241–250 of 253 posts
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Efficiency isn't really an argument that is going to get people to change their preferences. Case in point, Electron apps. Even if beef becomes the Electron of the food world, you know a ton of people are still going to consume it.
Higher efficiency should eventually result in a lower price, as mentioned in the article. Prices do affect consumer behavior.
I'm excited for meat alternatives, but have 3 thoughts on them that I haven't seen mentioned yet (I'm 42): * Nearly all of the rangeland and high desert in the western US was destroyed by cattle and sheep grazing over the past 150 years. This is a billion dollar industry with the emotional buy-in of millions of people so I'm skeptical that it will be reformed in our lifetimes. * My digestive system got wrecked trying…
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couple issues with this post: - it's trivial to find a class of animals that doesn't eat flesh (e.g. elephant) so i'm assuming you meant to say omnivore here - evolution doesn't "make" things in that way. it could be that it provided an advantage, it could be that it is bound to something else that provided an advantage, or it could be completely coincidental. for example, suppose our optimal setup is eating 100% fre…
I don't understand. I did say "omnivores". "Make" is a metaphor. I just don't like to use the turn of phrase "we evolved to do X" because it leads to just-so stories. And it's common to use vague evolutionary arguments to try and support all sorts of personal opinions: "We evolved to do X so we should not do Y", etc. The point is that we are an animal that eats other animals and plants. I don't think that this is any…
it clearly makes the argument "as animals, we are not plant eaters". did you really mean animals? or did you mean omnivores?
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Consuming copious amounts of anything with a high carb/calorie load can make you fat. Barley, sweet potatos, cookies, etc. If your point is that eating a lot can cause your body to store energy then well done. Did I state otherwise? No.
Of course you did First you started by saying how "Processed foods are the the issue. Not "grains". Carbohydrates are not the devil here" and then "But so many overlook how carbs are good. Fruits and vegetables are loaded with carbs and fiber. Most people don't think 5 grams of broccoli carbs are bad for you, but it's obvious when you compare those 5 grams from broccoli to 5 grams of carbs from Oreos." According to y…
Do I believe processed foods contribute to obesity and health in a negative fashion? Yes. Quick comparison of carb/calorie load of processed vs raw shows the story rather plainly. It doesn't take too much insight to gather that if you compare them side by side those processed foods contain a whole lot more of what you don't want per gram. Saturated fat, sugar, cholesterol, sodium, etc. Those things are fine in moderation, but most processed foods are high in one or many of those things.
And, no - carbs aren't the devil. Eating too much of anything can make you fat. My point is that people use the strawman of saying that by there are fat vegetarians (there are) because it's not hard to eat a crappy diet and be vegetarian.
My guess is that you're on something like a strict "Paleo" diet and have a hard time rationalizing how carbs are part of a healthy diet. But your point is so poorly made I'm not sure what you're arguing. If you're trying to hang me out to dry because I stated fibers are good and didn't qualify that by overeating them they can make you "fat", well then - you got me. I assumed that was implied knowledge and we didn't need to explain simple logic as well.
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> Last time I cooked a Beyond Meat burger I noticed it was 30% canola oil. 30% CANOLA OIL Burgers are typically made from 80/20 ground beef. That's 80% meat, 20% fat.
Yea but it's typically unsaturated & saturated fat which is being less demonized these days. I'm convinced it's actually healthy for you but don't take my word for it. Refined Canola Oil & Soybean Oil however have artificial trans fatty acids and are high in omega-6 which is inflammatory.
Pro/anti inflammatory of o6 effect is determined by the o6/o3 ratio which is ok in canola oil. Though even better in some other vegetable oils like olive. But olive oil would have too strong a taste for this application.
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> Last time I cooked a Beyond Meat burger I noticed it was 30% canola oil. 30% CANOLA OIL Burgers are typically made from 80/20 ground beef. That's 80% meat, 20% fat.
> That's 80% meat, 20% fat. And that ratio is before cooking. A nontrivial amount of the fat cooks out on the grill.
