The human brain is fueled by about 20% of your caloric intake. We’re evolved to be omnivorous. This isn’t prescriptive but descriptive. It’s going to take development to make vegan food delicious and something we want to eat (and then all the other features we want out of food: cheap, storage-safe, easy to prepare, etc.)
For those of us who still eat a meat diet, it usually takes a chef to make something actually enjoyable from strictly vegetables. Otherwise, we’re used to receiving oddly-spiced bland mush from our vegan friends. But we could do better if we were putting billions into it, and not another more-addictive cheeto.
But we live entrenched in capitalism, so no one is going to take this seriously until we’re already dropping dead from natural disasters and famine.
For those of us who still eat a meat diet, it usually takes a chef to make something actually enjoyable from strictly vegetables.
chop brussels sprouts in half, toss with avocado oil with some salt and pepper, and air fry for 15-20 mins. toss some balsamic on em after they’re done.
Which is delicious! There are a number of things that are edible. But let me clarify…
In most of the households I lived in with others, I just needed to wait less than a month before the women around wanted flesh and blood. Neither spinach (which has the iron they crave) nor tofu (high protein) cut it.
And in the public, the mere smell of fast food burgers keeps them coming in. As long as dead animal flesh can be sold, it will be, and we don’t regulate it. (Yes, in India, cows are sacred, but chickens and goats certainly are not)
There are plenty of individual dishes that are fine. But if you want well rounded nutrition, eventually you’re going to be resorting to the few high-protein things that are either uninteresting or a bitch to prepare.
Now mind you, my kitchen savvy is limited. I’m learning, but slowly.
No, what I said was different from what was read. I’ll take the blame you like. I’m not trying to win an argument, and don’t think less of you if you fail to make a relevant point.
I’m trying to clarify my position.
I also wasn’t intending to imply we can’t or shouldn’t have to move away from meat (more on that below) but that society is going to be difficult to move in that direction.
Though I would say eventually for sake of sustainability we’ll probably need to move to veganism or cultured meat or invertebrate protein, at least until we can get our space colonization and terraforming programs up to speed. But we’re probably going to starve via climate-crisis driven drought sooner than any of these solutions become popular.
I do hope to be demonstrated wrong by the future, though.
All I was trying to say is that it doesn’t take a professional chef’s level of skill to cook tasty and nutritious food without using meat.
To address more of your post I originally responded to, I don’t think there’s any need for development or investment in vegan/vegetarian food, or meat alternatives.
Plenty of delicious and nutritious food exists without requiring meat or animal products. And preparing such meals is not even remotely difficult or expensive, with the very important caveats of those food items being available for purchase without price gouging where folks live (like food deserts - think someone who can’t afford a car but whose neighborhood doesn’t have any real grocery stores), and some folks have dietary issues that may make eating meat the only practical choice.
I think we agree that the problem exists and that a lot of people are too comfortable with the status quo to voluntarily change. I just don’t think it’s fair to suggest that meat-free food somehow isn’t good enough.
For those of us who still eat a meat diet, it usually takes a chef to make something actually enjoyable from strictly vegetables.
This is a joke, right? Have you ever tried pasta? Rice? Fruit?
Edit: ramen, PB&J, Oreos, potatoes
The skills you need to make vegetables taste good are the same as the skills you need to make meat taste good. I really hope you aren’t just, like, boiling chicken breasts and eating them unseasoned
Oreos are famously vegan. There’s some dispute about the ethics of buying products with palm oil, and some sugar suppliers might use bone char to filter sugar, but the ingredients don’t necessarily include any animal products
No idea what you are talking about. I’m not even vegan, but I can make a delicious vegan meal without even trying. All my vegan friends make very tasty food, too. No need for billions.
Wow, I asked for the bullshit and you seriously delivered! Not sure if I should take the time to reply to this, because would it even matter?
