5 ms·

I really don’t understand eating vegetarian, presumably for well-being, and then making fake “meat” food science experiments a major part of your diet. I have

by User23 4y ago

I really don’t understand eating vegetarian, presumably for well-being, and then making fake “meat” food science experiments a major part of your diet. I have nothing against people choosing to eat vegetarian either. I’m not vegetarian, but I abstain from meat from time to time so sometimes I eat vegetarian. And when I do I’d much rather have something like delicious traditionally vegetarian Indian food than the output of some novel process chemistry reactor.

carstenhag 4y ago
Because many vegans (including me) like meat taste, but don't want to cause unnecessary suffering and/or kill animals.
- ihatepython 4y ago
  Are there many vegans who do want to cause unnecessary suffering and/or kill? The guy who killed those 4 students in Moscow ID is a vegan. Was wondering if there was any correlation.
  - someNameIG 4y ago
    There are very many terrible people who eat meat, what's your point?
    - ihatepython 4y ago
      Just wondering if vegans are more or less likely to be murderers compared to non-vegans, because perhaps vegans are more ideological and less flexible, maybe there's a correlation
throwawaylinux 4y ago
> I really don’t understand eating vegetarian, presumably for well-being, and then making fake “meat” food science experiments a major part of your diet. Okay, thanks for the data point. Have you done anything to try to understand it? Talked to people who do this and ask them about it, for example?
- User23 4y ago
  Yes. That’s why I posted my bafflement on a website dedicated to curiosity in a discussion thread on the topic. Have you got any ideas on the subject?
  - jorgen123 4y ago
    Your bafflement is baffling about the wrong question. People who eat vegetarian may on occasion want to eat a meat replacement product for the flavor of it. They would not make it a major component of their diet. On the other hand, these products can displace meat consumption in diets that consume unnecessary volumes of meat, which will also be generally beneficial due to less resource use.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    No I don't have any idea. I just didn't know what I was supposed to do with that information so I was trying to keep the conversation going. Looks like you got some good comments though, hopefully that's cleared up your lack of understanding.
robga 4y ago
I’ve been veg’an for decades. I really enjoy “meat” substitutes for their texture and flavour absorption ability. For me it is no way an effort or experience of meat substitution. In short, meat eaters don’t have some copyright over “meatiness” and it is perfectly fine for non meat eaters to enjoy or seek out a gamut of food textures. Typically, I eat the traditional foods of tofu, tempeh, and seitan/gluten and they are a “major part of my diet”. Over the past decade, “food science experiments” have given us mycoprotein products (Quorn), textured vegetable proteins (TVPs) made from pea etc, and more recent eattempts like Beyond. Frankly, I prefer the “traditional” forms but the new types are improving and I eat them for some variety. My only “beef” is that they tend to push traditional veg’an proteins out of precious supermarket space. I make sure I understand the protein, sugar, carbs, aminos, vitamins (especially B) I eat, as should everyone, and am perfectly healthy.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
orev 4y ago
Raising animals takes a huge amount of resources, so in order to sustain the number of people we have in the planet, we need to find other ways to make food that don’t require so many resources. People clearly like to eat meat, so if we can replace a lot of it with something plant based that also satisfies those needs, then why not do it? Most people will hardly notice the difference now if ground beef in meat sauces, taco meat, etc was replaced, or even only half of it, with plant based meat.
- User23 4y ago
  > Raising animals takes a huge amount of resources, so in order to sustain the number of people we have in the planet, we need to find other ways to make food that don’t require so many resources. Is that really true? Livestock farming can be entirely sustainable using renewable inputs. The per unit resource usage might be high by some simplistic arbitrary metrics, but when those resources are basically sunlight and its natural products, what’s the problem? In any event we’re nowhere near the planet’s renewable carrying capacity. I’m against foolish, cruel, and unsustainable “factory farming” practices, but the existence of a bad method of doing something doesn’t mean there aren’t good ones. > People clearly like to eat meat, so if we can replace a lot of it with something plant based that also satisfies those needs, then why not do it? People clearly like to drink sugar water too. So we replaced sugar with food science experiments like aspartame and sucralose that can’t be metabolized. But now we’re learning they’re endocrine disrupters with significant side effects.
  - wyre 4y ago
    >Is that really true? Yes. Livestock farming needs more than “sunlight and it’s natural products.” There isn’t enough land to replace factory farming with better pasture-raised methods [1]. Beef production is the leading causes of deforestation in the world [2], responsible for 80% of deforestation in the Amazon [3]. How is this sustainable? [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401 [2] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/beef-cattle https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/beef-cattle [3] https://www.fao.org/3/xii/0568-b1.htm#:~:text=Pastures%20cover%2080%20%25%20of%20deforested,expansion%20of%20the%20agricultural%20frontier https://www.fao.org/3/xii/0568-b1.htm#:~:text=Pastures%20cov....
nxpnsv 4y ago
Now why would anyone choose to eat something? What reason could there possibly be? Oh, maybe to some it tastes good? Not really en enigma... But why do so many meat eaters really worry about this? And why do you presume well being? Could it not be one of say some combination of taste, climate, economy, well being, ethics, religion?
