you know what would help is if they could find a realistic “meat flavor” i mean if you could get a made with whatever fake/non meat burger that taste exactly like a nice grilled burger or pork bbq rib or a nice medium rare porterhouse … even if its an extract I think would go a helluva long way toward that goal
Indeed. This is one of the scenarios where meat won’t become obsolete. People could even return to cannibalism.
But if civilization doesn’t collapse, and humans manage to colonize other celestial bodies, it is quite likely that bugs should replace meat as a protein source.
Margarine has been around for over 100 years, is half the price or less of butter and yet people still eat butter. Margarine is used industrially all over the place in “commodity” applications where the difference is not so noticable and used by people lower down on the income ladder but, for many people in the middle class or above, the price difference simply isn’t significant enough to switch them away from butter.
It’s not as if meat suddenly shoots up in price if less people eat it. The cost of feeding an animal, slaughtering it and getting it to a store is still going to remain roughly the same. The lower end of the commodity market will get filled with cheaper meat substitutes and health concerns will certainly decrease meat consumption among some people but it’ll still be the reliably delicious thing most people enjoy, just like butter.
Factory farming is the problem – not meat in general. And believe it or not, veganism can also be harmful to the environment:
And what about animals that cannot be vegans? How are you going to feed your dog, or your cat? They cannot eat a plant-based diet, especially cats.
It wouldn’t hurt to cut back on steaks and bacon and eat more veggies, but no, I don’t think meat will ever go obsolete. That would be a really bad idea.
A long time ago, I convinced myself (i.e. my taste buds) that Diet Coke tasted as good as Coke. It starts with a wincing disbelief but if you work at it, you’ll get to where the gold standard is way too sweet.
I didn’t do it for love of animals or sustainability or anything beyond “Where can I cut a few calories?” And no, Diet Pepsi is no substitute.
Grind up the worms, flavor them with some beef essence, sweat how to get the texture and mouth feel right…I’m probably right there.
People prefer margarine to butter because it is a superior cooking ingredient.
Margarine has also turned out to be unhealthier than butter.
It is companies that use margarine instead of butter due to economic reasons, and it will probably be mainly economic reasons why people will resort to other protein sources in the future.
I don’t think this will really be a problem. On the one had, we can feed cats and dogs meat-based food even if we no longer consume meat - the same way we don’t eat the feed we offer the fish in our tanks.
On the other hand, when the time comes for people to give up eating meat, enough societal changes will have occurred so that the question whether we could still give meat to our pets or not should become irrelevant. This won’t happen too soon, though, but if it happens it is going to be dramatic. I don’t know, maybe even positively dramatic, but dramatic nevertheless.
Just to reply to one of your concerns, as I already said, admittedly a while back, I am apparently a vegan in principle, but a meat eater in actuality. Yes I know the hypocrisy. And I deserve all your barbs (but keep it civil–this is still GD).
Actually FWIW meat is beginning to disgust me more. Every time I eat it now, I feel like gagging. I have tried introducing some vegan entrees into my diet. But presently it is just expensive and impractical for me (sorry).
And BTW I disagree with people who say your body just sometimes needs meat. Mine never does.
I am a little disappointed some of you didn’t offer a stronger defense of veganism. But as I said, I still sometimes eat meat. So maybe it is just as well.
And yes, as I pointed out, I often look hopefully to the future, for many things in fact.
Now won’t someone offer a strong defense of veganism? You would really make my and possibly someone else’s day.
My partner has been a vegetarian since age 11 for ethical reasons and I always agreed to eat a vegetarian diet at home, but had no qualms about eating meat (and lots of it) on business trips or when dining out.
In February 2019 I accidentally watched a few seconds of a video that moved me so much that I stopped eating meat then and there. Hasn’t been a big effort due to me being used to basically eating vegetarian food most of the time, but I have to admit that a nice ribeye steak is still my favourite food ever.
Still, I’m pretty sure that I will not eat meat again, unless it comes out of a petri dish.
When manufactured meat is readily available. I don’t think many people would still obstinately wish to kill conscious animals for meat. Even the tiny spark of consciousness in a chicken, cow or pig makes me unenthusiastic about killing it to eat.
Maybe the biotech industry will be able to create some kind of free-range biological robot that can digest grasses without needing consciousness - the chap next door to me has a robot which cuts his grass, and that doesn’t need consciousness, so I imagine this could be done. Maybe in a couple of hundred years people who eat conscious animals will be seen as egregious and selfish.
Depending on your definition of consciousness, plants are too. Eating is part of the circle of life. Do you think if people stopped eating farmed animals that they would just be set free into the wild?
If the herds get replaced by vat-meat, we can just eat the ones that are left. Maybe a few herds of aurochs might remain in the wild, but I’d keep clear of them, as they can be vicious. One day, more people will be killed by cows than the other way round- and that’s maybe the way it should be.
Should the wildabeast kill the lion? The deer kill the wolf? This is the world that we live in. Things feed off of other things. Morality is not a part of it. Even the viruses that kill humans.
I’m fine with animals killing and eating each other.
Mind you, one chap I’m in contact with, the philosopher David Pearce, thinks we should genetically modify all carnivores to make them herbivorous. An interesting idea, but probably a recipe for an unstable ecosystem.
At the end of the day veganism is a dietary choice. It’s not an essential path for human health. You could choose to eat no dairy. You could choose to eat no wheat. You can choose to eat no animal-sourced foods.
Strong defense? I absolutely defend the right of any adult to choose what does and does not go into their body.
I think what’s in the head of chickens, cows, and pigs is more than a “spark”. I think many meat-eaters tell stories to themselves so they don’t have to confront where meat actually comes from.
Heck, at work I once had a customer who didn’t know where potatoes come from.
If he is against all suffering, who is going to do the unpleasant jobs that we all need done to have society? Suffering is important in human life because from suffering comes experience and growth. He seems to think that chemically induced bliss is the same as bliss acquired through life experience. Im not sure that brain stimulation can deliver the same experience as organic life experience. This guy is white privilege cubed.
Absolutely. I foresee a state of society where smart, but non-conscious, machines do most of the work in society, like the robot on the lawn next door.
But this state of affairs won’t suit everybody. Some people live to strive.
While I agree that morality will not be the reason we move away from eating animals, I do think it will play a factor. The better the alternatives, the more compelling the moral argument will be to people. It’s much easier to convince someone to do something small than something big.
There are just quite a few arguments for why we should eat animals, using beliefs many of us already hold. For example, most believe that it’s wrong to be cruel to animals, yet that is exactly what happens with mass-produced meat. There are few that we can eat animals, and basically none that say we should eat them. The situation is not balanced.
As such, the easier it becomes to not eat animals but still have meat, the more people will move away from eating animals. Not everyone, but it will be a factor.
I know that I would find it hard to justify eating animals when there are other sources of meat that taste nearly as good and are nearly the same price or cheaper.
Non sentient machines will not be able to do the work that requires human interaction and judgment. And who is going to repair all those machines when they break down?
But what requires human interaction and judgement will decrease as technology gets better. He specifically said “smart machines,” meaning artificial intelligence.
And the required maintenance is still less work than actually having to do all the things the machines will do. Required maintenance on a washing machine is still less work than washing all your clothes by hand.