4 ms·
What is cultural is how much meat eating seems reasonable. I love meat, but both my own ethics and those of my social group basically tell me not to eat too mu
by wheels 2y ago
What is cultural is how much meat eating seems reasonable. I love meat, but both my own ethics and those of my social group basically tell me not to eat too much of it. Same for say, something like drinking beer. People like beer. But drinking too much of it too often isn't socially acceptable.
I'm from a family where one of my grandfathers was a cattle rancher and the other one a butcher, still I only eat about 1 kg of meat a month. I was terrified recently to learn that that's 10% of average American consumption. But I go in for the good shit. A little smoked meat goes a long way in altering the flavor profile of a dish. I love cooking myself a €20 steak, but I only do that every couple months. I save my fat caps and off-cuts to make sausage every few months. I only buy organic or meat with another animal welfare certification. It's expensive. As it should be.
- hnlmorg 2y agoThat’s fair. But I think the only way to change that is to have substitutes that are equivalent in taste and cost. Though even there, it would be an uphill battle fighting the farming lobbyists.
- wheels 2y agoI think it's more likely to expect the changes to be largely generational. That's how most dietary trends change. I give my kids less meat than my parents did, and they'll probably give their kids even less. The other piece is that meat should have its externalities priced in. We shouldn't be doing to animals the things we do in factory farming. Not being shitty to animals makes animal products a lot more expensive, which generally means people consume less of them. A carbon tax also wouldn't be crazy. People eat a lot more meat than they used to because it's cheap now. Eating meat with every meal is a relatively recent cultural phenomenon in the west. Making it not cheap again would put us back to where we were a few generations back. People liked cigarettes as much as they liked meat, but social norms, policy changes and price hikes have made it to where people smoke now a lot less than they used to. Having a cheap / enjoyable alternative is a nice route, but it's not the only one.