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Comment by goaheaddownvote | Hacker News Reader

People are kinda stupid when it comes to eating meat. The current scale of meat consumption [1] is just mind boggling. Yet even this comment has to be a throwaway because people can't handle someone telling them they shouldn't eat meat 2x a day.

It's bad for the environment, it's bad for individual health, it's bad for collective health (breeding drug resistance and causing pandemics), and all that is before we even talk about the mass scale of needless suffering inflicted on other sentient beings.

I don't know what the solution is, because as soon as you mention eating less meat people laugh at you or get super defensive. "What, do you care about the animals?" is something I've had people say to me in all seriousness.

When I gave it up it felt similar to giving up cigarettes, you get depressed and feel exiled from a joy you used to share with others. But that's what addiction does to you and once you get to the other side you wonder how you even participated in such negative behavior in the first place.

My fantasy solution is everyone needs to go get a meat consumption license by going to a farm and killing an animal with a knife in their hands every, say, 10 years. If you can't do it, then you have no business participating in consuming it. Bonus points if you're a regular hunter.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/animals-slaughtered-for-m...

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Overuse of antibiotics in livestock is certainly a problem, but this is also true for many of the pesticides we use for plant farming and our lack of standardized irrigation water testing (in the US) which has lead to issues like the recent E. Coli outbreak in lettuce. In general modern farming of all kinds has issues that need to be addressed, I don't see any exclusivity in the meat category.

I will continue eating meat, I believe it is *good* for both individual health and collective health. In fact the amount of vegans I've met in life who didn't look like they were suffering from some illness has been very rare, only solidifying my position on this.

I'm comfortable with meat prices going up if it resolves the antibiotics issue, but I'm unconvinced by the moral arguments you disguise as health arguments.

Every Vegan I know either looks like an underwear model or an athlete. Doesn't mean that all of them are like that though. Although being Vegan definitely stops you from eating at most horrible fast food places. Whenever someone asks me if I feel healthier since cutting out meat I just say "Beer is Vegan."

The moral arguments are pretty solid though. The amount of rainforest currently being clear cut to make way for cattle is insane. Ecosystem destruction is being fueled heavily by the demand for meat products. The US used to be covered in huge forests that were clear cut for cattle, way before any of us were born. Use of antibiotics is just one more aspect of why we should probably cut back heavily on beef.

The pricing does a good job of this, but I would encourage meat eaters to reduce consumption of beef products as much as possible. Maybe make it an occasional treat instead of the main course of every meal.

> Every Vegan I know either looks like an underwear model or an athlete

That sounds like the vegetarians I know. The vegans I know look like cancer patients.

Veganism can act as cover for disordered eating; perhaps that is what you have observed.

Related, I know many “vegetarians” who are what I call effective vegans, meaning they eat vegan ~90% of the time, recognizing purity as a pointless pursuit.

Anecdotally, vegetarian seem to eat a lot of eggs, fish, etc. Yes I know fish is technically not vegetarian, but.. they call themselves vegetarian and certainly avoid other meats.

Just saying, my experience with vegans is very limited. For all you know, the vegans you know are, in fact, cancer patients. Cancer patients are much less rare than vegans after all. Not everyone tells the people around them.

> Cancer patients are much less rare than vegans after all.

Maybe in the general population, but not in my social circles (which skew young and urban.)

> In fact the amount of vegans I've met in life who didn't look like they were suffering from some illness has been very rare, only solidifying my position on this.

I would push against this sort of anecdotal view. The circle of people we eat with (and therefore know the dietary restrictions of) tend to be quite low compared to all the people we meet with on a day to day. Additionally, "looking sick" is a vague enough assessment that simply knowing someone is a vegan may very easily cause you to be much more critical of their appearance, and vice versa you may see someone who looks sick to you and then pay more attention to their dietary habits than you ordinarily would. Another thing to note is that all dietary restriction lifestyles is subject to a noticeably higher rate of disordered eating or intestinal issue that leads to the person participating in the dietary change and therefore it may be important to first determine if the disordered eating or gut issue caused veganism vs the other way around.

That is to say: even though I am neutral towards veganism itself, your logic as to why meat is good reads to me as quite flawed and poorly reasoned around.

What do you want me to say here? The science is pretty much settled that we are omnivores, you can't just ditch meat without consequences. Yes there are substitutes, but in practice do vegans consistently eat these at the right amount to compensate for the lack of meat in their diet? Well my first hand experience tells me this is a big fat NO.

Let's put it another way, imagine some guy likes to pester you about your eating habits, says they are unhealthy, and that their diet is healthy. Well the burden of proof is on them and as someone who cares about staying fit, if the guy trying to convince me either looks like skin & bones, or is overweight, then they are already on shakey ground. This has been my first hand experience multiple times.

Ultimately my ancedote is not meant to be a counter-argument, but instead a reminder to those reading to touch grass. Because why wouldn't your personal experiences matter more than the anecdotes and misinformation spread by strangers online? (This applies to my own anecdote as well)

I'm just saying that "well everyone I met who is vegan looks sick" is shoddy reasoning to proclaim eating meat is the healthy behavior. That's it. I already clearly said I have no opinion on veganism itself, nor am I pestering you with a claim that any one diet is healthy.

