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Comment by karol | Hacker News Reader

> Convincing, nutritious, cheap artificial meat could turn the world vegetarian.

You wrongly assume people in general want to or need to be vegetarian. We evolved to eat and digest animal based foods.

We evolved to do a lot of things we no longer tolerate, and we have invented many things that do better than evolution.

As for “need”… what is good for one human is often very different to what’s good for humanity — tragedy of the commons, Nash equilibrium, there are many examples.

And as a vegetarian, I’m an existence proof that it’s fine, though not any evidence of it being better or worse than an omnivorous diet.

> We evolved to do a lot of things we no longer tolerate

Such as?

Food hygiene is the big one, in this case. We used to eat whatever we could hunt and kill (or gather) without knowing what bacterial infections looked like, much less how to eliminate the pathogens. Even cleaning bowls and cutlery is only possible after the invention of those things, and soap is much more recent, circa 5000 BC according to a quick Google (and then apparently used for curing ailments rather than as a general thing? IDK how much to trust first hit on the web).

Do you think you'd die if you were to eat with your hands off the floor? Rich Western citizen probably have weaker immune systems than people living in the middle of the jungle, but they're all the same species, it's not a matter of "we've evolved to need to eat with a clean fork."

Even the Rich Western person is much more resilient than you think they might be. You can survive, perhaps not thrive, off half rotten carrion if need be. Evolution works on much bigger timescales.

> Do you think you'd die if you were to eat with your hands off the floor?

No, that’s putting words into my mouth.

I’m saying we won’t tolerate bad hygiene, not that it will kill us, and our floors are generally quite clean these days anyway.

Food poisoning is however a thing, and from what I’ve heard (never had it myself) quite unpleasant.

> We evolved

Nutrition is poorly understood so being conservative with changes is reasonable, but making claims about what is and is not good because of the environment we evolved in doesn't make sense at all. Evolving in a specific environment emphatically does not say what you are optimal for, just what you can tolerate acceptably enough to function. That we can function while eating meat is not in doubt and every other claim based on evolution is an appeal to authority to an authority that doesn't support what you say.

Nutrition isn’t poorly understood. If what you said was true, vegans wouldn’t need to take tests to check their micronutrient profile or need so many supplements. You have no evidence to support your claim, there has been 0 vegan civilizations; for good reason. There is no dimension where a vegan does not need to check their iron levels and supplementation is a must: if you care about your health and getting what your ancestors did from meat.

Checking the micronutrient profile is important and it does a lot, but absolutely 0 nutritional specialists will claim to you that this will solve your nutritional problems. That is why they tell you to have a "diverse" diet: It's a hedge against the fact that at the end of the day they have no idea what to do. All they can do is check a few markers and hope for the best.

If nutrition is as well understood as you claim when you criticise vegan diets (I don’t know, not my field), then we must also know how to create a vegan food item that can replace meat and dairy, and the question is then one of taste and cost.

They made that a long time ago and achieved it (vegans that supplement), dog food like vegan products like Soylent exists. Although it exists you'll have to convince people to consume it since its not preferable.

So you agree the question is then one of taste and cost.

No.

The cost of soylent is not more expensive, and its taste is not bad. The problem is culture. You don't need to convince a progammmer who doesn't want to leave his computer. Vegans are/were also not convinced by taste or cost, that is not why they are vegan.

If you don’t think it’s a question of taste and cost, why did you say in other threads: “They know. That is the hope, but the plant based ones are disgusting.”, “I ate some quorn, its rather good, but its overpriced and I would never buy the vegan one.”, “I found quorn (made with egg white) to be a 1:1 chicken breast replacement, but its much too expensive to be a real replacement.”, “I am not interested in a meat flavored veggie protein shake that is made of seed oils, costs more and is less nutritious. It’s disgusting.”

I won’t be convinced to eat heavily processed food nor will I become vegan ever. Talking about their taste doesn’t mean it’s why I’m not vegan.

When did this become about you rather than about if society can accept a new food product?

Search "you" in the thread. It has been that way since the beginning, in fact you started the thread doing so.

I don't get the your logic of starting the thread talking about my opinions then asking when it became about me when you are literally talking to me about my opinions the entire thread, posting "So you agree the question is then one of taste and cost." and even dreging comments from other posts about my opinions. It is all about me.

> We evolved to eat and digest animal based foods.

I doubt we evolved to eat large quantities of (mostly low quality processed) meat two or three times a day though, that's a very very modern lifestyle.

Almost all meat our ancestors ate was processed in some manner. Very rarely did they gnaw it directly off the bone immediately after the kill.

It depends who you ask, but humans have been processing and cooking meat for probably half a million years.

Salted and preserved meats have been sound for a very long time as well.

