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I suppose the next step beyond vegetarianism and veganism will be mineralism: Food using molecules certified never to have been part of any known living organis
by Terr_ 2y ago
I suppose the next step beyond vegetarianism and veganism will be mineralism: Food using molecules certified never to have been part of any known living organism.
I remember there was a fictional advertisement for such a product in a sci-fi story, but not exactly where.
- ada1981 2y agoI think such a technical advancement would parallel a moral one. I’ve been vegan 25 years and would be happy to silence the “but what about plants” people once and for all.
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoI’m vegan too. Someone will say “what about the microorganisms in your gut” or something. People often have a negative reaction to vegans and that’s not going to change.
- throwawaycities 2y agoObviously some plants die and others don’t in harvesting. Mostly the “even broccoli screams when you rip it from the ground” is a joke more often than actual trolling. I think the valid moral argument is that as a result of modern agricultural practices substantially more animals are killed than animal husbandry. Usually the counter-arguments involves moving the moral goal posts by valuing farm animals over “pests and insects”, or blaming the modern agricultural practices and suggesting organic farming cures those harms.
- luqtas 2y agolike all meat we produce is grass fed... livestock lives out of grains in a high % and if you want to take all meat production to free-roam practices, good luck destroying the entire planet for that
- spookie 2y agoI don't think the aim would be to be able to achieve the same level of production that way :)
- luqtas 2y agoglad you answered. what's your opinion on the dialogue between people producing eggs in battery-cages (those classic confined chickens) vs. free-roam ones? so far the discussion points out to _way_ more disease spread in free ones, leading to more suffering and death, specially when we are doing in a commercial scale. wild animals killing those free roam animals also occurs. so far the science on battery-cages went far as: sizing perfectly the cages so you don't have cases of cannibalism between them because they are stressed, decent ventilation........ red meat is also confined for a lot of months before their death to receive proper treatment to not screw the population that's eating their meat. that's also involves tons and tons of (insectoid murder) grains & please don't forget that free-roam practices, considering the amount of land they use, i wouldn't get surprised that the pesticides/herbicides used on the grass fields prior to cows introduction kills a comparable if not more amount of insects vs. plantae/fungi production seriously, this insect rights argument is pure bullshit from people trying to justify their holocaust-like-inducing diet
- spookie 2y agoLook, I don't think you would want to produce at the same level. Because of the reason you stated.
- throwawaycities 2y agoThis is such a great response that perfectly reflects the moving of the moral goal posts that deflects the moral culpability. Thank you.
- mmooss 2y agoThere's a distinction - between obvious BS that is a philosophical puzzle to rebut on one hand, and genuine issues on the other. You don't really have to play the game of the former, unless you don't like philosophical puzzles of course.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoWhat about the atoms?
- ant6n 2y agoNot too much fission or fusion happening in your body, afaik.
- pests 2y agoSome people do care about the plants though, such as Jainism. If you draw the line at plants - that's fine, but some others do not and are wondering why you arbitrarily drew that line where you did. Sure some may be joking around but its still a legit concern for some.
- jraph 2y agoFrom what I understand, Jains are lacto-vegetarian [1]. Vegans draw that line further (because they also don't take milk). As a human being, if you avoid eating plants, or things that eat plants, you die. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
- dr_dshiv 2y agoJains don’t eat foods like onions and potatoes. But, so far as I know, this is on account of the bugs that may be harmed when harvesting soil-based plants.
- pests 2y agoI believe it's also as the onion or potatoe is the entire plant and when you eat it, it's gone. Verses eating a strawberry or Apple does not destroy the plant.
- ethbr1 2y ago> "but what about plants" I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals -- I'm one because I hate plants.
- Teever 2y agoI've wondered about this too and if in our quest to colonize the solar system and mine asteroids we will inadvertently destroy remnants of dead extraterrestrial life or artifacts of alien species such as defunct sentinel probes that were hidden in an asteroid. It would be tragic if the only proof of alien life in the solar system was gobbled up by some automated asteroid miner that turns asteroids into shitty consumer goods.
- m463 2y agoIs mined food processed food?
- consf 2y ago[dead]
- jaydeegee 2y agoEvery* food is processed food the amount of processing varies.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y agoDoes that apply to to self-harvested apples and berries, too? Is washing them with water a process which changes their structure and composition of nutrients? Less proteins because of less bugs and worms?
- ch4s3 2y agoThey’re selectively bred for one thing, and they start changing the moment you pick them. Just sitting on your counter changes a piece of fruit. Touching a berry with your finger introduces millions of tiny bioreactors onto its surface, some will go to work breaking cell walls, fermenting, fighting with the local and antecedent microscopic flora, and so on.
- consf 2y ago[dead]
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoSure, if you want to be asinine about it. The term 'processed' is probably too broad, same as calling food 'healthy' or 'unhealthy'.
- Terr_ 2y agoOr cooking it, for that matter. Plus there's the "processing" of an enormous mobile smelter-factory of nanomachines we call the human body. Chop and grind, add peptides, acid-bath, add neutralizing agent, churn with fermentation bacteria... Yeah, I know, people usually implicitly mean "artificial" processing, but that's often more about who is doing the processing, rather than what kind of process is going on.
