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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

#401

Post by slfnflctd »

nabla9 wrote: post #368
strken wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Pink slime" is made by centrifuging heated fatty offcuts, which doesn't turn my stomach that much. I have a sneaking suspicion that what people find disgusting is the industrial production of meat, and that if Gordon Ramsey had a small and inoffensive centrifuge attachment for his KitchenAid the process would seem less gross.

High status for the rich food can be gross, but it can't be low quality. Ammonia or citric acid processed slime-paste is as low quality as it gets. Adding pink slime to the product changes the texture. Pink slime less meaty and juicy compared to normal beef. Good chef can do good simple food, but they want good ingredient and that's not that pink slime is.

On one hand, I know what you mean.

On the other, isn't it all really quite subjective? What you describe is tied every bit as much to irrational emotions about histories of things as it is about 'quality' in any measurable sense. What is considered the highest delicacy with a complex preparation in one century has that same process industrialized and becomes 'poor people junk food' in the next, despite being objectively, measurably a better quality product by every possible metric.

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#402

Post by sridca »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #89

I live on and help operate a small family farm (230 head of grass fed cattle) and I don't think that meat substitutes will hurt our sales or margins, unless and until their quality results in a broad shift in societal attitudes that leads to meat itself becoming illegal. I do absolutely think that it will reduce the demand for industrially farmed, feedlot-fed, commodity-priced meat, and this is a good thing.

I'm a carnivore and my diet is 100% meat (health reasons). Should I be concerned about moves like this? Do you think this will negatively affect the price of meat for consumers?

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#403

Post by evjim »

mcv wrote: post #378
anonu wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur with the sentiment. Isn't GMO to create foods that require less pesticides? So wouldn't that be a good thing if there are less chemicals used on our foods, seeping into our soil and water supply? I never really understood why people are so scared of GMO.... I can see GMO foods being owned by the likes of Monsanto, earning healthy royalties on seeds that cannot bear offspring. I think there should be a GMO op…

> Isn't GMO to create foods that require less pesticides? That depends entirely on the kind of GMO. GMOs don't exist for any particular single purpose. Some GMOs exist to make it easier to use pesticides. Some GMOs contain pesticides. Some GMOs have nothing to do with pesticides but add nutritional value. For example, Golden Rice, which has beta-carotene added to increase the vitamin-A intake of the hundreds of milli…

Golden Rice is cool. And it's "nice" that the intellectual property owner has relaxed royalties for now. But it will be interesting to see how fast ancient local strains of rice disappear and there is less biodiversity. How hard is it to mix in a few greens with rice to get vitamin A?

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#404

Post by sridca »

loceng wrote: post #161

Most people are omnivores, not carnivores as PG stated - however the trend seems to be moving towards the health benefits of eating as carnivore - a purely meat diet; it's the food you don't eat that improves health, meat is a healthy food for most people. We have the sugar lobby who paid researchers to create propaganda that fat was the culprit. We have companies incentivized to sell fad diets, we have every partici…

No surprise to see this comment getting downvoted. :-P

Meat eaters (and haters), see for yourself the recent discussion on meat vs plants:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19235684

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19177116

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#405

Post by sridca »

loceng wrote: post #396
dennis_jeeves wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey loceng, I don't normally comment on the meat subject. "Veggies are good and meat is bad" is a modern day religion. Looking at you past posts it seems that you are dealing unsuccessfully with depression. Here is something that will work with a very high degree of certainity. Go all red meat. No spices, no lean meat, no veggies. Nothing but red meat and salt for a month. Go for the fatty and gelatinous cuts: Ribs,…

Hey Dennis, sorry about whoever downvoted you - if you look far enough back in my posts you'll see my opinion on why downvotes are lazy and don't add anything to civil conversation; I get downvotes too often for reasons I can't understand, I feel I have a couple of losers following me around with nothing more to contribute than click a downvote to feel some lame satisfaction and reward in their life. I would say I've…

> Unfortunately I have to wait 4 months between stem cell treatments

Would a 5 day water fast help you?

Ref: "Fasting boosts stem cells’ regenerative capacity" http://news.mit.edu/2018/fasting-boosts-stem-cells-regenerat...