One thing, though: Everything you eat is vegan, except for the animal tissue, the milk-stuff and eggs. We don’t need capitalism to invest in more vegan meat alternatives, we fight it by eating plant based! No junk, just delicious fruits, nuts, legumes and vegetables, like we always did. It’s cheap, great for your body and for our suffering planet as well!
Omnivores? We were lucky apes who found out that fire kills enough parasites and bacteria that live in meat. Dogs are the real omnivores, pigs are, too. They eat a rotting squirrel if the feel like it! We die if our bleach-cleaned chicken filet wasn’t in the freezer for a couple of hours.
Do you know what elephants and hippos eat all day … damn, I just started replying.
In light of the west’s heavily animal-centric diets resulting in most of the top causes of death in these places, it’s not exactly accurate to call us omnivores. The centered on whole plant foods our diets are, the better off we are. Animal flesh, dairy, and eggs, at the very least, cannot be consumed without increasing progression and risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes (Ignoring a host of other harmful effects like cancer and autoimmune disorders, which is more contentious).
It would be more accurate to say that we are primarily herbivores, but with an incomplete and dangerous emergency system for omnivory.
Let’s put it this way, our bodies really like the smell, taste and mouthfeel of meat. So long as our system is focused on compelling people to eat via yummy food, there’s going to be a market for it. It’s not prescription, just description.
That’s why I was saying we’ll have to overcome capitalism before we can really beat this. Otherwise actual balanced nutrition will be a < checks spelling > commodifiable feature of food, rather than its essential point.
Estimates have it that in the industrial world, somewhere between 1-5% of people are vegan. That remaining the same until your preferred revolution happens, and your idealized form of governance becomes the reality everywhere: how is your socioeconomic system going to get the remaining 95% of billions of people to stop consuming, committing cruelty to, and exploiting animals? Sorry, but we have to do whatever we can in the here and now, and there is urgency in time. It’s not only a matter of morality. We know that our wanton animal consumption is one of the largest drivers of climate change. We know that our society’s addiction to flesh and secretions have resulted in agricultural systems that not only resulted in one recent pandemic, but we are hanging on the edge of an even worse flu pandemic that can end up happening at any time. 75% of new infectious diseases have a zoonotic origin.
In a world where ideal society has never happened and is always a dream away, we do not have the luxury of an either/or approach of fixing one problem before we think about the next.
The toxic food environment is a reality, and that needs to be fixed in policy. But individual choice matters too, because what we choose to buy is what drives what is sold. Taste is dynamic and subjective. New diets are only temporarily less satisfying until the person develops the knowledge, cooking skills, and palate to start getting more satisfaction out of their foods. Even better, the difference in the way people feel when they adopt a whole-food plant-based diet for even as little as a couple of weeks, is a start contrast to the standard western diet. Experiencing the difference first-hand generates more motivation to continue.
Also, our bodies do not inherently like the smell, taste, and mouthfeel of animal flesh. That is a learned habit. When a person goes long enough without consuming flesh, the very smell of it changes - even the freshest meats smell rotten, and the people who eat these foods smell like rotting corpses.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but our elite class seems determined to stay there, and historically violent revolution is what unseats them and allows their wealth to be redistributed from their Scrooge McDuck vaults.
Nonviolent resistance might work, but we haven’t seen the kind of mass wealth dispersion that will be necessary.
And the elite are content to drive us right into extinction via the climate crisis and the plastic crisis. Even if you make technology that disrupts the meat market, they’re going to legally wrest control of it from you (unless you are rich enough to defend it from Nestlé). Regardless, when it comes to the climate crisis, the deal is done. The pooch is screwed. We know after the collapse the upper limit of sustainable population will be about one billion, and that number dwindles with each day of inaction.
Meanwhile the industrial world is choosing far-right parties over the usual neoliberal crap we’ve endured through the latter half of the twentieth century, so we’re not even serious about managing the climate crisis without the aforementioned revolution (and in that case, into some kind of communal government, since the typical outcome of a people’s revolution is a chain of dictators).
