goaheaddownvote

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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).

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...