The processed foods we eat today are probably far higher quality than anything our ancestors ate. I can only assume “quality” here to refer the safety, cleanliness, and purity of the food. I don’t know what else it could mean.

If you think the smoked or salted meat of our ancestors is "processed" in a way that is similar to modern industrial food I think you should dig a bit more.

> I don’t know what else it could mean.

I guess thats the issue then. Preservatives, colorants, added sugars/salts, melting salts, texturants, fake cheeses, and all kind of additives, &c.

Do you ever wonder why more and more people develop food related addictions and health issues ? Why half of the US is obese ? Why diabetes is skyrocketing ?

https://www.advisory.com/en/daily-briefing/2019/01/03/banned...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211014102038.h...

https://thecounter.org/bpi-pink-slime-ground-beef-usda-recla...

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318630#refined-car...

All of which exist in plant based food too.

Overeating is why people are obese, specifically overeating plant based foods. Diabetes isn’t caused by meat, it’s caused by sugar, derived from beets or sugar cane, both plants. I implore you to find me a person that is obese from eating nothing but meat, the same way you can find obese vegans. (It doesn't exist.)

If you care about people's heath, surely you'll tell them to eat more meat.

> All of which exist in plant based food too.

Yeah of course, that's why I think the modern take on vegetarianism/veganism is bs, every trend is corrupted by consumerism and the easiest way to make a profit is selling processed food (mostly byproducts of other industries) with a "vegan" sticker on it

> specifically overeating plant based foods

Can't find anything about that, any sources ? I can find dozen of studies linking meat over consumption to obesity and health issues in general, a few linking plant based diets to lower risk of getting overweight/obese but none linking vegetarianism to obesity.

> Diabetes isn’t caused by meat, it’s caused by sugar

Oh don't worry, they also add sugar to meat based processed food, they add sugar to pretty much everything. Ah, and you're wrong:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14576980/

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/95/3/752/4576709

> If you care about people's heath, surely you'll tell them to eat more meat.

I doubt it, the average american already it 120+kg of meat a year... and it's strongly associated to all kind of health issues already.

https://www.cancercouncil.com.au/1in3cancers/lifestyle-choic...

https://www.diw.de/de/diw_01.c.741627.de/publikationen/round...

Adding sugar to meat doesn’t make meat the cause of obesity any more than shooting someone with COVID means COVID killed them.

Neither of them are all meat diets, you just posted articles less that state incorrectly that that eating too much plants and adding meat is proof that meat are the only reason they’re obese and diabetic.

Or corn! Don't forget corn!

The US produces ~14B bushels of corn each year. That's about 1500lbs per man, woman and child. What did you do with your share of corn this year?

Fed it to a cow and ate the cow.

That must have been one massive burger!

I think most of it is used as feed or sold isn’t it?

Oh, mostly it's cracked into syrup, oil, protein, fibre, dextrose, starch etc. And those things are used in everything - paper, fabric, building materials, other animal feed, plastic...

Corn won early and it won big, so everybody started figuring out what they could make with the cheap stuff. And it turns out, nearly everything.

“Low quality” “Processed”

These words are meaningless.

Eh... so a chicken breast and a hot dog sausage are the same ?

The beef from the farm across my parents' house is the same as an antibiotic fed beef from a large scale US exploitation shipped over the atlantic ?

A frozen burger patty vs a locally sourced beef piece minced by your local butcher ?

A bag of dehydrated potatoe crumbs vs home made mashed potatoes ?

An apple and a banana vs an industrial sugar and preservative ridden compote ?

I know removing or altering the meaning of words is a big trend these days but it seems dishonest to not see the difference here. I honestly think you'd have to be severely uneducated or straight up lying not to see it

So your gotcha is that he or all meat eaters equate hot dogs and chicken breasts and you’re trying to call him uneducated or a liar with this genius logic?

No gotcha, read the comment I'm replying to. “Low quality” “Processed” definitely have a meaning

There’s a lot of implications you’re making, like a frozen beef patty is never higher quality than one that is from a butcher. Your examples aren’t convincing.

Drastically reducing the consumption of real meat, especially beef, would have an impact on our greenhouse gas emissions comparable to making all planes and ships carbon neutral

I didn't know these numbers, so I had to look them up:

* Ships are responsible for 90% of international transport, their CO2 emissions accounting for approximately 2.2% of the global total of such emissions [0]

* Aircraft are responsible for 1.9% of greenhouse gas emissions (which includes all greenhouse gases, not only CO2) and 2.5% of CO2 emissions [1]

[0] https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/158911010/Working_Paper_4_Emissio...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation

That is an enormous lie.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... Agriculture in total is 10%. Transportation is 29%

Emissions in Transportation are dominated by road transport, which I didn't include. Road transport is responsible for about 70-80% of all transport emissions.

