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Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

bighospitality.co.uk

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Re: Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

#301

Post by SamReidHughes »

belltaco wrote: post #283
SamReidHughes wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many cat adoption centers won't let people adopt cats if they'll let them outside. And those cats are living a better life than squirrels. I disagree with that, but the way I'd put it is, eating wild animals (modulo overfishing) is unquestionably morally right, but with captured animals, well, you noted that they're injected with hormones. That doesn't make the animals unhappy. I think you should concentrate on what…

>eating wild animals (modulo overfishing) is unquestionably morally right How did you come to that conclusion? I don't think it's anywhere close to "unquestionably".

I didn’t use “unquestionably” in any sense which is obviously false, like, say, some sense that would imply I’m unaware of vegans. I came to that conclusion by gut instinct.

Re: Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

#302

Post by jobigoud »

yters wrote: post #239
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to the existence question depends on what you consider to be more valuable: life or suffering. As to the second question, that is an active topic of research: https://foundational-research.org/the-importance-of-wild-ani... with some info on Wikipedia as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_animal_suffering#Ecology_...

If avoiding suffering is categorically more important than living, then since all living things suffer, the logical conclusion is that all life should be wiped out. From my perspective, the conclusion seems to be wrong, and thus I deny the first premise.

I find this conundrum fascinating and during a deep dive into obscure corners of Youtube I discovered there is a number of people that carried this logic throughout. They are called "life extinctionists". They indeed believe that life is suffering and thus it would be a net positive if all life went extinct. You may have thought the "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" was fringe but this is so outrageous it becomes interesting to understand the logic. I can't find more links at the moment.

The debate between living vs avoiding suffering has very important implications for artificial life, artificial consciousness, artificial intelligence, and even space colonization and curing aging.

Re: Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

#303

Post by jobigoud »

Iv wrote: post #289
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not the most unethical thing that is happening in the world I'm just going to refer to the factory farming article from 80000hours: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/factory-farming/ Considering that "Each year, 50 billion animals are raised and slaughtered in factory farms globally. Over a billion animals live in factory farms at any point of time in the United States. Most experience serious levels o…

I just don't attribute the same value to animal life than to human life. I don't even attribute the same value to life of different species. I don't think that worm farms are as bad as cow farms. I tend to buy organic/free range animal products. I think factory farms are terrible, I would not mind seeing them gone, but imposing free range would be terrible for the environment. Free range ones are not too unethical as…

> imposing free range would be terrible for the environment

It would have to be coupled with other measures to limit resources depletion, but it's the right thing to do imho. It would raise the price much higher, factoring in humane treatment. Sales would drop due to this higher price, there wouldn't be as many farm animals as now.

Re: Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

#304

Post by jobigoud »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #175
nicoburns wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in London, there has been a big uptick in veganism in the last year or so. Helped by mainstream supermarkets and restuarants adding vegan options en mass.

If you don't buy a lot of ready-made meals you notice that supermarkets have always had plenty of vegetarian and vegan options.

The new thing is the number of ready-made meals that are also vegetarian, and directly from the distributor brand.

And for me the biggest marker is that it's now advertised on the package. Not just the small vegan logo, there is big lettering like "suitable for vegetarians" or "meat-free" or whatever. It must have become a selling point.

Re: Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

#305

Post by jobigoud »

sandworm101 wrote: post #167
dgellow wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An animal need not have a brain to be an animal. How does that work? If I grew a chicken breast in lab, without the rest of the chicken, that's not an animal, right?

Is a human without a brain still a human? There are plenty of people in hospitals with zero brain function, some with virtually no brain matter, that still have full rights as humans. If a jellyfish not an animal because it doesn't have a brain? A worm? Many vegans choose not to draw lines between different types of animals.

> There are plenty of people in hospitals with zero brain function.

Legal death is defined as brain death in many (most?) places. I think you mean these people are in a vegetative state, but their brain is still on autopilot so the body doesn't completely shutdown.

