Ask HN: Plant-Based Meat to Carnivores? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Plant-Based Meat to Carnivores?

If we can make plant-based meat which is healthy for carnivores, should we give it to them? I was watching a video showing a komodo dragon eating a deer alive from back to front. The suffering of the deer was unimaginable. It makes me wonder if we should ever interfere?

Pros : reduce a lot of suffering. We do a lot to reduce human suffering, but don't animals also deserve a life without suffering.

Cons : No right to interfere with nature; knowing people, we will probably screw it up completely.

Thoughts?

View on HN

I am a carnivore and unashamed by it, due to the two factors:

- In nature getting eaten (and hence killed) is part of life

- Humans are in my opinion mainly carnivorous (basically because we have a handful of needed animal amino acids that we cannot synthesize ourselves and that our intestines composition is much, much closer to carnivores "averages" than vegetarian "averages")

I do buy grass fed cows and pig whenever I can (I don't really eat any poultry), even at far greater cost.

Farmed animals on grass from a caring farmer does not suffer much. Maybe half an hour of elevated stress (due to transport to the slaughter house) and a swift death (bolt pistol usually).

I am very skeptical on the "plant based meats" idea. Most of them thinks that the idea is to make something that tastes and has the same texture than real meat.

But I think, that is plainly wrong. Meat is an essential source of animal fat with amino acids, that (due to being fauna) cannot come from the plant kingdom (flora).

Also biology is much, much more complex than "we need to make it taste like meat", both ours and the animals we eat.

So I basically see no way of the plant based "meats" ever (in my life time) succeeding in getting as good food source as the real stuff designed by millions of years of evolution..

"Also biology is much, much more complex than "we need to make it taste like meat", both ours and the animals we eat."

I think this is a big part. I feel like throughout history we think we know more than we actually do.

Which amino acids?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid

"The amino acid distribution profile is less optimal in plant foods than in animal foods.[12][13] but it is not necessary to consume plant foods containing complete proteins as long as a reasonably varied diet is maintained.[14] Numerous pairs of different plant foods can provide a complete protein profile. Certain traditional combinations of foods, such as corn and beans, or beans and rice, contain the essential amino acids necessary for humans in adequate amounts.[15] The official position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is that protein from an appropriate planned combination of a variety of plant foods eaten during the course of a day can be nutritionally adequate when caloric requirements are met.[14]"

> So I basically see no way of the plant based "meats" ever (in my life time) succeeding in getting as good food source as the real stuff designed by millions of years of evolution..

Why is the takeaway not just that humans have evolved to be healthy on a huge variety of diets?

Humans can live perfectly fine on vegetarian diets. Even grow "strong" as you define it. Please go read something real

Humans can also make themselves sick on both carnivore and plant based diets. We are still just beginning to understand the complexity of how diet relates to health.

This is a great example of Chesterton's fence.

Predators keep population numbers low. Which prevents overgrazing, which protects the environment, which ensures herbivores can survive.

The Yellowstone park's reintroduction of wolves is a pretty good example of it.

It's really just arrogance to assume we need to or should interfere with nature, but I appreciate the good intentions and don't mean that in a negative manner.

well my app sucks and this should have been a top level reply. My bad

>No right to interfere with nature

Not exactly sure what that means, but anything we do interferes with nature. Our meat eating massively interferes with nature.

If the idea is about saving that gazelle from getting attacked by lions by ensuring all wild carnivores are constantly feed so much artificial meat that they're too full to hunt, then that seems like a weird angle of attacking the problem of suffering. Because you can reduce both suffering and interference by firstly tackling factory farms where billions of animals are tortured and killed with industrial precision. In fact at this point the majority of mammals isn't even free and living in the wild anymore but they're in human captivity. And since we're going through a man-made mass extinction on a scale that the world hasn't seen in millions of years (Holocene extinction or Anthropocene extinction) these numbers are only going to get worse.

So, isn't that a bit of an alibi concern? We can worry about the edge cases and philosophical questions like 'should Komodo dragons be allowed to kill' once we've we've figured it out for ourselves.

I think that trying to do this for wild animals, aside from being highly impractical, can cause unintended side effects. For example, one well known account of the positive effect of carnivores on their environment has been the story of the reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone National Park[0]. Aside from unintended side effects, I don't think we'd be able to find an effective way in practice to give all these wild animals fake meat and prevent them from hunting in the wild.

I think domesticated animals and humans are a different story. While I highly doubt that any plant based methods will be able to replace a healthy carnivorous diet for obligate carnivores like cats, I have high hopes for cultured meat options in pet food. I believe there is already research and product development ongoing into this for dogs[1]

[0] https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-r...

[1] https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/ANIC/launch...

Do animals deserve a life without suffering? Someone convince me. Do even humans deserve a life without suffering? Who/what grants and enforces this right? Is it more moral to reduce human suffering or animal suffering?

By feeding plant based meats to Komodo dragons instead of their normal diet, you are assuaging your human suffering that you feel over watching the deer get eaten as nature intended, not lessening the animal’s suffering.

Most of the plant "meats" that we have today are not healthy at all due to their pursuit to taste like meat.

I would be highly skeptical that we could manage to grow enough/manufacture plant based "meat". Then we would have to somehow distribute it to all the wild animals. We would still need to find a way to prevent attacks between feedings when the opportunity arises. Some animals will kill for "fun" or practice (like coyotes killing domestic sheep).

Basically it's an insurmountable task. We can't even manage to end human suffering.

From an ecosystem point of view that would be a disaster. You'd disrupt/destruct so many food chains with unpredictable results

Reply on news.ycombinator.com