- mywittyname 4y agoFWIW, I knew what you meant and got a cluckle from it.
- itsoktocry 4y ago>it's a tradeoff I'm excited to make 1-2 a month to get the flavor of a burger You're not getting the flavour of a burger, no matter how hard you try to fool yourself (or make yourself sick). That's why these companies are flailing.
- ethanbond 4y ago“Your mouth is wrong but I am here to tell you what you’re tasting” is quite the argument…
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yamazakiwi 4y agoThere are qualities in a fake burgers that emulate parts of a burger someone might enjoy without having an exact replica. In the same way Turkey Bacon is acceptable to some and not others. I think the purists are trying to hold a parity argument but the substitute enjoyers are cool with experimentation and want something similar even if it's not 1:1.
- x0x0 4y agoI, uh, thought that the beyond meat pseudo-ground-beef I ate tasted almost exactly like beef, cooked like beef, looked like beef, etc... just without the killing of a cow. I liked it and will buy it the next time I want ground beef.