Revere is thinking about how to grow meat without the animal. It’s a cool idea that’s been floating around in science fiction for a while now, but, well, of course it has problems, and Revere notes a couple.
The two biggest, as far as I can see from a quick perusal of the burgeoning literature, are finding a suitable nutrient to grow the cells in; and then growing tissue that has the proper texture for being a meat substitute. Animal meat is not just muscle cells but a complicated structure also containing connective tissue, blood and blood vessels, nerves and fat. Just growing up masses of identical cells isn’t sufficient. You have to reproduce an architecture.
I see those two problems as aspects of one much bigger problem. Muscle doesn’t grow in isolation: it’s always in a solid environmental context. It’s made up of cells that respond to activity in a way that enhances performance for the organism, and incidentally promotes flavor and texture and bulk for the delectation of the carnivore. So what do you need to make edible muscle mass, beyond a sheet of myocytes in a culture dish (which, I suspect, would have the texture of slime and would not sell well in test markets)?
An architecture is right. You need connective tissue to form a framework and you need a rigid but motile structure to do work and exercise the growing muscle. Then, because you want a piece of muscle larger than a drop, you need a delivery system for nutrients: a circulatory system, with a pump. This muscle in a vat is going to need a skeleton and a heart.
When I teach physiology, one of the organs I emphasize is the liver. It’s amazing how important a liver is to just about everything: growth, digestion, physical performance, reproduction, the whole shebang. Our cultured muscle will need a liver equivalent to support it. Even if we get rid of the digestive system entirely and feed this muscle mass on delivered supplies of pure glucose, amino acids, and various cofactors and enzymes, the liver is a primary regulatory agent for those substances.
Then we need an immune system. A huge lump of cells growing in a bath of sugar and amino acids is bacterial heaven — it’s going to need major antibacterial/antiviral support.
The more I think about it, the more I think people are going at it backwards. We shouldn’t be thinking about building muscle from the cells up, to create a purified system to produce meat for the market, we should be going the other way, starting with self-sustaining meat producers and genetically paring away the less commercially viable bits, like the brain. Instead of test-tube meat, we should be working on more efficient organisms that generate muscle tissue with the properties we want.
Guess what? Farmers have already been doing this! Look at the domestic cow and chicken and turkey: they’re far more brainless than their wild relatives, and have been reduced to as much stupidity and helplessness as possible, without compromising their ability to survive semi-autonomously and harvest nutrients from naturally occurring food sources. I don’t see all that much difference in the consequences between building up a functional meat producer from cells in a dish, and stripping down a functional meat producer from a line of domesticated animals. Both starting points are aiming at the same final result; I suspect that the top down procedure is more likely to achieve success in my lifetime.
With all the speed technology allows,
From agar plates, we work our way to cows.
Excellent post.
Of course, if you really want to maximize the muscle mass to parts-I’m-not-interested-in-eating ratio, you’re wasting your time with endotherms anyway–takes too much guts to maintain those high thermoregulatory metabolic rates. Best to start with something like a fish. Or a shrimp.
You may be a little behind on this actually, I was reading about this a few days ago. The texture is still a problem, but pretty much everything else has been worked out–as soon as they can get the cost down it’s ready to go for certain processed foods where the texture doesn’t matter. Chicken nuggets were mentioned specifically. They were estimating it’ll be available in five or six years.
I remember when the original McChicken Sandwich came out. It was perfectly round and the exact size of a Petri dish. It occurred to me that perhaps they cloned some cells, grew them in a dish, popped it out, breaded it, froze it and shipped it to your local McD’s. Creepy, eh?
Most animals including modern hens and swine retain the ability to go feral, breed and live successfully in the wild. They are calmer, but when measured in ecologically sensible ways, generally not stupider.
it’s kind of scary actually. Eventually we’ll be eating food that was synthetically grown. Our great grandchildren will ask “What is cow? Chicken?”
They’re made out of meat!
Instead why not work on building structure and the essential nutrients into plant tissues? That technology is even older – in fact >1000s of years old – soy and lentil based mock meats. It is clean and civilised and no one gets killed.
Heck, they’re better off genetically modifying plant material to have the taste and consistency of meat.
That’s what they really want anyway… not meat in a vat that takes a ton of factory support to grow.
I could see the practical application of “vat grown” meat for something like long-term space travel, where a food store may not be sufficient. Of course, the process would have to be fairly compact, wouldn’t it? And from what PZ is describing, it all sounds fairly complex.
Maybe we should be investigating the applicability of zero-g bovines.
–Raynfala
“Pigs….. in….. spaaaaaace…..”
So what’s the structural complexity of a goose liver look like? Could we grow humane fois gras in a petri dish?
Give up meat. Save the world. Easy peasy.
If we stopped eating meat, we’d stop growing farm animals, so they’d never get to live in the first place. I’m all for eating meat as long as the animal didn’t suffer in life or death. Of course, if humans are going to continue to reproduce at the rate we are, we’re probably going to have to eat less meat anyway. It’s just an inefficient way of getting our nutrients.
Forget the Vat-Veal, we already have a limitless supply of tasty, nutritious Soylent!
So what do you need to make edible muscle mass, beyond a sheet of myocytes in a culture dish (which, I suspect, would have the texture of slime and would not sell well in test markets)?
You should remember that the primary consumer of this lab-grown “meat” in the future would be those who willingly consume tofu and the like today. Taste and texture obviously mean nothing to them.
[/snark]
I’m with Jit– you’re attacking a non-problem. There’s no reason for humans (especially those in developed countries!) to eat meat except “it tastes good”.
This is one area where most of you champions of rational thinking really let me down.
I think we’re going completely in the wrong direction. We should have to hunt for our meat. And it should be dangerous. And the animals we hunt should be strong and wily and be trying very hard to not die.
(Don’t ask me how serious I am about this because I don’t really know. I just know I won’t eat veal–way too creepy. And I eat buffalo meat when it’s reasonably priced.)
boomer – The video version. Made of meat, indeed.
According to the guy I was drinking with the other night, KFC already does this. That’s why they had to legally change their name to KFC, since they couldn’t call it “chicken” anymore.
(Snopes link for anyone that hasn’t heard this one before)
which, I suspect, would have the texture of slime
You mean, like egg whites?
I think an undifferentiated cow cell omelet would be pretty tasty.
Reminds me of an off-hand reference in Sterling’s Schismatrix to floating, headless chickens as “free-fall protein machines.” And then of course (same book) there’s Kitsume, whose body is essentially acres of vat-grown human flesh carpeting the interior of an orbital habitat.
I loved the story “They’re made out of meat”.
It does seem that vat grown meat is going in the wrong direction just in the end too complicated that I doubt it could be made profitable or grown cheaper than using some kind of animal instead. If you are willing to process the primary source of the animal protein then you would have the entire animal kingdom to chose from, add selective breeding and genetic engineering you could get “hamburger patties” from beef flavored worms with all the “flavor, fat and texture” of beef grown on organic waste and water.
Vat grown food like meat seems so “Victorian” so removed from the body like putting “skirts” on furniture to hide the naked legs.
@#21
Wow. I was beginning to think I was the only person who ever read Schismatrix.
Re: zero-g bovines @#10
“Assume a spherical cow….”
AMEN.
I get in these arguments with fellow physicists all the time. They talk about how one day we will make small self replicating ‘robots’ that we can instruct to build things. And perhaps they can be powered by chemistry or even sunlight. So let’s get started, building these form the ground up. That’s clearly the most efficient way to go about it since nothing like this exists already.
You all are missing the point. Obviously the best thing about cultured meat is the ability to grow it from your own biopsy. I’m sure I’m delicious.
Of course, I’d settle for a better soybean or whatever. Like one engineered with a more ideal/meat-like amino acid profile and a higher protein/carb ratio.
Some kind of engineered plant product you could leave in a barrel for a while to make vegetarian fish sauce would be awesome too.
“13, “If we stopped eating meat, we’d stop growing farm animals, so they’d never get to live in the first place.”
I’m not sure I understand what benefit is to be derived from getting to “live in the first place” if you’re destined to be slaughtered at 2 years of age or younger and eaten.
As a serious question, how much of the animal is used strictly for food, and how much is used for other applications (glue, leather, etc.)? Do we even need the animals for those other applications, or is it that we’re raising so many for meat, that the leftovers would simply be waste, otherwise, so they’re currently cheaper than synthetic versions.
I recall hearing on NPR this morning, that if Americans (U.S. Americans, that is, sorry to all you other residents of the New World) reduced their meat consumption by 20%, it would have the equivalent reduction in greenhouse gases of everybody switching to driving Toyota Priuses.
where else are you going to keep yr chickens?
Gah! Where’d I put that closing blockquote tag??
Serves me right for not previewing. The bit from “Not just eaten” is mine.
Ha! You mentioned that the domesticated cow, chicken and turkey are far more brainless than their wild relatives. Of course, because they have absorbed the humans freaking religion that soaked into the grain and grasses and then ossified into their brains and bones. Man, that stuff is pernicious!
While there are certainly good arguments for both approaches, the last I read about vat-grown muscle tissue suggested that they could already get something about the consistancy of hot-dogs. I don’t know that this was a particularly large step; sausages still seem to be a long ways away.
I also suspect that there would be a greater negative reaction from various animal rights organizations if the approach was to deliberatly create ‘mutated’ livestock with missing parts, non-essential for meat production, like eyes or ears.
Practically, both paths should be pursued because both approaches will yield information which should help the other succeed.
Of course, while meat may be a sexy thing to try to grow in vats, I would rather see them work on vat growing plywood. It should be simplier than meat, and it should result in stronger plywood.
The website linked by revere claims that they’ve been making 2 cm long muscles that contract when subjected to electrical current. If they can do that already, it doesn’t seem like a huge leap to make muscles 10 bigger, which would be good for eating (supposing that they are thick enough).