Re: Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

#306

Post by jobigoud »

jbob2000 wrote: post #5
sniuff wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be vegan to eat vegan food.

If I eat an apple, am I eating vegan food? If you call anything that isn't carnivore food as "vegan" food, then you're labelling like 90% of our food as "vegan". That's obviously ridiculous, so I think it's more accurate to call food "vegan" when it's being eaten by someone who is respecting vegan principles. What I mean to say is that I think "vegan food" is defined by the eater, not the makeup of the food. Edit: I…

> What I mean to say is that I think "vegan food" is defined by the eater, not the makeup of the food.

A lot of the debate under your comment is stemming from the difference between vegan people and vegan food.

In French we have three words. Vegatarien, Vegetalien, Vegan. Vegetalien means vegan but it's only used in the context of what food the person eats. While vegan was more about the lifestyle and not wearing leather/fur, etc. Although recently the term vegan is used for food more and more, it's simpler.

Re: Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

#307

Post by yters »

bootlooped wrote: post #286
yters wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the animals experience more suffering than if they lived in the wild? Is industrial slaughter more or less traumatic than death in the wild? Are there any benefits animals experience living in captivity vs living in the wild? Is there anything positive about more such animals getting to live in the first place due to demand for meat?

You could use the same questions to attempt to sow doubt about whether or not human slavery is wrong, and I think that is the most disturbing thing about this line of argumentation.

Perhaps different moral standards apply to humans?

Re: Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

#308

Post by Iv »

jobigoud wrote: post #303
Iv wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't attribute the same value to animal life than to human life. I don't even attribute the same value to life of different species. I don't think that worm farms are as bad as cow farms. I tend to buy organic/free range animal products. I think factory farms are terrible, I would not mind seeing them gone, but imposing free range would be terrible for the environment. Free range ones are not too unethical as…

> imposing free range would be terrible for the environment It would have to be coupled with other measures to limit resources depletion, but it's the right thing to do imho. It would raise the price much higher, factoring in humane treatment. Sales would drop due to this higher price, there wouldn't be as many farm animals as now.

See? That's the thing. I agree that in the absolute that's a good thing, but done badly, that could just make us lose the fight against climate change by removing tons of forest to feed cattle.

That's why I wish we solve the environmental issues first, as well as the food security of the whole population.

Re: Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

#309

Post by missingrib »

jonfw wrote: post #172
Relys wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The question really comes down to whether or not you consider the opportunity to experience life, even a particularly difficult life, as a blessing." A life born of slavery, torture, and slaughter is not a life worth living. An animal doesn't really have the idea of a bloodline or legacy (just the primal urge to reproduce). The rationalization that a life of suffering is somehow doing the animal a favor is just asin…

Personally, I would accept any form of life before I chose not to exist at all, because I view life itself as a blessing. I understand that this isn't a philosophy that I share with everybody but you should still be respectful of it. Just how shitty of a life do you need to have to not be worth living? People who spend their lives in prison don't usually kill themselves. You can read stories about people captured as…

A life where you're tortured for a year and then are slaughtered.

Re: Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years

#310

Post by mumblemumble »

okmokmz wrote: post #209
mumblemumble wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if higher-end restaurants end up lagging on this trend, simply because they have a bit of a reputational hole to dig themselves out of with the vegetarian, and particularly vegan, crowd. For a lot of reasons. For starters, the options a lot of higher-end restaurants offer have a history of tending to be either really unsatisfying "twigs and berries" type food, overly rich (a lot of vegans aren…

Entirely anecdotal, but I went to a 10 course tasting menu restaurant in Portland last year that was about $300 per person and they had a vegan menu. I've seen other high end restaurants providing vegan or vegetarian menus as well in Seattle

It's an interesting anecdote, but the words that really jump out of the sentence there are "Portland" and "Seattle". I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of people who eat vegetarian in the PNW is 10x as high as what it is in, say, the Rust Belt.
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