Good luck convincing our officials, elected or not, to choose veganism over the meat industry, or even nutrition over junk food. You will need all you can get.
So be the change, Uriel238! You are against suffering, slavery and destruction of our resources? Against the greedy elite who brutaly and recklessly exploit the weak instead of protecting them? (See what I did there?)
Stop paying for dead animal parts next time you’re shopping at the supermarket! It feels really good to not take part in this evil system of misery and annihilation.
I know veganism is not the only solution, but no solution will ever be enough without it. Plus it’s the easiest Fuck You to the ruling class, while we wait for a revolution.
Dude, I already have doubts if I am worth my footprint, if we’re going to think in transactional terms. It’s easy to decide if cutting out meat is the only way I can make a difference, then why not cut out everything else as well? Should people kill themselves in order to spare nature the cost of their upkeep?
When we talk about the generation of greenhouse gasses, and the rising global average temperature, companies pollute in a day (in some cases, an hour) what humans produce across their lifetime. US suicides (49,000 per year, as of 2022, and rising with hate-crime and rampage killing rates) are barely a blip.
Maybe folks in the alt-right believe that human lives, at least the ones they don’t like, are worth less than the resources they consume, but a lot more believe the lives are worth the food and poop, which is, again, insignificant to the ever-burning fires of industry.
Quitting meat doesn’t stick it to the man in any significant way, any more than self immolation does.
Quitting meat will lead to a little less suffering, destruction and exploitation. It costs you just some self-reflection and a change of habit. But Uriel238, obviously a fellow leftist, refuses this. He wants others to change first. But they, as you said, also will not. Prisoners dilemma, crab mentality.
Yes, of course, the revolution hinges entirely on my behavior and no one else’s.
Your unquantified adjectives are doing a fuckton of heavy lifting. Tread lightly, qualified-friend, you are one step away from a block. Think of me whatever you will, but your manipulative bullshit will not be tolerated beyond this warning.
The human brain is fueled by about 20% of your caloric intake. We’re evolved to be omnivorous. This isn’t prescriptive but descriptive. It’s going to take development to make vegan food delicious and something we want to eat (and then all the other features we want out of food: cheap, storage-safe, easy to prepare, etc.)
For those of us who still eat a meat diet, it usually takes a chef to make something actually enjoyable from strictly vegetables. Otherwise, we’re used to receiving oddly-spiced bland mush from our vegan friends. But we could do better if we were putting billions into it, and not another more-addictive cheeto.
But we live entrenched in capitalism, so no one is going to take this seriously until we’re already dropping dead from natural disasters and famine.
chop brussels sprouts in half, toss with avocado oil with some salt and pepper, and air fry for 15-20 mins. toss some balsamic on em after they’re done.
Which is delicious! There are a number of things that are edible. But let me clarify…
In most of the households I lived in with others, I just needed to wait less than a month before the women around wanted flesh and blood. Neither spinach (which has the iron they crave) nor tofu (high protein) cut it.
And in the public, the mere smell of fast food burgers keeps them coming in. As long as dead animal flesh can be sold, it will be, and we don’t regulate it. (Yes, in India, cows are sacred, but chickens and goats certainly are not)
There are plenty of individual dishes that are fine. But if you want well rounded nutrition, eventually you’re going to be resorting to the few high-protein things that are either uninteresting or a bitch to prepare.
Now mind you, my kitchen savvy is limited. I’m learning, but slowly.
Feels like the goalposts just moved.
No, what I said was different from what was read. I’ll take the blame you like. I’m not trying to win an argument, and don’t think less of you if you fail to make a relevant point.
I’m trying to clarify my position.
I also wasn’t intending to imply we can’t or shouldn’t have to move away from meat (more on that below) but that society is going to be difficult to move in that direction.