Most people on this forum are flabby omnivores but nobody is going to use that observation to condemn plants or meat because it doesn't make sense. Same with someone's carnivore hot dog diet. Or someone's vegan Skittles diet.

I agree with you here. I'm not advocating everyone be vegan -- I'm not even personally vegan! I don't even think most people should be vegetarian, as much as I'd love to live in that future. I don't even think I made any arguments one way or the other, just that it's generally pretty bad and maybe we should do less of it!

I just find that most people when confronted with a fairly straightforward way to mitigate massive environmental and global health problems (eat less meat), people will get up in arms and defensive and shut the conversation down immediately. They'll make all sorts of assumptions about what you're implying about them, which I feel like points to the fact that people in their deepest self know that it's somewhat wrong.

It's kinda funny is all, it's the same behavior I engaged in when people told me I should consider smoking less or not at all.

>I don't see any exclusivity in the meat category

It's exclusive in the resource requirements, which are an order of magnitude greater than for plant-based foods.

> My fantasy solution is everyone needs to go get a meat consumption license by going to a farm and killing an animal with a knife in their hands every, say, 10 years.

I have heard this repeated from so many vegans / animal activists at this point, including my own sister. Where did you get it from? Who is the original author? I am seriously asking.

An argument involving only my individual health (I am into fitness stuff) plus effect on the environment - repeated enough times - would sway me.

To be completely honest: I do not appreciate being told that I am an immoral human being for X (X = eating meat).

Been told that too many times already during my lifetime. It is a cultural constant. That formula is just too tiresome to hear yet again at this point.

I don't get it. In most circumstances, if one doesn't want to be called immoral for performing an objectively cruel act, the standard course of action would be to stop doing it.

Why would one who inflicts or remunerates mistreatment, slavery, and death upon animals expect to be shielded from criticism on the count of it potentially hurting their feelings?

There’s a huge difference between killing animals and eating their meat. Likewise there’s a world of difference between industrial scale livestock and smaller, organic, free-range farming - on many levels. Yes, animal slaughter is require for meat production, and by eating meat we contribute to said slaughter. But there’s a ton of nuance in between, and people know this.

It’s a really disingenuous argument to pretend these are exactly the same thing from an ethical standpoint. In Buddhist ethics, for example, intention is key: monks cannot kill an animal but they may eat meat if offered. People who cry about the moral or ethical basis of some decision often make uninformed arguments believing an issue is black and white. Ethics is gray all the way down.

Until technology advances thee is only one way to make meat: by killing a living creature. You do not get to just remove that step from the conversation because you don’t like it. There is no “huge difference” when the action is a required part of producing meat.

But… if the animal is treated well during its lifetime, and slaughtered humanely (as painlessly as possible), almost everybody isn’t going to have a problem with it. You are then getting into religious beliefs which most are not going to agree with.

Admittedly a lot of current practices are pretty horrible.

I agree that killing is inseparable from consumption.

But there is absolutely a huge degree of difference in how the killing occurs, and how the animal is treated during its life leading up to it.

These differences materialize as an array of options when deciding what to purchase, and are factors that can be weighed by an individual.

The difference is there and quite meaningful once you examine the spectrum of realities involved in modern meat production.

One might still believe that no form of animal killing is ever acceptable regardless of circumstances, but that places the argument in a different category.

The topic here is about animals who are fed excessive quantities of antibiotics while healthy, fattening them up to the point that their skeletons frequently fracture because they can't bear the weight. These are not well-treated "happy hens". They are chickens crammed by the tens of thousands into barns with about as much square footage as it has birds. Sometimes less. The unroofed "free range" they get access to may amortize out to a couple square inches per bird, in a portion of the facility they'll never reach due to bird traffic.

It is of no solace to any of the 40 billion individual chickens presently in factory farms that some others may be raised in a coup in a backyard of someone's hypothetical uncle's house. And the hypothetical existence of said uncle has no relevance to the act of paying others to abuse birds in farms, which is where every single person reading this is getting either the vast majority or all of their bird flesh.

To be clear, I find the conditions you're describing to be abhorrent and an unacceptable norm, and I've argued elsewhere in this thread to that end.

But real free-range farms actually exist, and are not someone's "hypothetical uncle's house". The products of these farms are available in stores, and purchasing them does not contribute to the abuse of animals in factory farms.

To claim otherwise cannot be justified by an examination of facts/reality, and is to claim that I didn't eat dinner last Thursday. This is not to say that sourcing food this way is easy, and it's certainly not cheap.

> the act of paying others to abuse birds in farms, which is where every single person reading this is getting either the vast majority or all of their bird flesh.

The point with all of this is that there is a nuanced conversation to be had. Oversimplified binary reductions do not represent reality nor are they a useful point from which to have a conversation about how to improve the status quo. Issuing blanket statements like the one quoted above can only create a wedge between your position and those who you'd arguably like to reach with it. I happen to agree with you re: the horrors of unhappy hens, but you're also directly contradicting my lived experience.

GP's point is that eating isn't killing, you can eat meat without (personally) killing any animals, and that can be (and for very many is) emotionally different for people.

And the general counterpoint to this is that the emotional distance gained by not doing the killing has zero relevance to the moral acceptability of mass abuse in factory farms.

Furthermore, that emotional distance leads to even more grotesque behavior because people are so far removed from the process that they can remain completely unaware.