If we stopped eating meat, we’d stop growing farm animals, so they’d never get to live in the first place. I’m all for eating meat as long as the animal didn’t suffer in life or death. Of course, if humans are going to continue to reproduce at the rate we are, we’re probably going to have to eat less meat anyway. It’s just an inefficient way of getting our nutrients.
This describes an ideal that seems to still be a long way from becoming realized. The life form, humans included, has not been born yet in our ancient history that suffered none in life nor death. I agree that we should do our best to minimize inhumane or unnecessary suffering, but to cut meat out of the human diet would drastically change the biosphere we live in, and as is the same with any drastic change to a system, most of these changes will be both unforeseen and in some way damaging to our established manner of living. And if the human population continues to grow, the the capitalist leaning of the world will more than likely take the route of reasoning that more produce and livestock will be necessary, and will push their efforts in research and development towards THAT area, instead of deciding that the population has made their form of commerce obsolete.
As for the claim that ingesting meat from animals is an inefficient way of getting our nutrients, I have serious doubts in mind that prohibit me from accepting that claim at face value. Discounting the fact that many of the alternatives to actual meat still cause a majority of people to have digestive complications, the fact remains that a great many of the alternatives to meat – and more specifically the proteins within – simply do not measure up the the efficacy of actual meat’s absorption into the system. I’m not trying top say that these alternatives do not belong on the table at all, but they do need more testing and development before they should be considered viable alternatives to the kind of sustenance our race has lived on for the entirety of its existence.
Armchair Dissident– Ah, you give Karen the same argument meat-eaters usually resort to: “mmm, it tastes good”. But if a creobot was in here giving an equally vapid response to a valid question, folks would be livid.
As for Fatboy’s remark about 20% = Priuses… well, why not drop meat-eating by 100%? It’s not difficult in the slightest. Hell, it’s actually more difficult to stop driving, given the spread-out nature of most modern communities!
What is all this talk about the future soon. Have to live in the moment. You think somehow all the imperfections will be fixed? I remember when I was 13…
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/The%20Future%20Soon
I already eat flavored soy patties, and now you tell me I might be able to get vat meat? When do I get my chrome bustier, clownish eye makeup, and big, big hair? Oh, dystopian SF future, how I’ve longed for you! *wipes away a tear*
So I’m thinking it’s the Matrix all over again – except with cows. Yeah cows in those pods! Imagine the energy that could be derived! Plus, as a benefit, the methane they produce could be sequestered and used as fuel which would help save our planet from global warming!
I wonder what the cow Matrix would look like inside. Lots of fields probably.
Anyway, meat is so 19th century. We really need to grow up about it. The way it’s consumed here in the west is not healthy for us or our planet.
Anyway, meat is so 19th century. We really need to grow up about it. The way it’s consumed here in the west is not healthy for us or our planet.
Posted by: Alex | April 16, 2008 1:41 PM
Cows are a great way to turn grass into human-edible calories. But when cows are fed something that’s already a human-edible, like, say, corn, it becomes bogglingly wasteful.
Guess which way we do it?
I don’t want to eat mean from chickens raised in the conditions they are raised in. I doubt that chicken farming can go back to something more humane. I like chicken. What to do?
Once we get the technology to do so we should be creating PLANTS that can produce muscle simulcra without all the saturated fats, parasites and bacteria traditionally found in meat critters.
Yes its playing Frankenstein but if can get cheap easy to grow plants that can dump out protein rich pseudo-meat I’d become a vegetarian over night. This might prove impossible or unfeasible just seems to be the most direct route from sun to stomach.
That was my thought. We need something like “steak plants”. Or chicken mimics that grow out of the ground. Or shrimp trees.
All are perennial staples of SF.
#40
There are far easier, more efficient, and more productive ways to produce human-edible calories than using lumbering beasts as production facilities.
http://groups.google.com/group/ottawavegchat/browse_thread/thread/3ad0017de9772f32
Besides, calories from red meat are not the healthiest for humans and are easily replaced by better sources.
It wasn’t an argument; but yes, meat tastes fantastic. On the converse side, my fiancée is a vegetarian. She’s not a vegetarian because of any moral objections to meat, but because she simply doesn’t like it. She has the same reaction to meat that I have to tofu. She doesn’t like meat, I don’t like tofu (or that revolting Quorn stuff, and most of her vegetarian recipies for that matter).
Huh?
I don’t care whether you find eating meat immoral, I don’t. I have absolutely no objection to the raising of animals, or their humane slaughter or eating them. Just as I don’t find animal testing or leather shoes immoral. I don’t care whether you do or don’t. If you find eating animals distasteful (pardon me), then don’t eat animals. These are both entirely subjective views.
Whether or not eating meat is an efficient way to get nutrients may or may not be objectively demonstrable, but it is also is beside the point because – whether or not it’s factual – it’s *irrelevant* to me; I don’t have a moral objection to eating meat in the first place.
Creationists, are making demonstrably false statements about objective reality. I’m not. I fail utterly to see where the valid comparison is.
I wouldn’t know. I don’t drive.
Besides, calories from red meat are not the healthiest for humans and are easily replaced by better sources.
Posted by: Alex | April 16, 2008 1:58 PM
There’s some evidence that those stats only hold for corn-fed beef, not grass-fed. (Pollan cites some in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but I don’t have a copy to hand.)
Anyway, you’re preaching to the wrong person; I’m a vegetarian.
jack lecou,
I remember a SF short story that involved a new food product that became so popular that congressional hearings were held. All foods at that point were vat-grown. The manufacturer testified, and had to point-out that many of the foods people were eating were actually analogues of materials originally from natural sources, and that some were classified as “meat,” which he then had to define, much to the alarm and disgust of the congressmen. Then he defined “pork,” “chicken,” etc. He pointed-out that this new “meat” had the perfect balance of nutrients, and had never, even in pre-vat days, been available to anyone but the most privileged. The story ended with the words “Now let me define the word ‘cannibal.'”
I can’t believe none of you have mention The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe yet.
They’d solved the problem by breeding an animal that not only wanted to be eaten, but was capable of saying so.
I concur. I’m a big advocate of this direction in “humane” meat, and I don’t see how the tissue approach has much promise compared to simply engineering animals without any higher brain function. Even growing tissues in plants seems more promising than basically growing trying to grow muscle grafts en masse on a plastic framework.
“If we stopped eating meat, we’d stop growing farm animals, so they’d never get to live in the first place.”
Apply the same logic to having too many children, and you can see how easily it breaks down. What we want is for lives lived to be good lives. The number is not what’s morally important, because a life never lived in the first place is nothing lost or suffered. It’s the quality of what there is, not how much of it we can produce.
I became convinced from watching turkeys on my grandfathers farm that the FDA should re-classify them as vegetables anyway.
awesome. im a vegetarian for ethical reasons so i would have no problem eating this unless there are as now unforeseen environmental side effects.
As a former chef and somewhat of a food nerd, I can see many things that would suck about this.
Modern beef and pork and chicken coming from mass producing farms already is lagging way behind heritage breeds of the same animals in flavor, texture and fat content (which adds to both flavor and texture and mouthfeel).
The only way I see this going is further homogenizing the animals to the point of having exactly zero variance in any of the above characteristics. There are some many variables that go into how an animal tastes (feed, location, breeding, etc..) that this appears to only be headed towards the dry bland stale pork we see in mass supermarkets we have now. Instead of the marvelous cuts one can get from something like a Berkshire hog.
And please there are some of us that still think the nasty bits (yes phrase stolen directly from Bourdain) are worth having.
/rant on theoretical issue off
It would be no fun to hunt down and kill a vat of “meat”(TM)
This thread is making me SOOO hungry…
raven – Shrimp trees… That’d be enough to make me want to learn how to garden. We could call them Popplers.
OT kinda, PZ maybe you can answer this. If we can make food for cats and dogs that give them all of their nutrition in a single food product why can’t we do that for humans? A single product that would provide all of a human’s dietary needs, proteins, carbs, vitamins, minerals, etc. A product that if a person ate nothing else they would still have a healthy diet. Perhaps in the form of a kibble that you would just put some water on and microwave and it would make it’s own gravy? You could sell it in bulk with different flavor packets. Call it, Bachelor Chow.
Actually, I am serious. This would be a huge time saver.
Of course what we really need is meat that *wants* to be eaten and is capable of saying so quite clearly and distinctly.
I know (or at least I think I do) that that was somewhat tongue in cheek…. but
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING.
Food should be enjoyed as well as provide sustenance. It’s been a primary focus for social interaction through history. I can’t imagine asking the boys over to watch bland standaed sports event© to suck back brand standard brewed adult beverage© and have a bowl of bland standard gray colored gruel© with all new flavor packets©.
#6 “Our great grandchildren will ask “What is cow? Chicken?””
Perhaps our great-grandchildren will ask “What is eating?”
Aaaaa, don’t listen to the Chimp–a self-described “food nerd” who can actually use the term “mouthfeel” with a straight face–this is a briliant idea that is bound to make big, big money. Of course it would be most likely to be enjoyed in precisely those food-consuming situations that do not involve social interaction. There’d be plenty of room for “real” food too.
Bah.
*shakes fist at Sven
*grins back at BigDumbChimp while enjoying Eyes of the World from Roosevelt Stadium, 8/1/73
Armchair–
I certainly didn’t bring up “morality,” so I don’t know why you’re arguing that. I said that you haven’t given me any rational argument for eating meat, and instead have stuck with an “it tastes good” answer instead. Mentioning your veggie girlfriend is like when a racist mentions their one black friend– it’s not much of a defense!
Instead of generic kibble, how about a trans-dermal meal patch for when you’re just too busy to stop for a bite?
Perhaps our great-grandchildren will ask “What is eating?”
I can only hope. As a minor foodophobe (I’m not picky; I just don’t like eating. In fact I’ll eat nearly anything so I don’t have to be hungry and can go back to doing whatever it is that I was doing), I look forward to the day when I can toss down a meal in a cup with all the protein, minerals, vitamins and fibre I need three times a day, and save the real food for special occasions.
