4 ms·

Why is fake food so popular with billionaires? Unlike natural foods that are readily available, it's patentable!

• sqeaky 2y ago
  Some people want to minimize animal suffering.
  • brokensegue 2y ago
    Or help the environment
  • nytesky 2y ago
    From Guns, Germs, and Steel, my impression is that cows as a species will go extinct if not domesticated. I am all for grass fed free ranging happy cows, of course, and I personally don’t eat red meat. But I don’t know where on the scale of animal suffering it all falls.
    • excalibur 2y ago
      I don't think we're in any danger of reducing our livestock levels to the point where cows become an endangered species, nuclear Armageddon notwithstanding.
    • PretzelPirate 2y ago
      > my impression is that cows as a species will go extinct if not domesticated. Is that bad? Cows aren't necessary for the food chain and them not existing won't do anything to harm the environment, it will do the exact opposite. The "cow species" isn't a sentient being who cares whether or not it exists, so if we can reduce the suffering of individual cows who are already here and the outcome is that domesticated cows go extinct, I don't see that as being bad. It is bad for the dairy farmer, but it's worse for the individual cows and the environment if we keep things the way they are. Even free-range cows are sent to get fattened up on corn that they can't properly digest before they're slaughtered. Despite what Temple Grandin tried to do, cows are still very stressed and scared before they're slaughtered, and the slaughter process is optimized for speed, so the bolt gun doesn't always stun the cow before they're bled out. I think it would be hard to look at what we do to end a cow's life at just a fraction of it's natural length and think that it's better than allowing domestic cows to go extinct.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    • gweinberg 2y ago
      If we wanted to, we could turn domestic cows back into something like aurochs with selective breeding.
  • EricE 2y ago
    And Bill Gates loves to make lots of money. If he can pretend he's also saving the planet and ending animal suffering that's just a double bonus. BTW - I have friends who own diaries - they treat their cows way better than our government treats our veterans.
    • diob 2y ago
      What a weird tangent, how are those two things related?
    • sqeaky 2y ago
      I am glad to hear that the intersection of Diary Authors and Humane Cow Owners has such a healthy overlap. :p But seriously, how the US treats veterans is nuts.
• ilaksh 2y ago
  It's because many natural alternatives to meat or dairy don't taste the same or necessarily as good as what they are replacing. We need something that is more equivalent to convince large numbers of people to switch. Bovine agriculture on a commercial scale is unsustainable and cruel. The only way totally natural old fashioned options that might be less cruel could work is if only a very small portion of the population has access to them. Some people seriously would like to see 90% of the human population killed off and to regress to a largely pre-industrial system. In my opinion, this is a very ignorant idea.
  • EricE 2y ago
    >Bovine agriculture on a commercial scale is unsustainable Seriously? Based on what? Cows can process plant matter we can't. Plant matter that takes FAR less resources to grow than plant matter we can digest.
    • nanomonkey 2y ago
      Grass fed beef maybe, but the majority of cows are being fed grain, broken potato chips, and soy...all of which are suitable for human consumption. Even taking into account what cows can consume, the organic matter would be better used growing mushroom or other fungi that can produce the same enzymes that break down the cell walls that the microbes in the guts of the cows are using.
      • fakedang 2y ago
        That seems to be a problem with crop surpluses and grazing land shortages. And government subsidies, can't forget those can we? I for one was extremely surprised to learn that hay, dried plant matter, is universally expensive from California to Calcutta.
    • ilaksh 2y ago
      https://sentientmedia.org/cattle-farming/ https://sentientmedia.org/cattle-farming/
  • 2y ago
• Ekaros 2y ago
  Overly optimistic back of the napkin calculations make it look really really good. How many people eat food? Everyone. How often they eat food? Like every day, or even multiple times a day... So if we get everyone on planet to eat our thing what twice a week? Easy surely... So if we get like 1 or 5 profit for each sale? That is what 2 times 52 times 8 billion. 800 billion a year, or 4 trillion if we charge a bit more... Now that is lot of profit a year...