However, if you want to win over the average consumer, or someone who has developed tastebuds over twenty years, or really anyone who doesn't already eat a vegan diet, you have to overcumb 1 crucial thing:
It needs to taste good or better than whatever you are trying to replace.
I haven't come across a vegan pizza that doesn't taste like the way I have come to expect pizza to taste, the cheese just isn't right. All the food science in the world can't seem to solve this problem (I've tried it homemade, by several skilled professionals, I've tried what was rated as some of the best vegan pizza in my city, mutiple times of the years, and the list goes on).
Until it tastes like the pizza I have fundamentally come to expect pizza to taste like, it just isn't worth switching for me.
If you can solve this problem, nobody is going to care if its vegan or not, because it just taste good.
I wish PETA and the like would focus their time and money on this, since it would actually yield the net benefit results they're looking for without the air of hositility some of their followers have.
Yes, you can debate whether its right or wrong to even think this way. The truth is, people in large already do, why not meet them where they are at?
Or just cost less. At scale (notwithstanding government subsidies), vegan food will be cheaper than animal based food.
People don't go to McDonald's because their burgers taste better than at the steakhouse, they go because it's cheaper.
If you have to refine it into fake meat or similar, the cost savings is gone.
There's also research into meat grown from stem cells. Right now it is still too expensive to grow, but I believe that is the way forward.
duhhh you'd be stupid not to at that point. Until we get there the consumer needs to signal big corporations that demand exists and McDonald's adding plant based options is a huge step. Every burger sold will contribute to encourage more companies to offer vegan options, even cheese
Gee well that's a rather bold statement. I find this attitude of "if you're not vegan you're a liar" so insufferable. I can think of at least a few explanations for the parent comment. "If you think your cheese is suffering free..."
1. You may be underinformed
2. You've purchased free range dairy products
3. You know something I don't
The entire ordeal is very much not natural and not pleasant. And we do it at a scale that is awe-inducing. If you are a compassionate type that sees cows in a similar light to dogs, I'd bet you can understand why someone would feel very strongly that it's not an option.
If you would like to learn more there are a few documentaries that explore the big 3 benefits of veganism--Health, ecology, and animal welfare. I won't link them here as they are easy to find for any that are interested.
If you eliminate meat and dairy, those animals won’t have any life at all. The only reason they are there is because humans eat them.
Their population would be greatly reduced, but is having a billion consciousnesses in a mediocre state and potentially suffering somehow better than having a few orders of magnitude fewer consciousnesses that are properly cared for and living more "natural" lives? It is hard to say without getting into the details, but from a high-level utilitarian perspective, one feels that the latter is somehow more preferable, although doing any kind of arithmetic with souls is a risky business.
Free range or not, cows still need to be artificially inseminated (read: industry term to fancy dress "cow rape"), the calves still need to be weaned off after only a few weeks with their mothers (once the colostrum part is over) and/or be given formula milk substitute while humans drink what's rightfully the calf's. Leaving the calf with the cow is absolutely not profitable. Also, the mother cow needs to be culled after only 5-6 years of living because they cannot bear children after that; cows naturally live for up to 20 years. Free range cows still end up in the same slaughter house, so you're indirectly funding the beef industry. Oh, and by the way, if the calf is a male, it's killed right away or sold to the veal industry.
It's disgusting and cruel regardless of how much space the cow had to roam in; every other aspect of its life was miserable. Not knowing this is okay, but if you're reading this and the sibling comments, you really have no excuse any more.
Some animals are abused and we can work on regulation to prevent that and promote sustainable development (in EU they already have some laws about this) but I don't think making sure cows die by old age should be the end goal.
1. Lions are obligate carnivores, we're not. We do not need meat to survive (evidenced by several cultures around the world living off a nearly entirely plant-based diet for centuries), lions do.
2. What animals do isn't a good moral compass. Animals rape each other, steal, kill their children, and do all sorts of morally reprehensible stuff.
>Some animals are abused and we can work on regulation to prevent that
The best solution to stopping animal abuse is to not breed the animal in the first place. Can't abuse something that doesn't exist now, can we?
>I don't think making sure cows die by old age should be the end goal.
I never proposed that. I said we shouldn't have bred them into this miserable existence in the first place.
Why do we get to decide how long a cow should live? Why do we get to artificially inseminate a cow that cannot possibly give consent? Why do we get to take away the newborn child of a defenceless creature? Come on.