Better yet, when are you scientist-types gonna be able to make us photosynthesise? Hell, if we were really effficient at it, we could subsist on a pint of Guinness and an hour’s tanning per week in the summertime.
I don’t know, that sounds exactly like any average Carl’s Jr or Burger King commercial.
Speaking of science fiction “Vat Meat”, Samuel R. Delany’s “Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand” had interplanetary cultures with all kinds of cloned meat, including human. One of the characters is eating a meal on a more ‘primitive’ planet and is shocked to find a piece of bone in his food: “This meat had once been walking around with a skeleton inside!”
Rev. BigDumbChimp,
One fascinating attribute of innovation is that it starts by trying to simulate an established product in the market. Initially it is of inferior quality, but if it becomes successful, it supersedes some facet of the original product in some fashion. The chicken farms produce chickens of little flavor, but they are cheap, so they are successful among those people for whom cheapness is a desirable aspect. Over time, other aspects may be improved, including flavor and texture.
So, eventually the vat-raised meat may have varieties which does have the texture and flavor of Kobi beef. At an additional cost of course.
But there is another facet with regard to innovations. Eventually the innovation is accepted as commonplace and they potentialities inherent in the innovation are exploited. Do you want vat-raised Green Eggs and Ham? Currently pigs and eggs don’t produce emerald colored flesh (at least not when it’s fresh). But vat-grown meat could (potentially) be made in any color, shape, or texture you want!
The mind boggles with possibilities.
A square roast with ham on one side and chicken on the other… perfect for your catering needs.
A marinade which marbleizes the meat when applied… let it soak overnight for Canadian bacon.
A technicolor roast where the all the colors of the rainbow are used to indicate the temperature it reached when cooked… “Waiter, I ordered this steak pink, and it arrived purple!!”
Even flavor compounds that change as the cooking tempature changes…. The green parts are minty and express themselves when cooked at 130C, while the yellow is flavored with horseradish, and becomes dominant at 150C.
Ah, well, I should get back to studying for my exam tonight. Real work just isn’t going to happen today. Wild-ass (and mouth watering) speculation is much more enjoyable.
Nice. You dirty hippie. Now I’ll have to pull that one out of the collection.
Posted by: Bill | April 16, 2008 2:14 PM
“Perhaps in the form of a kibble that you would just put some water on and microwave and it would make it’s own gravy? You could sell it in bulk with different flavor packets. Call it, Bachelor Chow.
Actually, I am serious. This would be a huge time saver.”
I should think that if he intended for the post to be a parody, he should not have inserted the line at the end of the quotation below – so I’ll answer as if it were sincere.
Bill, I don’t know if you have ever been remotely close to the military and the way they do things, but the old, brown packaged MRE’s had certain entrees and desserts that were synthetic, and all you had to do was add water. (A La the “peach square – a semi-cookie of chopped peaches that you had to place in a small bowl of water. To equate it to something we all know and – do not, i hope – pine for, imagine a bowl of “peach-flavored” Cheerios after you have finished all but ten or fifteen of them, and then imagine those semi-soggy things floating in water instead of milk.) I do not care how much technology has advanced since then. What I do care about is the fact that however you packaged freeze dried or other types of water-reactive food, they still taste like watered down synthetics of the food they are intended to imitate. If you don’t agree, ask a few astronauts about their cravings upon returning to Earth after a long stay in outer space. I’d be willing to bet that their food choices are never freeze-dried, hyper-nutritional alternative foods.
And as for time-savers, since when has saving time been in anyone’s best safety or health interests? Sure, TV dinners are quick and easy, but how many nutritionists would suggest that you live off a diet of Hungry Man meals?
Yeah, yeah, Bachelor Chow. I can get behind that. As for social interaction, that’s what copious amounts of liquor are for.
I’ve never had a meal with someone I wouldn’t rather be doing something else with.
“So what do you need to make edible muscle mass, beyond a sheet of myocytes in a culture dish (which, I suspect, would have the texture of slime and would not sell well in test markets)?”
I think that’s pretty much what they said about tofu. Some still do. Humans are adaptable. I might live long enough to see a tube of “Meet” or “Jerky Slurry” on the shelf right next to the aerosol cheez, the gelatinous “yogurt”, and the guar gum ice “cream”.
The ‘it tastes good’ argument is PARAMOUNT. People don’t eat just for survival; they eat for comfort and for pleasure. Rational thinking doesn’t mean giving up all worldly pleasures.
Evangelical vegetarians really remind me of no-fun christians; one tells us not to fuck, the other not to eat.
For some of the same reasons, I’ve often thought that the frequently related dream of nanobots in our bloodstreams, etc., might never come true.
I think it will turn out that everything we might want to do on the microscale can be done easier by tailored micro-organisms. Unlike nanobots, they’d be self-repairing, self-replicating, cheap, and carry their own power sources. Having been in development and field-testing for the past couple of billion years, working models already exist — we just have to figure out how to break them down and reassemble them in desirable new ways.
raven said:
That was my thought. We need something like “steak plants”. Or chicken mimics that grow out of the ground. Or shrimp trees.
Maybe a transgenic basidiomycete would do the trick?
“13, “If we stopped eating meat, we’d stop growing farm animals, so they’d never get to live in the first place.”
There has better be something wrong with this argument. Is the couple who decides not to have children, when they could have had, say, eight, as morally reprehensible as the person who kills eight people? In fact, continuing your line of reasoning, the couple`s behavior would be slightly worse, since the murder victims at least got to live SOME time before getting killed.
I`m not sure I can point out exactly where it goes wrong (possibly with the action of killing being objectionable in itself). It may have be something about deprieving someone of something being worse than not giving it in the first place, but really, I think, the solution seems to be tied to whatever undermines the old ‘why should I worry about being dead? I don`t worry about the long time of emptiness before I was born, so why should I worry about the emptiness at the other side?’
Personally I eat meat because I don`t care, mostly.
I agree that its possible Flex, but the mass produced meat right now continues to head in the other direction, namly in the direction of bland rubbery stale overly lean meat. Of course you could argue that the recent upswing in smaller farms producing better quality animals and more variety of breeds of said animals are in response to the meat industry’s continual “dumbing down” (yeah not sure if that works there but what the hell) of the products you find at the Piggy Wiggly, Harris Teeter and ALbertsons. And you’d probably be right. But the cost of and limited availability of those higher quality products isn’t making a huge impact on how the big boys continue to operate. An impact yes, but not a overly significant one.
Maybe that will change? Maybe it would work that way with the proposed techniques above. I’d hate to give up on the “natural” (yes that word sucks too but I’m drawing a blank) products to find out.
They already do. It is called ramen.
I’ve started buying most of my animal protein from local farmers; the critters are not factory farmed.
You haven’t given a rational reason that “it tastes good” is *not* a good reason to eat meat! I’m like meat because it’s tasty. I have no moral objection to eating meat. Ergo I eat meat because it’s tasty. Could you please point out the logical flaw in that argument without resorting to questioning the morality of killing animals?
What?! First, she’s not my girlfriend, she’s my fiancée. I used to get stick from my work colleagues when I kept making that mistake, so you will get it too. And later this year she will be my wife. I hope you’re not in the habit of calling people’s wives “your girlfriend”.
However. Are you seriously suggesting that because I don’t have a moral objection to eating meat, that I will therefore ensure that vegetarians can’t hold political office, or work? Are you *really* going to go down the “meat-eater == racist” route?
Seriously?
I respect people who don’t eat meat because they don’t like the taste and I also respect people who refuse to eat certain meats because of how horribly the animals have been treated their whole lives.
However, I will not respect people who refuse to eat meat because it’s “immoral under all circumstances” and also people who go posting videos of the cruelties done to battery chickens or other animals and then continue to eat all the chicken they want regardless, have some balls.
And your cows get fed corn? As far as I know most if not all of the cows in New Zealand are grass fed, my uncle and aunty’s farm has something like 1000+ cows all fed really nice grass and then get milked twice daily (they actually to be milked on their own accord usually, they like being milked) and go about doing their cow-like things all day. It’s not a bad life really. :P
I don’t know what meat is like in the states however, is it good?
And yes, it probably would be beneficial to the human race under some terms if we just dropped meat altogether, I could never do it though, meat is just so freaking delicious.
Maybe if you brought up a whole group of people who had never tried meat you might be able to do it?
Yeah I don’t eat at those places either.
From what I’ve heard and read brokenSoldier, you’re right about the MREs and astronaut meals, but the trick is not to try to make them taste like something else. Imagine a gruel that didn’t taste like some watered down version of oatmeal, but had its own specific flavour.
After all, we don’t try to make chicken taste like broccoli or garlic taste like raspberries. Given a world in which people eat casu marzu, I’ll bet if you flavoured an MRE with skunk glands they’d be considered a delicacy in some circles.
Evangelical vegetarians really remind me of no-fun christians; one tells us not to fuck, the other not to eat.
Posted by: Marc | April 16, 2008 2:57 PM
I’m not particularly evangelical (except about soy burgers, mmm), but for many vegetarians “it tastes good!” sounds like the “I feel safer!” argument for driving SUVs–okay, great, but you are doing harm, which outweighs your enjoyment.
You are thinking of the product, Vitameatavegamin™ See this product advertisement from 1952. See also The Jetsons.
DaveX, You bring up an interesting topic.
A long time ago, I tried vegetarianism. Food combining, cheese, nuts, protein powders, the whole works. After several months I turned pale. As an experiment, I ate a big steak 3 nights in a row. I will never forget the moment, when on the third day, I was standing in a doorway and my strength returned. I suddenly felt energized and flexed all my muscles like a weight lifter. I didn’t even realize I had lost that feeling! Never again.