Over time, more people have become aware of child labor and otherwise horrible working conditions in the production of clothing and shoes. Not being directly exposed to those conditions does not in any way excuse those conditions or make them acceptable.

> objectively cruel act

You mean "subjectively"

Which is the whole crux of the issue isn't it?

You think it's "objectively cruel"

Many people don't think it is.

> I do not appreciate being told that I am an immoral human being for X (X = eating meat).

While I don’t think it’s useful to oversimplify this into a binary moral issue, I also think it’s necessary to be reminded about the realities of the choices we make.

Why do you not appreciate this sentiment? Inconvenient truths tend to not feel very good, but that doesn’t make them incorrect.

> Been told that too many times already during my lifetime. It is a cultural constant. That formula is just too tiresome to hear yet again at this point.

I mean this with all respect, but this really sounds like “well, the world hasn’t stopped abusing animals yet, so I really don’t have a choice but to participate, and it’s really tiresome when people point that out”.

Change starts from within. I’d argue that the reason these argument feel tiresome is because the current solutions are not easy ones. They require each of us to alter our habits and demand broader change.

This is legitimately hard. But neither is there some magic bullet that will solve this.

I fully appreciate that we’re all stuck in a system that we can’t do much individually to change. But the one thing we can change is ourselves, and this is an option that is always available.

I wouldn’t be so quick to call someone who eats meat immoral, and as a meat eater I’d be a hypocrite for doing so. I’ve also gone to lengths to acquire meat that is as ethical/humane as possible, and over time I’ve reduced consumption significantly.

There are historically plenty of culturally acceptable practices that are also deeply immoral upon further reflection. If you’re finding the arguments tiresome, that may be a good signal to listen more closely.

I agree. We should be able to acknowledge that we do harmful things without turning it into judgement on our overall character. It's not hypocrisy to admit that you do bad things sometimes.

> Why do you not appreciate this sentiment? Inconvenient truths tend to not feel very good, but that doesn’t make them incorrect.

Is this a genuine question?

We're social animals and calling someone immoral is going to be perceived as a social attack by non-neurodivergent people.

> I mean this with all respect, but this really sounds like “well, the world hasn’t stopped abusing animals yet, so I really don’t have a choice but to participate, and it’s really tiresome when people point that out”.

If you think this is just about animals you're missing most of the picture. In the modern day people are told they are immoral for many many reasons: driving cars, not turning off lights when they leave the room, not going to that BLM protest, not signing the anti-abortion petition, not going to church, using shampoo, not donating to ukraine/save the children/deworm the world, etc etc

It's an extremely common tactic used by every activist on every topic.

> Why do you not appreciate this sentiment? Inconvenient truths tend to not feel very good, but that doesn’t make them incorrect.

"You're immoral for X" is very often used by someone who wants to take a very grey issue and make it black and white, with their side obviously being the "right" one (and, just in case it's not clear, they label the other side as immoral). It's often a cheap rhetorical trick of someone who wants to win the argument by default, rather than having to go through the hard work of actually persuading people (which means having to deal with all the grey parts of the question). "I'm morally right, you're morally wrong, you should feel ashamed of your position, and therefore you should shut up" is almost never a good-faith argument.

That doesn't make them "inconvenient truths". That makes them rhetorical ammunition for someone who is interested in winning, not in truth or good-faith discussion.

Note well: This does not apply to all instances of the phrase "inconvenient truth". But it seems to me that it is used that way more often than it's used in good faith.

If one accepts they are an omnivore, and there is ample evidence to support this, then they do not feel it is immoral to kill animals for food. That would make one’s very existence immoral. You may disagree, but that doesn’t mean you’re right or that your point of view is the truth, convenient or otherwise and few people appreciate moral judgments from others.

I think it is a valid point. We can only indulge in such a guilt free way because we don't see how the sausage is made.

My friend will eat burgers and chicken nuggets all day, but a chicken drumstick with it's tendons and cartilage he is unable to eat, it is a necessary disconnect for him.

My tolerance is way higher but if part of ordering dinner was choosing a living animal for them to kill and prepare I would definitely just get tofu.

"We can only indulge in such a guilt free way because we don't see how the sausage is made."

That might be for some people. There are many that would have no guilt. As you point out, some people know what is in a chicken nugget (chicken) but eat it anyways. This path might slightly reduce the number of omnivores, but I doubt it would have a serious impact overall. Like any reduction in consumption from them would just lead to a lower price and increased demand either domestically or internationally.

IDK, I don't see any food-guilt issues from any of the countryside people I know who see "how the sausage is made" because they have done it, and have slaughtered some of the animals they have grown themselves.

And IMHO the discussions about "kill your own dinner" are quite impractical because that simply doesn't work in most conditions from the perspective of hygiene and food safety, and slaughtering is a job that does require quite some skill to do it properly, having it done by amateurs can easily be needless cruelty if you do it wrong. Like, I can butcher a chicken or a rabbit, but I would not be qualified to handle a pig or a cow properly.

Also, slaughtering as a process never was an issue for people. My grandma slaughtered chicken in her back yard.

