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Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

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Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#211
post #198

If you think about it, eating meat is really a terrible thing to do. Most people who eat meat would never be able to kill an animal, I suspect. I know I wouldn't. And the conditions in which the poor animals are kept make it a billion times worse. That's the thought that made me switch to being a vegetarian after eating meat my whole life.

I strongly disagree with this line of thinking. Please let me explain. I do understand that meat eating is environmentally disastrous and is current meat industry practices make it ethically questionable. We're on the same boat, trying to make this planet a better place for the next generations. I simply think forcing consumers into guilt is the worst possible way to solve this problem. I do not think eating meat is morally bad; at least it's not any more morally bad than a wolf eating a prey. What is morally bad is farming animals in cruel cages like they're a piece of plastic. This is not a consumer problem. Consumer is abstracted out of the morally wrong parts of those practices. If we want change, we need to change the economy. Meat should become more expensive. Meat industry should not be allowed to practice their cruel practices. Going door by door and chiming how bad meat eating is, does not help this problem. We will not see any large scale changes by guilting people out of meat eating. We need to fix producers.

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#212
post #81

I was brought up vegetarian, and while I gave it up when I got married and had kids, I've never really grown to love the taste of meat. The thing I'm most annoyed by is that nice tasting veggie dishes are often being replaced in restaurants with horrible tasting meat-substitute dishes trying to capture the taste of beef or whatever. This is probably just me against the universe though.

+1 I'm a lifelong vegetarian who has very literal tolerance for the taste of meat. Can we give it up with these meat substitutes already? Even if they absolutely nail the taste of real meat, I don't want my food to taste like that.

Let me tell you as a lapsed vegetarian, the worst thing isn't even the taste - these people eat stuff that doesn't even dissolve in your mouth. The first time I had lamb, I just chewed for about five minutes before realising I was going to have to overcome my gag reflex to force this tasteless brown stuff down. I'd be horrified if we started replicating _that_.

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#213

Since we're making predictions here, I predict that shortly after we adopt meat substitutes, we'll start to question what's inside them. Then the conversation will change from meat substitutes being good and healthy to something akin to the GMO debate about meat substitutes not being natural. And just like GMOs, whether it's actually bad for you or not won't matter. This debate will be a proxy war between Big Meat an…

On a tangential note, I wish it were possible to buy foods specifically because they contain GMOs. I intentionally avoid buying foods labeled "non-GMO" in a feeble attempt to vote with my wallet.

mmmm glyphosate.

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#214

In general I’m bullish on biotech but best case for tissue culture meat still leaves me sceptical. Most of the hype focuses around beef substitutes, beef cattle is about as inefficient as animal agriculture gets at ~3% efficient on an energy basis of edible parts. Dairy jerseys and laying hens are both ~12%, with meat chickens ~15%. The best replicating eukaryotic cell culture I know are certain yeast at 50%. So a be…

> Even there an argument could be made that humane husbandry is positive-utility rather than the neutral of lab-grown, while also coming out ahead environmentally. Can that be true? Animals from U.S. factory farms generate >1 million tons of manure per day (open-air lagoons of animal waste are a special treat) and are responsible for an impressive percentage of methane emissions.

Didn't the poster above say humane animal husbandry? What you describe it not humane animal husbandry.

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#215
post #198

If you think about it, eating meat is really a terrible thing to do. Most people who eat meat would never be able to kill an animal, I suspect. I know I wouldn't. And the conditions in which the poor animals are kept make it a billion times worse. That's the thought that made me switch to being a vegetarian after eating meat my whole life.

Well yeah but if the whole goal is to minimize suffering in the world as I assume yours is, the lines get very blurry very fast. I would probably not personally beat a Chinese kid that's building my phone too slowly in a sweatshop, yet I still use a phone, and all the other electronics and clothing produced like that; and I'm going to assume you do have some of these products as well. And then of you really wanted to…

Making iPhones does not require beating people. Industrial meat production requires mutilating, imprisoning, and slaughtering animals (edit: obviously I'm not referring to cultured meat tissues, which does not exist on the market).

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#216
post #104

FWIW I think he's predicting something which is already beginning to happen. Carl's Jr. (Hardees to you midwestern/east coast folks) recently added Beyond Meat patties to their menu ( https://www.reuters.com/article/us-beyond-meat-carl-s-jr-idU... ). For a small price extra, you can get a not-farmed-meat burger and they're promoting it pretty heavily. I dropped in a while back, was surprised to see it on the menu, th…

This is also happening at White Castle, where they are selling Impossible Burger Sliders for 1.99. I will say I didn't particularly enjoy it but I will also say I it was the first time I've been to a White Castle when I'm sober, so YMMV.

Impossible is rolling out their 2.0 burger which reviews say is much better.

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#217

Since we're making predictions here, I predict that shortly after we adopt meat substitutes, we'll start to question what's inside them. Then the conversation will change from meat substitutes being good and healthy to something akin to the GMO debate about meat substitutes not being natural. And just like GMOs, whether it's actually bad for you or not won't matter. This debate will be a proxy war between Big Meat an…

On a tangential note, I wish it were possible to buy foods specifically because they contain GMOs. I intentionally avoid buying foods labeled "non-GMO" in a feeble attempt to vote with my wallet.

So far, I know of exactly one brand that offers this:

https://soylent.com/blogs/news/proudly-made-with-gmos

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even there an argument could be made that humane husbandry is positive-utility rather than the neutral of lab-grown, while also coming out ahead environmentally. Can that be true? Animals from U.S. factory farms generate >1 million tons of manure per day (open-air lagoons of animal waste are a special treat) and are responsible for an impressive percentage of methane emissions.

There was a recent freakonomics podcast [1] from which I learned that greenhouse gas emissions mostly come from cattle breathing, not their manure (I guess the manure imagery that often goes along with describing livestock environmental impact is just used because it's evocative?). Also that livestock farming in the US only contributes 3% of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions [2], which I wouldn't call a particula…

> Also that livestock farming in the US only contributes 3% of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions

"Worldwide, livestock accounts for between 14.5 percent and 18 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. The percentage is lower in the United States in part because our overall greenhouse gas emissions are so much higher than other countries"

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/climate/cows-global-warmi...

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