That doesn’t mean I eat only meat, or even meat at every meal–or even every day. (I like tofu, too! Soy sauce, hot sauce, garlic powder, dill weed, mustard and mayonnaise, yummy!) Health is important to me, and whole grains and dark green leafy vegetables comprise much of my diet–but I do eat meat. I’m also concerned about the quality of it. Is it really all, in the end, just protein?
I also agree with grass fed beef. It makes more sense, in many ways, than feeding them corn.
Where’s Gary Larson when we really need him? I have an image of a rather large pod contraption with a viewing window or possibly made entirely of acrylic; completely filled with a black and white splotch pattern like a Holstein cow. Think a cylindrical version of the computer box from Gateway. No discernable head or tail or any body structure – just a cylinder of cow.
Kadath @38 – I’m not sure why (maybe it’s just me) but the entire concept of eating vegetarian but wanting it to look and taste like meat sort of seems ‘half-hearted’. Yes, I’m aware that some people eat vegetarian for the health benefits and not because they ‘hate’ meat (or do they dislike carnivores?) Maybe South Park or The Simpson’s will do an episode on it to help me understand. Vegetarian hamburgers? Vegetarian hotdogs? Vegetarian veal? Vegetarian uni (sea urchin roe)? I mean, where does it stop pretending to be meat and simply relax and be vegetables? And has anyone taken a close look at the ingredients and the processes necessary to meat-ize vegetables? Are the health benefits of the soy product negated by the addition of whatever they add to make it beefy? Could the process be improved so that the soy/tofu is sold with individual flavor packets so I can stir in some pork chop powder one day and some chicken nugget flakes another depending on my dining companion (one doesn’t like chicken and the other doesn’t like pork)?
Raven @43 – Can I have shrimp bushes instead? I live in a condo and don’t have room for a tree.
Bill @54 – I believe what you are looking for is sold in the U.S. as “Ramen”. It boils up in just a few minutes, comes with a variety of flavor packets, and can be bought at many discount grocery stores for about 12 and 1/2 cents each.
#52 – You make a good point, but I don’t think it will be as much of a problem. Producing specialty meat varieties like that now requires special animal strains, feed, treatment, or all of the above. If vatgrown meat makes it as easy as just turning up the fat content knob or whatnot, that could make it more cost-effective for large manufacturers to sell a wider range of products, or for smaller specialty factories to fill that niche instead.
We also might be able to express combinations of texture and flavor that don’t now occur naturally, which could be culinarily interesting.
You won’t regret it. Dark Star-> El Paso-> Eyes Of The World-> Morning Dew and it kills from front to back.
And, by the way, I’ll cop to the “hippie” but I showered just this morning.
Alex #39 “I wonder what the cow Matrix would look like inside. Lots of fields probably.”
It would be just like the World as we know it, but cows and humans would have swapped places (or have I been reading too much Far Side?).
Actually, maybe we are in a Matrix, and in reality we are the ones being farmed by our bovine masters?
Kadath @38 – I’m not sure why (maybe it’s just me) but the entire concept of eating vegetarian but wanting it to look and taste like meat sort of seems ‘half-hearted’.
Posted by: WRMartin | April 16, 2008 3:08 PM
I can’t stand most veggie products that pretend to be meat. My fiance’s endlessly trying to get me to try “chicken” nuggets and whatnot and they’re all wrong. My crockpot chili calls for barley, but he always wants to substitute TVP crumbles and the texture’s just wrong.
Also, you’re right about the amount of processing needed to turn soy or TVP into fake meat. The only way to really justify it is if you’re an animal rights/welfare vegetarian; from a health or sustainability perspective, it’s just more processed food (though it’s still slightly better than the equivalent meat products.) For my money, you’re better off not trying to mimic meat products, but to fill the dietary niche with something that’s tasty and nutritious on its own, like legumes….
Except for the patties I linked to! I don’t know what they put in there, but it’s like crack. They don’t taste a thing like beef, but it doesn’t matter, because they are so good. Mmm, Vegan Grillers.
Well, Rev. BigDumbChimp, historically innovative products which survive the test of the marketplace do improve and supplant previous market leaders. Think of how plastics moved from bakelite with simulated woodgrain to a design feature using the unique properties of plastic.
Now I’m not a huge fan of leaving everything to the marketplace, there are a lot of social ills which arise when you do that, but the reason the mass-produced meat industries developed was because they could provide a meat at a lower cost.
But while they still can do so, the recent increase in the number of the small meat-producers is because the additional costs of operating on a small scale has dropped to the point where flavor and health-conscious buyers are willing to pay enough to support them. We’ll have to see how this all turns out, but this change in meat-eaters attitude may well either greatly reward the small meat producers or convince the big boys that a better quality of meat is needed for the supermarkets while KFC and Taco Bell can take the poor quality stuff.
Or they can use it to manufacture Brownian’s Beneficial Broth.
I’m all for seeing if it can be done, but I reserve the right to have a prime grass fed ribeye from a heritage breeder until I deem it equal.
Damn it PZ, you broke the RSS feeds again. Please fix it following the suggestions at the feed validator: click
The title for the “heart” Philly post is probably what broke it.
We can hope. But judging from how popular places like Taco Bell and KFC and [insert fast food megalodrive-through here] I’m not convinced there’s much of a change in attitude overall.
At least there will be some outlets for those of who want it. Hopefully that will remain as well.
Speaking of selective breeding. I wonder how a vegan would feel about Ameglian Major Cow? Solves everyones problem, but I think we are going about this in the wrong way. Clearly, we need far more intelligent animals.
(If you don’t get the reference, sorry…there is always google.)
Wanting vege producted to taste like meat is only “half hearted” if you stop eating meet because you don’t like its taste. In my experience my moral judgements and my sensory receptors aren’t terribly well intergrated, one has to trump the other.
Multiple references to Ameglian Major Cow has already been posted in the comments, but no mention of Shmoo at all? For shame.
OrchidGrowinMan-
It’s not an uncommon theme in SF, but the one you describe sounds a lot like one by Arthur C. Clarke.
WRMartin-
I don’t think ramen really meets Bill’s “healthy diet” specification.
With regard to ersatz meat products: as a vegetarian, I kind of agree on the aesthetic aspects, but I think you have to appreciate “meatlessballs”, etc. on their own terms rather than as substitutes. None of the stuff really tastes all that much like meat, after all, but many of the products are delicious in their own way, and they’re a convenient source of protein. Would be nice if they were less expensive though, hence my desire for a more nutritious, more easily processed soy bean or something.
Also, AFAIK, there aren’t any particularly strange additives involved- soybeans are liquefied, the protein is isolated, then steamed, extruded, etc. in various ways. It’s probably kind of energy and water intensive, but I imagine less so than farming meat animals.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the pig they have up in Asgard that just regrows the parts they cut off for dinner each day…
Armchair–
Unlike the creationists, vegetarians can point to a rather large array of data available showing that meat production and consumption results in pollution, waste, and simple inefficiency when compared to a vegetarian diet.
I think it is foolish of you to ask me to re-provide all this information for you in a comment box, when its easily available online. Trouble is, you don’t seem willing to engage with the actual data… again, rather like the creationists– always willing to argue, but not so willing to listen.
Sorry about your troubles with the missus.
—
Ramblin Dude– I’m glad you gave it a shot, and hope you’ll try it again sometime. I don’t do anything real special with my diet, personally. I just don’t eat animal products. I did, however, give them up in stages. Pork went first, followed by beef, poultry, fish, eggs. Took me about 6 months total, but I think easing into it was the way to go, as I’d been eating meat for 18 years previously! I imagine you felt crappy because you made such a radical change in diet so suddenly. As for strength, I’m not lacking– my last job was pushing jacked-up cars around parking lots in all sorts of weather…
magical pig
I imagine you [RamblinDude] felt crappy because you made such a radical change in diet so suddenly.
Posted by: DaveX | April 16, 2008 3:45 PM
Dave, some people just can’t seem to go healthily veg no matter how conscientiously they try–diet plants, extensive supplementation, you name it, nothing seems to work until they switch back to meat. I’ve heard that particular anecdote in too many variations from too many people to believe they’re all doing something wrong.
I did, however, give them up in stages. Pork went first, followed by beef, poultry, fish, eggs. Took me about 6 months total, but I think easing into it was the way to go, as I’d been eating meat for 18 years previously!
I went cold turkey (so to speak) after a quarter century of meat-eating and didn’t have any problems, except for one bizarrely specific craving for a Quizno’s roast beef au jus.
SKFK –
Sorry, I was going to post a Animal 57 reference though, but I was sure there were no kibology readers here.
showing that meat production and consumption results in pollution, waste, and simple inefficiency when compared to a vegetarian diet.
DaveX, do you listen to music? If so, what is your rational justification for it, given how many resources are wasted in the production of CDs, musical instruments, the wasted human capital involved in the writing and recording of songs, etc etc? It runs into the many billions. And you can somehow justify supporting that massive waste of resources that could otherwise, I dunno, feed barley to the poor?
You are a Hitlerian monster. Or, just possibly, you apply an unreasonable moral standard to one area of people’s lives but not others, because it makes you feel superior. I guess it could be either one.
You are a Hitlerian monster.
Posted by: Gilmore | April 16, 2008 4:02 PM
Oh honestly. If this thread descends into a veggie/meat-eater flamewar, I won’t give anyone my awesome mushroom barley soup recipe.
You are a Hitlerian monster.
Pick that up from Ben Stein, did ya?
You folks have let me down today! So far, I’ve seen the “it tastes good” defense; a comparison to Hitler, and a reductio ad absurdum argument about music!
Pathetic.
You are a Hitlerian monster. Or, just possibly, you apply an unreasonable moral standard to one area of people’s lives but not others, because it makes you feel superior. I guess it could be either one.
DaveX has touched a large nerve here. The meat eaters here don’t need to justify their passions – but they have to accept that if the whole world was veggie we could actually feed the whole world. (The last seven years consumption has exceeded supply – remember all those grain mountains? What grain mountains? They are now hamburger.) Those who can look down and not see their kajimbo probably aren’t veggie… so a few might find health benefits, also.
