I really don't know how to help attitudes move towards a plant based life-style. I don't bother bringing it up because the second the topic is introduced, people feel attacked and that I'm just doing it to feel superior. Amusingly enough, it's usually omnivores that bring up that topic but still are obviously uneasy about the whole thing.
I wonder how much vegan restaurants can undercut omni restaurants due to the lower costs of vegetables compared to meats.
Source: anecdata from an omnivore that recently decided to try vegan food and found that there are actually some pretty delicious deals to be found.
If I could get a really great vegan meal for $6-8 rather than the $9-13 I normally pay in NYC I would probably start replacing a lot of my eating out with it.
The subsidies wouldn't create more vegans in my view but it would reduce overall meat consumption. If you look at countries with higher meat costs (relative to income) you see that most have lower per capita meat consumption but they don't necessarily have higher incidence of vegans.
It should very much be possible. Anecdotally, India has huge number of people who don't eat meat and the vegetarian food is pretty delicious. But perhaps its just because I grew up eating that food.
The problem is probably that innovation in non-meat based food hasn't happened very much in the US. But I do see that changing with Amy's kitchen and all the vegan/veggie restaurants that are springing up.
My personal feeling is that lab grown meat and meat substitutes are probably the best way to get around this rather than moralizing about it, which never works.
Disclaimer: I'm definitely a meat lover, but do try to eat less meat whenever I can.
I recently tried the Beyond Burger at Veggie Grill and was downright shocked by how good it tasted. More of that and people might be a lot happier to go vegan!
Thinking about how to affect cultural change on an person-to-person basis is good but there are much better ways. Journalists like Glenn Greenwald and activists willing to risk arrest to take undercover videos (a profoundly American pair of sorts of people) should continue exposing cruelty and torture of animals inside slaughterhouses...
Recently in Australia we had a bit of an eye-opener [1] (animal cruelty in it) as to the conditions the sheep etc are treated in for our 1B+ industry we're apparently the leaders in [2]. The first link is 60 Minutes so it'll be all drama and deep bells ringing, but the images and treatment are shocking.
Not all land is the same. But I don't think it's about land use. It's about water usage, soil and water contamination, deforestation, greenhouse gas emission and the inefficient conversion of plant calories to animal calories.
Oh and of course the tiny little detail that applying the efficiency optimizer that is capitalism results in atrocious treatment of sentient beings (pardon the pathos, feel free to substitute with emotionless words if you can think of any).
Sorry. It didn't seem so bad to me, just a bit too much pathos maybe, as I wrote. I didn't want to spend more time rewording my comment. Of course the second paragraph is only my opinion. Just ignore it if it bothers you.
I am an omnivore who is engaged to a vegetarian. My meat consumption has dropped since we have started dating, but I don't feel a strong desire to turn vegetarian. I love meat, fish, eggs, and milk, and while I have tried all the vegan based alternatives, they are not good enough for me. I try to limit my intake in these areas, but I don't see why I should eliminate them completely. I suppose that when lab made meat or vegan meat like impossible burger become better tasting to me I would make the switch, but until then I don't see a strong drive to completely eliminate my consumption of meat.
I think there are nutritional benefits of meat, milk, and fish and I like the taste so my viewpoint is to moderate intake and be thoughtful in what I consume.
But I'm always open to change my viewpoint so happy to hear your philosophy.
Well, some people have a "philosophy" that humans aren't the only life-form in the universe whose lives mean something, have value.
Reading your post is for me a little like someone talking about slavery, how they like it, it has benefits, they don't feel a strong desire to stop, they've tried to cut down but don't see why they should stop completely, etc. It's kind of obscene. Or at best, like there's a huge elephant in the room. It's not all about you. I was brought up on a farm with cows we ate, later I ate hamburgers.. Then in my 20s it dawned on me that treating animals as they they're nothing but things for humans to eat only seemed ethically OK because it was the norm in my culture, (encouraged by a lot of now-super-gruesome-seeming TV ads on e.g. how delicious lambs are) and..because I'm human. A lot like how racism seemed OK if you're white, slavery if you're not a slave etc. It's a matter of widening your field of ethical concern from the arbitrary "Animals of my species, uh plus cats and dogs" line. Otherwise you will sound like, say, a white-supremacist racist talking as if only white people matter, all others have no value, mean nothing except as they can serve whites. (I have to use these analogies to try to get you to hear what meat-eater arguments sound like to me)
You were just complaining in another comment about vegans being painted as unreasonable and proselytizing, and then immediately posted this comment comparing non-vegans to slave owners. I can't tell if you're trolling or if you honestly can't see what's wrong with this picture.
Not trolling. Maybe you could say what's "wrong with this picture", unreasonable, instead of darkly implying..something. The animal-eating issue is unusual, in that it involves not only ethical considerations, but turns on whether you count groups of life-forms as worthy of any ethical consideration whatever or not. Similar to racism, slavery, etc. They either seem totally normal, or horrific and unimaginable. If you can think of other examples you'd prefer were used, let me know. That's the point, that to vegans, these are indeed apt comparisons, but to people used to treating e.g. cows as walking bags of "meat" whose only value is to people, they seem, well, like trolling, apparently. Yes, they are very different ethical outlooks on life, but to call one "unreasonable" because it's different from yours, isn't what the word means.
