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Comment by bookmarkable | Hacker News Reader

They'll keep coming after meat eating with every angle - health, ecology, economics, emotional appeals - but humans can live a long, healthy life with meat in their diet. That doesn't mean industrial burgers daily or portions that look like a carnival hot dog eating contest, but 4 to 6 oz of quality meat from animals is healthy.

I think the US especially would be far better served to appeal to people to reduce portion sizes rather than insist on industrialized plant based food. Minimally processed foods in smaller portions is far more sustainable and healthier than vegan radicalism and scientifically formulated plant-based edible substances.

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You're absolutely right. There's a whole subset of people who have declared war on meat. They want to replace meat with a diet desperately low in B12 so you have to supplement to be healthy. They want to replace meat with ingredients most similar to the ingredients they use to make dog food. They want to replace meat with extremely processed vegetables made to taste like meat, just like they did with margarine replacing butter, and hydrogenated vegetable oils replacing lard (both of which have killed millions prematurely). They want to replace meat with something very high in phytoestrogens and then demand that you believe that the massive endocrine disruption we're seeing all across humanity isn't related to this push towards foods high in xenoestrogens. They won't even allow for the possibility because it doesn't fit their agenda.

There are issues with our industrial food production particularly around meat. They should be addressed. I would be perfectly happy with lab grown meat if it was proven to be safe over time. I would prefer real meat without massive pollution or cruelty. But I'm not going to shift my diet to something proven to require pills to be healthy.

Just watch, the next phase will be trying to shame people for eating meat. It's only a matter of time.

If you can figure out how to successfully market and sell "Eat less, eat quality" to American consumers while maintaining food supplier revenue growth, you'll solve a lot of problems.

My personal opinion is that we're so growth and value oriented - and that's fundamentally incompatible with a healthy diet.

Look at CostCo! They have an amazing amount of fresh, healthy meats and vegetables. But you're still walking out of that store with a twelve-pack of fish and the barrel of cheese puffs you saw on the way out. The majority of Americans simply lack the self control. The food production companies know this and take full advantage of it.

I think it has been figured out, it is just heavily lobbied against. In general, you have to flip normal. Every time I get my Butcherbox pasture raised beef out of the freezer, I'm aggravated they have to print "pasture raised"... that should be the standard, not the luxury brand. A few ideas off the cuff...

- Make food companies label non-organic food and say why they aren't organic, vs. making organic declare themselves, certify and therefore cost more. - Raise minimum grades on beef and poultry. Low grade meat is the only way to make large portions work economically. - Require food with meat ingredients to list what grade of meat is being used, hormone use, etc. - Disallow mixing of multiple animals in ground meat products... or at least cap it. Right now, fast food works because you can grind up hundreds of cattle at once.

I agree with most of this, but what specifically is wrong with grinding up hundreds of animals (apart from sounding gross)?

Risk of disease spread. Many outbreaks (mad cow, etc) were larger problems than they should have been because cattle from various farms had been mixed.

It also complicates source tracing for any other problem - bad feed, importing rules, etc.

Who's "they"?

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