spicymaki 4y ago
> I really don’t understand eating vegetarian, presumably for well-being, and then making fake “meat” food science experiments a major part of your diet. People eat vegetarian diets for many different reasons. Sometimes religious, cultural, health, environmental, and sometimes as a protest to animal suffering. I think a majority of Americans consume processed foods on a daily basis. If you are eating deli meats, hot dogs, burgers, etc. the food is pretty processed. A chicken, pork, and beef filler hot dog is not natural by any means. The way animals are raised before slaughter is not natural and the feed they are given are not what animals consume in nature. Everything you eat is really a food science experiment.
- User23 4y ago
  I strongly agree that more of my diet than I'd like is a food science experiment. That doesn't mean I want to add more food science experiments. Otherwise, I do what I can to get both meats and fruits and vegetables, including processed meats like sausages, from sources that are personally known to me and that use traditional natural methods and ingredients. I'd say over half of the meat I eat is from animals that I personally saw when they were alive and I know they were both raised and slaughtered humanely. I'd like to get that number considerably closer to 100%. It's a lot harder to do with vegetables since I've not yet gotten good at preservation besides freezing, and there's only so much space, so in the off season I'm mostly stuck with supermarket produce.
troyvit 4y ago
This is just a weird data point but my kids are vegan (long story). My youngest has no idea what meat tastes like but she loves the taste of vegan sausages and chick'n nuggets. She doesn't care if it tastes like actual chicken or actual pork sausage, she just knows she likes the taste. And yeah I couldn't get her to eat chickpea masala to save her life.
armoredkitten 4y ago
Sometimes you just need a burger-like product to take to the company BBQ so that Todd from accounting will shut the fuck up for once about how vegetarian food is all "rabbit food". Sometimes you want to make one of the many dishes you grew up with, but you want to live consistently with your ethics, so you want a simple replacement. Sometimes you want something that freezes easily so that when you've had a long and stressful day you have something quick and easy to reach for. Most meat-eaters don't make hamburgers a "major part of their diet" -- and most vegetarians/vegans don't make veggie burgers a "major part" of theirs either. But as an occasional thing, it's very useful to have these meat substitutes, for a variety of reasons. You don't have to eat them for every meal in order to find them useful.
- User23 4y ago
  > Sometimes you just need a burger-like product to take to the company BBQ so that Todd from accounting will shut the fuck up for once about how vegetarian food is all "rabbit food". I've always preferred "thats not food, that's what food eats." I don't see how fake meat is going to solve a gap in senses of humor though. > Sometimes you want to make one of the many dishes you grew up with, but you want to live consistently with your ethics, so you want a simple replacement. I would be quite interested in hearing a consistent and rigorous herbivore ethical system. All of the herbivores I've personally encountered mistake their emotional revulsion for an ethos. But, in all charity, I can at least imagine the existence of a consistent ethos one might hold with respect abstention. In fact, there's one that's part of my faith tradition, but it's considered an exceptional penance and not a moral obligation. Somehow I don't think that's your motivation though. If it is a penitential act though, then you have my sincere admiration. That said, eating highly processed food science experiments that we have no actual data on the long term effects of consumption of is inconsistent with my ethics. Naturally, that is orthogonal to eating a complete diet that's as consistent as possible given practical constraints with what H. Sapiens evolved to eat. Incidentally that's the basis of my ethos with regard to food: I want to eat what my body is best able to use. > Sometimes you want something that freezes easily so that when you've had a long and stressful day you have something quick and easy to reach for. I don't understand this, I've never had trouble freezing the vegetarian dishes that I've made. > Most meat-eaters don't make hamburgers a "major part of their diet" -- and most vegetarians/vegans don't make veggie burgers a "major part" of theirs either. But as an occasional thing, it's very useful to have these meat substitutes, for a variety of reasons. You don't have to eat them for every meal in order to find them useful. I certainly agree that even eating supermarket meats it's hard to eat a complete diet. Organ meat is basically impossible to find in your average supermarket, but it's of vital importance for getting nutritionally available dietary micronutrients. I'm sure that you know, as an educated herbivore, that it's considerably more difficult to get bioavailable micronutrients from plants due to our digestive system not being evolved to process phytates. Fortunately thanks to human ingenuity there are some workarounds, like fermentation and other forms of processing that neutralize the natural defensive poisons that plants produce. Because, believe it or not, just like animals plants also prefer not to be eaten!
kashunstva 4y ago
> then making fake “meat” food science experiments a major part of your diet. Vegetarian meat-like alternatives exist but their existence doesn’t mean that some large number of vegetarians subsist in large part on them any more than meat eaters subsist primarily on hamburgers. This seems like an argument against some straw man vegetarian that doesn’t often exist. I’ve been vegan for 25 years and consume commercially prepared meat alternatives maybe twice a month at most. Most vegans I know have similar dietary habits.

