I mean, I like tofu, but it just doesn’t hit the spot that meat hits. I’ve yet to eat a faux meat product that tastes like meat. Most of what’s on the market needs to be heavily spiced to be palatable at all. Maybe we’ll get there, but honestly, I expect it to be vat-grown mammal muscle, not fungi, that do the trick.
Yes, raising meat is the optimal use for a lot of marginal land, including big chunks of the American plains. You need a lot of irrigation to grow crops in places cattle thrive.
But the real reason to eat meat is because it’s delicious. That and health arguments.
I have a couple of friends who can no longer digest the plant foods they used to enjoy, and are now mostly eating meat and white rice. One was mostly vegetarian, and is grumpy about needing to eat so much meat. (The other lines meat, but has an extremely restricted diet, and is grumpy he can’t eat onions or garlic or most vegetables or many fruits or any beans any longer.)
That doesn’t mean it’s okay to torture meat animals. I don’t eat American veal, I’ve cut way back on pork, and I buy expensive eggs from chickens who aren’t caged or de-beaked. There are lots of options between “torture animals to eat them” and “be vegan”.
Just to clarify, synthetic meat is not imitation meat; it is real live meat, so presumably it is nutritionally identical to slaughtered meat.
As for raising cows on rocky hillsides, that is an interesting idea, but the UN is reporting that livestock grazing already occupies 26% of all ice-free land on the planet and livestock feed production uses 33% of all croplands, not to mention animal agriculture causing the majority of greenhouse gas emissions, while both human population and demand for animal products are projected to increase. The synthetic meat proponents claim their products will be significantly more environmentally friendly, though of course that remains to be seen.
Would I need to justify wearing dyed textiles? People can get by just fine with undyed clothing. What justification is there for wearing colourful clothing, other than “it looks good”?
This is the point at which, if this board allowed pictures, I’d post the Matrix meme about having done this thread over a million times and getting exceedingly good at it.
I mean, yeah, meat is delicious but that is not a good reason to eat it. Kinda like saying egging your house is fun therefore it is good for me to do it. Doesn’t really follow.
The reason is we are omnivores. That is how mother nature built us. Does the OP begrudge a lion its dinner? I assume not. Lions are made to eat meat. Cows are made to eat grass. Humans are made to live somewhere in the middle.
Mother nature has produced animals to fill a myriad of niches in nature and we are one. It is not “good” or “bad”. It is merely how we are built and fit into the natural order of things on this planet.
Also, it is worth noting that eating plants is FAR from harmless. Visit a modern farm after harvest. It is Armageddon in the fields. All sorts of ground dwelling animals from birds (some nest on the ground) to snakes to mice to turtles. Lots of things get munched up by the harvesters. Your steak killed one cow. Your desert could a dozen more.
Humans, like other apes, are carnivores. People who are ickked out by eating meat are analogous to those who are ickked out by sex.
A person can live just fine never having sex. A person can liver a long healthy life without meat. Further more than a few do. Nonetheless, such behaviors obviously goes against our nature.
Vegetarians have a role in society. They are developing a new cuisine that might one day be dominate. They are helping us understand what a healthy dies is.
But militant vegetarianism is silly. It attempts to lay a guilt trip on people who are simply doing as their culture has taught for thousands of years. It is a form of cultural imperialism. Do away with animals as a source of wealth and more than a billion people become paupers.
Like most philosophies, eating or not eating meat has important and valid points. But like most philosophies, neither school of thought is completely correct.
The only reason people are concerned about efficiency is because there are so many humans on the planet that need to be fed. Solving that problem would resolve many other issues as well. Anything else is just a bandaid over a gaping flesh wound.
How many champion competitive athletes are there who don’t eat red meat? It just lists 10 of whom Carl Lewis is the most notable (not sure if he was a veggie duing his competitive years.)
Western levels of wealth can; days of yore, not so much.
Animals like cows, sheep, pigs, and goats turn land unsuitable for agriculture into tasty meat. Fish and shellfish turn seas - which you can’t use for agriculture - into tasty meat.
In a survival situation in the jungle. You’re not likely to recognize edible plants, unless you studied them. But getting animal protein to eat is easy enough (but you also need to learn about them.)
That’s exactly the same reason. Our sense of “this tastes good” is closely tied to “my body extracted good nutrients from this flavor the last time I tasted this.”
Yeah, we like things that are high in calories and in available protein and other nutrients, and tend to over-indulge in abundance. But meat tastes good exactly because we evolved to eat it.
This is something I don’t tell vegans, because it’s depressing. Forget harvest, the farmer rained destruction on a gazillion insects to raise that crop, and probably killed a lot of birds and herbivorous mammals, as well.
And then there’s habitat destruction. Grazing cows can coexist with a lot of what would otherwise be there. A wheat monoculture? Not so much.
(Yes, most US meat is finished on grain. Yes, it would be good for the environment if we didn’t do that. And yes, with 7 billion people we will have a colossal footprint whatever we eat.)
I don’t understand this “we evolved to do it” argument. Yes, we are physically capable of eating and digesting meat. We are also physically capable of spitting, but it usually isn’t considered acceptable to spit in people’s faces.
There’s no justification for demanding to know what the justification is.
Expecting humans to “justify” what they eat, logically requires that you assume that humans caused creation itself, if you think about it thoroughly. Only that initial assumption would allow you to call for “justification.”
Cows are bred so that they’ll produce milk. The offspring produced, if female, contribute to replacement dairy producers for the herd. But, about half the offspring produced are male calves, aka veal calves. What would you have Farmer Jones do with these male calves?
Veal exists, at least in part, due to people drinking milk.
Well for me eating that vegetarian crap is like eating shit. Literally. I suppose I could survive on pasta and like it, but would want some variety. Some meat lasagna would be nice.
Now may I ask a question in return? What justification do you have for telling others, outside your immediate family, what they can or can not eat?