491–500 of 947 posts
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It’s not just cow farts. Raising and killing a whole cow is an inefficient way to extract calories from plants. Even chicken would be more efficient.
My understanding is that cooked meat has much higher caloric value than vegetables. To be honest if it wasn't so good for us we wouldn't have evolved to consume it!
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It’s not just cow farts. Raising and killing a whole cow is an inefficient way to extract calories from plants. Even chicken would be more efficient.
My understanding is that cooked meat has much higher caloric value than vegetables. To be honest if it wasn't so good for us we wouldn't have evolved to consume it!
Chickens need as few as 2,000 calories of plant to produce 1,000 calories of chicken.
If they are eating roughage humans can't eat, it's useful. But if we are farming corn to feed cows, we could have been farming something humans (or chickens) can eat instead with less land, fertilizer, etc.
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like elephants? giraffes? Hippos? I'm not a vegetarian but I can think of lots of large herbivores.
Elephants spend 12-18 hours a day eating,[1] compared to 68 minutes on average for an American human.[2] Is that what you want for me and your children? [1] http://www.nationalelephantcenter.org/learn/#:~:text=Since%2... . [2] https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/2015/07/guess-how-m...
It's an interesting counterpoint but not actually proving the point made. There are large herbivores.
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Those arguments always drive me nuts because they're all so bro sciencey, and I'm not even vegan or vegetarian. Sure, meat offers a different set of nutritional value than vegetables - you can most definitely replace it entirely with other sources and remain very healthy. Billions of people have done it for centuries and continue to do so, as you've said.
A counter argument - billions of people subsisted on ok food for centuries, but somehow in the 20th and 21st centuries people got taller, smarter and had earlier puberties because of better nutrition. Doesn't that mean there is a quality (and quantity) to nutrition and not just subsisting, that we need to examine? And the claim about meat is that it has a quality that is beneficial.
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>> For me, it was mostly about reducing suffering of other animals. The way I think of it, pigs are very intelligent, more intelligent than dogs. However, humans are more intelligent. If pigs were more intelligent, pigs would eat humans. And that's not a figure of speech. Pig would eat us if they could. They wouldn't stop and think, gee, does this little baby human girl cry because it doesn't want to be eaten, maybe…
> I don't see any problem with eating meat, given that I'm an animal and some animals eat other animals' meat. Some animals rape other animals in packs, have territorial wars resulting in killing for nonfood reasons, and torture and/or kill other creatures for sport. Some animals eat their young if possible. Juvenile females are impregnated and give birth as soon as it is biologically possible. Some animals keep slav…
The strongest argument is that (some) animals don't have a sense of their own self/mortality or make future plans beyond not experiencing suffering or fear.
If you could kill an animal in that set without it suffering that would be okay, particularly if you took good care of it up to that point.
I have two main issues with this in practice.
The first is that I've become a lot less comfortable about which animals 'don't have a sense of their own mortality or make future plans'. Humans have been pretty arrogant about this line and the behavior of lots of animals (birds, dolphins, octopus etc.) suggest some pretty complex behavior and communication.
The second is a logistical issue, I basically don't think it's possible to do it in such a way that doesn't cause suffering or fear (and we certainly don't currently anyway even if it was possible).
This also introduces the issue that human infants aren't really self-aware or making future plans, but it still seems wrong to kill them even if you do it in such a way that they don't suffer. So I think it's at best, still not totally consistent without carving out some exceptions for human babies or 'future potential' which feels like cheating. And it's also not really practical anyway.
To your point, it'd still ultimately be 'because people like eating meat', but at least if the above argument held and meat was produced that way - I wouldn't think of it as necessarily unethical. That said, ultimately I think the argument is wrong even if it is the strongest wrong argument.
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I imagine this sentiment is often from seeing documentaries about the worst conditions in farming, and the general cosseting away from life and death that most of us have enjoyed. But the farms and ranches I grew up around, and that I buy most of my meat from, never seem that brutal when I’ve visited them, and the animals seem well cared for and mostly doing their own thing on the pasture most of the time. I wanted t…
The blind enthusiasm for factory meat is concerning. Any farm suggestions?
It’s more expensive, but you treasure every bite. When it’s something you’ve hunted yourself, you couldn’t imagine letting a scrap go to waste.
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It's also becoming possible to grow plants hydroponically in a highly automated and controlled environment (warehouse/cattle shed), with up to a 98% saving in treated water usage, 60% less nutrients required but with more nutritious crops and no pesticides. This is the case for High Pressure Aeroponics, which is slightly more complex than other hydroponic methods. https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/ch_3.html
That's an interesting point, but isn't it also true that hydroponics are currently just not a very economically feasible option?
I've tried the other fake meats on them; like Lightlife and St. Ives. They won't touch it, and I find cooking with the other fake meats is just ... nowhere near as good.
Beyond beef is awesome. I wish it were cheaper.
Impossible is definitely better tasting, but I'm happy to see Taco Bell is included in this deal (though not in the headline here on HN). I haven't been there since they got rid of potatoes, so having a vegan option would make my taco consumption during lunch break skyrocket.
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I keep seeing people say that Impossible tastes better, bit Beyond keeps snagging big deals like this and it makes me wonder if they have either a price or supply-chain advantage.
A key factor being BYND is a public company and they are under pressure to produce results. These are largely small experimental runs. I think the general consensus is that Impossible is the better product. And my guess is McDonald’s knows this and could be trying to drive down valuation for Impossible so they can buy it. It’s currently valued around $4-5B vs $9B for BYND.