6 ms·

Yes, I do not want to eat genetically engineered fungus or crickets. I prefer a steak.

throwway120385 3y ago
I prefer steak too but I only eat it once or twice a year due to the cost.
orthecreedence 3y ago
And hopefully one day we'll live in a world where steak has the incredibly high cost it actually deserves, and people like you can spend your hard-earned money on it still while everyone else eats the fungi equivalent for pennies on the dollar.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  So you essentially want to go back to the good old days where the rich and powerful gorged and feasted on the finest foods imaginable while the rest of humanity fed on the scraps. You want the common man to be priced out of high quality meat which is both tasty and nutritious. You want them feeding on some amorphous fungal slop made just for them.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    Not the poster: but I want the price of food to represent its true cost and not be artificially cheap (or expensive) because of externalities. In the United States, we don't have a real market in water; hence, the cost of water in food isn't really represented. Worse, we "export" a whole lot of water for artificially cheap. Countries with insufficient water to grow crops they would like buy water-intensive crops from the US where water is artifically cheap; hence the massive exports of alfalfa to China. In turn, US aquifiers are ending up depleted and catastrophe looms. Fixing this, though, will have other effects like perhaps doubling the price of steak. We'll still eat more of it and at a lower cost than we did 75 years ago, but not as much or as cheaply as today. Quality will also probably rise, too, as the measures that produce higher quality beef will be a smaller proportion of the price.
  - orthecreedence 3y ago
    Meat is not scalable. If 8+ billion people want to live on this planet, they will not all be eating steak every night. Sorry if that offends you. If people find an alternative that looks, tastes, and acts like meat but is as or more nutritional and much less ecologically damaging to produce, then great, problem solved. Secondly, the only reason "the common man" can afford meat in the quantities he can now is because of massive amounts of subsidies and incredibly damaging practices. So frame your overly-emotional argument however you want, but there are realities you aren't addressing and they don't go away because of your feelings.
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      Here's a reality you aren't addressing: people don't really want to eat insects. Here's another: about 2 years ago a president was elected in my country partly by promising that the poor would get to eat meat regularly once again. Make people miserable at your own peril. The simple fact is nobody really wants to be reduced to eating worms and bugs. No one really gives a shit about how "scalable" it is either. Whoever finds a way to provide what people want will have enormous power. > If people find an alternative that looks, tastes, and acts like meat Pretty big if you got there. The "alternatives" so far don't really fulfill any of those criteria. They also have the added bonus of offending a person's basic dignity with the knowledge that they're eating insects. There are literal animals out there who receive better treatment.
- willmadden 3y ago
  Well then, enjoy your fungi!
Almondsetat 3y ago
Do you know how steaks are made?
- willmadden 3y ago
  Yes, they graze on semi-arable areas where crops can't be grown, thereby transforming it into productive land.
  - shipman05 3y ago
    I do not presume to know your dietary habits, but I find it interesting that only ~4% of US beef production is "grass fed" yet everyone claims to be only eating beef grazed on semi-arable land using regenerative agriculture. "they graze on semi-arable areas where crops can't be grown" That may or may not be where your steak comes from, but it is not, as a rule, where most steak comes from. Most steaks come from cattle started on grass and finished on corn, and an increasing amount come from cattle who graze on Brazilian rainforest land clear-cut just for that purpose.
    - willmadden 3y ago
      Your numbers and definitions are apparently based on cooked google search results and are wrong. You should read more about how cows are fed and raised before forming opinions. 93% of cattle's caloric intake (whether grass or grain finished) does not compete with human suitable food sources. Also, all cattle are grass-fed for some of their lives: https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/print-publications/afs/corn-as-cattle-feed-vs-human-food-afs-3296.pdf https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/print-publications... >While the diet provided to finishing cattle in feedlots relies on some human-edible inputs (i.e., corn grain), the forages and byproducts fed to cattle throughout their lives are largely inedible to humans. For example, once the entire lifetime feed intake of cattle is accounted for (meaning all the feed they consume from birth to harvest), corn accounts for only approximately 7 percent of the animal’s diet. The other 93 percent of the animal’s lifetime diet will consist largely of feed that is inedible to humans, thus not in direct competition with the human food supply.
rdedev 3y ago
If you want to eat steak you can. But it is going to get less popular or more expensive in the future. There are a lot of negative externalities with consuming meat especially beef (in its current form of mass production). But I don't think anyone is going to ban it.
- rockskon 3y ago
  Less popular? For any reason other than increased price?

throwway120385 3y ago

I prefer steak too but I only eat it once or twice a year due to the cost.

