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How to lower the price of plant-based meat

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Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#661

Post by nkozyra »

Badfood wrote: post #632
nkozyra wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it works. If you're going to make a claim, support it.

The original claim was that meat has a good track record. Citation needed. NIH is brimming with publications to the contrary

Sure. Humans have been eating meat for tens of thousands of years. That's a track record. The idea that something that's been consumed by humans since there have been himself having a better track record than something that historically hasn't isn't even controversial.

Your turn. Basically all cardiovascular diseases are caused by meat, right?

I've spent most of my life as a vegetation but dishonest histrionics like this do a disservice to the aim of convincing meat eaters to eat less meat.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#662

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

danShumway wrote: post #628
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> That doesn't line up with the narrative you have about this paper. Nowhere does it say, "pediatricians should figure out how to convince families strongly willing to follow a vegetarian/vegan regimen that they're being scammed/deluded." I'm sorry, I don't follow. Who said that?

> I am inclined to believe that the problem is not that pediatricians are not adequately informed, but that parents are adhering to information from inadequate sources. I don't think the paper supports that conclusion. The paper doesn't suggest that vegetarian weaning is itself a problem or a scam, it suggests that we don't have the educational resources available to support people who are doing it.

I still don't understand: who said that "vegetarian weaning is itself a problem or a scam"?

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#663

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

tomstoms wrote: post #654
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There absolutely isn't a scientific consensus. If anything, several cases have come up recently to counter the wild acceptance that anyone can live vegan just fine, and further investigation is still necessary. Please note I didn't comment that "anyone can live vegan just fine".

Well to address the point you are making about poor people. Looking at the current poor population of North America, the cheap meat based diet is nothing short of a disaster to general public health ridden with all sorts of dietary caused diseases such as obesity, diabetes, coronary diseases and so on. Surely, a shift towards plant based diets for this demographic couldn’t make things any worse than it already is.

My understanding about the problem with the diet of "the current poor population of North America" is not so much that they don't eat enough plant food, but that they eat all kinds of over-processed food, full of saturated fats, sugars and salt, and that any kind of food they get, meat or plant-based is of poor quality. Removing meat from that diet, even the poor quality meats they can afford right now, sounds like it would hurt their diet even more, not improve it.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#664

Post by KozmoNau7 »

nemo44x wrote: post #660
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that people in the US (and really most of the western world) have grown up eating meat, been told that they should desire meat, that meat is an essential part of their diet and, to a certain extent, that not eating meat is unmanly and weak. Meat consumption is so ingrained that any attempt to curtail it is met with fierce opposition, because people feel as if it's an attack on their identity.

I don’t think that’s the case. Look around the world and you’ll see that as a country has become more prosperous that their meat consumption has increased. I don’t think it’s because people suddenly became more “manly”. It’s because of a simple fact: most humans love meat. Food is more than a personal identity. It’s a major part of people’s culture globally and meat plays a primary role in many cultures. I think most…

>"Look around the world and you’ll see that as a country has become more prosperous that their meat consumption has increased. I don’t think it’s because people suddenly became more “manly”. It’s because of a simple fact: most humans love meat."

I think it's much more likely that people in countries with rising prosperity are seeing the high meat consumption in affluent parts of the world, and now that they themselves are becoming affluent, they want that diet/lifestyle themselves. It's aspirational, more than anything else.

There is certainly a biological appeal of eating cooked meat, just as there is with fatty (and sugary) foods in general: It signifies high caloric density, which is hugely important for a hunter/gatherer/subsistence community. That base desire is still there, leading to overeating and health issues, since excess calories are often abundant and easily affordable.

Modern Americans (and Europeans) eat a lot more meat than any other culture[1] past or present. The eating of meat every single day at every meal is a huge historical aberration and the clearest possible proof of our destructive overconsumption.

Just as with many other things like candy, sugary drinks, tobacco and alcohol, it would be wise to reduce consumption significantly. Rather than simply indulging base desires, we can choose to cut back and introduce some moderation, a wiser and more enlightened choice, not least because lifestock farming is an ongoing massive environmental disaster.

Currently the US is heavily subsidizing the meat industry, including by massively subsidizing corn. The wise move would be to cut that back and subsidize environmentally sound farming practices and ending the practice of feeding human food to animals. Farm what animals can be sustainably farmed on grass, hay and other plants unfit for human consumption, use the corn and soy and grains for food directly.