What's wrong is that you act indignant about people's hyperbolic descriptions of vegans, but when your opinion of non-vegans is invited, you immediately trot out the most hyperbolic, damning analogy (and a poor one at that) possible. Of course, your angle is that you're correct, and therefore the comparison of meat eaters and slave owners is simply a matter of fact, while calling vegans "proselytizers" is an unfounded and offensive opinion.
As for the analogy itself, I'm not going to get into why it's absurd. I've had that conversation enough times to know that the correctness of the analogy is not what's important to you. All that matters is that it riles up those you see as morally inferior to yourself. You chose that analogy because you get off on the reaction it gets, plain and simple.
Just know that when people portray vegans as rabid ideologues, they're talking specifically about vegans like you. You are the sort who gives vegans a bad name. If you think proselytizing is the right thing to do, then by all means, do it. But admit to yourself that that's what you're doing. You can't simultaneously proselytize and get offended by people pointing out that that's what you're doing.
> to call one "unreasonable" because it's different from yours, isn't what the word means.
See, the thing about words like "unreasonable" is that they're in the eye of the beholder. It's like the word "asshole"--you don't get to decide if you're an asshole. That's for others to decide. You get to hold whatever opinions you want about meat-eaters, and they get to decide if they think those opinions are unreasonable. Opinions are subject to critique. That's how this works.
Wow. Um.. I don't think I acted indignant, certainly didn't feel it. "All that matters is that it riles up those you see as morally inferior to yourself. You chose that analogy because you get off on the reaction it gets, plain and simple." Wow, going to stop reading right there. That kind of hate and unsurpassable bad faith doesn't deserve to be read, let alone answered.
You're over here comparing people to slave owners for eating a hot dog, but I'm the one spreading "hate" by pointing out that you're being a dick. Whatever you say, buddy.
I'm curious, how to vegans like you square away the idea that it's horrible for humans to eat animals vs it's okay for other animals (like lions) to eat animals?
Genuinely curious since I understand you points but it doesn't seem possible to apply that philosophy universally (and I see that as a sign of an incorrect philosophy)
To be clear, there are three different arguments in favor of eating less meat:
1. Personal health
2. Environmental benefits
3. Moral requirement
I'm only asking about the moral argument since that what you focused on in your post
Hi :-) I'm not sure what philosophy "it doesn't seem possible to apply universally".. Maybe "Killing any animal is wrong" (By any animal/person, for any reason, etc)? I don't think that. Also, I don't see this as an "argument in favor of eating less meat", or a "moral requirement".. Is it hard for you to not hunt, kill and eat people? Do you need arguments in favor of having less slaves. No.. Those things seem morally repugnant to most of us now, while they were normal in other times and places.
Two points from the many that bear on this:
1. The line between "humans and uh cats and dogs" and everything else seems arbitrary, human-centric etc. "Those in my group have value, those outside are nothing" comes naturally to humans, but there's nothing reasonable about it. For me, I don't like pain. I think inflicting pain/suffering is bad--not to mention painless killing, which seems worse than inflicting suffering. I would prefer someone inflicted pain on me than killed me painlessly! (How strange that I felt the need to explicitly make that point.)
There is a range of life-forms on this planet, from simple to complex, some of which, like single-cell bacteria, viruses, probably don't feel pain. (Neither do trees, it seems--they can't run away so it didn't evolve. But I respect them for other reasons. I hate seeing heavily graffitied trees, I wonder who could do that desecration.) There seems no obvious line to draw between animals whose pain/suffering, and lives, are worthy of ethical consideration, and those whose aren't. (And conveniently, we put humans at the top of that range, presumably other animals might see things differently) Doctors/vets kill lower-life forms to save higher ones. Personally, I put it fairly low (Oysters?..).. but to save worrying about the exact place to draw the line, I've found it simpler (and painless, I've never missed 'it') to avoid animal products altogether.
2. The matter of need. If it's a matter of killing animals for food or dying, I would do the same. (or even eating people, see the movie Alive.) If it's a matter of, for you and I, wanting a steak, when there's no need whatsoever, it's an entirely different thing. I stopped dairy products when I learnt about what people do to cows and their babies in that industry. And learn about factory farming of chickens, pigs, cows, go on a tour of an abattoir--the gruesome realities are hidden from us.
Also, I'm just talking about ethical considerations for humans, how we treat other life-forms. Because we realize other people than ourselves matter, other species than ourselves. (Not really sure what to say about the lions in your example.)
Thanks for the reply. It sounds like your argument is "we should minimize the pain in the world" which could make sense when it comes to humans eating animals.
Two counter questions come to mind though:
1. What if you could kill the animals painlessly (e.g. euthanize them) in a way that still left them fit to eat? Would that be okay
2. Would you consider it immoral to feed a dog or cat (and perhaps we should just kill them instead)? The pain that dog will feel from being killed once is probably much less than the combined pain of dying experienced by all the various animals that the dog will eat in it's life. That would minimize pain in the world
1) I don't have any ethical issues with any organism killing another organism to help sustain their life. And by the way, you don't either. Unless you've spawned the ability to photosynthesize light (in which case all props to you), your body is sustained by killing off biological life, breaking that life into macro molecules, and using that to sustain yourself. You make a distinction that you are ok with extinguishing the life of Bacteria, Protozoa, Plants, and Fungi, while I do all of that and add on animals. I'm not sure what the difference is there if you are arguing that life is sacred because if you believe all life is precious and shouldn't be extinguished, then you can't exactly live. Which btw is a totally feasible and admirable viewpoint - Jainism takes an approach like that and I respect that religion. I just personally don't see self actualization as giving all up earthly desires and extinguishing my life as a part of nirvana.