I think it's important, as people who eat meat, to fully acknowledge the deep and societal harms that meat causes. It is well-studied that slaughterhouses are uniquely bad for a community and uniquely bad for the people who work there. Meat as a food can sometimes be bad for people, but meat as an industry is definitely bad for people. Knowing this can allow us to make more responsible choices even if we still end up eating meat, such as selecting for small, ethical farmers that also limit the trauma of themselves/those who do the slaughtering of their stock.

if you read the comment you're replying to carefully, you'll see they never said you or anyone else was immoral for eating meat, yet that's your takeaway.

I 100% agree with you in most regards (including being able to kill what you eat), but I don't think meat is bad for individual health. I recently did just 3 weeks of a carnivore diet as an experiment and it was boggling how much it affected my strength and recovery. Vegan and vegetarian both have had immediate negative impacts on recovery, even when supplementing protein and other vitamins.

From an altruistic perspective yeah, do not touch meat, but it does have health benefits that I have not been able to replicate with vegetarian alternatives.

Also a throwaway to say "eating meat is bad?" that isn't a crazy controversial stance haha.

> Also a throwaway to say "eating meat is bad?" that isn't a crazy controversial stance haha.

Can't speak for op, but it feels like 50% of the times I bring it up here, even when trying to be careful, my comment fades into low contrast…

Seeing this response so high up makes me a bit sad.

There's a lot of ways to eat vegetarian, and all the ones that I can think of that require supplementing protein and vitamins are unhealthy.

It should be obvious that eating a way that "had immediate negative impacts on recovery" indicates that what you're eating is not healthy.

You see this with a lot of omnivores, they try cutting meat out of their diet and complain. But, the thing is, an omnivore diet without meat is a deficient diet. It sounds a bit intimidating but you really have to rebuild the way you eat if you've been eating meat.

Cultures that have a vegetarian tradition (even if not described as such) provide a rich tapestry of foods to make a healthy diet rich in protein and vitamins. Ethiopian, Persian, Indian, Sri Lankian; these are just some of the cultures a successful and healthy vegetarian will take inspiration from. Eat like a world traveler and you can forgo meat without being unhealthy.

Quick list of good protein-rich ingredients across cultures:

Mushroom

Quinoa

Eggs

Halloumi

Chickpeas

Green/brown/red lentils

Peas

Paneer

Yoghurt

Walnuts/almonds/sunflower seeds/pistachios

And forget stews. Roast, broil, saute, crisp, brown! There are flavors unlocked by the family of Maillard reactions - the technical name for the chemical reactions that give rise to browning - that we associate with meat but are common to the process of roasting. Savory vegetarian food is a thing.

protein !== protein. Besides eggs those are all terrible sources of protein from an amino acid perspective.

I never said it was unhealthy to forego meat, just that I have never found a non-meat source that can compete. I was vegetarian for 6 months, have done tons of 3-6 week vegan stints, keto, carnivore and others all while doing rock climbing training and tracking my performance. I am noticeably weaker and more injury prone on a vegan/vegetarian diet. I do 3-6 weeks of veganism to intentionally lose muscle mass and lower my overall weight.

People and the internet can say whatever they want about nutrition but it will be hard to convince me when I can accurately predict how much strength I will lose when removing meat from my diet.

no, they are not "terrible", they're not complex proteins - excepting eggs. you have to mix two sources of simple protein to equal complex. good, bad; whatever your characterization of them may be, that's the foundation.

you again seem to be conflating your ability to measure something with the method itself being good. I think it's impossible for us to say your vegetarian diet is healthy when you say it makes you weaker, yet you point to being predictably weaker as a sign of knowing what you're doing? I'm not following.

I think the poster meant "complete protein" (providing all essential amino acids)

Plug garbanzos into cronometer.com and tell me which amino acid it lacks. Do it again for broccoli.

There's a weird amount of "vegetable denialism" in these comments from people who presumably never even looked up the nutrition info a vegetable.

Forget stew? I understand the motivations for being anti-meat, even if I don't agree with them, but anti-stew? Stew is great, even vegetables stews. How can you be anti-stew?

Hah, I'm not anti-stew. It's a conception you run into a lot, that healthy vegetarian food is a brown stew of chickpeas. I threw that in there for the skeptical.

Mushrooms straight up are not protein-rich.

Like sure, there aren't a lot of other calories either, so you can eat lots of them and get protein, but they are basically flavoring, not nutrition.

Eggs, paneer and yogurt aren't vegetarian.

Aren't vegan - but they are vegetarian. Veganism has consumed much of the vegetarian movement.

I think they were talking more about mental health. But that is just speculation.

> ... I don't think meat is bad for individual health

I agree with you here too, meat eating isn't in and of itself unhealthy, but the quantity and scale that most people engage with it at is not doing their body any favors. You sound like a very conscious person when it comes to their body, which is unfortunately atypical.

As someone that is extremely active as well (training 5x per week muay thai and ashtanga yoga, with lots of kettlebell work mixed in), I also agree that recovery can be much harder on a vegetarian diet. You really have to think about your nutrition more, but personally I've decided it's fine for me to make that recovery sacrifice for the benefit of animals and the Earth. I don't expect others to do the same though and I'm fine with that.

> People are kinda stupid when it comes to eating meat. The current scale of meat consumption [1] is just mind boggling. Yet even this comment has to be a throwaway because people can't handle someone telling them they shouldn't eat meat 2x a day.

