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Comment by satvikpendem | Hacker News Reader

Given that most people want to eat meat, as an axiom, looks like you will have to choose one or the other. In this case, if one is concerned for sentient animal welfare, then insects could be a great solution (although they'd be more of a protein source, not actually meat), or better yet, lab-grown meat, since that's ideally identical to animal-cultivated meat.

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> Given that most people want to eat meat

Nature vs nurture?

I think most people want to eat good tasting, ideally nutritious food.

Probably nature, due to the preponderance of evidence for it, and that likely evolved into a cultural phenomenon too. There is a reason all societies eat meat in one form or another.

Yes, humans are omnivores. Meat is a natural component of our diet.

There is evidence of vegetarian communities and tribes too though:

Native Americans: https://www.ivu.org/history/native_americans.html

Indians: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism

The substantive difference is that we don't need to look for evidence of meat-eating communities and tribes. They're all around.

I’ve been wondering how snails fit into this. I know they have some higher calcium needs, but their carbon footprint per gram of protein is a fraction of chicken. Granted, I know most of their flavor comes from the butter and garlic they are cooked with, but speaking as someone who likes escargot, why is the focus always on crickets? What is the missing piece?

> why is the focus always on crickets

Virtue signaling by eating something gross? Dunno.

Higher protein content per carb, easier to grow than other small animals.

In terms of protein and CO2 eq, the snails seem comparable if not better than crickets, if I’m reading the data correctly, with .7 kg CO2 eq per kg for the snails (edible meat) vs 1.3 for crickets, and 16g protein vs the crickets 14-20g.

Granted, there may be other factors in play, such as how easy they are the farm as you mention.

Then we should eat snails, at least they have that meaty texture compared to crickets. Perhaps other forms of bugs could work though, the ones in The Lion King sure looked tasty.

Further research is yielding that, in the USA, they are considered pests, and so somewhat highly regulated: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-are-snails-raised

I prefer rib-eye though, from a cow, not a lab.

Even if they were otherwise indistinguishable at some point in the future?

Even if they are indistinguishable at some point the OP gets to make his/her own choice.

Sure, and we're allowed to consider such a choice - to explicitly prioritize suffering - to be psychopathic.

If it makes you feel better, you can label my preference however you see fit dear internet stranger. I merely pointed out that not everyone who eats meat does it strictly to ingest a specific combination of proteins.

Some of the replies seem to imply that life is some abstract combination of chemicals. Just do a double blind test, and be "unable to believe it's butter". Once neuralink is up to spec, plug in, be happy, and "free of suffering".

I believe there is much to be done to reduce suffering, and it's a worthy goal, primarily for humans, and also for animals. One animal killing another for food is not on that list of you ask me. The problem is that we do treat animals very poorly, at tremendous scale, but that is not the only way. In my opinion there is nothing ethically or morally wrong to kill an animal for consumption. We're still (barely) free enough to disagree ;)

You've entirely skipped answering the actual question, though.

If the taste, appearance, etc. of a lab-grown ribeye - perhaps they grow an entire headless, brainless cow and ensure it manages to get exercise - is identical, would your preference still be the one that required a thinking creature to die?

Is it the death that matters, or the taste?

Yes. Although I think the example is ridiculous.

But it's not the death that matters. The death is just what happens, and I have no issues with that.

That would imply "I prefer rib-eye though, from a cow, not a lab" is not necessarily true, then.

I certainly prefer a rib-eye to tofu, but that's not the question.

The question is why, why do you prefer a cow over something chemically identical? I don't understand that part of your opinion.

Why? And how would you be able to tell if given a double-blind test?

(Not the OP) Because I don't trust Kraft and other food companies not to completely fuck about with it in the name of saving a dollar.

If it is 100% chemically identical to meat from a cow, I'll try it. If it's full of other chemicals not present in a piece of dead cow I won't.

That's a fair concern, with a live cow you at least know what you're getting.

you've had rib-eye from a lab?

Have you ever had rib-eye from a lab?

Insects aren't sentient?

Probably not, they don't seem to exhibit the same sorts of signs as higher level species.

Higher level species? Your comment seems to have some preconceived biases.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/do-insects-have-co...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weve-been-looking...

https://www.animal-ethics.org/invertebrate-sentience-a-revie...

Sure, I don't know the recent research, so I'm not the right person to ask about insect sentience.

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