2) I don't have an issue with domestically raising a species and treating it purely as a thing for me to eat. To me that's actually a better way to do things, because domestic consumption ensures that I'm not eradicating wild and unique ecosystems of life. Btw, unless you forage for all your produce, you don't have an issue with that because if you eat vegetables from a grocery store you are consuming a highly genetically modified organism that has been evolved purely for your consumption. The fact that grocery bananas don't have seeds should disturb you greatly if you have a problem with evolving organism for your benefit. The distinction again, is that you have a problem with domestication of animals, but you seem not treat other organism as purely something for you to eat.
To put into your own words, it's a matter of widening your field of ethical concern from the arbitrary "Animals" to all organisms. Otherwise you will sound like, say, a white-supremacist racist talking as if only white people matter, all others have no value, mean nothing except as they can serve whites. (I have to use these analogies to try to get you to hear what plant-eater arguments sound like to me)
I learned how bad the conditions are in animal factories and I don't want anything to do with it. If you look at these conditions and feel no compassion for the animals, then I won't try to change your mind. I also don't consider myself somehow a better person or something like that.
Some people believe in God, others don't. Some are tall, some are short. Some feel attracted to the same gender, some to a different one. I don't think we have influence on these things. However, if you are like I was simply ignorant of what is going on, I encourage you to look into it.
The whole thing about saving the planet... I don't think that'll work out even if all humans become vegan tomorrow.
Yes, that is a fair point and I agree that the way we are raising animals today is drastically different from 100 years ago. Mad cow disease starts from US farmers feeding cows shitty animal parts to herbivore cows. Turkeys have to be artificial inseminated because they are engineered too fat to have sex. Chickens are fed growth hormone and then given a square foot to live in and are pumped with anti bioticd so they don’t die from their living conditions. Lots of terrible things there.
I personally don’t have a problem with killing animals for energy, but the manner in which we are raising the animals seems wrong to me. So I see your point there and it does make me question my diet.
I know, right? Just the other day on here I read, mid-discussion of an unrelated subject, someone saying "like vegans" as a random example of an unreasonable, aggressive, troublesome, proselytizing group. I wanted to comment but couldn't think of anything....suitable to say. (vegan here) I don't know if they didn't think vegans would read it, or not care, or it didn't occur to them.
I am extremely interested in veganism but currently I purchase free-range eggs and grass-fed beef from a neighbor. I have Celiac disease and I'm lactose intolerant so the only dairy I consume is butter.
I cook with butter/tallow/bacon fat but eat 6+lbs of grass-fed beef a week. I hunt deer/elk and fish salmon/bass, as well.
I use the whole animal (organs) and hunting/free-range/grass-fed is the most ethical way I can think of consuming animals while respecting the earth.
I absolutely hate modern agriculture and want to buy land where I don't touch a thing and allow ruminants to live as freely as they want, then hunt what I need.
What do you see wrong with my lifestyle?
I've looked into a plant-based diet but I still have a lot to learn though! I'm definitely open to it.
Having fewer kids, or no kids at all, is actually the single biggest way to reduce impact on Earth.
Also, as can be seen on the graph of the article, the major problem is actually beef, and not meat in general.
Something the article doesn't mention, and maybe the paper doesn't take into account, is distribution. Fruits and vegetables can have a bigger footprint than certain meats because these can be transported off season from very long distances.
The paper did include transportation in the evaluation:
"Studies included provided ~1050 estimates of postfarm processes. To fill gaps in processing, packaging, or retail, we used additional meta-analyses of 153 studies providing 550 observations. Transport and losses were included from global data sets"
Even more radically than having "no kids at all", one could also commit suicide in order to immediately and more completely "reduce impact" -- as the end-goal seems to be.
Can you explain how that is not the logical conclusion? Along those lines, some radical environmentalists have been advocating mass slaughter of the human species.
By analogy, say your goal is to eliminate income equality. In order to maximize your chances of your actions favoring that outcome, is the logical conclusion that you should find a job paying in median wage, that you spend your income in median consumption, and that you invest the remaining in median savings?
As much as we're raised to believe that being an example of the ideal you want to see will somehow manifest the necessary changes to get everyone else there, it doesn't really work that way.
Since the whole point of society is a system of reinforcing incentives to stabilize the power structures of the status quo and not engender revolution, by choosing non-participation in the destabilization of the existing order by being the most mediocre rather than playing the part at the extremes of the spectrum as parasite or exploiter, you end up perpetuating the inequality you sought to fix by more thoroughly lubricating the cogs of checks and balances.
An environmentalist's duty is to harm the Earth to their fullest lifelong potential to more thoroughly and completely kill off the humans of future generations before the Earth actually suffers beyond its capacity to repair.
Now that you got this far in reading: Poe's Law :)
Your analogy would be valid if someone had previously claimed that the single most effective way to end poverty is to prevent the poor from having children. Then one could explore the logical conclusions of their advice.
"Actually". Ever wonder why you feel the need to insert that into your sentences? Moving on...
