341–350 of 538 posts
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The one big problem for me is that nearly every "veggie" dish I've ever known would be IMPROVED with meat in my very personal opinion. Is there any meal/food that tastes worse with a dead animal added?
Vanilla pudding may taste worse with meat :-). I am also not sure about pineapple juice.
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I love meat but I've always struggled to reconcile my love of eating it with my love of animals. I would be happy to pay a premium if it meant I could get meat-like taste without the guilt
I'm not sure if I'd eat this burger, but if lab-grown meat was available and as good as the natural alternative, I think I would definitely switch. Sadly if everyone did this it would probably mean we would only see cows, sheep etc in zoos, rather than grazing in fields.
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That's more impressive, and yet, as a non-expert, I still don't know how to evaluate whether the calculation is bug-free. Do you? I guess I'd have to track down all the references and build my own spreadsheet? There are some spreadsheets listed in the references, but it seems like a complicated task. Just to nit-pick one little detail, it seems to treat all land the same: "Significant decreases in land occupation als…
Juse because "we can't be absolutely sure" doesn't mean the evidence doesn't point in a direction. There doesn't seem to be ground to overwhelmingly doubt to evidence to the point where the conclusions are radically reversed. It's a known cognitive bias (assuming you don't know what you're doing) or sophism (if you do). See: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GrDqnMjhqoxiqpQPw/the-proper...
In the case of nutrition, economics, and ecology, my rough answer is "rather high". (Consider Piketty and spreadsheet errors.) And answering this question combines all of them. If being right matters, I'd hedge my bets.
Most people aren't heavily invested in Impossible Foods, so bet-hedging basically means letting them do their thing and seeing how it turns out. I look forward to trying their new product.
I'm just quibbling with "no doubt". Just like being an expert in most subjects is unnecessary, being doubt-free is unnecessary for most people in most subjects, and I think most conversations would go better if the true believers (and radical cynics) backed off a bit and acknowledged uncertainty.
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Yes. Exactly so. If I had to make no effort at all, and I could also save some money, I would switch. But it is not obvious that everyone would. Perhaps all of your acquaintances would, but perhaps you just don't know someone of the sort who wouldn't. Pre-framing the debate in (hostile) terms of just how selfish I am gives me the inkling that you are not looking for an honest, factual, and productive discussion, and…
In my experiences, both as a meat-eater for most of my life and about a year of not eating meat, most of the reason you (or I, previously) couldn't stomach that kind of vector is because (at least in my case) it's the difference between thinking about where the meat comes from vs not. I was fully aware of what animals were, and that they died so I could have that food, but I never really tried to think about it. Basi…
Meat comes from the corpses of animals slaughtered on our behalf. Selfishness does not come from eating it, or from insufficiently valuing the environmental impact of it, or from getting annoyed with people that have made it a cornerstone of their personal religion.
I don't feel challenged at all by vegans, in the same sense that I am not challenged by missionaries knocking on doors or distributing flyers. When they speak, and I detect the emotional investment, I tune out, because I have learned long ago that one cannot argue with religion. I don't want a religion; you can't convert me by preaching.
So when someone tells me I am selfish, knowing little of me beyond the words in my initial post, I have exactly the same emotional reaction as with someone telling me that I will go to Hell for being atheist. It only makes sense to a believer, and I am not one. I tuned my bullshit detector with years of pointless arguments with kooks and crackpots, and no one but an expert is going to slip a rhetorical cheat past it.
If I am selfish, by definition, I wouldn't care whether other people think I am selfish. Ergo, attempting to sway someone by suggesting they might be selfish is implicitly dishonest. It would only work on someone already concerned that they might be too selfish, while not knowing of any specific reasons why that might be so. By introspection and by comparison with acquaintances, I have reached the conclusion that I am not selfish, or at least not more than one standard deviation above the median level of selfishness. I am stubborn and skeptical; sometimes it comes out looking similar. Since I know myself better than anyone else does, whenever someone comes out and says I am selfish, my bullshit detector pings, and I look for the ulterior motive.
Aha! The person making the claim has no specific interest in me or my prior claims, but is using me as a prop to preach to the more accessible listeners in the audience, and to their own choir. They are treating me exactly as I treat a piece of meat--a thing to be used to advance their own ends, rather than something of inherent value. That's hypocrisy, of a sort, and I dislike it in vegan preachers, and every other kind of preacher.
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"Sadly if everyone did this it would probably mean we would only see cows, sheep etc in zoos, rather than grazing in fields." Eh, not really, as cows and sheep and goats still provide valuable resources. Milk and wools, for example. I'm guessing lots of other things can be taken as they die naturally - leathers and stuff from bones and pet foods and whatnot. Sure, we could eventually engineer ourselves out of needing…
there's nut milks and faux leather. nearly everything has a plant-based alternative and if something doesn't, it will have one soon.
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The burger is made primarily from Soy. Soy accounts for 2/3 of global protein feed. Humans eating directly from livestock's primary food source is likely to be much more efficient at a global scale.
Soy contains phytoestrogens which certain populations (e.g. women pregnant with male fetuses) may be advised to reduce intake of or avoid. Something to keep in mind as meat replacements become more popular - that it may not be a one-size-fits-all solution.
[1]https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shourong_Shi/publicatio...
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I'm more excited about where they go after they get passed the "uncanny valley of meat". If they can nail it, they'll get bored and move on to new and weirder flavors and textures. Hook it up to Watson and you don't just get new recipes, but they're combined with new meat! ( https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/trends-news/ar... )
I wonder if they can somehow replicate the flavor in bones. I'd love to make stock or a stew, but so much of the "meaty" flavor comes from bones
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There are also quite a few German/Austrian dishes that are sweet but are a full meal. Look up "Kaiserschmarrn" or " Zwetschgenknoedel". "Kässpätzle" are not sweet but also a full meal.
But to be frank, while Austrian desserts-as-main-course could qualify as vegetarian cuisine, most main courses aren't vegetarian, and at least include a little bit of bacon here and there.
I unironically can't wait to read release notes about newer versions of my food
Not only this, but we should have continuous integration testing. Each batch of every product should be run through a litany of health and safety tests, and such a thing could be crowdsourced.
That's really cool. Although I wish there were more vegan food that didn't try to replicate non-vegan textures and flavors. Imitation can only be playing catch-up. The best vegan and vegetarian food does its own thing.