I'm sensing a lack of empathy in this comment.

Calling people stupid or attaching any label to them will only hinder your attempt to sway their minds.

Portraying black and white thinking (splitting), when we know the world is shades of grey, also hinders your ability to change minds.

It's great that you found benefits to moving to a non-meat diet. This helps others see what they could benefit from. Continue from here.

I don't think the OP was trying to sway minds when they described meat consumption as stupid, they were simply stating the obvious.

There is absolutely no call for this.

This is the same issue as an abolitionist speaking to a slaveholder. The moral problem is so overwhelming for the abolitionist that it is exceedingly frustrating, difficult and ineffective trying to persuade the slaveholder.

> I'm sensing a lack of empathy in this comment

That is what is frustrating- to have to show more empathy for the feelings of the slaveholder than the slaveholder has for their slaves.

Lol, I get what you're saying but comparing meat eating to slavery makes you seem even more unreasonable.

If — and I recognise that it is an "if" given the current lack of any sufficient testable definition of subjective consciousness awareness of self — if farm animals are self-aware, then slavery would be several steps up from their current existence.

We only stopped feeding cows to other cows because of a fear humans might get prion diseases.

Coming at it from the other direction, "what if humans were food?" is a horror trope, be it vampires, zombies, werewolves, or psychopath cannibals.

> comparing meat eating to slavery makes you seen even more unreasonable

I think that is an attitude that our culture will be ashamed of in the near future, just like we are ashamed of slavery now. The agricultural practices are almost identical (different mammal). The major difference is that we consume the flesh of one, and the produce of another.

The only reason for saying that the enslavement of other animals is ok, while the enslavement of humans is not, is if we can come up with a reason that makes us special and those other animals not. There is only shaky ground for any of those possible reasons, and believing them puts blinders on what we can know. I.e., we will not recognize things that do not fit our conceptions, which has big implications for our biological science, psychology and philosophy.

The fact is that meat eating, like slavery, is not reasonable. It is just something we grew up doing (individually and as a species). Any argument advocating it is as superficial and misleading as antebellum racial theorists. That is an uncomfortable truth.

Nonsense. Try telling the lion it is being cruel to the Antelope, or the wolf it is being cruel to the deer. All life (minus plants and Cyanobacteria) get their energy from eating other living things. That’s just the way it works.

Rape is also ubiquitous in the animal kingdom (and human history), yet we don't find that to be a convincing moral justification for raping women.

It's only unreasonable to compare factory farming to human slavery if one believes that the rights of animals compared to humans is similar or worse than slaveholders believed the rights of their slaves to be compared to thme.

For the record I eat meat, but I'm under no illusions regarding the cruelty of the process. I support all laws that would increase farm animal welfare, even if it means my steak gets more expensive, it's simple enough to make good veggie dishes once in a while.

Have you been to commercial meat operations? I am not talking about millions of non human lives held in captivity, raped and slaughtered..but the condition of the labour in meat processing and meat packing industry.

It’s not a cowboy who brings your steak to the table, but probably some undocumented immigrant paid slave wages and living in a shed.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/21/life-inside-am...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/exploitation-a...

https://www.jsonline.com/in-depth/news/special-reports/dairy...

https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/smithfields-hog-f...

https://stonepierpress.org/goodfoodnews/wastelands-book-revi...

Sometimes we compare dissimilar things and in the process discover new truths. We don't compare them to see which is worse, we don't compare to rank them, but to discern similarities and differences and, in doing so, gain a better understanding of both our subjects; even, why not, of ourselves.

> have to show more empathy

"Empathy" is not "sympathy" ("in-" vs "with-"). You try to understand the position of the other (it's a projection), not necessarily sharing the feelings.

The poster clearly expressed that "if they do not see it, insulting will probably create a counterproductive reaction of closure - it's not helping them to see it".

Its an arbitrary line, holding slaves at least follows from the golden principle. What principle says don't raise animals in poor conditions or eat them? Are you extending the golden principle to apply to all animals? Why? Do you think these principles come from anything but a higher-order self-serving? Rather naive to make up a principle for no other reason than a poorly identified (non)-symmetry. I could see applying the golden principle to a dolphin but its probably some back of the mind idea that maybe one day my grandchilds grandchilds grandchild will be half dolphin and I should hedge for that eventuality.

I'm not trying to sway any minds, the majority of people aren't going to change their meat consumption habits at all and honestly I'm fine with that. I never said in my comment that everyone should be vegetarian. Being vegetarian requires a lot of thoughtfulness, especially if you're at all athletic (I train muay thai and ashtanga yoga), and most people don't have the time for it (or think they don't).

People become exceedingly defensive when they're asked to confront the reality of their habits, and honestly I think it's probably too much for people to even begin to consider. I have deep empathy for that as a fellow human as I've been through it too and have experienced both sides of it multiple times (meat eating -> veg -> meat eating -> and now back to veg for good).

imagine they were talking the same way about something you're not so sensitive about, something you agree with them on.

Hi, I'm seeing a lot of people misunderstanding and/or disagreeing with your points so I just wanted to say that I agree with you. I've always liked the taste of meat, but the older I've gotten, the more the idea of killing something, and then consuming it, has increasingly bothered me. It has led me to try stretches of vegetarianism over the past couple years.