And hopefully one day we'll live in a world where steak has the incredibly high cost it actually deserves, and people like you can spend your hard-earned money on it still while everyone else eats the fungi equivalent for pennies on the dollar.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
So you essentially want to go back to the good old days where the rich and powerful gorged and feasted on the finest foods imaginable while the rest of humanity fed on the scraps. You want the common man to be priced out of high quality meat which is both tasty and nutritious. You want them feeding on some amorphous fungal slop made just for them.
- mlyle 3y ago
  Not the poster: but I want the price of food to represent its true cost and not be artificially cheap (or expensive) because of externalities. In the United States, we don't have a real market in water; hence, the cost of water in food isn't really represented. Worse, we "export" a whole lot of water for artificially cheap. Countries with insufficient water to grow crops they would like buy water-intensive crops from the US where water is artifically cheap; hence the massive exports of alfalfa to China. In turn, US aquifiers are ending up depleted and catastrophe looms. Fixing this, though, will have other effects like perhaps doubling the price of steak. We'll still eat more of it and at a lower cost than we did 75 years ago, but not as much or as cheaply as today. Quality will also probably rise, too, as the measures that produce higher quality beef will be a smaller proportion of the price.
- orthecreedence 3y ago
  Meat is not scalable. If 8+ billion people want to live on this planet, they will not all be eating steak every night. Sorry if that offends you. If people find an alternative that looks, tastes, and acts like meat but is as or more nutritional and much less ecologically damaging to produce, then great, problem solved. Secondly, the only reason "the common man" can afford meat in the quantities he can now is because of massive amounts of subsidies and incredibly damaging practices. So frame your overly-emotional argument however you want, but there are realities you aren't addressing and they don't go away because of your feelings.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Here's a reality you aren't addressing: people don't really want to eat insects. Here's another: about 2 years ago a president was elected in my country partly by promising that the poor would get to eat meat regularly once again. Make people miserable at your own peril. The simple fact is nobody really wants to be reduced to eating worms and bugs. No one really gives a shit about how "scalable" it is either. Whoever finds a way to provide what people want will have enormous power. > If people find an alternative that looks, tastes, and acts like meat Pretty big if you got there. The "alternatives" so far don't really fulfill any of those criteria. They also have the added bonus of offending a person's basic dignity with the knowledge that they're eating insects. There are literal animals out there who receive better treatment.
willmadden 3y ago
Well then, enjoy your fungi!

Almondsetat 3y ago

Do you know how steaks are made?

willmadden 3y ago
Yes, they graze on semi-arable areas where crops can't be grown, thereby transforming it into productive land.
- shipman05 3y ago
  I do not presume to know your dietary habits, but I find it interesting that only ~4% of US beef production is "grass fed" yet everyone claims to be only eating beef grazed on semi-arable land using regenerative agriculture. "they graze on semi-arable areas where crops can't be grown" That may or may not be where your steak comes from, but it is not, as a rule, where most steak comes from. Most steaks come from cattle started on grass and finished on corn, and an increasing amount come from cattle who graze on Brazilian rainforest land clear-cut just for that purpose.
  - willmadden 3y ago
    Your numbers and definitions are apparently based on cooked google search results and are wrong. You should read more about how cows are fed and raised before forming opinions. 93% of cattle's caloric intake (whether grass or grain finished) does not compete with human suitable food sources. Also, all cattle are grass-fed for some of their lives: https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/print-publications/afs/corn-as-cattle-feed-vs-human-food-afs-3296.pdf https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/print-publications... >While the diet provided to finishing cattle in feedlots relies on some human-edible inputs (i.e., corn grain), the forages and byproducts fed to cattle throughout their lives are largely inedible to humans. For example, once the entire lifetime feed intake of cattle is accounted for (meaning all the feed they consume from birth to harvest), corn accounts for only approximately 7 percent of the animal’s diet. The other 93 percent of the animal’s lifetime diet will consist largely of feed that is inedible to humans, thus not in direct competition with the human food supply.

rdedev 3y ago

If you want to eat steak you can. But it is going to get less popular or more expensive in the future. There are a lot of negative externalities with consuming meat especially beef (in its current form of mass production). But I don't think anyone is going to ban it.

rockskon 3y ago
Less popular? For any reason other than increased price?