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Comment by hardwaregeek | Hacker News Reader

My hot take is that meat eating will be the smoking of my generation. I say this as a proud degenerate meat eater myself. It's been shown to be rather unhealthy; beef is terrible for the environment; and most animals are raised in profoundly unethical environments. I've noticed more and more people my age going vegetarian or low-meat and I can't say I blame them. As much as synthetic meat is tempting, the solution might just be to stop eating meat altogether.

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And I'm 180, eating meat is natural - and has been part of human diets for, since, forever.

Humans have been eating eat longer than driving, flying, and more.

Beef isn't terrible for the enviornment, is that companies are looking at one side of the sustainability of their organization and are running profit first. There's most likely reasonable ways to improve land use, or even increase cost of meat to make it better for the enviornment.

People your age, can't compare 1:1, people my age are doing keto, high protein date, carnivore diet, fasting / one meal a day and protein is on there, vs soy.

Stopping eating meat is not a solution itself. Especially for the world.

Especially for emerging economies and such, hah. The last bit really, IMO is just so short sighted and assuming that everyone in this world has a choice in their diet, what they eat and to tell them "no, meat is bad." is laudable at best.

I dunno, frequent, daily meat eating is a relatively new phenomenon for 99% of the population. For a lot of history your worker would eat carbs, vegetables and a tiny morsel of meat. Meat is affordable due to grain subsidies, massive industries and vastly underpaid workers. Sure, there was a period before that where hunting was a primary food source, but it's not like humans need to eat meat.

Appealing to nature is also a little suspect. There's a lot of things that are "natural" that we don't partake in due to changing ethics and mores.

I'll concede that comparing it to smoking is not entirely accurate. Smoking is a very binary relation; you are either a smoker or not. It's much more likely that people in 50-100 years will be light meat eaters, i.e. eat meat once or twice a week.

Emerging economies may eat more meat. They may also smoke more. I agree that it's not always productive to demand that an emerging economy follow the rules of a developed economy. But a lot of these emerging economies will not be so emerging in 50-100 years. It's quite possible the populace will reduce their meat consumption as education and concern about the environment increases.

You analogized it to smoking - there is no safe amount of smoking, it will kill you, sooner, and more unpleasantly.

You can consume meat safely, consuming only meat is bad for you in the long run, but a balanced diet is good. Broadly, we need to eat less meat, our meat consumption needs to look like it did 80 years ago, not like it does now.

Yeah and I concede that smoking is not exactly like meat eating in that smoking is exceedingly binary. However I stand by my prediction that future generations will look back on how much meat we eat with a generous amount of disgust or shock. Heck, I already do this. I don't understand how people can eat nothing but meat and carbs and feel okay. Doesn't it hurt their digestion?

I’ll tack on here there is also a difference between muscle meat and organ meat.

Organ meat has been a staple of traditional diets in every culture, but for some reason(s) its reviled in the modern western diet.

Muscle meat is much higher in saturated fat (red beef in particular). That’s really what ends up giving people cardiovascular disease on top of excess sugar consumption and a sedentary lifestyle.

We should eat less meat, not none, just.. less.

Like, anyone who tells you "everyone must be a vegetarian" is in my opinion, a fool.

Meat should cost a bit more, and we should feed our meet sources as naturally as possible, cows from grass, pigs from offal (and other sources, pigs will eat anything), and less factory farming of poultry - quite arguably poultry should cost 2-3x more.

Similarly, if folks want to lose weight, the best answer is just to eat less, and I say this as a fat person.

Why not none? We certainly don't need it, so why are we obligated to eat some baseline level of meat?

Its extremely hard to get protein from just plants and fortified foods - cost wise and the amount of food you would have to consume vs protein rich meat.

You don’t “need” any specific foods as long as you meet micro/macro/caloric/fiber nutrition requirements. Some people like the taste and preparation of meat. The problem is the amount,type and quality of that meat.

Nah it's super easy to get enough protein just from plants. Lets say your 160 lbs, which translates to about 58 grams of protein daily [1]. Then lets take a look at some high protein plants: https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/19-high-pro...