Though I would say eventually for sake of sustainability we’ll probably need to move to veganism or cultured meat or invertebrate protein, at least until we can get our space colonization and terraforming programs up to speed. But we’re probably going to starve via climate-crisis driven drought sooner than any of these solutions become popular.
I do hope to be demonstrated wrong by the future, though.
All I was trying to say is that it doesn’t take a professional chef’s level of skill to cook tasty and nutritious food without using meat.
To address more of your post I originally responded to, I don’t think there’s any need for development or investment in vegan/vegetarian food, or meat alternatives.
Plenty of delicious and nutritious food exists without requiring meat or animal products. And preparing such meals is not even remotely difficult or expensive, with the very important caveats of those food items being available for purchase without price gouging where folks live (like food deserts - think someone who can’t afford a car but whose neighborhood doesn’t have any real grocery stores), and some folks have dietary issues that may make eating meat the only practical choice.
I think we agree that the problem exists and that a lot of people are too comfortable with the status quo to voluntarily change. I just don’t think it’s fair to suggest that meat-free food somehow isn’t good enough.
This is a joke, right? Have you ever tried pasta? Rice? Fruit?
Edit: ramen, PB&J, Oreos, potatoes
The skills you need to make vegetables taste good are the same as the skills you need to make meat taste good. I really hope you aren’t just, like, boiling chicken breasts and eating them unseasoned
deleted by creator
Oreos are famously vegan. There’s some dispute about the ethics of buying products with palm oil, and some sugar suppliers might use bone char to filter sugar, but the ingredients don’t necessarily include any animal products
Well …
No idea what you are talking about. I’m not even vegan, but I can make a delicious vegan meal without even trying. All my vegan friends make very tasty food, too. No need for billions.
I have no question that everyone across the industrialized world would gladly switch to your delicious recipes.
Maybe you should start a business!
Wow, I asked for the bullshit and you seriously delivered! Not sure if I should take the time to reply to this, because would it even matter?
One thing, though: Everything you eat is vegan, except for the animal tissue, the milk-stuff and eggs. We don’t need capitalism to invest in more vegan meat alternatives, we fight it by eating plant based! No junk, just delicious fruits, nuts, legumes and vegetables, like we always did. It’s cheap, great for your body and for our suffering planet as well!
Omnivores? We were lucky apes who found out that fire kills enough parasites and bacteria that live in meat. Dogs are the real omnivores, pigs are, too. They eat a rotting squirrel if the feel like it! We die if our bleach-cleaned chicken filet wasn’t in the freezer for a couple of hours.
Do you know what elephants and hippos eat all day … damn, I just started replying.
In light of the west’s heavily animal-centric diets resulting in most of the top causes of death in these places, it’s not exactly accurate to call us omnivores. The centered on whole plant foods our diets are, the better off we are. Animal flesh, dairy, and eggs, at the very least, cannot be consumed without increasing progression and risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes (Ignoring a host of other harmful effects like cancer and autoimmune disorders, which is more contentious).
It would be more accurate to say that we are primarily herbivores, but with an incomplete and dangerous emergency system for omnivory.
Let’s put it this way, our bodies really like the smell, taste and mouthfeel of meat. So long as our system is focused on compelling people to eat via yummy food, there’s going to be a market for it. It’s not prescription, just description.
That’s why I was saying we’ll have to overcome capitalism before we can really beat this. Otherwise actual balanced nutrition will be a < checks spelling > commodifiable feature of food, rather than its essential point.
Estimates have it that in the industrial world, somewhere between 1-5% of people are vegan. That remaining the same until your preferred revolution happens, and your idealized form of governance becomes the reality everywhere: how is your socioeconomic system going to get the remaining 95% of billions of people to stop consuming, committing cruelty to, and exploiting animals? Sorry, but we have to do whatever we can in the here and now, and there is urgency in time. It’s not only a matter of morality. We know that our wanton animal consumption is one of the largest drivers of climate change. We know that our society’s addiction to flesh and secretions have resulted in agricultural systems that not only resulted in one recent pandemic, but we are hanging on the edge of an even worse flu pandemic that can end up happening at any time. 75% of new infectious diseases have a zoonotic origin.