1. How about killing yourself? One might, if one was truly serious about reducing impact, or perhaps just to prove there is a "bigger way".
2. I don't know the name of that fallacy. You could pedantically object to any headline/finding in similar terms. "Smoking causes cancer" .. "As can be seen in graph X, the major problem is actually cigarettes, and not smoking in general."
I understand what you're getting at with the fallacy (lets call it 'winning by not fighting'), but I don't think it applies here. There is too much difference between ending your life and choosing not to create another. Also related is the difference between not having children (logical end: no more humans) and having one child fewer than you would under better circumstances (logical end: decrease in population until circumstances improve).
That said, I'm biased because I don't want any kids right now. If I had one, suicide would probably follow anyway.
so...this is some kind of vague, bluffy justification for eating 'meat'? Uh, because otherwise you're "pretending"? Hmm there's an advertising slogan in there somewhere. Connect some dots for us, please.
You mean eating only plants is not in our nature and it might be harmful for us? That should be relatively easy to validate by observing a lot of long time vegans.
Eating soy beans is not in the nature of cows or fish but we smart cookies make them eat it in our animal factories anyway because it is convenient and cheap. To make that work, we have to give them lots of nasty stuff that we know is harmful to both them and us. But us pretending to not be herbivores on behalf of cows is fine somehow I guess.
All else being equal including the number of children, I think this would increase the age gap between generations and therefore decrease the average number of people alive at any given time. But unless the number of children being born changes, it won't change the trend.
Studies to determine what about the absorption? The old line of thought about complete vs. incomplete protein has mostly fallen by the wayside, and there are certainly some fairly compelling general studies on the health overall[1] (disclaimer, I am not a vegan, but I have been vegetarian for 30+ years, and I bike, lift, and climb without any trouble).
The problem with healthy eating is that you get five opinions when you ask two experts.
However, you can't find a ton of videos on YouTube with plausible sounding explanations why a plant-based diet is healthiest. Just watch those and decide to believe them.
Whatever you do, do not read "The Plant Paradox". That book will ruin eating for you if you even so much as consider to ponder the possibility that it might not be total BS.
To me it would be ideal if plant based food was the default and animal products an expensive luxury. Not unaffordable, let's say a dish with meat costs about twice as much as a vegan dish in most restaurants.
But I would already be perfectly happy and content if all the wonderful places in the world I want to visit had vegan food at all.
Of course I understand that people struggling with hunger and poverty have more important things to worry about.
I don't know what it takes to "save the planet". Everyone going vegan might not be enough. But that ship has probably sailed anyway. The planet will have plenty of time to recover and/or become something new after humans disappeared (themselves). What bugs me is seeing animals suffer, regardless of species (including humans ofc).
India is mostly vegetarian, grows enough food to feed all its people and still has millions dying of starvation. In most countries that face starving denizens, it is often (although not exclusively) the result of flawed distribution rather than an inability to grow food. I really think we're not focusing on the right problem, but that is my opinion.
And when you say vegetarian, do you mean vegan? I don't know what real Indian food is, but the Indian food I have seen (and enjoyed tremendously) always had dairy/butter/ghee in it (maybe with the exception of dal(sp?)). Which is hilarious considering the whole holy cow thing.
I'm uncomfortable about taking BBC articles at face value. If you read it with a critical eye, you can see it giving weight to unspecified surveys a lot more than official Government surveys. There would have been a much easier way to measure meat consumption: measure the production of meat (internal + imports) and average daily consumption of households to see if the data is valid. Until the article provides any kind of proof that the data is flawed, I will continue to trust official figures.
> Which is hilarious considering the whole holy cow thing.
I genuinely don't understand what you mean by this. Milk rearing in India is not done in the industrialized fashion that you see in the US, but by small scale dairy farmers who sell their produce to cooperatives. In a country like India where nutrition is scarce, milk and milk based products are an excellent way to supplement diets. And as you mention they are already a substantial part of Indian cuisine.
Interesting. I think it would be even easier to see whether the article is lying or not. Just go to India, visit many different regions and have a look what the shops and restaurants frequented by locals sell.
In my opinion, there is no point in avoiding meat without giving up dairy. With "the whole holy cow thing" I meant that, as far as I know, in one (?) religion that is common in India (Hinduism?), cows are considered sacred animals. Because of that, followers of that religion don't eat them. And in some branches of Buddhism, harming any living being is a no go. I could have gotten all this totally wrong. I didn't even take the time to read up on it right now. I'm not all that interested in religion, barely know anything about Catholicism even though that's the crazy I've been baptized in/on/with/whatever. I exited that club way too late, regrettably, but at least I'm not giving money to child molesters any more.
Sorry, rambling. Back to cows: So eating them is bad, but somehow, perma-raping cows and making them sad by taking their babies away is totally cool. Maybe that not-as-bad-as-in-'murica milk production method avoids this bad karma. That would be great. Regardless of that though, I believe dairy is not healthy at all for adult humans. Cow milk is for cow babies. If you are reading this, you are not a cow baby.
> Interesting. I think it would be even easier to see whether the article is lying or not. Just go to India, visit many different regions and have a look what the shops and restaurants frequented by locals sell.
That is called anecdotal evidence and cannot be taken as the basis to making informed conclusions about the whole country. India is a HUGE country and incredibly diverse. How many neighborhoods in India will you go to make a spot check? Statistics is your friend, not anecdotes.