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> So why is it unethical for us, specifically, to eat other animals when it's not unethical for other animals? You almost answered your own question. "Unethical" is a foreign concept for animals because they don't even have ethics. Humans do, and these ethics have implications for how you should or should not treat other sentient life.
Yes, we have ethics. But what is it that makes eating other animals unethical, so that our ethics may stop us from doing so? There has to be some kind of justification for the moral judgement that "eating other animals is unethical". And that justification cannot be "eating other animals is unethical", itself.
We can recognize that animals are conscious. Very rarely do animals consciously want to die, and very demonstrably the way most humans prepare and kill animals for consumption is observably harmful to them - they experience pain and suffering throughout the process.
I don't think we have laws against harming each other exclusively because we operate at a mental capacity to talk about those laws. Because its still illegal to kill a human being operating at a mental state reduced below that of most of the animals we eat due to disease or impairment. We constructed the social contract to not harm each other both out of the selfish desire to not be harmed ourselves and out of the empathy to project that if we do not want to be harmed or killed most other people would also probably not want to be either, and we could agree to prohibit that.
It is a definite leap to extend such courtesy to animals, because they generally don't have intent or goal. Animals are great at conveying their desire not to be harmed and to avoid known sources of harm - electric fences, getting a door slammed on their tail, etc. Some can even mourn death as seen in dogs, elephants and dolphins.
Its not that great a leap then to presume that most animals don't want to die, even if they cannot understand the concept in much the same way that young children under 8 generally aren't treated as inhuman just because they have yet to comprehend the concept of death. Hell, humans don't even achieve object permanence until they are upwards of 3-4 years old some times but again you don't have different laws depending on intellectual capacity on whether it is allowed to hurt or kill someone.
We base all those rules and laws on the presumption that other people are conscious, regardless of their intellectual capacity to express or comprehend said consciousness, and that the rules we can agree upon between ourselves that we don't want to be harmed and thus we prohibit causing harm to one another should also apply to those who cannot express such desire as long as they are still human.
We also have ample law about animal cruelty and abuse, again enshrining the recognition of consciousness in other species.
If we can recognize animals as conscious, recognize their propensity to have wants and desires, recognize their desire to not be harmed and to be ill affected by harm, and even in some cases their desire to express mourning and loss in death than the only reason you wouldn't apply the same rules we use between ourselves to prevent harm to them is wholly arbitrary - it isn't on an intellectual basis, and it isn't on a perceptive basis, it would be purely human exceptionalism for no greater reason than "I am human, screw everything that isn't". But that wouldn't be consistent in law unless animal cruelty was considered acceptable universally, so its presently a strong contradiction in most societies.
If you demonstrably don't need to eat animals to survive, you recognize their consciousness, and you extend personal protections you want for yourself to others because you can empathize with them, then it comes down the same mechanism that can help abate racism or sexism in society - exposure to the maledicted class is often very effective in informing people on the empathic response they should be having to most sapient biological life. Consult /r/happycowgifs for more info.
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I don't understand. I did say "omnivores". "Make" is a metaphor. I just don't like to use the turn of phrase "we evolved to do X" because it leads to just-so stories. And it's common to use vague evolutionary arguments to try and support all sorts of personal opinions: "We evolved to do X so we should not do Y", etc. The point is that we are an animal that eats other animals and plants. I don't think that this is any…
> Note also that, as animals, we are not plant-eaters: we can't survive on plant matter alone. it clearly makes the argument "as animals, we are not plant eaters". did you really mean animals? or did you mean omnivores?
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Yes, we have ethics. But what is it that makes eating other animals unethical, so that our ethics may stop us from doing so? There has to be some kind of justification for the moral judgement that "eating other animals is unethical". And that justification cannot be "eating other animals is unethical", itself.
The justifiication is generally: We can recognize that animals are conscious. Very rarely do animals consciously want to die, and very demonstrably the way most humans prepare and kill animals for consumption is observably harmful to them - they experience pain and suffering throughout the process. I don't think we have laws against harming each other exclusively because we operate at a mental capacity to talk about…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, we have ethics. But what is it that makes eating other animals unethical, so that our ethics may stop us from doing so? There has to be some kind of justification for the moral judgement that "eating other animals is unethical". And that justification cannot be "eating other animals is unethical", itself.