- jorgesborges 2y agoThis actually makes sense to me in terms of logical coherence. I understand and support people who follow ethically-motivated diets but the fact is a line is always drawn somewhere. Plants are alive. Why is a carrot’s life less important than a rabbit’s? I don’t think we’re good at making claims about where particular organisms sit along a gradient of consciousness we can’t even properly define. I like to imagine other civilizations in the universe might use this basic distinction to evaluate how sophisticated a culture is — do they still needlessly eradicate life for more convenient consumption? Akin to asking, are they still a pre-warp civilization?
- PartiallyTyped 2y agoI draw my line based on units of consciousness that I half-arbitrarily assign to different animals. I think most people do so, the assignment seems to be a sort of emergent property of the local society within which any individual is brought up.
- wruza 2y agoIn my book about distant civilizations they eradicate all life except the forms that are able to function as you described. Because it’s pointless to just avoid participating in a meat grinder that life itself is naturally. The point is to stop anything that suffers from suffering. They dream about visiting every world and eradicating unascended lifes there for that same reason.
- mmooss 2y ago> it’s pointless to just avoid participating in a meat grinder that life itself is naturally. We've revolutionized human life over a few generations, and even more over a few hundred years. One outcome is that you can communicate freely - politically and technologically - with people all over the world. And you use that to say how pointless it is to try to improve. Think bigger and better. People did all that work to get us to this point; what will we do? How will we pull our weight? The only thing you have to fear is trendy contempt itself.
- 2y ago
- jajko 2y agoBut there will never ever be such guarantee that could be taken seriously. How do you know that 2 star generations ago (so say roughly 10 billion years ago), in our previous neighborhood, a massive hypernova wiped out advanced civilization and you are now just consuming molecules that were once part of sentient living being, even with IQ much higher than yours? Nah, you can never be 100% sure, its one of those situations reachable only on paper.
- Terr_ 2y agoThe phrasing "any known living organism" already excludes that. Even if it didn't, a guarantee in product marketing is a promise and quasi-legal committment, not a certification of objective universal cosmic truth. In some cases, everybody knows that statistically there will be at least one case where the guarantee is broken, but that doesn't void anything.
- shikon7 2y agoOn that premise, knowing too much might literally starve you.
- polynomial 2y agoAlmost certainly Food of the Gods by Arthur C. Clarke.
- ElevenLathe 2y agoBruce Sterling's /Islands in the Net/ has a character that is this kind of vegan (forget what they call it). He finds the idea of agricultural food disgusting and only eats sterile synthetic food. Edit: had the wrong Sterling book.
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y agoI've been vegan since 2002 and would be down to go on a fully synthetic vegan diet. I used to be a heavy consumer of Soylent
- luqtas 2y agoveganism is about reducing suffering to a practical extend. no vegan is ditching transportation or plastic because it may contain by-products of the animal industry... thus if one day we can make food out of minerals, for sure that would be vegan; although i can't see ANY harm done to a fruit tree or a soybean/corn that dries out because of its short life cycle being a 'bad thing' but maybe minerals based food will avoid taking land of native species
- dgfitz 2y ago> veganism is about reducing suffering to a practical extend I don’t think there are enough current or future vegans in the world to negate anything at all.
- shepherdjerred 2y agoPractical for the individual
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> veganism is about reducing suffering to a practical extend There is genuine debate around whether plants suffer. The answer seems to be “no,” at least not in a way we’d recognise as suffering. But that ambiguity is more than enough to spawn a movement. Ethically-harvested honey doesn’t harm bees, for instance, and family dairies can blur the line between animal husbandry and petkeeping.
- aziaziazi 2y ago"Ethically" harvested honey means not killing the bees in the process I guess, which is awesome, but there’s still stress induced by removing the food they make and stock for their hives, and the cage around the queen just to be sure she doesn’t go back to the wild. Im not sure how to define ethics anyway but surely I would’t like to be a farm bee, even an ethical one. Familly diaries also comes with they own sets of abuse forgotten because "they love their cows". At the end it’s always a speechless being exploited to serve the dominant interest.
- mr_toad 2y ago> Food using molecules certified never to have been part of any known living organism. Over the aeons they have almost certainly been part of some living creature. There’s only a finite supply. And humans have come to monopolise it. We should worry less about killing individual creatures and worry a lot more about wiping out entire species.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 2y ago> Over the aeons they have almost certainly been part of some living creature. That contains a very-unproven assumption that other biological life was present prior to the ignition of our Sun and formation of the solar system... Or that there are "living creatures" in solar plasma.
- coldtea 2y ago>Over the aeons they have almost certainly been part of some living creature. There are neither enough aeons (10-20 billion years of universe), nor enough living creatures for that. >There’s only a finite supply* Finite supply doesn't mean all possible permutations have happenned. It's also not like an infinitely old universe (and even one like that wouldn't necessarily have permutations of molecule arrangements where thats statement is true).
- wrp 2y ago> fictional advertisement for such a product in a sci-fi story Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl The artificial food was called CHON.
- ashoeafoot 2y agoPart of the gateway trilogy
- consf 2y ago[dead]