Meat abstainers should know you don’t have to be Kzinti to recognize that vegetables are what food eats.
A big problem with vat-grown meat is that it does nothing for zombies: all they want to do is eat your brains. Vat grown brains are full of chemicals–they’ll just make you sick. Or are we brains in a vat dreaming we’re eating meat after having taken the blue pill, when it’s really only Soylent Green nutri-pap? It all tastes like chicken, but only if it’s been properly prepared.
I started thinking about this after reading Douglas Adams’ talking dinner cow in Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Given that we already have all these dairy cows producing milk day after day, why not adapt their genetics so that they also give us meat without being slaughtered for it? I can envision an adaptation that causes meat nodules to grow out of the wall of one of the digestive compartments, that “bud off” at a given size and are regurgitated by the cow, wrapped in their own thick skin “bag.” The farmers could collect these at milking time (regurgitation stimulated by milking), wash them off, refrigerate, and then ship them off to the supermarket or food processing kitchen. This could go over well in the third world given the lack of need for technology beyond the cow itself.
I want a photosynthesis hat so I don’t have to spend time getting food.
Hmmmmm…. Regurgitated meat nodule cow buds wrapped in their own thick skin…
gaaaaaaaaa….
An obvious variation on my post above, is to design the cow genes such that a haploid cow egg does not just degenerate, but forms this meat product. Thus, if you do not put the cows in with the bull, they just keep delivering you meat modules produced from the same great development environment that gives you more cows.
I can’t see my kajimbo! Is that anything like my hoo-ha?
I’m another one of these people who has a “failure to thrive” on a vegetarian (strict vegetarian, since I can’t eat eggs or milk products) diet. The fact that I can’t digest some of the more nutrient-packed grains and things (like quinoa, which gives me incredible stomach cramps) doesn’t help. The fact that I already have to supplement my iron, despite eating a diet rich in chick peas, red lentils, and other rich sources of iron and taking a multivitamin as well, indicates I should probably be living on liver, specifically (fat chance, but red meat works almost as well). There’s also the little incidental fact that at this latitude, eating a strict vegetarian diet is actually more monetarily expensive than eating meat. I don’t live far enough north to get the “Northern Allowance” to offset trying, though.
My sister’s a vegetarian, of the “doesn’t like meat” school of thought, and I’ve read her extensive collection of handbooks and cookbooks on how to eat vegetarian properly, so I don’t think it’s just me.
I agree with some people on this thread on the subject of tofu: It takes a Vietnamese cook to turn tofu into anything edible, and I’m not one.
I do understand that many will be grossed out by my suggestions; were that my goal I would have suggested that you visit a slaughterhouse.
The notion that genetically-bred animals will somehow be cheaper or more efficient than vat-grown meat ignores a lot of factors. Animals take a large amount of space to raise. Animals take time to mature. Animals spend a lot of their energy inputs into making things we generally don’t eat (such as bones). Animals get sick. And, of course, animals require large amounts of nutrition, which they turn into much smaller amounts of nutrition. All of these things can theoretically be tweaked with vat-grown meat.
A note to vegans:
STOP ANTHROPOMORPHISING YOUR FOOD.
An animal is an animal, and I shouldn’t be guilt-tripped when I eat something my body evolved to be able to eat (almost said “designed to eat” there, then I remembered my audience :)
A wolf doesn’t care if the deer he’s eating suffered before it died. Hell, it doesn’t even care if the thing as all-the-way-dead before it digs in. A cow’s safe and healthy, if shortened, life in a farm is far better than having its throat ripped out by some random predator. And don’t try to say “How would I feel if I were raised for food?” That doesn’t matter, because my whole point is that we treat our food animals far better than they are treated by nature.
And DaveX, although the Hitler comment was over the line, Gilmore had a point with his music analogy- food isn’t just fuel, it’s art. It’s a source of happiness and comfort. I really weep for people who eat for nothing but nutrition. I can’t imagine a life so bland and colorless.
The day I have to survive on “textured vegetable protein” is the day I slit my wrists.
Seriously:
Even if meat can be grown in vat, the cost of materials and energy is many times bigger than gain from not growing inedible parts of animal. This high-tech vat must be heated, sprayed with antibiotics and glucose doesn’t grow on pasture.
If motivation is not harming animals, it is naive view that farming kills only animals used for food. If you think that making your soybean steak killed no animals, you are very, very wrong. Farming kills animals mostly by taking over habitat, pest control and consuming resources like petrol and electricity. Cows and chickens are just minority. So it makes sense to support organic farming which leaves place for many wildlife, but certainly not eating soybean produced by intensive monoculture.
However, vat-grown organs would be extremely useful as medical transplants. I guess the higher price would give a better motivation to this field.
/Oh honestly. If this thread descends into a veggie/meat-eater flamewar, I won’t give anyone my awesome mushroom barley soup recipe./
Quickly, everyone get real vicious before Kadath starts posting again, pleeease.
A cow’s safe and healthy, if shortened, life in a farm is far better than having its throat ripped out by some random predator. And don’t try to say “How would I feel if I were raised for food?” That doesn’t matter, because my whole point is that we treat our food animals far better than they are treated by nature.
Posted by: Luke | April 16, 2008 4:51 PM
You really need to read up on how we actually raise food animals. It ain’t pretty, and is the primary reason I’m a vegetarian.
food isn’t just fuel, it’s art. It’s a source of happiness and comfort. I really weep for people who eat for nothing but nutrition. I can’t imagine a life so bland and colorless.
The day I have to survive on “textured vegetable protein” is the day I slit my wrists.
Quit being such a patronizing ass. Vegetarianism does not mean sacrificing the pleasure of eating, any more than atheism means sacrificing the pleasure of living.
Whoops, HTML failure. The line about TVP is, obviously, Luke’s.
/Oh honestly. If this thread descends into a veggie/meat-eater flamewar, I won’t give anyone my awesome mushroom barley soup recipe./
Quickly, everyone get real vicious before Kadath starts posting again, pleeease.
Posted by: Jsn | April 16, 2008 4:56 PM
Your loss! ^_^
A human is an animal. Unless you’re going to claim that humans are somehow discontinuous with the rest of the evolved biological world (for example, that they have a “soul”), I don’t see how your statement holds any moral weight.
(I find it more than a bit bizarre that many evolution-friendly anti-religion rationalists suddenly seem to think there is something inherently “special” about humans when dealing with animal issues.)
And “is” doesn’t imply “ought”. There are plenty of evo-psych types who argue that we evolved to have racial prejudice, or to rape, but it is silly to take one’s morality from the contingencies of evolutionary history. (In other words, while there may be good arguments to be made regarding the moral status of meat eating, “I was evolved to” isn’t one of them.)
I live in one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the planet. I routinely eat at Indian restaurants, Ethiopian restaurants, Italian restaurants, Sri Lankan restaurants, Thai restaurants, Japanese restaurants, Chinese restaurants, Mexican restaurants…and I eat vegetarian. I’d hardly call my diet bland and colourless — fatty maybe, but not bland and colourless.
There are tons of cuisines around the world that have native vegetarian dishes. For some reason many American vegetarians seem to feel the need for “earnest” food, as if spices were somehow sinful. I am not of that persuasion.
Luke– Since you’re so blasted ready to argue the art thing, consider this… there’s a lot of art you probably don’t want around anymore either. A quick example might be made of the castrato. At one time, no respectful opera was without them.
Sure, they might have sounded great– but most guy prefer the kajimbos attached to the hooha, or whatever folks are calling ’em here. No doubt there’s opportunity for art in the kitchen, denying this would be ludicrous. However, meat could hardly be considered the only tool for art of this nature.
Don’t worry– art won’t die without your steak. (molecular gastronomy, anyone?)
For some reason many American vegetarians seem to feel the need for “earnest” food, as if spices were somehow sinful. I am not of that persuasion.
I think it’s that many American vegetarians just plain don’t know how to cook.
“I really weep for people who eat for nothing but nutrition.”
You hear that, Kadath? HE WEPT FOR YOU.
If today has been any indication, the next Pharynguloid commenter will be telling us there are no vegetarians in foxholes!
“I really weep for people who eat for nothing but nutrition.”
You hear that, Kadath? HE WEPT FOR YOU.
If my levels of cookie-and-ice-cream consumption are anything to go by, it ain’t me Luke was weeping for. Brownian, maybe, since he’s said he doesn’t really like eating. (And apparently eats meat, as well. Oh noes, cognitive dissonance!)
If today has been any indication, the next Pharynguloid commenter will be telling us there are no vegetarians in foxholes!
I’m disappointed in the quality of argumentation, too, and I’m not even trying to persuade people to do anything but leave me the hell alone in my dietary choices.
OK Kadath, I’ll bite! ;) gmail com
Send the recipe here (with the usual replacements):
wm.russ.martin
Or sent it to this comment thread just to irk Jsn and friends. Hurry before this descends even further into a veggie/meat-eater/Hitler flame war.
The best barley soup concoction I can offer back uses ox tails and those might even offend some carnivores.
Reading these animal rights comments made me afraid.
If I understand, the acceptable way to stop suffering of farm animals is to stop keeping them. Logical next step is probably, as humanity is responsible also for maintenance of wild animals in national parks, that we should stop their unavoidable suffering – predators etc.
The ideal: all the Earth surface is converted to monocultures of soybean, quinoa, lentils etc. No animal suffers, because all animals are extinct. Hopefully, ecological catastrophe is somehow avoided. But do you really want to live in such a world?
Luckily, animal rights movement is so illogical that it cannot succeed. Uff…
None of which has any bearing – whatsoever – on the argument that meat is tasty. Meat is tasty.
I’m arguing about the how scrumptious dead animal flesh is! I like it, you don’t and my fiancée doesn’t. But the fact that I’m out-voted 2-3 in this straw-poll doesn’t change the fact that I like fried bacon, or a bit of steak!
