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Comment by malvosenior | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of people (myself included) who actually enjoy real meat and would never switch, so no it won't be happening any time soon or at all really.

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My meat eating wife, whose favorite food is steak, prefers the impossible burger and gets it over the real thing when we go out. I've heard other similar accounts as well. Unless everyone like yourself refuses to even try it then it's likely to catch on at least to some extent.

And honestly it seems a bit selfish to not at least try the less environmentally damaging option.

I would try it and I would eat it if it tastes good. There are a lot of different kinds of meat that would need suitable replacements though:

* all cuts of steak

* chicken

* pork

* salmon, tuna, mackerel, eel, sea urchin, shrimp...

Ground beef seems like low hanging fruit, making convincing sushi seems more difficult.

> And honestly it seems a bit selfish to not at least try the less environmentally damaging option.

I can think of several reasons people may not want artificial meat. Maybe they think it's gross (test tube meat) or it goes against tradition and culture. I don't think the "shaming" angle works well to get people to change their diet. I know I immediately tune out or get defensive when people tell me what I should do with my personal life. Especially since almost everything is "bad" for the environment. So unless someone lives in a dirt hut, eating veggies they grow themselves, wearing clothes made from their own hemp and never traveling, I really don't take what they have to say about the environment into consideration.

Eventually that may be a socially untenable practice, what with meat consumption being linked to so many ethical and environmental issues.

Between the cancer risk posed by red and processed meat as well as the environmental damage, I expect meat consumption to go the way of smoking within a generation.

The vast majority of people in the US eat meat regularly and feed it to their children. There is no way this is going to stop in one generation. There are also plenty of cultures that have meat as their staple. Can you imagine telling Mexicans to eat vegetarian tacos for instance? That simply will never happen, it's too ingrained into culture (and too delicious!).

Smoking cigarettes and cigars was also once considered a delicious and ingrained part of many cultures. It is now clear that processed and red meats cause bowel cancer, and the environmental impacts they pose are also becoming more and more clear. Just like smoking ended in a generation I can definitely see people rejecting these products in the near future. Cultures change all the time.

I don’t agree. Diet is an integral part of one’s culture. Smoking cigarettes is a needless vice mostly pushed by marketing. I think you’re greatly underestimating how important food is to some cultures. I suggest you have a conversation about this with someone from a meat eating culture. It will give you more perspective on the staying power of meat.

I think you're under-estimating the grip tobacco had on society. Smoking was very common. Between the 1940s and 1980s over 40% of the population smoked. https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures-table...

We used to give cigarettes out in Red Cross parcels. https://www.loc.gov/resource/anrc.08956/

I know it was very popular, but 1940 was not that long ago. We're comparing it to eating meat which humans have been doing for at least tens of thousands of years. You also need to eat something, while some cultures smoke more than others, no one needs to smoke to survive.

Not necessarily cigars/cigarettes, but tobacco has also played an important role in some cultures. I doubt Native Americans were using tobacco, sometimes for ceremonial and religious purposes, due to marketing

>Just like smoking ended in a generation

It did? Where? In what world?

Here in America, which has much lower smoking rates than many other developed nations and has indeed lowered the smoking rate a lot since ~50 years ago, there's tons of young people taking up smoking and "vaping". A bunch of my tech coworkers do.

I’m Mexican and can confirm meat isn’t going anywhere. I can’t even imagine Mexico City without it. Not only does everyone eat meat but most people make a living selling it. There are taco carts on every corner.

It’s also a huge part of family life. These dishes have been passed down through the generations and it’s actually moderately offensive to suggest that it’s not socially acceptable to eat what my family has been eating for as far back as anyone can remember. I know my children are growing up learning to love all of the dishes their family cooks and enjoys together.

Given the sad state of nutritional "science" and the extremely low odds of it getting better anytime soon, I think it's just as likely we'll shortly find out that red meat reduces your cancer risk.

The science is solid. We know that red meat, especially processed red meat, definitely causes cancer. The evidence so good that the evidence is now in the same trust-worthy class as the evidence that tells us smoking causes cancer.

But red meat doesn't cause very much cancer. There's a low risk of colorectal cancer, and red meat (even processed red meat) increases that risk by a small amount.

To prevent one case of cancer from red meat a large number of people have to give it up.

I disagree with parent poster. If people can assess risk they'll see a small increase of a low risk, and decide there are other things to worry about. If people can't assess risk (the vast majority of people) they'll decide if they like bacon enough to keep eating it, just as they do with alcohol or anything else.

And eggs are bad, and if you want to lose weight eat less fat and more pasta!

I don't trust anything that comes from these people. They don't have the ability to properly test their hypotheses.

Have you missed the incredible amount of pushback in the recent past against identity politics? You may get half the population to decide it is socially untenable, but the other half will double down in response.

Do you refuse to stop anything enjoyable? I think there are often other factors worth considering. Maybe you enjoy meat, but if you also enjoy many non-meat foods, you can eat those and still fulfill the need to eat and the need to enjoy food.

> Do you refuse to stop anything enjoyable? I think there are often other factors worth considering

Other people's opinion about my diet isn't one of those factors. You can't shame someone out of doing something they enjoy.

> Maybe you enjoy meat, but if you also enjoy many non-meat foods, you can eat those and still fulfill the need to eat and the need to enjoy food

But I like eating meat so I will continue to do that in addition to eating other foods I also enjoy.

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