We in the western world have to realize that our wildly luxurious eating habits are completely unsustainable, and accept that meat will again be a once a week, maybe twice a week treat.

[1] Save a rare few very specific outliers, such as the Inuit, who in some areas subsist almost entirely on meat.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#665

Post by runarberg »

nec4b wrote: post #625
runarberg wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said “only insular population of us living in harsh climates” . I doubt that hunter gatherers in temperate climate ate 100 kg of meat per year. This kind of meat consumption only existed were plant based diet wasn’t available at all. To contextualize, 100 kg (average yearly USA meat consumption per person) is around 2 kg per week, that is around 150 grams per meal (given 14 meals per week). I would say that qu…

>Like I said “only insular population of us living in harsh climates”. Which is almost everywhere on the planet beside tropics and subtropics before agriculture came to existence. It was natural for humans to live on a predominantly meat diet for a lot longer than it became fashionable to live from plants only. >To contextualize, 100 kg (average yearly USA meat consumption per person) is around 2 kg per week, that is…

Are you an expert in this field? I’m not so honestly you don’t have to know a lot to know more then me, but here are my guesses:

a) You underestimate how forested the temperate regions were before humans started significantly altering them well after the agricultural revolution.

b) You underestimate how well humans can gather and store non meat foods without agriculture. I bet an average group of humans knew where there were fruitful nut trees, know when they were ripe, know how to store the nuts, and know how to sprout and grow knew once in a favorable location. I bet roots have the same story. See you don’t need agriculture to grow things, and I bet humans have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years.

c) You underestimate how hard it is to hunt with stone and bone tools. Apart from fishing, game is mostly seasonal in the temperate regions, so there would always be seasons where meat was scarce. It takes a ton of effort and coordination to hunt a single animal, you are not always succesful, and when you are, then storing the meat becomes an issue. So your best bet is to share the meat with the whole group, and probably leave some for other scavengers.

As I said, I’m not an expert, but realistically I don’t see how pre neolithic humans could have eaten even close to 100 kg a meat per year.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#666

Post by nec4b »

runarberg wrote: post #665
nec4b wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like I said “only insular population of us living in harsh climates”. Which is almost everywhere on the planet beside tropics and subtropics before agriculture came to existence. It was natural for humans to live on a predominantly meat diet for a lot longer than it became fashionable to live from plants only. >To contextualize, 100 kg (average yearly USA meat consumption per person) is around 2 kg per week, that is…

Are you an expert in this field? I’m not so honestly you don’t have to know a lot to know more then me, but here are my guesses: a) You underestimate how forested the temperate regions were before humans started significantly altering them well after the agricultural revolution. b) You underestimate how well humans can gather and store non meat foods without agriculture. I bet an average group of humans knew where th…

A quote from an article[1] about the latest research about a "vegetarian gene":

"Furthermore, before the advent of farming, pre-Neolithic hunter–gatherers throughout Europe had been subsisting on animal-based diets with a substantial aquatic contribution, in contrast to the plant-heavy diets of recent European farmers."

Temperate climate means 4 distinct seasons and plants rest from autumn to spring. Which makes it impossible find and eat fruits of plants for 6 months. Sure you could store some nuts, but that will not cover you dietary needs for long.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0167.epdf?author_...

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#667

Post by tomstoms »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #663
tomstoms wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well to address the point you are making about poor people. Looking at the current poor population of North America, the cheap meat based diet is nothing short of a disaster to general public health ridden with all sorts of dietary caused diseases such as obesity, diabetes, coronary diseases and so on. Surely, a shift towards plant based diets for this demographic couldn’t make things any worse than it already is.