You will, I’m sure, be delighted to hear that I have absolutely no troubles with “the missus” (I woman I prefer to call – as you may recall – “my fiancée”). She enjoys her vegetarian meals, and I enjoy my slaughtered animal flesh.
OK Kadath, I’ll bite! ;)
When I get home and can transcribe from the recipe card.
The best barley soup concoction I can offer back uses ox tails and those might even offend some carnivores.
Really good stocks are the chink in my vegetarian armor!
Also, poutine.
I’m amazed no one has posted these yet:
The vegetarians dilemma
and
Meat sheets
Re #56, Bachelor Chow:
Does this mean there won’t be pizza in the future?
Do vegetarians/vegans think that if they don’t eat meat that no animals died for their food? Just because there is no meat on your plate doesn’t mean animals did not die. Maybe not chickens, cows, pigs – but gee loads of little furry creatures and others are routinely sliced, diced and dismemebered to get those oh-so-cheap vegetables and grains onto your sanctamonious plates.
Factor in the processing of the tufu and shipping of those exotic vegetables and those veggie munchers are probably responsible for way more animal deaths than the average meat eater.
Want to make a difference? Buy local produce and locally raised animals. Support the farmers who raise their animals humanely.
Don’t they kill slugs?
Having had dogs, and worked with cattle, horses and mules, I know they all have feelings — which, once you become able to “read” them, are at least as detectable as the feelings of other humans. I’m pretty sure the same is true of pigs, and probably most other furred critters.
Whichever side of the meat-eating question you come down on, you should at least know they’re not the insensible machines some of us want them to be.
…
Sheep, now, I don’t have any problem with people eating sheep. They’re so stupid, they’re probably all staunch Republicans.
Dang Tom, you beat me to it!
The Science Fiction story described in comment #47 is called “Food of the Gods” and was written by the late, great Arthur C. Clarke
:o)
I’m with the Bachelor Chow crowd. I love food and I love to cook, but most days, I’m just not inclined to go to a lot of effort and I eat solely for death avoidance.
At the start of the Iraq war, there were anti-war protests in London. The organisers had bussed in people from all over the country and had organised entertainment for them in the evening. The comedian hired for the night noticed that many of the protesters were wearing tee-shirts with “Meat Means Murder!” on them, so the wily comedian went to one of those tee-shirt print shops and had his own made. In the evening, he went on stage in front of a large crowd and removed his sweater to reveal the tee-shirt which read “Meat Means Dinner!”
I’ll eat vegetarian. As a matter of fact I eat vegetarian more than I do meat. I love tofu if prepared correctly and there are many many vegetarian dishes I prepare frequently. But that doesn’t change the fact that my knees get weak over the bacon I make, a rare steak frites or even some nice fried sweetbreads.
On that note I’ll leave the various moral arguments aside. I’ll off to make some Linguini alla puttanesca. Made with….. ANCHOVIES.
noooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!
I’ll = I’m.
My typing skills pale in comparison to my culinary ones.
So what’s the structural complexity of a goose liver look like? Could we grow humane fois gras in a petri dish?
Of course, I read that as *human* fois gras. And even though I’m a vegetarian I had to wonder, what would human fois gras taste like.
/I’m off to make some Linguini alla puttanesca. Made with….. ANCHOVIES./
Daaaamn Rev, what time’s dinner and where do you live exactly?
‘ll bet if you flavoured an MRE with skunk glands they’d be considered a delicacy in some circles.”
Posted by: Brownian, OM | April 16, 2008 3:05 PM
Very true, and that only goes to show that no one will ever succeed in getting the world to a common vegetarian diet. As for the unique taste aspect, I’d also suggest that as long as you make the new food visually appetizing as well, I think it wouldn’t come upp against too much resistance. As most good chefs will tell you, it has to taste good, and it has to look good. If you cover those two (and most health foods fail both…), then you should have something viable that people will buy into. And as an aside, I used to wait at the door when I was a child for my dad to come home with a case of those MRE’s, because I loved them. But when you HAVE to eat them – and nothing else – for a month, you quickly realize that whatever name they give it or whatever flavor they try to simulate (and regardless of how successful that simulation may or may not be), that type of easy-access, ultra-nutritional food is definitely NOT something that everyone will use for the entirety of their diet.
I am of the opinion – and I doubt I’m alone in this – that proteins, amino acids, and other nutrients are NOT the sole determining factor in choosing a meal. I mean, I could tell you that I’d enjoy a good roast with vegetables more than I would enjoy liver and onions, but I surely cannot tell you why such a choice is nutritionally better for me.
For me, what is at the crux of this issue being debated is simply that some people think nutritional concerns should be the only factors in food decisions, while the great majority of us would like to enjoy the food that tastes good to us in peace, without being told that something else could be better for us. For many, food is a pleasure as well as a necessity, and we’d rather not narrow that pair down to pure necessity.
Tsk, tsk! All these science-fiction fans and no one has yet mentioned Chicken Little from The Space Merchants by C M Kornbluth and Frederick Pohl.
I’m chief cook and bottle washer at our house, first of all because I enjoy it and secondly because my wife hates to cook and her schedule is less flexible than mine.
I have always observed food restrictions when cooking for others, i.e. food allergies, religious dietary restrictions (I know) and vegetarians. Just being finicky doesn’t cut it. I try to prepare at least a couple of meatless meals or moderated with seafood and tofu each week. We do eat pork, beef, chicken and on rare occaision lamb and goat (cabrito!!!). I’ve taken calves to slaughter when I lived on a small farm so I accept responsibility for eating the animal and wearing leather, etc. I have little patience with people who are hypersqueamish but I could never be the next Andrew Zimmern either.
However, I refuse to cook for vegans – no eggs, no milk, no cheese. When you are that limited in what you are willing to eat, get it your own self …and take your freakin’ Beano.
They shouldn’t, just as people who don’t buy from known sweatshops shouldn’t think that nothing they purchase involves exploitation. But, and this is a big but, it does make things better, it helps to minimize the issue. That’s ultimately all one can hope for, is to make things better.
Shrimp trees!!
Already we have: Baby carrots, bloodroot, kidney beans, cowpeas, buffalo berries, Chickweed, horse chestnuts, and Canary grass. :P
And nobody has mentioned Sligs- sweetest meat this side of heaven! -God Emperor of Dune.
djt, #131:
No, so the rest of your comment was wasted.
131# Want to make a difference? Buy local produce and locally raised animals. Support the farmers who raise their animals humanely.
I like it.
Farm animals “have been reduced to as much stupidity and helplessness as possible.” An additional step in the right direction would be to make our food animals bigger. If we could get one cow head to support, say, four cow bodies, we’d have to kill a lot fewer “cows” for the same number of hamburgers.
I loves me my farmers market.
Post #120 seems to imply that Mexican food has a tendency to be vegetarian, but that’s completely wrong (I’m a Mexican, typing this from México). Although we may be typified as bean eaters (I was an exchange student in the USA and I heard all the jokes), the truth is that people live on frijoles only when their resources force carne(meat) to be a minoritary or absent part of their diet. In Mexican cuisine the fanciest dishes always contain some animal parts (one of the most expensive Mexican dish is made out of ant larvae: escamoles) and I bet that is so in most cuisines considered exotic by people of Western European heritage (with, maybe, the exception of Indian cuisine, due to religious reasons). So, if poor people here want to have enough protein in their diet they either have to raise their own animals for food or buy the ridiculously cheap (and hence of dubious quality) chickens or beef imported from the USA. Those people don’t stop to think about whether it’s ethical or if the animal suffered or whatever. It’s become a matter of survival, because a vegetarian or vegan diet would be beyond what they can afford and, besides, the body demands the intake of animals as food, and you better pay attention to your body when your food resources are so limited. Most people outside Western Europe, the USA and Japan face the same situation, only the people in which the overabundance of food makes almost any kind of food optional have the privilege of being that finicky (and no, most people facing limited food resources wouldn’t be better off trying to get a balanced aminoacid intake from the right mixture of vegetable and dairy resources… they might have only a few vegetables available that they grow themselves or buy from neighbors, maybe some maíz, some chiles and some frijoles… if meat is a luxury, so are dairy products… the option of living on vegetables only exists exclusively for the people that can go to a supermarket and get there almost any edible thing in the world).
Ribozyme,
Lucky you. I find Mexican (not TEX-MEX) cuisine vast and very complex. Some of the moles are incredibly sophisticated in flavor (as you well know). The power of the array of spices may lend itself to vegitarian bastardized dishes. Tex Mex and New Mex Mex(?) are rice, beans and hominy heavy, and enchiladas and burritos can be stuffed with anything and not be “untrue” to any cultural culinary integrity.
You really need to read up on how we actually raise food animals. It ain’t pretty, and is the primary reason I’m a vegetarian.
This statement is more ironic than you could imagine. I rent my land to cattle farmers, so I know plenty about how we raise food animals. There are about a dozen head of beef critter wandering around my acres, and I can see first hand how well they are treated, no reading necessary. Granted, I can’t speak for big corperate farms, but small farmers know how to take care of their animals. It’s incredibly insulting that you assume all cattle farmers fit some boogeyman image you have in your mind.
I’m sorry if I sound peevish (all right, I guess there’s no “if” about it), but I am passionate about food and cuisine. I love eating meat, I love to cook meat, and I even find a peculiur joy in butchering my own steaks and roasts at home. I have nothing against vegetables, or even vegetarian meals (I’ve had a few great all-veg meals, mostly Indian cuisine. Those guys know their way around an eggplant), I just hate it when a group tries to throw out an entire vast field of cooking on some quasi-moral argument. Plus, as I mentioned before, many of my friends and neighbors raise cattle, and they have mouths to feed, no pun intended.