See for example [1] for a more detailed breakdown. They list Aviation as 1.9% of total emissions, Shipping (by ship) as 1.7%, Livestock & manure as 5.8%. So by those numbers planes and ships add to 3.6, much less than the 5.8 of livestock (and that's not including use of energy or transport for livestock).

1: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

That data is from 2016. It’s rather outdated. That amount of percentage change is rather low for the disproportionate impact it would have, its like convincing others to use a raspberry pi 3 for a gaming desktop to use less energy but ignore the hvac that can be replaced with more efficient energy usage with less of an impact.

With data from 2020 the comparison would be unfair and even worse, look e.g. at chart 2 in [1] about how transportation emissions changed in recent years. I can't find good worldwide numbers newer than 2016, but my statement should have plenty of margin to hold for a couple of years after 2016.

> That amount of percentage change is rather low for the disproportionate impact it would have

That's the neat thing about artificial meat (what this whole thread was about): at its best it promises to slash the need for livestock without requiring any change in consumer behavior. The consumer shouldn't even notice that it's not real meat they are eating.

Of course there's impact on farmers, but that's no different from the petroleum industry being harmed from the move to EVs.

1: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/transport...

>That's the neat thing about artificial meat (what this whole thread was about): at its best it promises to slash the need for livestock without requiring any change in consumer behavior. The consumer shouldn't even notice that it's not real meat they are eating.

They know. That is the hope, but the plant based ones are disgusting. If you're talking about the bovine serum derrived one, you're assuming a 1:1 replacement that is equal in price. Manure is used to fertilize plants, it is used as a fuel in india, and can be used as a substrate to grown mushrooms but its benefits are ignored since solutions aren't really being suggested, only the complete removal of cows is acceptable.

All these problems are wealthy problems, the poor are not going to have this impact them, and it will cost too much for it to reach the masses.

That seems pretty comparable.

If you consider 10% to be 29% it certainly is very comparable.

Comparable doesn't mean identical. It means they exist on the same scale, or are of similar magnitude. Obviously that's subjective to an extent, but a factor of 3 is only half an order of magnitude - sufficiently similar that "enormous lie" seems a rather unfair description.

Nearly 300% difference is a huge and fitting description of a huge lie. 10% is also all agriculture, not just bovine production, and even if you removed trucks in transportation, I am sure its not going to be similiar at all.

This is largely a red herring. The entire world could become vegetarian overnight and emissions would only be reduced by a couple percentage points. Reducing oil dependence is a far more fruitful endeavor to pursue.

"reducing oil dependence" is hardly a singular task. "Reduce Meat consumption" would rank lower than "make electricity production less dependent on coal, natural gas and oil" but higher than "find a viable alternative fuel for ships".

Luckily we have enough people and resources that we can work on multiple problems at once

We already have nuclear as an alternative, it’s just not being used.

Using buffalo instead would lower emissions, use less resources and give healthier meat but the war against beef isn’t really looking for solutions, it’s trying to fit the abolishment of rudiments as the only acceptable method.

Yes, yet that doesn’t make it any easier to change peoples dietary preferences.

In the UK under rationing during WW2, during which people ate very little meat, the health of the population soared. Mortality dropped, both in infancy and old age. Children grew taller and heavier.

Also during WW2, occupying Germans removed all animal livestock from Norway - so Norwegians had to survive on wholegrains, legumes, fruit and vegetables. Deaths from strokes and heart disease plummeted almost immediately. After the war, the consequent return to eating animal products saw the previous levels of disease return.

We eat far more protein than we actually need today.

They were worried about famine, people were starving and children didn’t get proper nutrition and were prone to more disease, girls stopped menstruating. Some Norwegians were lucky and grew their own food including animals. The fact your cited the malnourishment of these unfortunate people as a citation to justify your propaganda of poor nutrition and eating habits is evidence that nobody should take you seriously, it should only be seen that your dreadful beliefs as the opposite of what to do unless they agree with your advocacy for stunted children, non menstruating females, and being prone to illnesses such as diarrhea, pneumonia and meningitis, which will kill them before heart disease and they won't live long enough to have a stroke either.

https://www.kubenarendal.no/Eydehavn/undervisning/barndomung...

>In the UK under rationing during WW2, during which people ate very little meat, the health of the population soared. Mortality dropped, both in infancy and old age. Children grew taller and heavier.

Okay but is it because of eating very little meat, or because of rationing itself? Looks like it's simply because a lot of people got a steady and stable supply of calories and vitamins/minerals, not anything to do with meat.[0] . In other words rationing + more meat could have easily produced even better results. Meat, after all, is an excellent nutritional choice.

[0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/9728

edit: wowza typos

A lot of things were rationed in WW2. What definitively points to excess meat as the culprit?

You cannot make absurd claims like yours without any source whatsoever. Please link it below.

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