> Sorry, rambling. Back to cows: So eating them is bad, but somehow, perma-raping cows and making them sad by taking their babies away is totally cool. Maybe that not-as-bad-as-in-'murica milk production method avoids this bad karma. That would be great. Regardless of that though, I believe dairy is not healthy at all for adult humans. Cow milk is for cow babies. If you are reading this, you are not a cow baby.
What the fuck? Whatever pain the cows may face is infinitely less than the absolutely disgusting conditions under which cattle are grown and slaughtered in the US (including cow babies as you so cutely refer to them).
Milk is ABSOLUTELY a good source of nutrition for human beings. Especially in a country like India where a significant fraction of the population faces malnutrition, it is a very effective way to provide nutrition. It also has the side effect of financially enriching farmers who are one of the most vulnerable segments of Indian society.
Thank you for responding and putting up with me. :)
You are right, visiting India and having a look would not provide data to base policy decisions on or anything like that. I didn't mean to imply that. It would be enough for me to form an opinion based on experience, is all.
As I said, I don't know how milk is obtained by Indian dairy farmers. I believe you straight away that it is way better than in "efficient" factories. I assume they leave the babies with the mothers and let them have the milk and take whatever is left over. That'd be dope.
However don't you need even more cows then with the "efficient" method? And do those cows not emit the same amount of greenhouse gases as the poor creatures in factories? Not if they eat seaweed, apparently (https://foodtank.com/news/2017/06/seaweed-reduce-cow-methane...). Do they? Is that their natural diet? If not, is it fine anyway?
If they are treated properly, they won't eat food that humans could use, so that's good.
How much water do they need? Is water scarce around Indian dairy farms?
It's all so complicated. Just eating a plant-based diet is so much simpler. It would also be much easier if all sufficiently wealthy and developed parts of the world finally got the memo that some people want this. Where are you capitalism? Serve the market. Shut up and take my money. Pretty please.
I have no doubt that most of India is not sufficiently wealthy and developed. Obviously I undestand that consuming dairy is better than starving and I would never ever tell someone in that situation what to do. That would be absolutely insane and devoid of any compassion. However, "better than starving" is also a very low bar and not quite the same as "healthy food for adult humans".
It is not just about nutrients. If I mix vitamin C and rat poison, is the result healthy?
Killing yourself reduces your impact on the Earth by 100% - that doesn't mean it is a productive thing to do. Individual action isn't going to fix this. Each person's contribution is too small. Systemic change is the only way to address this.
Modern industrialized agriculture has a lot of issues. Other methods of agriculture can have net-negative emissions: grow all of your feedstock onsite and use waste products to produce more feedstock. If all the carbon you emit was previously captured onsite, you're only 'borrowing' carbon, not really producing it. Slightly net-negative carbon as soil is built as a byproduct.
See Joel Salatin for further reading.
I think writing articles about how "You, individual, can do something to save the Earth" is ineffective moralizing not unlike Facebook posts asking to "Share this if you want to end human trafficking!" - the only tangible effect is self-promotion of the author and inflating the self-esteem of the readers who go along with it.
I read The Omnivores Dilemma and share your believe that this kind of farming seems fine. I don't know whether this would work for feeding the entire planet. Right now, farms like this are an exception anyway.
In my experience, only consuming animal products from these farms is a bigger hassle than finding vegan food.
From my recollected (watched that ~6 mo ago), the amount of land needed to grow food for his herd is less than the amount of land that would be needed to purchase it elsewhere, because the rotation of the animals keeps his fields fertilized and trimmed to the optimum length for fast growth. Plus, by rotating in chickens, he's double dipping a bit.
There are some people doing some interesting research into using herd animals to prep beds for annual vegetables: they let the animal graze as the seeds are starting to germinate, animals eat everything green. The germinating seeds are then able to fill the void left behind faster than anything else, because the farmer timed it properly.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadI really don't know how to help attitudes move towards a plant based life-style. I don't bother bringing it up because the second the topic is introduced, people feel attacked and that I'm just doing it to feel superior. Amusingly enough, it's usually omnivores that bring up that topic but still are obviously uneasy about the whole thing.
I wonder how much vegan restaurants can undercut omni restaurants due to the lower costs of vegetables compared to meats.
Source: anecdata from an omnivore that recently decided to try vegan food and found that there are actually some pretty delicious deals to be found.
If I could get a really great vegan meal for $6-8 rather than the $9-13 I normally pay in NYC I would probably start replacing a lot of my eating out with it.
The problem is probably that innovation in non-meat based food hasn't happened very much in the US. But I do see that changing with Amy's kitchen and all the vegan/veggie restaurants that are springing up.
My personal feeling is that lab grown meat and meat substitutes are probably the best way to get around this rather than moralizing about it, which never works.
Disclaimer: I'm definitely a meat lover, but do try to eat less meat whenever I can.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXZkfdLU8O8 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArgrLXE1ZG8
Even if that was valid, a second-order effect is to increase carrying capacity and increase the rate of population growth.
Even now there are people who can't afford food, the more efficiently farming is done, the cheaper food will be for them.
Oh and of course the tiny little detail that applying the efficiency optimizer that is capitalism results in atrocious treatment of sentient beings (pardon the pathos, feel free to substitute with emotionless words if you can think of any).
