I don’t know about you, but I’m both amazed at the persistence of this meme, and getting tired of it. This notion that vegetarians, by existing, are somehow trying to “covert” meat-eaters, or impose their diet on them, or being critical of meat eating.
Being omnivores, humans have a lot of choices in what they eat. Being vegetarian is a choice. It’s just as much a choice as deciding whether or not to eat beets, or whether you like rye bread with seed or without seeds… or maybe you don’t like rye bread and choose not to eat it.
Of course, there are some vegetarians who do seem to have an agenda, and approach their diet from ethical grounds, but that’s not all vegetarians. Some, like my mother-in-law, simply do not like meat and that’s totally fine. Others are in it because they believe it is healthier. Some might be because that’s they way they were raised. Lots of reasons to choose one diet over another.
Well, if you posit that most people have to justify meat eating to themselves, and then shoot down those justifications, you are a person with an agenda.
Wild deer are a bit different to herds of domesticated cattle. In particular deep can jump into fields of crops and cause damage, whereas sheep and cattle generally can’t. So there is a good case for a continued cull of deer for consumption. As I’ve said, I’m not against hunting.
Or we could encourage bears and wolves to return, although that would make countryside rambling somewhat more entertaining than it already is.
It’s true that there are a lot of reasons to eat vegetarian, one of them not liking meat. But in my experience, the most vegetarians I know have ethical, medicinal or ecological reasons. Also, there must be many vegetarians who still crave meat, enough for an ongoing boom of vegetarian/vegan meat substitutes.
Most of the people i know buying meat substitutes are not vegetarian, but have concerns about eating meat and would like to eat less.
Yes, most people who are actually vegetarian, and not just “don’t eat much meat” have some reason other than food preference, be it ethical, health, or religious. But most of them never really craved meat, either. It’s the people with ethical, etc. reasons who do crave meat, and eat it but feel bad about eating it, who seem to be driving the market for fake meat. Too bad the stuff isn’t any healthier than meat. (But it probably does involve fewer suffering animals.)
A lot of non-vegans/non-vegetarians seem to have an issue with the concept of fake meats, usually based on utterly flawed and inane questions of the form: “If vegans don’t like meat, why do they make fake meat?”
I meant that TMC’s morality seems determined by the majority.
For me, slavery is abhorrent and immoral, and I hope I’d still believe that, even if I were the last human to think so.
Some (not all) of the ‘swap’ type products are pretty dire in nutrition - fake cheese seems to be about the worst, usually comprising a sort of solidified custard made from coconut oil and starch.
For fake meats, there seems to be a loosely inverse correlation between the aesthetic similarity to meat and the nutritional quality - products like sausages seem to be able to get the balance right - I suppose because sausages themselves don’t really resemble meat.
My SIL is a vegan. Like most vegans she is in it for ethical reasons. He housemate rescued a chicken (maybe several chickens) who had been commercial laying hens, and were being “disposed of” because they were no longer laying enough eggs. So they had pet chickens. And of course, the hens still laid a few eggs.
So she decided to try one. After all, there are no ethical problems with eating the unfertilized egg of your pet chicken.
She said she got halfway through cooking it and felt nauseous. Eggs have become disgusting to her. She didn’t eat the egg.