by User23 4y ago

carstenhag 4y ago

Because many vegans (including me) like meat taste, but don't want to cause unnecessary suffering and/or kill animals.

ihatepython 4y ago
Are there many vegans who do want to cause unnecessary suffering and/or kill? The guy who killed those 4 students in Moscow ID is a vegan. Was wondering if there was any correlation.
- someNameIG 4y ago
  There are very many terrible people who eat meat, what's your point?
  - ihatepython 4y ago
    Just wondering if vegans are more or less likely to be murderers compared to non-vegans, because perhaps vegans are more ideological and less flexible, maybe there's a correlation

throwawaylinux 4y ago

> I really don’t understand eating vegetarian, presumably for well-being, and then making fake “meat” food science experiments a major part of your diet. Okay, thanks for the data point. Have you done anything to try to understand it? Talked to people who do this and ask them about it, for example?

User23 4y ago
Yes. That’s why I posted my bafflement on a website dedicated to curiosity in a discussion thread on the topic. Have you got any ideas on the subject?
- jorgen123 4y ago
  Your bafflement is baffling about the wrong question. People who eat vegetarian may on occasion want to eat a meat replacement product for the flavor of it. They would not make it a major component of their diet. On the other hand, these products can displace meat consumption in diets that consume unnecessary volumes of meat, which will also be generally beneficial due to less resource use.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  No I don't have any idea. I just didn't know what I was supposed to do with that information so I was trying to keep the conversation going. Looks like you got some good comments though, hopefully that's cleared up your lack of understanding.