I definitely wouldn't be able to kill an animal with a knife, unless I was starving.

I do agree that part of the problem is that the eating of animals has become so abstracted away (i.e. chicken tenders) that most people aren't even truly aware of what it is they're doing. I like the knife + license idea.

I like meat. Vegetables just don't cut it. Eating meat is one of the few pleasures in my life, and I'm not willing to give it up for some vague ideal.

I'd assume a lot of people think the same way. It could be considered somewhat arrogant to demand everyone to give up their personal pleasures for something you believe in.

We could solve all world's problems by collectively killing ourselves, but obviously we don't want to do that. Giving up things is somewhere on the spectrum between giving up our life and not giving up anything. Who gets to decide where the line is for everyone?

I'll just keep saying it in this thread, but not once did I say everyone should give up meat. In fact I said go at it, go hunt and kill and eat it!

But the fact that people feel defensive whenever the thought of vegetarianism comes up to me points to the fact that deep down people on an individual level know that it is, to some degree, wrong.

You called for introducing meat eating license, which would introduce friction and make people eat less meat. The end game is the same, the mechanism is different.

> But the fact that people feel defensive whenever the thought of vegetarianism comes up to me points to the fact that deep down people on an individual level know that it is, to some degree, wrong.

Maybe. Or maybe people just feel discomfort because of all the people who are trying to dictate to them what they can and cannot eat.

No one is forcing you to give up meat, and no one is forcing you to engage in this thread. The status quo of meat consumption is firmly entrenched in our society and if anything getting stronger (see the rise of the carnivore diet for example) and yet when someone on the internet seriously believes in the opposite and laments the hopelessness of the situation, they get bombarded by dozens of meat eaters with comments about how vegans look sick, meat is essential, etc...

Can you not see where the OP is coming from? Do you have any sympathy towards them? They seriously believe that meat eating is wrong, and yet when the mention that on the internet in a thread about antibiotic overuse, they got bombarded by pro-meat commenters.

> They seriously believe that meat eating is wrong

I seriously believe that meat eating is right. They can voice their beliefs, and I can voice mine. I don't really see the issue.

Are you saying vegetarians are tired of people telling them that what they believe is wrong? :)

For context, I eat meat too. And what I am saying (and to some extent the OP is saying) is that on balance, vegetarianism is more ethical and sustainable than meat eating. There is of course some nuance to it, i.e eating factory farmed meat is a lot worse than eating meat that you hunted or raised humanely. But for the most part, vegetarianism wins.

I am man enough to admit that, and I own up to the fact that my meat consumption is the less ethical choice. But a lot of posters on this thread seem to have fragile egos and instead of owning it, make up a bunch of half baked excuses why eating meat is the better choice.

> I am man enough to admit that, and I own up to the fact that my meat consumption is the less ethical choice. But a lot of posters on this thread seem to have fragile egos and instead of owning it, make up a bunch of half baked excuses why eating meat is the better choice.

So, you hold a belief, you consider it "the right belief" (ethically speaking) and then you even pat yourself on the back for being "man enough" to hold your belief, implying that anyone who doesn't agree with you couldn't possibly have any other reason to, but is simply "not enough of a man" to agree with you, and has a small peni... ahem, I meam, fragile ego?

I'm sorry man, but that only makes me think of you as a narcissistic virtue signaller. I don't care if you think I'm "not man enough", "ethically evil", or whatever evaluation of me as a person you come up with, I like meat and no amount of shaming will make me pretend I don't. If you wonder why people hate vegetarians, this holier-than-thou attitude might be one of the reasons.

If you want to convince people of ethical superiority of your beliefs, it might help to just stick to the cold facts. E.g. what framework of ethics you're starting from, and how does it make vegetarianism more ethical.

The definition of fragile ego right here. Name calling, circular arguments, and even a reference to reproductive organs. Just admit you were wrong. It is okay to be wrong sometimes.

> . In fact I said go at it, go hunt and kill and eat it!

This is a strange and unreasonable argument that's just designed to eliminate all meat, and not a good faith stance.

> We could solve all world's problems by collectively killing ourselves,

Don't worry, we're in the process of that.

> My fantasy solution is everyone needs to go get a meat consumption license by going to a farm and killing an animal with a knife in their hands every, say, 10 years

That's not a solution.

My grandmother's generation (, Chinese) has extensive experience with slaughtering animals. That generation still likes and craves meat.

You might have people who chicken out in the short term, but in a couple of years getting a butcher license will become normalized and you're back at square 1.

That's great! People should be in touch with the foods that they eat, preferably ones that they raise and aren't kept in nightmarish conditions on factory farms.

If people in my completely made up fantasy world eat tons of meat then that's fine too, but I do have a suspicion that many people wouldn't be so fine with doing it. I personally could not, so I don't eat animals.

> causing pandemics

Which pandemic was caused by people eating meat?

Much of what you said is true, but some of it is a stretch, and taken altogether it seems like an exaggeration.

Literally the current one? I mean yes there's the lab leak theory, but still the common explanation is that it first jumped the species gap at a meat market.

As another comment mentioned, the one we just lived through where I had to be inside for 2 years. It came from a live meat market.

That's so far from being decisively proven that I genuinely forgot it was one of the theories.

