Hacker News Reader

Interesting, I've never felt any quality of life loss when going vegan. Just the opposite. I feel much better and food is delicious now that I have discovered a whole new range of food that I never considered before.

I'm glad you feel that way. I've looked at the array of foods I'd have to give up, and it's not worth it.

> now that I have discovered a whole new range of food that I never considered before.

Here's the awesome thing from my point of view: I can eat vegan foods and hamburgers. :) Nothing about eating meat prevents me from also eating vegan dishes.

I can do so too. However, I would never really discover all those great options if I haven't seriously tried to limit my meat consumption in past few years.

I do eat meat, but these days ~90% of my diet is vegetarian. My favorite burger place around is... a vegan one. I never tried it before, now it's my number one when I crave for a burger. Go figure.

Some people go vegan because they care about morality and "purity", but the fact is - if everyone really tried to consider alternatives to meat and eat it only occasionally, even without taking any moral stance about it, the environmental impact of meat production would look completely different than it does now (and would actually be less problematic morally as well).

I agree and I don’t think you’re an asshole.

There is a bigger problem before a one-size-fits-all-no-meat solution, climate change deniers.

If you can’t get people to acknowledge the problem is real, you aren’t going to get them to make a big life change to help address it.

I’m on the same page as you regarding meat. I love it. One of my hobbies is cooking it. That’s said, I acknowledge there is a problem and I want to do my part, despite that it may not do much in the grand scheme of things.

We are now a single electric car household, I walk or ride my bike to most things, I take a ride share if I have to go across LA.

Three dinners a week are vegetarian/vegan from Veestro (prepared meals) so I don’t have to _work_ to have a “lower quality” meal.[1]

I moved east in LA so I could own property to start growing my own food (not fully self sustained - yet)

All the vegans still driving cars, how green are those cars? Are they getting more efficient? How green are the trucks moving the produce you buy? Why do you live in a big city paying rent instead of having a home with land that you can grow your own food?

Use a phone? Gotta get that new phone as soon as it comes out?[2] Live in a house? Look out a window? What’s the carbon footprint of processing the sand to make this things?

People need to spend more time pressuring governments and corporations and finding any way that they can personally help that keeps them happy with their quality of life and less time looking down their nose at other individuals for not following their holier-than-thou solution.

[1] veestro isn’t low quality, it’s pretty good. I meant lower quality in my eyes because it’s lacking a key ingredient

[2] I only buy refurbed phones because I know sand is a bitch.

Edited for more ‘tude

> I will not go vegan, given the current offering of vegan foodstuffs. It just doesn't taste as good.

This may be, especially regarding texture. But think about it the other way: steak etc. is a poor substitute for the whole universe of flavours of plant-based dishes. As long as you are not clinging to meat substitutes, you are not missing out, quite the contrary.

If you are looking for a seamless segue from meat to plant, try vegan sausages. I found them to be indistinguishable from meat sausages. As long as texture is ground away, your taste buds won’t care about the type of protein involved, more about the spices used.

Doesn’t speak for the quality of industrial meat I suppose...

As I responded to a sibling comment - there's nothing about eating meat that prevents me from also eating various vegetarian and vegan dishes. I've had some pho with tofu, and it was fantastic (if expensive).

There's also milk, and milk product that I would have to give up or accept substitutes for.

Of course. Just to state the obvious: asking for puritan veganism is not necessary, and diplomatically irresponsible.

A friend of mine loves meat dishes, but has no problem eating vegetarian or vegan for days in a row. For him, meat is an optional ingredient, alongside cabbage and beans, not the staple of a healthy or even psychologically necessary diet.

That’s the mindset that is feasible and that we need. Not the religious zeal of that which calls itself veganism.

'older' person here (48) - so I'm not the next generation, etc. I've been mostly vegetarian (and sometimes vegan) for the last couple of years.

A lot of it does taste better than meat to me. Not everything, but then there's plenty of bad meat meals around that I'd avoid anyway (most burgers, etc). I had a vegan burger last night that was tasty and succulent - the kind of thing that I think a blind taste test would mean a meat eater would think it was good.

I occasionally eat meat, but make sure that it's good (last time I made a real effort was a steak house for my birthday while I was in Barcelona, it was incredible). Most of the time I feel better heath-wise for eating a mostly vegetarian diet (which is often vegan) - I don't feel like I've been violated (which with hindsight was how I felt after many meat-based meals), and don't feel like I'm eating loads of fat. In addition I can actually eat more than I used to, which is great.

The ship may have sailed, but we can permanently change its course if we each individually choose to do so. People often complain that there's no such thing as democracy any more, etc., but you can make a difference in your individual purchasing an lifestyle choices, and if everyone (or even a significant percentage of people) did the same, the world would be better off.

Without wanting to start a comment war, it sounds to me like you're being a bit selfish, and then trying to legitimise what you want to do by saying that it'll have no effect on the future. If everyone acted like this, the world would be in a terrible state.

I am being a bit selfish - but I think that applies even to philanthropists. They do it because it makes them feel good, or to atone for past sins, or to make future generations look upon them as "good".