robga 4y ago

I’ve been veg’an for decades. I really enjoy “meat” substitutes for their texture and flavour absorption ability. For me it is no way an effort or experience of meat substitution. In short, meat eaters don’t have some copyright over “meatiness” and it is perfectly fine for non meat eaters to enjoy or seek out a gamut of food textures. Typically, I eat the traditional foods of tofu, tempeh, and seitan/gluten and they are a “major part of my diet”. Over the past decade, “food science experiments” have given us mycoprotein products (Quorn), textured vegetable proteins (TVPs) made from pea etc, and more recent eattempts like Beyond. Frankly, I prefer the “traditional” forms but the new types are improving and I eat them for some variety. My only “beef” is that they tend to push traditional veg’an proteins out of precious supermarket space. I make sure I understand the protein, sugar, carbs, aminos, vitamins (especially B) I eat, as should everyone, and am perfectly healthy.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

orev 4y ago

Raising animals takes a huge amount of resources, so in order to sustain the number of people we have in the planet, we need to find other ways to make food that don’t require so many resources. People clearly like to eat meat, so if we can replace a lot of it with something plant based that also satisfies those needs, then why not do it? Most people will hardly notice the difference now if ground beef in meat sauces, taco meat, etc was replaced, or even only half of it, with plant based meat.

User23 4y ago
> Raising animals takes a huge amount of resources, so in order to sustain the number of people we have in the planet, we need to find other ways to make food that don’t require so many resources. Is that really true? Livestock farming can be entirely sustainable using renewable inputs. The per unit resource usage might be high by some simplistic arbitrary metrics, but when those resources are basically sunlight and its natural products, what’s the problem? In any event we’re nowhere near the planet’s renewable carrying capacity. I’m against foolish, cruel, and unsustainable “factory farming” practices, but the existence of a bad method of doing something doesn’t mean there aren’t good ones. > People clearly like to eat meat, so if we can replace a lot of it with something plant based that also satisfies those needs, then why not do it? People clearly like to drink sugar water too. So we replaced sugar with food science experiments like aspartame and sucralose that can’t be metabolized. But now we’re learning they’re endocrine disrupters with significant side effects.
- wyre 4y ago
  >Is that really true? Yes. Livestock farming needs more than “sunlight and it’s natural products.” There isn’t enough land to replace factory farming with better pasture-raised methods [1]. Beef production is the leading causes of deforestation in the world [2], responsible for 80% of deforestation in the Amazon [3]. How is this sustainable? [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401 [2] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/beef-cattle https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/beef-cattle [3] https://www.fao.org/3/xii/0568-b1.htm#:~:text=Pastures%20cover%2080%20%25%20of%20deforested,expansion%20of%20the%20agricultural%20frontier https://www.fao.org/3/xii/0568-b1.htm#:~:text=Pastures%20cov....

nxpnsv 4y ago

Now why would anyone choose to eat something? What reason could there possibly be? Oh, maybe to some it tastes good? Not really en enigma... But why do so many meat eaters really worry about this? And why do you presume well being? Could it not be one of say some combination of taste, climate, economy, well being, ethics, religion?

spicymaki 4y ago

> I really don’t understand eating vegetarian, presumably for well-being, and then making fake “meat” food science experiments a major part of your diet. People eat vegetarian diets for many different reasons. Sometimes religious, cultural, health, environmental, and sometimes as a protest to animal suffering. I think a majority of Americans consume processed foods on a daily basis. If you are eating deli meats, hot dogs, burgers, etc. the food is pretty processed. A chicken, pork, and beef filler hot dog is not natural by any means. The way animals are raised before slaughter is not natural and the feed they are given are not what animals consume in nature. Everything you eat is really a food science experiment.

