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Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

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Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#281

Post by pacomerh »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #191
sweetheart wrote: post #36

While it is not my experience at all, I understand that some folks have certain negative opinions of Beyond Burgers, and other fake meat/imitation burgers: - The texture is off - Maybe they cook strangely - Potentially less taste But the most important thing about them, and the reason I urge everyone to at least _try_ Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. This is not an argument that fairs well…

> Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. I find this interesting, in that cropping has plenty of violent against animals but one step removed. I have a small cattle property, we run on hill country with diversified ecosystem, mixed grass and bushland. We have a heap of native animals living across the property. And at the end of the day the steers do get sent of for slaughter after 18 to 24 mont…

It's funny how the counter argument (even if friendly) will always be "But your solution is not perfect and also doesn't solve the issue completely".

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be better.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#283

Post by acituan »

sweetheart wrote: post #36

While it is not my experience at all, I understand that some folks have certain negative opinions of Beyond Burgers, and other fake meat/imitation burgers: - The texture is off - Maybe they cook strangely - Potentially less taste But the most important thing about them, and the reason I urge everyone to at least _try_ Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. This is not an argument that fairs well…

> I urge everyone to at least _try_ Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals.

I understand what you mean by violence and I don't want to come across as a stickler just for sport, but if we are taking a hard ethical stance based on principles we need to be precise with categories. Two of which is most important;

1. category of animals include humans

2. category of violence include any suffering inflicted knowingly e.g. being overworked in a sweatshop, psychological violence etc.

If we accept above categories, our supply chain, not only for food but for pretty much everything we consume, unfortunately do incur violence on humans. As such, if someone takes a principle on requiring no violence against animals, they must also be concerned with everything they consume or use, not only what they eat. I am not saying they shouldn't not eat meat if they didn't do the other, I am saying they shouldn't claim a position from principle.

In fact if they made either these two arguments they would be perfectly consistent; argument of convenience "not eating meat is more convenient than not using an iPhone", or argument of priority "not requiring violence against other animals is more important to me than humans". But still they couldn't occupy a principled stance of no violence against animals.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#284

Post by vinni2 »

tomcam wrote: post #264
sweetheart wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the feel that you're having a go, no worries :) I think there are two parts to this: we can't raise the animals that folks want to eat without _also_ growing plants to feed those animals, so from my perspective it seems that we can apply most or all points about the negatives of cropping to the cropping that is done to support animal agriculture. So if cropping is bad, it's still bad when we do it for the…

I feel you. I stopped eating meat for 40 years for the same reason. But... they are on the same food chain we are, and they’d eat us in a heartbeat, right?

Good point except we are the woke moral and intelligent beings?

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#285

Post by eloff »

sweetheart wrote: post #36

While it is not my experience at all, I understand that some folks have certain negative opinions of Beyond Burgers, and other fake meat/imitation burgers: - The texture is off - Maybe they cook strangely - Potentially less taste But the most important thing about them, and the reason I urge everyone to at least _try_ Beyond Burgers, is they require no violence against animals. This is not an argument that fairs well…

> This is not an argument that fairs well on HN in general, but the fact that we can eat something this similar to a burger but without the slaughter of living, feeling, individual being is so unbelievably important and incredible.

When I was about fifteen it occurred to me that while that's true, those animals wouldn't be alive at all without us raising them for food. So it seems to me that the goal should be raising them in good conditions without cruelty. At least to my way of thinking, as someone grateful to my parents that I exist, that's better than no life at all.

There are plenty of other solid reasons to eat less meat, but this argument never worked for me.

I actually like the beyond burgers. If they weren't more expensive than a beef burger, I'd eat them.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#286

Post by purephase »

aqsalose wrote: post #263
purephase wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well shit, the taste is slightly off so let's keep killing billions of sentient animals.

I was introduced to the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" some 10 years ago in high school philosophy class, and have been mulling over it ever since. Today I am sympathetic to Dennett's argument in Consciousness Explained: there is no single Cartesian theater, there are several processes in the brain which are the same thing (up to the precision of definition of same) as we internally experience, and many properties w…

That's a lot of bullshit words to justify "meat taste's good".

We're not animals. We can't have it both ways in the ideological spectrum of how we both perceive and interact with the world. Whatever the fuck Ben Franklin said is largely meaningless when you take a few minutes to compare it against the world and reality he inhabited to the one we live in today.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#287

Post by spicymaki »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #136
dcolkitt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the difference would be though, that without the demand for meat, those cows would likely never have lived at all. 99%+ of all cows alive are used for human agriculture. From the perspective of any living creature, I generally think of existence as a positive good versus non-existence. I know I certainly would rather come to a violent death at a young age than have never been born at all. I think there's a pl…

If we all moved to impossible beef, cattle populations would plummet. However, despite popular perception, for most of its life before slaughter, a cow is raised in large open ranges for grazing, like in the California foothills. Only the last parts of their live do they get put into crowded feedlots for "fattening", which might be described as inhumane. Perhaps, it would lead to the advent of wild cattle in the Cali…

Two things:

Cattle are slaughtered within 1-2 years and they are held in feed lots for 1/3 of that time.

Cattle slaughtered for veal are caged and do not live in any humane conditions.

I would certainly not want to exist.

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#288

Post by asveikau »

Smithalicious wrote: post #266
asveikau wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you're replying to has a different opinion from yours and you seem very offended by it. It hasn't got anything to do with lockdown in London, how booked steak restaurants will be there, or how much the "emotionally intelligent people" cringe. This all feels like non sequitur or ad hominem. I eat meat with no plans to stop and I don't have a problem with the comment you're replying to.

It's funny calling this "being offended" when the original post is offended by the idea of eating meat to the point of calling it unethical. Not that there's anything wrong with being offended if you think a moral evil is happening, but it's hard to call defending yourself after being accused of evil deeds "being offended by a different opinion"

I completely understand why somebody would consider eating meat unethical. I also understand that people disagree about ethics all the time and it's often not a huge deal.

I know people who feel this way about the ethics of meat and I respect them and their opinions but I don't follow their standards and I don't think they mind, I remain friends with them.

You call it defending oneself but there is nothing to defend. So it struck me as "being defensive".

Re: Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)

#289

Post by crymptonopeicon »

ipaddr wrote: post #170

I'm generally surprised no one brings up the negative health benefits of processed foods. It is not healthier to get rid of meat only to replace it with high salt chemically processed food that tastes like meat. It seems like we are going backwards. You know what uses less greenhouse emissions, less water and less land? The orginal plant based food that gets processed into a beyond burger. If you really care about th…

>If you really care about the planet why are you buying processed anything?

If I'm really going to be dead within 100 years, why am I doing anything?

Lots of reasons, but the easiest is because it's more enjoyable than the alternative. Who cares if a plant burger is heavily-processed? I like it and I don't have to think about whatever died to bring me my meal.

Yes, it would be better if I grew my own lentils and only ate homemade dal. But that's not realistic for most people, and from a health and environmental perspective, it seems like it's hard to do worse than red meat.

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