But I also disagree that my individual effort will have even the smallest effect. I'm one of nine billion. We frequently underestimate how big a number that is, and how insignificant the individual is when looked at as part of the whole.

You could count people at a rate of 10 a second, and still take 70 years of non-stop counting to count everyone in the world.

You are not the only person in this world. Maybe the change will need to be forced upon us, but there are big changes that started grass-roots

No, I'm not the only person in the world. But I'm also not very unique in most of my point of views. There's a lot of people who, when asked these same questions will provide very similar answers (especially once you move past any "politeness").

I agree we are probably past the point of no return and I am a (non-orthodox) pescetarian (sp?).

Here is why...

I have never owned a car and bike everywhere and I also basically just eat peanut butter+jelly/ cereal/ 'rabbit food' as my old HS XC used to call it - and try to stay alive by also drinking kefir. This is all because I am cheap and lazy and increasingly set in my ways.

So I do not really have a decrease in my already low quality of life by sacrificing meat or not driving, and in fact I think biking increases my quality of life.

I really don't get the need to eat all this meat though. It's alright, but there are just as many delicious things that aren't meat. And if you are eating meat all the time that's not all-that-natural and frankly kind of gross.

Lastly, that chicken or burger or bacon (ok, bacon is delicious) came from an animal that suffered a lot for your increased quality of life. Is the trade-off really worth it? I think that if you think it is because you are a human, then you are either not thinking about what you are doing or you are and are very cruel.

One does not need to eat meat with every meal to still enjoy eating meat. Salads, tofu, pasta, all make great meals. But so do ham sandwiches, BLTs, and yes, the occasional steak.

> animal that suffered a lot for your increased quality of life

How much sea life has suffered to ship your computer from china to you? How many people suffered in the conditions used to build your computer? How many people suffered and died mining the materials used in your computer?

How many people have suffered and died to provide you with electricity? How many migrant workers suffered in the sun for low wages to provide you with the fruits used in your jelly?

Suffering is not limited to animals to provide us with the life we're living.

Yeah you are right. The funny thing is I just had this discussion with my roommate last night. He was inebriated and stuffing his face with pounds of pork - and insisted I try some. I declined, and then he made the same points as you but less sober and cohesively (sorry Jake, but it's hard to take you seriously with all that bbq sauce on your face).

I think there is a scale, this is why I am not orthodox about it. If I went to Mexico City (and I would fly there) I would have to try the tacos. But my personal desire for meat is usually outweighed by my dislike of how the animals are treated.

Fish is meat.

You're not sacrificing anything by eating just fish.

Maybe there's some sort of religious distinction for you, but meat is any muscle tissue from a living creature.

> If your plan to save the world includes requiring all 9 billion people to fundamentally change their lives (especially if its perceived as a degradation of their current quality of life), it's never going to work.

> Now I'll speak for myself. I will not go vegan

I agree with your logic, people like you are why it will not work. When the shit hits the fan, I hope your grandchildren can reserve some empathy for their ancestor who so loved his lifestyle that he was willing to watch the world burn rather than reduce his consumption.

As has been pointed out in other threads, it will take more than two generations of people for the lives of humanity to really be changed. And, in all likelihood, humanity will simply use technology to adapt to the changed circumstances.

My hypothetical grandchildren's grandchildren will be dead of old age well before humanity will have to do more than move from one city to another to preserve their way of life.

> And, in all likelihood, humanity will simply use technology to adapt to the changed circumstances.

That doesn't strike you as a convenient thing to believe because it means not having to give up anything? You remind me of smokers 20 years ago who assured me that medicine would cure lung cancer before they caught it so they didn't worry about it.

I believe in it, because it's already happening. Air conditioners counter heat. Heaters counter the cold. The Venetians have proven that they can hold back storm surges, and live in a city slowly being flooded. The Dutch have proven they can hold back the ocean itself. We are capable of planting and harvesting crops on previously unfarmable land. Biodomes have been tested (and work) at a small scale, and show promise at their ability to scale up. We can desalinate and clean water at the cost of mere electricity - something we're making more and more abundant and less reliant on fossil fuels.

Moving from these technologies that exist today to live in a harsher world tomorrow is nowhere near as big a jump as curing cancer.

Current generation here (I'm 20). There's a lot of steps you can take without decreasing your quality of life - is that cut of steak _really_ that important to your quality of life?

If, aware of the problem of climate change AND of the solutions, you choose to do nothing then you won't just be an asshole in the eyes of the next 20 generations, you're an asshole in the eyes of my generation too.

It's not just steak. It's tacos, hamburgers, roasted (or friend) turkey, pork chops, ham, BLTs, chicken tenders, milk, cheese, lattes, milk chocolate, white bread, clam chowder (any chowder for that matter), sushi... The list of non-vegan foods is quite long.

> you're an asshole in the eyes of my generation too.

I'm willing to accept that. The hate of a group of anonymous people is something I have no problems with.

Current generation? So am I like dead or something (30)?

The OP and billions of other meat eaters may be assholes, but I think it's a salient point that any solution will have to cater to these assholes to be effective. Just calling them assholes probably wont influence them to change their ways.