A human is an animal. Unless you’re going to claim that humans are somehow discontinuous with the rest of the evolved biological world (for example, that they have a “soul”), I don’t see how your statement holds any moral weight.
For the record, I’m as staunch an atheist as anyone here. And I’m not saying humans are “discontinuous” with animals, quite the opposite. Animals eat other animals. That’s how nature works. Someone mentioned the is/ought problem, and that’s a fair point. I’ll grant that, in an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to kill anything to survive. But we don’t live in that world, and any time we eat something has to die, whether it’s a cow in a slaughterhouse or pests in a field of grain. But it’s somehow different if the animals aren’t cute and fuzzy, right?
Again, sorry if I come off as rude (there’s that “if” again), this is a sore subject for me.
I’ve taken calves to slaughter when I lived on a small farm so I accept responsibility for eating the animal and wearing leather, etc. I have little patience with people who are hypersqueamish but I could never be the next Andrew Zimmern either.
However, I refuse to cook for vegans – no eggs, no milk, no cheese. When you are that limited in what you are willing to eat, get it your own self
You know, while I was composing my magum opus up there, Jsn was saying exactly what I meant to say, only without sounding all pissy about it…
I should have just joined in with the Futurama references.
I’d agree that Mexican food doesn’t have a “tendency to be vegetarian”, but there are many excellent Mexican and Tex-Mex dishes that this former Texan and current vegetarian loves. I’ll grant that most of them are heavy on the cheese (I had cheese enchiladas with salsa verde just this evening), but they’re not some sort of abomination, at least not where I grew up. The restaurants I went to always had bean burritos, non-meat quesadillas, the aforementioned cheese enchiladas, chile con queso, meatless nachos, among other dishes — most even offered a veggie “fajita” option (although I’ll admit that particular option seems pretty non-standard to me).
It’s a bit of joke in my family that whenever I head to Texas to visit, the first thing I do is go to a Tex-Mex restaurant (often on the way back from the airport), and I pretty much eat it at least once a day while I’m there (since there’s not much good Tex-Mex in Canada, alas).
So I won’t claim that real Mexican food is predominantly vegetarian — of course it isn’t, very few cuisines are. But one can have delicious Tex-Mex that is both vegetarian and authentic, at least in the eyes of this Texan. (And fortunately there is no debate on the veggieness of guacamole and margaritas.)
The existence of several hundred million vegetarians on this planet would seem to be a counterexample.
Tell that to the the roughly one-third of Indians who are vegetarian.
Most people on this planet eat meat sparingly at best — it is an important source of protein, yes, but it is rarely the centerpiece of a meal. It is primarily only those in the wealthy West who can afford to use food to make less food, and to make meat the main feature of every meal.
Dinner sadly, is over. However there is always tomorrow. I live in South Carolina and braised beef short ribs are on the menu this weekend. Come on down.
Sorry I missed it Rev. You’re welcome to drop by down here when you’re in Texas. I do a mean brisket chile relleno with tomatillo or salsa.
Sorry to tell you this, but all you veggie lovers are wrong. Meat, and the special proteins it includes, proteins utterly different from the sort produced by any plant in the world, is, in the long term, vitally necessary to present human development. The inclusion of meat into proto-human diets was how we developed the sort of complex thinking muscles necessary to entertain such qualms as you express in the first place.
Humans don’t eat meat because it tastes good. It tastes good to us because it is a fast, efficient(or cheap if you’d rather), and easy way to get lots of the materials our bodies need to grow and develop. Meats are easier to digest than plant material, and they hold a greater variety of the basic organic building blocks an animal uses in greater numbers than plants. The major draw backs are that its time and energy intensive to produce and acquire meat, but domestication takes care of most of that cost for us.
Why do you think Americans went, from 1700 to the present, from having an average height ~4 feet to an average height pushing 6 1/2? Why for that matter did the entire early industrializing world? Why are Swedes currently pushing an average of 7? Better nutrition yes, but a big part of that is a massive increase in meat consumption(which for the Swedes, acted to bolster the benefits of their already heavily fishy diet I’d imagine). One could even argue that the exponentially increasing rates of technological development which industrial revolutions tend to set off have as much to do with a healthier, meatier diet as it does with machine tools.
With all that said, everything can be taken too far. High starch, high protein meals, on a daily basis, or worse, three times a day, are definitely not good for you. Such high energy meals were never the norm in the past; they were special occasion type deals but, as our nation became increasingly, outrageously prosperous, we gradually ate those foods which represented success more and more often. We’ve reached a point where our diets have become so rich in nutrients and energy that we simply can’t make use of it all fast enough. Think about what exercise really is; its doing strenuous, needless activity so that you use up chemical energy before it transforms into stored, potential energy (fat).
It’s somewhat off topic, but I’d also like to say this as its been brought up by others. We already produce vastly more than enough food to feed everyone in the world a decent diet. The reason people starve isn’t because of all us terrible meat eaters making inefficient use of crop land. Its because of inefficient distribution of food resources brought on by greed and war. Sadly, these are artifacts of the human character and until they go away, starvation will continue.
You really need to read up on how we actually raise food animals. It ain’t pretty, and is the primary reason I’m a vegetarian.
This statement is more ironic than you could imagine. I rent my land to cattle farmers, so I know plenty about how we raise food animals. There are about a dozen head of beef critter wandering around my acres, and I can see first hand how well they are treated, no reading necessary. Granted, I can’t speak for big corperate farms,
Which are the majority.
but small farmers know how to take care of their animals. It’s incredibly insulting that you assume all cattle farmers fit some boogeyman image you have in your mind.
It’s incredibly shortsighted of you to assume that your anecdote constitutes data. If all the cattle in this country were raised as you claim your tenants raise theirs, I’d probably still eat meat, but they are not. (Hell, I’d probably still eat meat if I weren’t too lazy to do the legwork to find sustainably-raised meat. Easier to just make a pot of lentils.)
Anyway, the figure you see batted around a lot is that 54% of livestock are held by 5% (not a typo) of the farms in the country. If you expand to consider CAFOs in general, it’s something like 80-90%. Four companies (maybe three if that projected Brazilian merger went through) control meat processing in the US. Livestock management in this country is incredibly centralized and industrialized, to the detriment of everyone and everything involved save a few at the very top.
I just hate it when a group tries to throw out an entire vast field of cooking on some quasi-moral argument.
And I just hate it when someone comes along and tells me that my considered, researched, ethical decision is “quasi-moral.” I’m not trying to take away your fucking hamburgers, so quit getting up in arms at the mere mention of vegetarianism. I was perfectly happy to talk sustainability until the “I LIKE MEAT OKAY?” crowd showed up.
This is wrong. Plants and animals use the very same amino acids, so you can get adequate nutrition from plants. There are different proportions, so you have to take care to get a balanced diet, but there is no intrinsic impossibility to living well on an entirely vegetarian diet.
Plants do tend to have a much lower fat content, and so aren’t quite as rich a source of energy as meat, but again, this is not an inescapable problem.
I respect your choices Kadath. Your argument on sustainability is vallid. I think you’ve been very clear that you are not out to proselytize to the omnivors among us. Perhaps we were being quasi-modal. While I am feeling contrite will you please share your mushroom and barley soup recipe? (do you use beer as a base, mmmmm?)
Excellent post.
Scott,
Oh yeah, give credit to the biologist who points out the obvious succinctly and elegantly…
Yeah, give credit to whoever said:
Eat food.
Mostly plants.
Not too much.
Michael Pollan.
@Jacob: raise your own. Or buy yours from someone who does. They’re quite easy as long as you don’t leave them about when the raccoons come by. I only had egg layers ever, but it’s not absolutely impossible to kill, pluck and singe your own bird. That’s why I like to buy from the farmers who will do it for me.
I eat meat and don’t feel defensive about it. I eat much less than many Americans do, and more than most observant Hindus.
Of course you can go both ways. And that is how it would play out, if the bottom up approach is feasible.
But if you have seen a pig crazed about being confined in a too small sty, you would realize there is a major hurdle in the top down approach before the brain is taken out completely. (You can exercise muscle as they do in the bottom up approach, so you don’t really need a much of a brain for a self sustaining unit.)
And if all it takes to get rid of antibiotics is a healthy immune system, why are they used as growth stimulants?
Likewise the bottom up approach has hurdles to pass, but in this case market related. The more simpler approaches to additives to be used in say sausages still have to face up to quality vs cost considerations.
So, no panacea in either approach. As usual. [Thoughtfully chews and swallows breakfast.]
Of course you can go both ways. And that is how it would play out, if the bottom up approach is feasible.
But if you have seen a pig crazed about being confined in a too small sty, you would realize there is a major hurdle in the top down approach before the brain is taken out completely. (You can exercise muscle as they do in the bottom up approach, so you don’t really need a much of a brain for a self sustaining unit.)
And if all it takes to get rid of antibiotics is a healthy immune system, why are they used as growth stimulants?
Likewise the bottom up approach has hurdles to pass, but in this case market related. The more simpler approaches to additives to be used in say sausages still have to face up to quality vs cost considerations.
So, no panacea in either approach. As usual. [Thoughtfully chews and swallows breakfast.]
Best to add that I don’t really think the goal of husbandry is, or will be, to take out the brain et cetera. I’m just playing with an already playful scenario.
Best to add that I don’t really think the goal of husbandry is, or will be, to take out the brain et cetera. I’m just playing with an already playful scenario.
DaveX @16:
And what a great reason it is! Wait, that’s not what you meant?
I’m definitely with the foodies on this issue. I am fine with animals being killed for human purposes, but I dislike animal suffering. I eat free-range eggs but avoid chicken meat from a combination of concern about how it was raised and its lack of unique flavour. I buy locally raised meat from the farmers’ market or local butcher (extra tasty!). I don’t go out of my way to avoid meat when eating out, but if I choose to eat meat it had better be damn tasty or I won’t bother. For takeaways I usually eat vegetarian curries because I find cottage cheese or vegetarian kofta to be superior to poor quality meat.