I wouldn't be surprised if we get a sufficiently human-transmissible avian flu pandemic within the decade, given how many non-avians the current strain has been killing in addition to birds.

Why shouldn't people eat meat 2x a day?

The graph you posted seems very reasonable compared to the world population. That's around 10 chickens a person per year, and chickens are one of the most efficient farmed animals per gram of protein.

The USDA recommends 65g of protein for me per day per https://www.nal.usda.gov/human-nutrition-and-food-safety/dri... . That's around 200g of cooked chicken, which I'd obviously split into multiple meals and mix with other foods. And other foods don't come close in amount of protein, I'd have to replace vegetables or other things with eggs/yogurt which is not obviously a good move.

Edit: A 1.4kg chicken yields 600g cooked meat, so that's a chicken every 3 days. That's around 100 chickens a year for me, personally.

Aren't chickens closer to 3kg now?

Downvoting because you insult people without providing the required citations, even though I somewhat agree.

Also, this really doesn't work at all: My fantasy solution is everyone needs to go get a meat consumption license by going to a farm and killing an animal with a knife in their hands every, say, 10 years.

Humans used to do that for hundreds of thousands of years.

> It's bad for the environment

If you are worried about carbon emissions, just tax them directly and use that money to offset them. If meat then becomes uneconomical, then I guess that's that and people will reduce their consumption accordingly. Though honestly I suspect that if we did that we'll magically find new ways to farm meat that will be less carbon intensive (which is just another reason to do it).

> it's bad for individual health

Eating more meat has actually been great for my individual health, since it has a low glycemic index and high satiation per calorie. Thanks to all the weight I've lost my blood pressure and cholesterol have both really improved. It would've been almost impossible for me without meat.

> it's bad for collective health (breeding drug resistance and causing pandemics)

That sounds like a case for banning antibiotics in agriculture, not for not eating meat.

> and all that is before we even talk about the mass scale of needless suffering inflicted on other sentient beings.

I don't mean to sound offensive here, but I suspect that this is the only reason people that care about this actually care about, since every other reason brought out just ends up feeling like an excuse brought forth to strengthen this position even though the solution doesn't actually require forgoing meat.

> My fantasy solution is everyone needs to go get a meat consumption license by going to a farm and killing an animal with a knife in their hands every, say, 10 years. If you can't do it, then you have no business participating in consuming it. Bonus points if you're a regular hunter.

At the very least you'd have to make an exception for people who are too old/weak/disabled to do it themselves. Also a problem for Kashrut since an animal killed that way would not be Kosher. I believe it would not be Halal either.

Unfortunately, there are people like my friends who specifically have dietary restrictions forcing them onto Keto (meat) diets. So the "it's bad for individual health" falls apart in the face of a diverse human population. The fantasy solution would probably end in them starving to death, or make them victims of Chronic Unscheduled Intestinal Liquidation.

Also, just from an animal cruelty standpoint. Making an amateur kill a live animal, with a knife? That is just incredibly cruel and unethical. I don't think that idea is compatible with the philosophy you espoused earlier.

I've been to a camp that made us do that for dinner. It was messy and prolonged the animal's suffering. Some of our more religious fellows also refused to eat it, since the culling wasn't done properly in accordance to their beliefs.

The specific choice of a knife would definitely increase suffering compared to the more humane standard methods used in small and large scale agriculture. What’s the point here, to make someone inflict pain and suffering as punishment for the transgression of eating meat?

If the point is to gross someone out, have them field dress or gut for a few hours.

I'd do it if I could use a gun or a captive bolt pistol, but I've been knocked over by large animals before and I assume they would get more aggressive if they think you are trying to kill them. A farm animal can't pull the trigger of a gun, but they could push a knife back on you. I have body armor and a helmet so I would be wearing them.

Why is meat bad for individual health? Citation?

It isn’t, in fact it’s more nutrient dense per calories than vegetables and legumes and rich in amino-acids necessary to maintain muscle mass which is increasingly important as you age.

It’s just something the anti-meat crowd parade, while omitting that:

- These beliefs come from epidemiological studies without regards for other life habits such as smoking or dietary choices such as sugar intake.

- Often when saying meat is bad, what is actually referred to is processed meat packed with salt and nitrites.

Eating chicken, pork or beef that you buy raw and cook yourself is healthy.

How much you eat of anything matters too. Don’t eat anything in excess and move.

> more nutrient dense per calories than vegetables

I'm not sure how this meme started, but it's not actually true. You can plug foods into Cronometer.com and see for yourself. e.g. carrots (vitamin A) or kale (vitamin K1) give you the RDA with few calories. I mean, the cocoa powder I added to my smoothie this morning had 100% RDA copper and 45% RDA iron in 57 calories.

Similarly, plants and plant-based foods have full amino profiles. Once again, plug anything from soy beans or even broccoli into Cronometer.com and look at the amino acid breakdown.

These are some really ancient wives tales about vegetables.

> These beliefs come from epidemiological studies without regards for other life habits such as smoking or dietary choices such as sugar intake.

This isn't true. Tracking and multivariate adjustment are standard fare for epi studies.

It's not a meme. If you look at research that look at foods rich in micronutrients, you'll see that meat covers most of them.