User23 4y ago
I strongly agree that more of my diet than I'd like is a food science experiment. That doesn't mean I want to add more food science experiments. Otherwise, I do what I can to get both meats and fruits and vegetables, including processed meats like sausages, from sources that are personally known to me and that use traditional natural methods and ingredients. I'd say over half of the meat I eat is from animals that I personally saw when they were alive and I know they were both raised and slaughtered humanely. I'd like to get that number considerably closer to 100%. It's a lot harder to do with vegetables since I've not yet gotten good at preservation besides freezing, and there's only so much space, so in the off season I'm mostly stuck with supermarket produce.

troyvit 4y ago

This is just a weird data point but my kids are vegan (long story). My youngest has no idea what meat tastes like but she loves the taste of vegan sausages and chick'n nuggets. She doesn't care if it tastes like actual chicken or actual pork sausage, she just knows she likes the taste. And yeah I couldn't get her to eat chickpea masala to save her life.

armoredkitten 4y ago

Sometimes you just need a burger-like product to take to the company BBQ so that Todd from accounting will shut the fuck up for once about how vegetarian food is all "rabbit food". Sometimes you want to make one of the many dishes you grew up with, but you want to live consistently with your ethics, so you want a simple replacement. Sometimes you want something that freezes easily so that when you've had a long and stressful day you have something quick and easy to reach for. Most meat-eaters don't make hamburgers a "major part of their diet" -- and most vegetarians/vegans don't make veggie burgers a "major part" of theirs either. But as an occasional thing, it's very useful to have these meat substitutes, for a variety of reasons. You don't have to eat them for every meal in order to find them useful.

User23 4y ago
> Sometimes you just need a burger-like product to take to the company BBQ so that Todd from accounting will shut the fuck up for once about how vegetarian food is all "rabbit food". I've always preferred "thats not food, that's what food eats." I don't see how fake meat is going to solve a gap in senses of humor though. > Sometimes you want to make one of the many dishes you grew up with, but you want to live consistently with your ethics, so you want a simple replacement. I would be quite interested in hearing a consistent and rigorous herbivore ethical system. All of the herbivores I've personally encountered mistake their emotional revulsion for an ethos. But, in all charity, I can at least imagine the existence of a consistent ethos one might hold with respect abstention. In fact, there's one that's part of my faith tradition, but it's considered an exceptional penance and not a moral obligation. Somehow I don't think that's your motivation though. If it is a penitential act though, then you have my sincere admiration. That said, eating highly processed food science experiments that we have no actual data on the long term effects of consumption of is inconsistent with my ethics. Naturally, that is orthogonal to eating a complete diet that's as consistent as possible given practical constraints with what H. Sapiens evolved to eat. Incidentally that's the basis of my ethos with regard to food: I want to eat what my body is best able to use. > Sometimes you want something that freezes easily so that when you've had a long and stressful day you have something quick and easy to reach for. I don't understand this, I've never had trouble freezing the vegetarian dishes that I've made. > Most meat-eaters don't make hamburgers a "major part of their diet" -- and most vegetarians/vegans don't make veggie burgers a "major part" of theirs either. But as an occasional thing, it's very useful to have these meat substitutes, for a variety of reasons. You don't have to eat them for every meal in order to find them useful. I certainly agree that even eating supermarket meats it's hard to eat a complete diet. Organ meat is basically impossible to find in your average supermarket, but it's of vital importance for getting nutritionally available dietary micronutrients. I'm sure that you know, as an educated herbivore, that it's considerably more difficult to get bioavailable micronutrients from plants due to our digestive system not being evolved to process phytates. Fortunately thanks to human ingenuity there are some workarounds, like fermentation and other forms of processing that neutralize the natural defensive poisons that plants produce. Because, believe it or not, just like animals plants also prefer not to be eaten!

kashunstva 4y ago

> then making fake “meat” food science experiments a major part of your diet. Vegetarian meat-like alternatives exist but their existence doesn’t mean that some large number of vegetarians subsist in large part on them any more than meat eaters subsist primarily on hamburgers. This seems like an argument against some straw man vegetarian that doesn’t often exist. I’ve been vegan for 25 years and consume commercially prepared meat alternatives maybe twice a month at most. Most vegans I know have similar dietary habits.