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#406

Post by vibrato »

lustysocietyorg wrote: post #386
mcv wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A high carb low fat low protein whole food plant based diet with (cheap) vitamin supplements and maybe linseed oil: > - is the healthiest diet. I would love to see the argument for this. I accept that it's the most cheap, efficient and possibly ethical (although there are a lot of ways you can go about producing this food, not all of it ethical), but healthiest? High carbs makes you fat. You need proteins and some…

> High carbs makes you fat. An excess of energy makes you fat. Besides, fat is much easier to store as body fat for the body than carbs or protein. > You need proteins and some fat. Having your diet be all carbs sounds like a bad idea. I wrote whole food plant based diet. I wrote high carb, low fat, low protein. NOT: max carb, min fat, min protein.

High carbs mean satiety takes more energy input to reach.

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#407

Post by slfnflctd »

awb wrote: post #297
llukas wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can grill impossible burger just fine.

And there are tons of cars that work just fine and use less gas but people still buy SUVs. Price and mechanics will move some people but don't underestimate how strong culture is. Plus it's veggie patties or the Impossible Burger gets locked with hippies, vegans, California, liberals, etc. there will be tons of people who will never touch it.

> there will be tons of people who will never touch it

Having spent some time in the southern central U.S. in the past, this is right on the money. Preserving the cornerstones of the culture they grew up with is orders of magnitude more important to some of these people than just about any other criteria.

However, their children are increasingly realizing the ridiculousness of it and making smarter choices. This results in them doubling down, further entrenching themselves and becoming more alienated from 'outsiders'. Eventually it will stabilize down to a handful of freaks left with their little collection of hobbies they manage to get a tiny fraction of folks interested in every generation, and the rest of the world will have long since moved on.

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#408

Post by mcv »

evjim wrote: post #403
mcv wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't GMO to create foods that require less pesticides? That depends entirely on the kind of GMO. GMOs don't exist for any particular single purpose. Some GMOs exist to make it easier to use pesticides. Some GMOs contain pesticides. Some GMOs have nothing to do with pesticides but add nutritional value. For example, Golden Rice, which has beta-carotene added to increase the vitamin-A intake of the hundreds of milli…

Golden Rice is cool. And it's "nice" that the intellectual property owner has relaxed royalties for now. But it will be interesting to see how fast ancient local strains of rice disappear and there is less biodiversity. How hard is it to mix in a few greens with rice to get vitamin A?

As far as I understand, it doesn't have any kind of boosted resistance or anything, so it shouldn't dominate and replace wild rice the way other modified rice might.

That said, if farmers move from producing a wide variety of rice strains to only golden rice, that's still a significant reduction in biodiversity. Maybe they should make beta-carotene versions of more kinds of rice.

Mixing in a few greens is surprisingly hard when people are almost too poor to buy rice.

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#409

Post by mcv »

lustysocietyorg wrote: post #394
mcv wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no dietician, but here's a couple of facts/myths/urban legends I've heard about nutrition. No idea how true they are, but they sound plausible to me: * carbs digest into glucose * too much glucose in your blood triggers insulin production which turns glucose into fat * a glucose spike can trigger an insulin spike which leads to a glucose dip an hour or two after lunch * eating fat triggers the feeling of being fu…

These 4 points you mentioned are true facts. But your conclusion is still not true. Saying carbs should be avoided is like saying water should be avoided because people died from drinking too much. Biochemistry and psychology is complicated. But a healthy diet is well known and not complicated. Basically: Whole food plant based diet with vitamin supplements (notably vitamin B12) and e.g. linseed oil for the essential…

I think there are significantly more people who eat too many carbs than people who drink too much water.

Speaking for just myself, I used to feel that sugar low after my lunch, and I know that craving for more carbs. I gained too much weight as a result. Now I've cut down on my carbs and I mostly snack on veggies these days and try not to overdo carbs at lunch, and that seems to help at least with that sugar low.

Re: Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes

#410

Post by retzkek »

Accacin wrote: post #356
nearbuy wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is hunting better than being vegan?

As someone who doesn't eat meat or dairy I've heard the argument that the environmental impact would be less than a vegan that lives in a city. The argument being that a hunter is killing an animal that lived naturally is less of an environmental impact than getting food packaged and sent across the country, etc. I'm not sure I agree, but it's the most plausible argument I've seen for not being Vegan.

> getting food packaged and sent across the country

You missed the biggest factor: industrial farming. Have you been to the midwest-does that look like a healthy, natural ecosystem? A vegan (well, most people really ) who lives there gets their food from the same place as one in the city.

I'm not sure any form of food production/gathering, at the scale needed today, would look any better though.

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