Comment by existencebox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by existencebox | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

No bait intended, I honestly mean it. I just felt like "it tastes good" being a weak justification since it is by nature very subjective, so I look for a better justification.

also, to answer in order: -Indeed, there are multiple approaches, and this is why I find it hard to select one vs. the other. If my body "craves" meat, there's usually a reason due to digestive peptides that the nutrition from the food I'm craving is something that'd be useful. I realize I could with time potentially reprogram this, but, the statement stands.

-You'd actually be wrong. I enjoy both bow hunting (which I had the opportunity to learn initially as a boy scout) and game shooting.

-If you notice, I qualify that with avoiding creating undue harm. I think it's quite a strawman to draw an equivalence between consuming animals that are killed in a humane fashion with e.g. rape especially. If you kept it to manslaughter, you'd have a stronger point, since I have a hard time arguing against anything outside of specific targeted uses of violence either. (please don't take this as bait; just that there have been wars in history I do not oppose.)

People crave sugar, nicotine, narcotics, and other things that aren't good for them, so your argument falls apart there.

You crave meat for a variety of psychological and physiological reasons, but not necessarily because you're missing something that meat provides.

My argument for not eating meat is simple - why kill something for food if I don't have to?

> My argument for not eating meat is simple - why kill something for food if I don't have to?

Mostly, unless you've developed some kind of novel purely-synthetic foodstock, you have to (well, you can probably get away with dismembering living things rather than killing them, in some cases.) To a certain extent, you have a choice about whether the "something" killed or dismembered is plant, animal, fungus, etc.

There isn't exactly a lot of evidence that plants feel pain or can suffer in the same way that animals can. Even if they could, you'd still be minimizing the amount of killing by not eating meat, since animals have to be fed.

So as I said above, there's a certain degree of actual feedback in terms of your body "Wanting" foods that contain proper nutrients, and while with a combination of multiple types of beans, supplements, and other foods you can approximate some of the proteins you'd be missing out on by not eating meat, it's both far more complicated (and until recently in my life, expensive), and as my initial statement about a lack of "True Understanding"(tm) of necessary nutrition tried to state, has potential long term effects. (and I mean biologically long term, multiple generations. If there are meaningful long term studies on what various exclusionary diets do across generation I'd like to see them, but my understanding was that our data was currently very insufficient.) So I'd respond, there are some constraints that don't say I _have_ to eat meat, but certainly shift the cost/benefit analysis more in its favor.

With the exception of gym rats or those with a job that requires strenuous physical labor, the body doesn't require that much protein.

I've been a vegetarian for 15 years or so, and would question your statement that finding non-meat protein alternatives is complicated.

It sounds like you're trying to make an argument that not eating meat could have long-term health hazards, in which case I'd argue that it's easier to prove that meat is bad for you than it is to prove not-eating it is.

I don't think I'd draw the line as high as "gym rats." I was brought up in a family with a vegan mother, and at home generally had to conform to that same diet. During university, I had a majorly carb based (very unhealthy as well) diet. Across all three, when I finally had the money to buy good quality meat on a regular basis (3-4 times a week), I not only felt FAR better, but my rather light workout regimen (2 sessions a day, 3 reps of 30 set's of a variety of free weight exercises), became FAR more effective. I put on ~10-20 pounds within a few short months, and found myself far more capable in terms of both performing and recovering from the rather simple physical tasks I do as a sysadmin (staying on my feet most of the day, racking rather heavy servers)

Now, this is all anecdotal, I was just addressing that my body responded in a way that suggested that I did "require" the protein.

With regards to the more formal argument, I'd word it more that you put yourself more "at risk" for certain health hazards by cutting ANY core part of the diet out. It's certainly easy to prove meat is "bad" but most of the studies I had seen involved excessive consumption, which defaults back to the general statement of "all things in moderation". Do you have references that show the former (negative effects) without the latter? (ineffective dietary balance).

To summarize, I'd agree if we're only talking in extremes, that it's very easy to show that meat is bad. So I'd qualify all my previous statements with "a well balanced diet"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com