My understanding about the problem with the diet of "the current poor population of North America" is not so much that they don't eat enough plant food, but that they eat all kinds of over-processed food, full of saturated fats, sugars and salt, and that any kind of food they get, meat or plant-based is of poor quality. Removing meat from that diet, even the poor quality meats they can afford right now, sounds like i…

I don’t think there is any evidence to support that claim.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#668

Post by runarberg »

nec4b wrote: post #666
runarberg wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you an expert in this field? I’m not so honestly you don’t have to know a lot to know more then me, but here are my guesses: a) You underestimate how forested the temperate regions were before humans started significantly altering them well after the agricultural revolution. b) You underestimate how well humans can gather and store non meat foods without agriculture. I bet an average group of humans knew where th…

A quote from an article[1] about the latest research about a "vegetarian gene": "Furthermore, before the advent of farming, pre-Neolithic hunter–gatherers throughout Europe had been subsisting on animal-based diets with a substantial aquatic contribution, in contrast to the plant-heavy diets of recent European farmers." Temperate climate means 4 distinct seasons and plants rest from autumn to spring. Which makes it i…

I don’t know if upper paleolithic Europe had temperate climate. Given that there was a pretty deep ice age at the time I would definitely consider that insular population in a harsh climate. Also like I said above game is seasonal, and winter is exactly when hunting becomes easier as game is more vulnerable in the absence of foliage and takes greater risks as their own food source is scarce. If I were to guess, winter is when most pre-neolithic societies did most of their hunting in temperate regions, and consequently ate most of their meat. I would also guess that in late summer and early autumn months went by without any meat what so ever (except fish, some birds, and scavenged meat) as roots and nuts are plentiful and game is the hardest to hunt.

EDIT: I would also like to add, that the original claim was that it is in human nature to eat meat. If that were true, people wouldn’t have stopped doing it after the neolithic revolution as farming spread and plant based food became even easier. I mean we kept feeding meat to our dogs as it is definitely in the wolfs nature to eat meat.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#669

Post by danShumway »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #662
danShumway wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am inclined to believe that the problem is not that pediatricians are not adequately informed, but that parents are adhering to information from inadequate sources. I don't think the paper supports that conclusion. The paper doesn't suggest that vegetarian weaning is itself a problem or a scam, it suggests that we don't have the educational resources available to support people who are doing it.

I still don't understand: who said that "vegetarian weaning is itself a problem or a scam"?

Maybe I don't understand your argument. If vegetarian weaning isn't a problem, then what do you mean by:

> I am inclined to believe that the problem is not that pediatricians are not adequately informed, but that parents are adhering to information from inadequate sources.

The way I heard that was, "the problem is that parents aren't listening to pediatricians when they tell them less-common weaning methods are a bad idea." Did you mean something else?

I'm thinking about that in conjunction with your original statement, which to me sounds more directly like it's making that argument:

> Yes, the problem is not dairy vs. non-dairy, it is with feeding kids who have been weaned a vegetarian or vegan diet in general.

Is that statement not saying that vegetarian weaning is a problem?

But if we're arguing past each other, I apologize. I guess I'm not sure what your claim is. Do you mean that pediatricians are informed, and they are giving adequate advice about how to do successful vegetarian weaning, and they aren't hostile to the practice, but that parents are just ignoring it anyway and trying to do weaning on their own? But this paper still spends zero time trying to talk about how to convince the public to trust their pediatricians, so that also doesn't seem like it's the conclusion that the author is going for.

Again, apologies for misinterpreting you, but if that's not what you're trying to say then I'm missing what you are trying to say.

Re: How to lower the price of plant-based meat

#670

Post by themeiguoren »

jfim wrote: post #397
runarberg wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People eat meat because they like the taste and the texture AFAIK people usually don’t like the flavor nor texture of meat. If that was the case, you would see more people boiling the meat and not spice it. But AFAIK meat eaters tend to spice their meat a lot, to an extent where there it is the spice is the primary taste. They then oil the meat and prefer it fried or grilled which alters the texture as well. With p…

> AFAIK people usually don’t like the flavor nor texture of meat. If that was the case, you would see more people boiling the meat and not spice it. If that was true, steaks would not be a thing. A good steak has some coarse salt and pepper for seasoning, but not much else. Boiling meat is pretty much the worst way to prepare any cut of meat, and will ensure that it has a tough and unpleasant texture, strip all of th…

> Boiling meat is pretty much the worst way to prepare any cut of meat

Pulled chicken and pork would like to have a word. The trick is to let the meat cool down in the water after boiling so that it reabsorbs the fluid it lost. You get wonderfully tender and juicy pulled meat, plus a good stock. And the world of braising is a deep and delicious one. Not to mention meat-based stews, soups, and chowders. I’d suggest that if you hate meat that’s been boiled, it’s been from someone who doesn’t know how to do it. Which I mean not as a dig, but as a way of saying that there’s a lot of good cooking out there waiting to be discovered!

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