I am an omnivore who is engaged to a vegetarian. My meat consumption has dropped since we have started dating, but I don't feel a strong desire to turn vegetarian. I love meat, fish, eggs, and milk, and while I have tried all the vegan based alternatives, they are not good enough for me. I try to limit my intake in these areas, but I don't see why I should eliminate them completely. I suppose that when lab made meat or vegan meat like impossible burger become better tasting to me I would make the switch, but until then I don't see a strong drive to completely eliminate my consumption of meat.
I think there are nutritional benefits of meat, milk, and fish and I like the taste so my viewpoint is to moderate intake and be thoughtful in what I consume.
But I'm always open to change my viewpoint so happy to hear your philosophy.
Reading your post is for me a little like someone talking about slavery, how they like it, it has benefits, they don't feel a strong desire to stop, they've tried to cut down but don't see why they should stop completely, etc. It's kind of obscene. Or at best, like there's a huge elephant in the room. It's not all about you. I was brought up on a farm with cows we ate, later I ate hamburgers.. Then in my 20s it dawned on me that treating animals as they they're nothing but things for humans to eat only seemed ethically OK because it was the norm in my culture, (encouraged by a lot of now-super-gruesome-seeming TV ads on e.g. how delicious lambs are) and..because I'm human. A lot like how racism seemed OK if you're white, slavery if you're not a slave etc. It's a matter of widening your field of ethical concern from the arbitrary "Animals of my species, uh plus cats and dogs" line. Otherwise you will sound like, say, a white-supremacist racist talking as if only white people matter, all others have no value, mean nothing except as they can serve whites. (I have to use these analogies to try to get you to hear what meat-eater arguments sound like to me)
As for the analogy itself, I'm not going to get into why it's absurd. I've had that conversation enough times to know that the correctness of the analogy is not what's important to you. All that matters is that it riles up those you see as morally inferior to yourself. You chose that analogy because you get off on the reaction it gets, plain and simple.
Just know that when people portray vegans as rabid ideologues, they're talking specifically about vegans like you. You are the sort who gives vegans a bad name. If you think proselytizing is the right thing to do, then by all means, do it. But admit to yourself that that's what you're doing. You can't simultaneously proselytize and get offended by people pointing out that that's what you're doing.
> to call one "unreasonable" because it's different from yours, isn't what the word means.
See, the thing about words like "unreasonable" is that they're in the eye of the beholder. It's like the word "asshole"--you don't get to decide if you're an asshole. That's for others to decide. You get to hold whatever opinions you want about meat-eaters, and they get to decide if they think those opinions are unreasonable. Opinions are subject to critique. That's how this works.
Genuinely curious since I understand you points but it doesn't seem possible to apply that philosophy universally (and I see that as a sign of an incorrect philosophy)
To be clear, there are three different arguments in favor of eating less meat:
1. Personal health
2. Environmental benefits
3. Moral requirement
I'm only asking about the moral argument since that what you focused on in your post
Two points from the many that bear on this:
1. The line between "humans and uh cats and dogs" and everything else seems arbitrary, human-centric etc. "Those in my group have value, those outside are nothing" comes naturally to humans, but there's nothing reasonable about it. For me, I don't like pain. I think inflicting pain/suffering is bad--not to mention painless killing, which seems worse than inflicting suffering. I would prefer someone inflicted pain on me than killed me painlessly! (How strange that I felt the need to explicitly make that point.)
There is a range of life-forms on this planet, from simple to complex, some of which, like single-cell bacteria, viruses, probably don't feel pain. (Neither do trees, it seems--they can't run away so it didn't evolve. But I respect them for other reasons. I hate seeing heavily graffitied trees, I wonder who could do that desecration.) There seems no obvious line to draw between animals whose pain/suffering, and lives, are worthy of ethical consideration, and those whose aren't. (And conveniently, we put humans at the top of that range, presumably other animals might see things differently) Doctors/vets kill lower-life forms to save higher ones. Personally, I put it fairly low (Oysters?..).. but to save worrying about the exact place to draw the line, I've found it simpler (and painless, I've never missed 'it') to avoid animal products altogether.
2. The matter of need. If it's a matter of killing animals for food or dying, I would do the same. (or even eating people, see the movie Alive.) If it's a matter of, for you and I, wanting a steak, when there's no need whatsoever, it's an entirely different thing. I stopped dairy products when I learnt about what people do to cows and their babies in that industry. And learn about factory farming of chickens, pigs, cows, go on a tour of an abattoir--the gruesome realities are hidden from us.
Also, I'm just talking about ethical considerations for humans, how we treat other life-forms. Because we realize other people than ourselves matter, other species than ourselves. (Not really sure what to say about the lions in your example.)
Two counter questions come to mind though:
1. What if you could kill the animals painlessly (e.g. euthanize them) in a way that still left them fit to eat? Would that be okay
2. Would you consider it immoral to feed a dog or cat (and perhaps we should just kill them instead)? The pain that dog will feel from being killed once is probably much less than the combined pain of dying experienced by all the various animals that the dog will eat in it's life. That would minimize pain in the world
1) I don't have any ethical issues with any organism killing another organism to help sustain their life. And by the way, you don't either. Unless you've spawned the ability to photosynthesize light (in which case all props to you), your body is sustained by killing off biological life, breaking that life into macro molecules, and using that to sustain yourself. You make a distinction that you are ok with extinguishing the life of Bacteria, Protozoa, Plants, and Fungi, while I do all of that and add on animals. I'm not sure what the difference is there if you are arguing that life is sacred because if you believe all life is precious and shouldn't be extinguished, then you can't exactly live. Which btw is a totally feasible and admirable viewpoint - Jainism takes an approach like that and I respect that religion. I just personally don't see self actualization as giving all up earthly desires and extinguishing my life as a part of nirvana.
