If you’d rather eat meat all day, then you’re probably saying this problem is not important enough to you. Which is totally fine, it’s your choice. I just want you to realise you have a choice.

Also, vegetarian food can be really delicious. Go to a good vegetarian restaurant some day and order something that sounds tasty - it probably will be and you may not miss the meat as much as you think!

I'd rather eat meat all day, but also not have it pumped with antibiotics. So, to that end, I support banning the importation of meat grown with heavy use of antibiotics, I'd support certification schemes to guarantee reduced use of antibiotics, and other effective regulations (whether self-regulating or governmental regulation) with teeth that get the job done.

Just don't think that your choice to try and reduce the price of meat will meaningfully affect the use of meat. It's just more meat for me.

Really how well does that scale though? At a minimum, being able to eat a vegetarian diet—depending on geography—is a luxury. Eating at a vegetarian restaurant in place of meat in general is completely out of the question for most. Granted, if it's a choice to eat meat 3 times a day, than you certainly could be in a position to eat at a vegetarian restaurant 3 times a day.

How is eating a vegetarian diet a luxury?

During poverty in Yugoslavia my family and I subsisted on a diet of beans and rice. Complete protein in that combo, enough fiber and calories, we didn't die despite eating that for years.

You make a good point, but that is encompassed in my "depending on geography" bit.

Where exactly is it a luxury? In India? In Africa?

I'm pretty sure ex-Yugoslavia area has a very good geography, if not better than most countries. You can grow soy there, just like in the USA, you can grow corn, wheat, you can raise chickens, you can do practically anything there, olives, oranges, grapes, forest fruit etc.

What do vegetarians elsewhere eat? Is there a place on Earth where it's cheaper to grow protein by feeding protein to animals, or to just eat the protein directly?

I'm not exactly sure where in the world is rice and beans more expensive than meat? If so, then it's heavily subsidized and is not real free market behavior.

There is a lot to it, but Geography is not a hierarchical system. In this case, it seems Yugoslavia, as with much of Europe, is great for agriculture. Despite the poverty, that is a luxury. Similar subsistence strategies have been used all over the world for thousands of years (only about 12000). There are places where farming is either not feasible, less energy efficient, or where exclusively plant-based diets aren't feasible. Knowledge about how to replace every component of what you'd get from meat being a component of your diet is also a luxury. If its not already a cultural norm to rely on what has been tested to work, then you need knowledge, a luxury many people don't have. Lastly, you need the intent to drop meat from your diet. In your case this was no option and it worked out. Great. Otherwise its more or less a luxury to be able to experiment with your diet. I'm not so well versed as to know exactly where this occurs, but Papa new Guinea comes to mind, and a wealth of curiosity abounds with regard to the geography of the agricultural revolution and evolution of humans which would provide some indicators.

> There are places where farming is either not feasible, less energy efficient, or where exclusively plant-based diets aren't feasible.

I guess by this logic, since Sahara exists, eating food is a luxury.

Your definition of luxury has transformed into a supreme being just so you can call vegetarianism/veganism a luxury.

If you live in the first world, eating plants over eating meat is not a luxury. It's the cheapest form of healthy sustaining food there is.

You can spend more and buy hormone-free and antibiotic-free products.

One of the weirdest things, for me, is to spend a few weeks eating cheap, delicious, and relatively natural food in Latin America, and then returning to the USA where people get excited to buy groceries that are "made with real* ingredients!".

Where was this in Latin America? In Argentina, most cattle have gone from eating grass on the open pampas to being fed grain in cramped feedlots just like in the US, because it is more lucrative to use the land to grow soya. In Chile, a hell of a lot of food in the supermarkets is imported from the USA, namely from that country’s lower-end market (Walmart etc.). I can’t speak for other countries, but definitely some of Latin America countries are already basing their diet on relatively unnatural food.

humans have huge variety of choice for food which has all necessary nutrients which does not originate from meat, so this comment “eat like rabbit” is not correct if you are concluding vegetarian diet.

You're perfectly able to eat organic meat, where antibiotics will not have been used.

Lab grown meat and genetically modified plant based meat substitute with blood seem to be the two most likely examples.

So you're saying that two technologies which don't actually exist yet are more likely than not eating meat, which 100s of millions of humans already do? Yeah, for the average American, you could be right.

Get good meat! If you have the money, you’ve got options. It’ll taste better than antibiotic meat, too.