In a world where ideal society has never happened and is always a dream away, we do not have the luxury of an either/or approach of fixing one problem before we think about the next.
The toxic food environment is a reality, and that needs to be fixed in policy. But individual choice matters too, because what we choose to buy is what drives what is sold. Taste is dynamic and subjective. New diets are only temporarily less satisfying until the person develops the knowledge, cooking skills, and palate to start getting more satisfaction out of their foods. Even better, the difference in the way people feel when they adopt a whole-food plant-based diet for even as little as a couple of weeks, is a start contrast to the standard western diet. Experiencing the difference first-hand generates more motivation to continue.
Also, our bodies do not inherently like the smell, taste, and mouthfeel of animal flesh. That is a learned habit. When a person goes long enough without consuming flesh, the very smell of it changes - even the freshest meats smell rotten, and the people who eat these foods smell like rotting corpses.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but our elite class seems determined to stay there, and historically violent revolution is what unseats them and allows their wealth to be redistributed from their Scrooge McDuck vaults.
Nonviolent resistance might work, but we haven’t seen the kind of mass wealth dispersion that will be necessary.
And the elite are content to drive us right into extinction via the climate crisis and the plastic crisis. Even if you make technology that disrupts the meat market, they’re going to legally wrest control of it from you (unless you are rich enough to defend it from Nestlé). Regardless, when it comes to the climate crisis, the deal is done. The pooch is screwed. We know after the collapse the upper limit of sustainable population will be about one billion, and that number dwindles with each day of inaction.
Meanwhile the industrial world is choosing far-right parties over the usual neoliberal crap we’ve endured through the latter half of the twentieth century, so we’re not even serious about managing the climate crisis without the aforementioned revolution (and in that case, into some kind of communal government, since the typical outcome of a people’s revolution is a chain of dictators).
Good luck convincing our officials, elected or not, to choose veganism over the meat industry, or even nutrition over junk food. You will need all you can get.
So be the change, Uriel238! You are against suffering, slavery and destruction of our resources? Against the greedy elite who brutaly and recklessly exploit the weak instead of protecting them? (See what I did there?)
Stop paying for dead animal parts next time you’re shopping at the supermarket! It feels really good to not take part in this evil system of misery and annihilation.
I know veganism is not the only solution, but no solution will ever be enough without it. Plus it’s the easiest Fuck You to the ruling class, while we wait for a revolution.
Dude, I already have doubts if I am worth my footprint, if we’re going to think in transactional terms. It’s easy to decide if cutting out meat is the only way I can make a difference, then why not cut out everything else as well? Should people kill themselves in order to spare nature the cost of their upkeep?
When we talk about the generation of greenhouse gasses, and the rising global average temperature, companies pollute in a day (in some cases, an hour) what humans produce across their lifetime. US suicides (49,000 per year, as of 2022, and rising with hate-crime and rampage killing rates) are barely a blip.
Maybe folks in the alt-right believe that human lives, at least the ones they don’t like, are worth less than the resources they consume, but a lot more believe the lives are worth the food and poop, which is, again, insignificant to the ever-burning fires of industry.
Quitting meat doesn’t stick it to the man in any significant way, any more than self immolation does.
Quitting meat will lead to a little less suffering, destruction and exploitation. It costs you just some self-reflection and a change of habit. But Uriel238, obviously a fellow leftist, refuses this. He wants others to change first. But they, as you said, also will not. Prisoners dilemma, crab mentality.
Yes, of course, the revolution hinges entirely on my behavior and no one else’s.
Your unquantified adjectives are doing a fuckton of heavy lifting. Tread lightly, qualified-friend, you are one step away from a block. Think of me whatever you will, but your manipulative bullshit will not be tolerated beyond this warning.
That explains most of shit vegans spread.