The justifiication is generally: We can recognize that animals are conscious. Very rarely do animals consciously want to die, and very demonstrably the way most humans prepare and kill animals for consumption is observably harmful to them - they experience pain and suffering throughout the process. I don't think we have laws against harming each other exclusively because we operate at a mental capacity to talk about…
To summarise your comment (please correct me if I'm wrong): we should not eat animals because a) they're conscious, b) they do not want to be killed and eaten, and, c) we should apply to animals the same rules we apply to humans.
If I haven't misunderstood those- then I don't think that (a) is a particularly strong justification. On the one hand we know of societies where cannibalism was normal and even mandatory. For example, one of my favourite books of all times is "History of the conquest of Mexico" by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a conquistador who campaigned with Hernan Cortés [1]. He reports the cannibalistic rituals of the Aztecs. It's a prime example of humans having no compunctions to eat other humans, consciousness and all (and offer their hearts to the gods, and sell their other parts to the town market, in the case of the Aztecs).
(c) is also not very good justifications because of cannibalistic socities: if a society accepts that humans can be killed and eaten, then it treats animals in the same way as humans if animals are killed and eaten in that society. Then, there is the example of Buddhist societies where the belief is that the souls of humans may reincarnete as animals. Literally, eating a cow might mean eating your grandfather or your grandmother (reincarnated) and you know that you, yourself, may come back as a farm animal and be slaughtered and eaten. Still, nonhuman animals are killed and eaten, and karma applies to everyone equally, human, animal, or plant.
As to (b) I think that even mordern societies accept that there are situations where the will of the individual is subsumed by laws and even the right to life is not absolute (the US, the leading Western democracy, exercises capital punishment). We incarcerate people who do not want to be incarcerated, we separate parents from their children who do not want to be separated, we even kill people who do not want to be killed.
Yes, we have rules against cruelty to animals. But those laws, I think, never cover putting an animal to death in an acceptable manner that minimises its suffering when the purpose is to eat it. Pretty much every human society throughout history has accepted that at least some nonhuman animals may be killed for food. Restrictions are placed often on what animals can and cannot be killed or eaten (Hindus won't kill cows, Muslim and Jewish people will not eat pork and will only eat animals killed in a special manner, etc). However, there is always some class of animals that the majority of people will eat unquestioningly.
In the article above, I note, for example, that the subject is killing and eating cows. Not, say, chicken, fish, insects, sheep, pork, horses, dogs, cats, snails, deer, ducks, etc etc. In fact, some of those animals (insects, in particular) have been offered up as an alternative to killing and eating cows, although not by the author of this article as far as I can tell.
It seems to me then that the justification you offer is not perhaps the one envisioned by the author of the article, or perhaps, a certain viewpoint that the article represents. For this veiwpoint there seems to be a particular issue about eating spedifically beef. I am not sure I understand this but, beyond the obvious commercial interest in marketing a product as anti-beef eating, there also seems to be a heavy focus on a particular demographic, which I think is in particular a US demographic.
Finally, personally I don't accept your three justifications. I understand full well that the animals that have died so that I may eat their flesh are conscious and do not want to die. I do not feel there is anything unethical in killing an animal to eat it, because this is how eating works: you have to kill something to eat it and that something rarely agrees to be eaten. I myself will one day die regardless of whether I agree to it or not. I may be killed, and I may be killed and eaten (e.g. by a shark when I swilm in the sea; or even killed without being eaten in that case). I don't think killing and eating other animals is human exceptionalism. I think hyman exceptionalism is responsible for the idea that eating other animals is wrong: no other animals seem to have such rules; why should we, of all animals, have them, if not to pretend we're not like other animals?
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_D%C3%ADaz_del_Castillo#...
Edit: I should say I do feel compassion for the animals that have died so that I may eat their flesh. For that reason, I make sure ot never throw meat away. The poor animal died so that I could eat it so I may as well eat it.