For example, yes Kale is rich in calcium and vitamin K than meat in general, but beef, pork or chicken covers a higher ratio of micronutrients than Kale. Obviously, one should not only eat meat. But the point was that meat itself does not make you sick (unless in excess, like anything).

> Similarly, plants and plant-based foods have full amino profiles. Once again, plug anything from soy beans or even broccoli into Cronometer.com and look at the amino acid breakdown.

Full amino acid profile doesn't mean that it contains the same amount, it just means that it's present. Moreover, nutrient absorption is often lower with vegetables than with meat.

Again, not saying one should not eat vegetables. One definitely should eat fruits and vegetables. But it's clear that lacking meat in one diet has long term consequences that reveals itself later in life.

> a higher ratio of micronutrients

I'm assuming here that we're talking about "nutrient density"—the ratio of nutrients per calorie. Is that what you means? Or are you using something like "per gram"?

That's what I mean yes. English isn't my first language. How should I have phrased it?

I'm not sure. We don't really have a specific term for it as far as I know.

I think it's mostly confusing because we're talking about how healthy food is, and because you talked about a ratio. Since we're in a situation too many calories is more of an issue than too few, nutrition-per-calorie is used as a rough proxy for how "healthy" a food is. Pure lard has a higher nutrition-per-gram ratio than beef. (So long as you consider calories to be part of the "nutrition".)

Be specific about the micronutrients because aside from a few things like protein and b12, I think you will be let down by your expectations when you plug meat into Cronometer.

What are all these micronutrients that you think 100g (184cal) of chicken has? Now compare the mineral and folate contents of 100g (121cal) edamame (first vegetable I saw in my freezer). Or compare it to 530g of cooked broccoli which has the same calories as 100g chicken (if isocaloric comparison is easier) and tell me that chicken is more nutrient dense per calorie.

I don't want to sound like I'm a Cronometer affiliate, but most people can't even estimate which foods have which nutrients until they plot a few days of their diet into Cronometer. I was certainly surprised, myself.

I highly recommend you log a whole day of eating into Cronometer to get an idea of where nutrients come from.

"I don't know what the solution is"

I'll get hate for my comment too, but the answer is less people.

Resource consumption (for multiple resources) and freedom are competing interests. You have to trade freedom to restrict resource consumption. But even if you do that for this topic (meat). You have to look at the secondary effects and still need to do that for other topics to make any impact.

For example, if you do away with meat, you would also have to do away with egg, milk, etc products. In some cases these products are used in things like formula, vaccines, etc. Every alternative has some trade-off too. Some may be better, some may be worse. If you're still producing eggs or milk for these other purposes, then you still have meat as a byproduct. You'll also end up with people raising their own, which is less efficient and possibly worse for the environment if done on a mass scale. Certainly worse for health impacts is done illicitly in high density areas.

I do agree that there are many people who are disconnected from their meat source, among other things (eg people who think hunting is cruel but happily eat mass produced meat, or want their almonds/almond milk). I'm not sure licensing will really fix that. Either it had to come with a wide restriction to local only production to remove many environmental issues and force people to see production issues more visibly, or we slowly reduce population so we can maintain our desired lifestyles.

My estimate is that we will see restrictions in historical freedoms and economic pressures on everyday activities. This will led to some natural reduction in population. But it will be precarious because there will be people who don't agree with the restrictions or nations willing to fight for resources.

Edit: If you're going to disagree, please say why. Specifically, why is it not true that reducing resource consumption to truly sustainable levels won't require lifestyle restriction or a population decline? And not just that some unknown future tech will save us from out current situation.

>It's bad for the environment

Burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment. A cow eating grass and dying is not.

The part of meat production that's bad for the environment is the machinery used to transport and process the meat. Grain, legumes, and vegetable farming also use machinery for transportation and processing. Outside of that, animals and plants are all part of a carbon-neutral cycle, so long as the plants aren't fertilized with Haber-Bosch excrement.

>it's bad for individual health

This is nearly 100% certainly wrong.

We can say with nearly 100% certainty that a human being cannot thrive without regularly eating meat, or at least dairy or eggs. This is evidenced by human beings having eaten meat for millions of years. Eating meat is Lindy. Million-year-old Lindy things, especially biological things like diet, are robust, resilient, antifragile.

Diet is a solved problem. It was solved over millions of years of humans, their predecessors, and their extinct offshoots trying and testing various foods/diets. The ones who survived ate and continue to eat meat. Guess what happened to the other ones.

>I don't know what the solution is, because as soon as you mention eating less meat people laugh at you or get super defensive

Less is pretty relative, and there is no solution, because there is no problem. It's understandable people are going to get defensive when you attack their means to life.

Just eat how your ancestors ate. For a Northern European, that means a lot of milk and meat. If you're Mediterranean, follow the Greek Orthodox tradition - periodic meat and vegetable eating. If you're an Eskimo, eat a bunch of fish.

> We can say with nearly 100% certainty that a human being cannot thrive without regularly eating meat, or at least dairy or eggs. This is evidenced by human beings having eaten meat for millions of years.

Uh...your second sentence is evidence that you can thrive while regularly eating meat, but not evidence that you can't thrive without it.

Meanwhile, your first sentence entails that there's no such thing as a thriving vegan.

Maybe eating meat is natural, and healthy, and moral, but you might want to limit your arguments to those that don't deny basic observable facts.

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