2) I don't have an issue with domestically raising a species and treating it purely as a thing for me to eat. To me that's actually a better way to do things, because domestic consumption ensures that I'm not eradicating wild and unique ecosystems of life. Btw, unless you forage for all your produce, you don't have an issue with that because if you eat vegetables from a grocery store you are consuming a highly genetically modified organism that has been evolved purely for your consumption. The fact that grocery bananas don't have seeds should disturb you greatly if you have a problem with evolving organism for your benefit. The distinction again, is that you have a problem with domestication of animals, but you seem not treat other organism as purely something for you to eat.
To put into your own words, it's a matter of widening your field of ethical concern from the arbitrary "Animals" to all organisms. Otherwise you will sound like, say, a white-supremacist racist talking as if only white people matter, all others have no value, mean nothing except as they can serve whites. (I have to use these analogies to try to get you to hear what plant-eater arguments sound like to me)
Some people believe in God, others don't. Some are tall, some are short. Some feel attracted to the same gender, some to a different one. I don't think we have influence on these things. However, if you are like I was simply ignorant of what is going on, I encourage you to look into it.
The whole thing about saving the planet... I don't think that'll work out even if all humans become vegan tomorrow.
I personally don’t have a problem with killing animals for energy, but the manner in which we are raising the animals seems wrong to me. So I see your point there and it does make me question my diet.
I cook with butter/tallow/bacon fat but eat 6+lbs of grass-fed beef a week. I hunt deer/elk and fish salmon/bass, as well.
I use the whole animal (organs) and hunting/free-range/grass-fed is the most ethical way I can think of consuming animals while respecting the earth.
I absolutely hate modern agriculture and want to buy land where I don't touch a thing and allow ruminants to live as freely as they want, then hunt what I need.
What do you see wrong with my lifestyle?
I've looked into a plant-based diet but I still have a lot to learn though! I'm definitely open to it.
Also, as can be seen on the graph of the article, the major problem is actually beef, and not meat in general.
Something the article doesn't mention, and maybe the paper doesn't take into account, is distribution. Fruits and vegetables can have a bigger footprint than certain meats because these can be transported off season from very long distances.
http://the-ecotarian.com/stories/2016/2/26/environmental-imp...
"Studies included provided ~1050 estimates of postfarm processes. To fill gaps in processing, packaging, or retail, we used additional meta-analyses of 153 studies providing 550 observations. Transport and losses were included from global data sets"
Can you explain how that is not the logical conclusion? Along those lines, some radical environmentalists have been advocating mass slaughter of the human species.
As much as we're raised to believe that being an example of the ideal you want to see will somehow manifest the necessary changes to get everyone else there, it doesn't really work that way.
Since the whole point of society is a system of reinforcing incentives to stabilize the power structures of the status quo and not engender revolution, by choosing non-participation in the destabilization of the existing order by being the most mediocre rather than playing the part at the extremes of the spectrum as parasite or exploiter, you end up perpetuating the inequality you sought to fix by more thoroughly lubricating the cogs of checks and balances.
An environmentalist's duty is to harm the Earth to their fullest lifelong potential to more thoroughly and completely kill off the humans of future generations before the Earth actually suffers beyond its capacity to repair.
Now that you got this far in reading: Poe's Law :)
We could also end poverty by killing the poor.
1. How about killing yourself? One might, if one was truly serious about reducing impact, or perhaps just to prove there is a "bigger way".
2. I don't know the name of that fallacy. You could pedantically object to any headline/finding in similar terms. "Smoking causes cancer" .. "As can be seen in graph X, the major problem is actually cigarettes, and not smoking in general."
That said, I'm biased because I don't want any kids right now. If I had one, suicide would probably follow anyway.
That doesn't make it a good idea. Likewise, it's not a good idea to pretend you're not an omnivore.
Eating soy beans is not in the nature of cows or fish but we smart cookies make them eat it in our animal factories anyway because it is convenient and cheap. To make that work, we have to give them lots of nasty stuff that we know is harmful to both them and us. But us pretending to not be herbivores on behalf of cows is fine somehow I guess.
What's the math on starting to have kids at 30 years of age instead of 20, especially if that pattern is repeated by your progeny?
Having no impact sounds terrible.
I feel like this subject is often very emotional for some people, but what about science?
1: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
However, you can't find a ton of videos on YouTube with plausible sounding explanations why a plant-based diet is healthiest. Just watch those and decide to believe them. Whatever you do, do not read "The Plant Paradox". That book will ruin eating for you if you even so much as consider to ponder the possibility that it might not be total BS.
But I would already be perfectly happy and content if all the wonderful places in the world I want to visit had vegan food at all. Of course I understand that people struggling with hunger and poverty have more important things to worry about.
I don't know what it takes to "save the planet". Everyone going vegan might not be enough. But that ship has probably sailed anyway. The planet will have plenty of time to recover and/or become something new after humans disappeared (themselves). What bugs me is seeing animals suffer, regardless of species (including humans ofc).