Certainly eating meat is inefficient but so are a lot of other things such as large windows in houses or posting on the internet. Meat is one of my favourite luxuries, and I am willing to pay for it as such.
With that said, where’s this mushroom and barley soup recipe? I’m beginning to think you’re all talk, Kadath. I envisage a lot of garlic. It’s mean of you to taunt me like this!
You know, I’m sick of fighting about this.
I never wanted to insult any veggies out there (although I know I did a really bad job avoiding it). I just get a little cheesed off when people imply that I’m a bad person for enjoying a steak, or that I haven’t thought about where my meat comes from. I’ve seen the whole process, from birth to plate, without skipping any steps. I don’t shy away from the uglier parts, I embrace them. I think it’s possible to raise an animal for food sustainably, with compassion and respect for the animal that gives its life in the process. And I know that not all my meat was raised that way, but I support stricter controls on factory farms, and avoid them entirely where possible.
I also know it’s possible to live happily without eating meat. I agree with most vegetarians when they say that people shouldn’t eat meat if they ignore how it’s made. I think it’s disrespectful to the animals to take them for granted. I’ve gone through the same thought process that led to you becoming a vegetarian; I’ve just taken the opposite extreme. If you can respect my decision, I’ll respect yours.
Now, how about that soup recipe? I even promise not to sneak any bacon into it…
Luke, I don’t think people are “fighting” about this — they’re disagreeing, and providing arguments. You may not want to participate, but it seems to me that discussing issues like this rationally are largely what happens on this blog.
That said:
It’s compassionate and respectful to kill an animal for food? Is it compassionate and respectful to kill a human for food? If not, what’s the distinction that makes the moral difference?
i know I’ll regret this but
Do you give human life equal weight as that of livestock?
Spiteful Luke, I don’t think people are “fighting” about this — they’re disagreeing, and providing arguments.
I know that, I just think the argument has gotten unnecessarily spiteful, and I was trying to apologize for my contribution to that.
It’s compassionate and respectful to kill an animal for food?
If it’s done right, yes. Remember, I live in a farming community. That’s the attitude all good farmers take towards their livestock. If you start thinking about them as mere walking slabs of meat, well…
What I’m trying to say is that we don’t go around lopping the heads off calves for the hell of it. We put more thought into it than that. We make sure their lives are happy and free of illness, and when they die it’s quick and painless. No other meat eating animal puts that much thought and care into their food’s welfare. That’s the distinction.
Whoops, that first “spiteful” is a mistake, obviously.
Now everyone knows I’m so anal I copy my post to Word to check the spelling…
While I am feeling contrite will you please share your mushroom and barley soup recipe? (do you use beer as a base, mmmmm?)
Posted by: jsn | April 17, 2008 12:38 AM
Oh dear merciful Bob, I never thought of that (not much of a beer drinker, me.) I’m going to experiment this weekend!
Here, I’ll paste from my email to WRM. Bear in mind I’m one of those “well, that seems about right” cooks, which means I’ve probably never actually followed these instructions, and you should feel free to adjust on the fly:
Vegans, you can do the cooking in vegetable oils; avoid olive, because it will add an off note to the finished soup.
If you’re going to make a vegetarian version, I highly recommend using the dried mushroom substitution, because it enriches the broth substantially. If you want to make your own broth from stock, I can dig up one of my old pre-veggie stock recipes.
Hematite, feel free to increase the garlic. I find, as a rule, that it’s impossible to hit “too much” garlic, just the point of diminishing returns. ;)
The Rev:
No, but then again I don’t give equal weight to all human life, either — I’m pro-abortion, and there are instances where I would think it more moral to kill an organism that is genetically human that it would be to kill my dog (say, for example, that the human is an infant with profound unrecoverable neurological damage).
Luke:
That really doesn’t answer the question, since I am sure there were slave owners who could have written the above with the appropriate substitution for X.
My grandparents ran a cattle ranch in Texas, and my parents still own that land and lease it to other cattle ranchers. I visited the ranch every weekend as I was growing up, and helped out with the chores. I am pretty familiar with farm life. And I agree that good farmers generally treat their animals well, because poorly treated animals are lousy producers. But in the end, I have to disagree that it is “respectful” and “compassionate” to kill them.
PZ: you are right that plants use the same aminoacids as animals to make their proteins (in fact, all living things do, with the exception of some unusual aminoacids usede by bacteria), but my point is that, and I expect that is a known fact for peoply who know at least a little biology, aminoacid composition in protein rich vegetable foods is not appropiate unless you mix several of them (in contrast with meat, eggs and dairy products, in which just any one of them is enough to provide all the aminoacids we humans need). I must insist, when you are just barely growing enough corn or beans to supply your basic caloric needs (or not even that) through the carbohidrates they contain, growing several crops that are more complicated to grow successfully isn’t an option. It’s easy to think that you can easily have a balanced diet based on vegetables only when all that is needed is to go to the supermarket and buy them (and people can take advantage of the occasion to feel morally superior by wrinklin their noses at the meat department and despising those that buy there).
And, as comment #156 mentions, animal proteins are more digestible (you can eat meat raw, while vegetable protein sources require quite a deal of processing… the only risk is sanitary) and most common vegetable sources of proteins, seeds are also rich in carbohidrates and fats (e.g., soybeans, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, nuts).
Re #153
Well, those people are skinyy and small in stature, a clear sign of undernourishment. In fact, they look very similar to our poor Mexican subsistence farmers.
Tulse, I’m not sure I understand your argument.
You start off by saying it’s okay to end a human life in certain circumstances (for the record, I’m pro-choice too. I completely agree with you under the conditions you provide), but it’s never okay to kill an animal to feed your family?
Then you equate livestock with slavery…
Help me out here…
Kadath #172, thanks for posting your recipe; it looks delicious!
Luke, let’s be clear about what I wrote. I did not equate livestock with slavery, but equated the argument used for the one with arguments used for the other. That doesn’t necessarily mean that livestock and slavery are morally equivalent, all that means is that, without further justification, the validity of the argument you offered to justify raising animals for food is similar to that used by slaveowners.
If you want to offer a different argument, we can discuss that.
Again, please be accurate: I never said it was never OK to kill an animal to feed my family. I don’t believe it is never OK to kill other human beings, but I don’t do so on a routine basis, or believe that there is no moral issue involved.
Am I the only comic reader here? Warren Ellis used the idea that PZ mentions in his brilliant series Transmetropolitan. They grew humans in vats without brains. The meat was then sold as Long Pig.
@Charles – Long pork is a commonly used term for human flesh. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/long_pork)
@Kadath – Thanks for posting the recipe! I was getting worried that you were serious about withholding it for bad behavior. Looks delicious and I can’t wait to give it a try. :)
I think large proportion of people are meat-eaters for the wrong reasons. They do care about animal suffering, but either they have never thought about the issue, are in denial of reality, making bad ratioanalisations or have irrational fears with their health and reputation.
It’s true you can be consistent in the choice of eating meat if you say you care more about the taste of meat than about the suffering and other negative effects that the production causes. But instead people come up with some kind of bad reasons just as long as they don’t have to admit they are being thoughtless or incompassionate.
I’m not sure who this argument is directed at.
Certainly nobody is saying there are no poor or undernourished people in the world. There are. Hundreds of millions of very desperate people.
That’s not evidence that a complete, balanced (mostly-)vegetarian diet is not nourishing, or not an order of magnitude more sustainable than a meat-based one.
I especially don’t think “eat more meat” is really a solution to global poverty and hunger…
Kadath @ #172: That looks like a perfect inaugural recipe for my solar box cooker! Thanks!
“As for Fatboy’s remark about 20% = Priuses… well, why not drop meat-eating by 100%? It’s not difficult in the slightest. Hell, it’s actually more difficult to stop driving, given the spread-out nature of most modern communities!”
I won’t claim that I have stopped driving completely, but I am closer to 40 than I want to admit, and I have never owned a car, no matter where I’ve lived – and I have lived in some challenging places, St. Louis and Baltimore and Santa Fe and small cities smack in the middle of rural upstate New York. (I’ve also lived in some really wonderful cities to be carefree, like Washington and Boston.) In a busy year (one where I rent a car for a road trip from Boston, where I live now, to my hometown 400 miles away) I drive less than 1,000 miles in a year. Other years it’s probably less than 300. It’s actually rather easy – I just don’t buy very much stuff, and what I do buy, I buy in either the community where I live or the one where I work. Living without a car isn’t that hard for me. Your mileage may vary. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
But if I gave up eating animal products, I would have to eat a lot more grains and legumes, sources of way more starch than my pre-diabetic body can handle. A simple bowl of steel-cut oats shoots my blood sugar above 140 within 15 minutes, where it stays for 3 or more hours. And 140 is the level at which small nerves and blood vessels are damaged, leading to diabetic complications like blindness, kidney disease, and gangrene. It is actually far easier for me not to own a car than to give up meat. Plus, by keeping my blood sugar under control, I’m avoiding all those pharmaceuticals that are tested on animals. I am not claiming my diet is health-promoting for everyone, nor am I disputing that some people can thrive as vegetarians. I think different people do well on different diets.
I dispute that it’s “easy” to give up meat – it may be for some people, but for others it may truly be a matter of life and death. Similarly, some people may dispute that it’s “easy” to give up driving – they may find it almost impossible. Live and let live, I say.
Migraineur,
I do agree, when you say that giving up meat may be hard. Sometimes it’s hard to do the right thing. You have stop making excues to yourself, you have to change yourself and perhaps overcome social pressure.
But in developed countries survival or health are generally not an excuse. Maybe it’s quite impossible for you not to eat meat, but not generally.
“Live and let live”, you say.
I find that idiom very inapproppriate in this situation, because there’s a huge amount of sufferring happening for bad reasons and it just seems very disproportionate to complain about the small amount of discomfort you may feel when “the hippies are imposing their morality on others”.