You can trivially hit daily protein goals with just a few cups of various beans, and thats ignoring things life tofu, seitan, leafy greens, etc.

Besides, we know folks can get enough protein from plants alone, as there are many plant-based athletes and bodybuilders.

1. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-much-protein-do-you-...

I can assure you it’s very very…very.. easy to get enough protein. I have been gaining muscle while just barely caring about what plants I eat. Cheap too. I spent about the national average on food costs for the month.

The modern American diet consumes about double the protein needs.

For a plant based diet one only needs to invest maybe a day or two of research to figure out what foods to eat to get enough protein.

No one should obligate you to eat none. That's your choice to eat none, and good for you!

For the rest of us who chose to eat meat, my statement applies.

The evidence seems to suggest we certainly do need it, just not as much as some people eat.

Source?

There are certain nutrients -- like B vitamins -- that people have a hard time getting enough of from plants. It's not hard to get enough protein. It is hard to get enough of some other things.

That's common knowledge. It isn't something I need to prove.

B vitamins need to be supplemented for most people, plant-based or otherwise. Almost all livestock is supplemented, too, which is how most people who meat get any B-12 at all.

As for anything else, because you imply there are other vitamins that are lacking in plant-based diets, the onus to provide proof is definitely on you.

I agree but important to note that "less" really just means similar to what people ate a few generations ago or what some people still eat today, like around the Mediterranean and Italy. Eating vast quantities of meat has never been normal. Traditionally an entire family would consume one large animal a year (like a pig) and a few smaller ones like chickens. The bulk of the diet should be vegetables.

I'm a fan of the carnivore diet, and I hate this push for "fake meat" with a passion. Corporations are ruining the quality of meat (hormones, feed composed of "non-foods" like corn, soy, and other proinflammatory nonsense, poor treatment, destroying land quality unsustainably); and then other faceless corporations are taking advantage of this, starting a highly aggressive marketing campaign against meat and in favor of their future products, with the obvious goal of banning real meat altogether one day, preventing one from raising animals themselves, solidifying this false dichotomy between corporate fake-meat and corporate "real"-meat. With the current push, all across Europe, to ban perfectly good cars from being driven, it's obvious that the "moral emergency" of climate change will inevitably lead to governments feeling entitled to tell us we can't eat foods we evolved on, and have eaten for hundreds of millenia. Hard to think of something more dystopian. To be hurriedly replaced with unproven, non-Lindy, lab meat with zero long-term health studies, or other vegan foods (which, in today's worls, sadly isn't taken by most people to mean healthy vegetables, but mostly sugar-laden monstrosities; corporations love sugar, and sugar is a plant!)

Current vegans might rejoice, but all the ex-vegans and other dieters who switched to keto or carnivore and experienced immediate and (sometimes) lifechanging health benefits will be very, very angry at this prospect.

Meat has been forbidden for peasants for much of human history, it increases testosterone levels, enhancing upper body strength and promoting disregard for authority. So there's now a huge push against access to meat for the lower classes (that is, anyone except the top 1-5%).

Please provide evidence to support such bold claims.

My take is the opposite. There is some incredible work going on at smaller regional farms using cattle to increase grasslands and provide a sustainable source of protein. Farming in a way that doesn't vilify the cow. CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) meat will be the smoking equivalent in the future, but making the distinction between "dirty:" beef and sustainably raised beef is important.

I think you're generalizing a little bit too much, if you're talking about excess red meat and beef then yeah I would probably agree with you, but if you're consuming healthier sources such as lean chicken and fish then I haven't really read any papers suggesting that they have adverse health effects.

Do you mean in terms of PR ala "big tobacco lobbied and biased the social perception (and scientific enquiry) of its products", or do you mean in terms of personal harm?

b/c I'd find it hard to believe meat could be as harmful because, morality aside, smoking is very personally unhealthy, systematically.

Given the environmental impact, I'd sooner compare it to fossil fuel consumption, or (micro)plastics disposal.

> My hot take is that meat eating will be the smoking of my generation.

Your generation? How many millions of years old are you?

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