And when you say vegetarian, do you mean vegan? I don't know what real Indian food is, but the Indian food I have seen (and enjoyed tremendously) always had dairy/butter/ghee in it (maybe with the exception of dal(sp?)). Which is hilarious considering the whole holy cow thing.
> Which is hilarious considering the whole holy cow thing.
I genuinely don't understand what you mean by this. Milk rearing in India is not done in the industrialized fashion that you see in the US, but by small scale dairy farmers who sell their produce to cooperatives. In a country like India where nutrition is scarce, milk and milk based products are an excellent way to supplement diets. And as you mention they are already a substantial part of Indian cuisine.
In my opinion, there is no point in avoiding meat without giving up dairy. With "the whole holy cow thing" I meant that, as far as I know, in one (?) religion that is common in India (Hinduism?), cows are considered sacred animals. Because of that, followers of that religion don't eat them. And in some branches of Buddhism, harming any living being is a no go. I could have gotten all this totally wrong. I didn't even take the time to read up on it right now. I'm not all that interested in religion, barely know anything about Catholicism even though that's the crazy I've been baptized in/on/with/whatever. I exited that club way too late, regrettably, but at least I'm not giving money to child molesters any more.
Sorry, rambling. Back to cows: So eating them is bad, but somehow, perma-raping cows and making them sad by taking their babies away is totally cool. Maybe that not-as-bad-as-in-'murica milk production method avoids this bad karma. That would be great. Regardless of that though, I believe dairy is not healthy at all for adult humans. Cow milk is for cow babies. If you are reading this, you are not a cow baby.
That is called anecdotal evidence and cannot be taken as the basis to making informed conclusions about the whole country. India is a HUGE country and incredibly diverse. How many neighborhoods in India will you go to make a spot check? Statistics is your friend, not anecdotes.
> Sorry, rambling. Back to cows: So eating them is bad, but somehow, perma-raping cows and making them sad by taking their babies away is totally cool. Maybe that not-as-bad-as-in-'murica milk production method avoids this bad karma. That would be great. Regardless of that though, I believe dairy is not healthy at all for adult humans. Cow milk is for cow babies. If you are reading this, you are not a cow baby.
What the fuck? Whatever pain the cows may face is infinitely less than the absolutely disgusting conditions under which cattle are grown and slaughtered in the US (including cow babies as you so cutely refer to them).
Milk is ABSOLUTELY a good source of nutrition for human beings. Especially in a country like India where a significant fraction of the population faces malnutrition, it is a very effective way to provide nutrition. It also has the side effect of financially enriching farmers who are one of the most vulnerable segments of Indian society.
You are right, visiting India and having a look would not provide data to base policy decisions on or anything like that. I didn't mean to imply that. It would be enough for me to form an opinion based on experience, is all.
As I said, I don't know how milk is obtained by Indian dairy farmers. I believe you straight away that it is way better than in "efficient" factories. I assume they leave the babies with the mothers and let them have the milk and take whatever is left over. That'd be dope.
However don't you need even more cows then with the "efficient" method? And do those cows not emit the same amount of greenhouse gases as the poor creatures in factories? Not if they eat seaweed, apparently (https://foodtank.com/news/2017/06/seaweed-reduce-cow-methane...). Do they? Is that their natural diet? If not, is it fine anyway?
If they are treated properly, they won't eat food that humans could use, so that's good.
How much water do they need? Is water scarce around Indian dairy farms?
It's all so complicated. Just eating a plant-based diet is so much simpler. It would also be much easier if all sufficiently wealthy and developed parts of the world finally got the memo that some people want this. Where are you capitalism? Serve the market. Shut up and take my money. Pretty please.
I have no doubt that most of India is not sufficiently wealthy and developed. Obviously I undestand that consuming dairy is better than starving and I would never ever tell someone in that situation what to do. That would be absolutely insane and devoid of any compassion. However, "better than starving" is also a very low bar and not quite the same as "healthy food for adult humans".
It is not just about nutrients. If I mix vitamin C and rat poison, is the result healthy?
Modern industrialized agriculture has a lot of issues. Other methods of agriculture can have net-negative emissions: grow all of your feedstock onsite and use waste products to produce more feedstock. If all the carbon you emit was previously captured onsite, you're only 'borrowing' carbon, not really producing it. Slightly net-negative carbon as soil is built as a byproduct. See Joel Salatin for further reading.
I think writing articles about how "You, individual, can do something to save the Earth" is ineffective moralizing not unlike Facebook posts asking to "Share this if you want to end human trafficking!" - the only tangible effect is self-promotion of the author and inflating the self-esteem of the readers who go along with it.
In my experience, only consuming animal products from these farms is a bigger hassle than finding vegan food.
Here's a talk of his on Cows and Climate Change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z75A_JMBx4
From my recollected (watched that ~6 mo ago), the amount of land needed to grow food for his herd is less than the amount of land that would be needed to purchase it elsewhere, because the rotation of the animals keeps his fields fertilized and trimmed to the optimum length for fast growth. Plus, by rotating in chickens, he's double dipping a bit.
There are some people doing some interesting research into using herd animals to prep beds for annual vegetables: they let the animal graze as the seeds are starting to germinate, animals eat everything green. The germinating seeds are then able to fill the void left behind faster than anything else, because the farmer timed it properly.