I don't think we should go out of our way to hurt animals (for example intensive chicken production where you have overcrowded operations where chickens stay in the dark, etc, should be outlawed), but if I want to eat it I'll eat it. The cow need not consent, because it's my food.
Fundamentally it's simply not a moral issue to me, it's a gastronomic one. I believe most people agree with me. Vegans are so incredibly out of touch.
PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals.
It never needs to. You're performing mental gymnastics, I'm sorry. It's never true that this sort of immense suffering just needs to magical occur for the world to operate normally. There are limitless delicious recipes that require 0 suffering, 0 pain, 0 murder.
> I don't think we should go out of our way to hurt animals
That's what the entirety of animal agriculture is. We go WAAAY out of our way. It's expensive, inefficient, unhealthy, and immoral, and we do it anyway.
> That's what the entirety of animal agriculture is. We go WAAAY out of our way. It's expensive, inefficient, unhealthy, and immoral, and we do it anyway.
So are you against eating all meat or in favor of reforming industrial meat farming? These are two very different positions.
> It never needs to.
Yes I didn't say it needs to. I said sometimes it does. Foie gras involves sticking a pipe down a duck's throat and force feeding it until it has liver desease which makes its liver extra large and tasty. It is what it is. I support it because it's delicious. My taste buds are more important than a given animal's suffering, plain and simple.
I know I'm being blunt but I feel this holier-than-thou attitude on the vegan's side needs to be confronted with a little bit of "silent majority"-type viewpoints.
I'm not making controversial points, I'm spelling out widespread ideas to you.
lol holy shit. When your reasoning gets to this point, I think we need to back up and appreciate the insanity of what you're saying. Would you be fine with some alien species arriving to Earth and doing all this to you? Would you accept it and think "Ah yes well it is what it is!"
If an alien comes to us to eat us, I mean yes, that's just how it is. We can try fighting back of course (which species wants to be killed?) but if they win then, what can you do? Appeal emotionally with them? They could say the same thing, that it's just how it is. Might really does make right. If they have superiority in fighting power, I mean, there's nothing we can do other than accept it. And that's the same thing that's happening with us and the animals we eat.
The alien hypothetical isn’t about what is possible, it’s about what is right. Would you feel that the aliens should be allowed to enslave and eat you? Or would you feel like you’re being wronged, and that you don’t deserve it?
It's clear that you're trying to say that animals and people are equivalent, that animals are slaves. If I don't believe in that world view, you can't make me care. You could show rational reasons like, eating a vegetarian diet is better to combat climate change, which I accept, but having a moral appeal doesn't move me to change my meat-eating ways.
If an alien can overpower us, sure I'd try to escape because I obviously want to live, but I'd be under no delusion that I deserve to not die. The alien captured and wants to eat me, so that's going to be what will happen. There is a difference between how I feel, what would happen, and what is morally right. I posit that morals don't matter in this case, only power over other beings, which the aliens have over us in this scenario.
Said another way, why should morals matter in this case? I'm genuinely asking, because whenever I ask this, people don't give an actual answer and instead say something like, it's the right thing to do or it reduces suffering, but this uses morality to explain why morality matters, sort of like using the Bible to ask why things that are said in the Bible are true.
I'm not looking away and pretending it doesn't exist. I'm staring at it and saying "yes I approve of that because I like to eat animals".
If your argument is that intensive farming is less than ideal, sure, I agree. If your argument is that the solution to that is to stop eating meat, that's where you lose me.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/8q8984/why-animals-that-died...
>Vegans are so incredibly out of touch.
really? lol ok
> you're just a sociopath
Sure, according to your definition I would be. So would most people, billions of them.
> Do you also believe it is okay for me to torture a dog just because I get visual satisfaction from it?
Visual satisfaction? No. But if you want to slaughter and eat it I don't have a problem with that.
> really? lol ok
Yes, really. You come across as some sort of quixotean person yelling at windmills while most of us over here are just eating our meat. It's simply that people don't say it, out of politeness.
Neither what humans do is a compass for animals's behaviour. You know that cows are not humans, right? There is not much consent in their social life.
We can work to offer them a "good" peaceful life before a quick innevitable slaughter. Not all the farmers cage their animals. Some of them live a pretty good life eating good grass and breathing fresher air than most humans do.
As long as the lifespan of a cow is concerned what difference does it make if it lives 5 years or 20 years? Eventually you have to accept that death is innevitable for animals, insects, plants and humans alike.
Eventuall you will end up death too, get eaten by "disgusting" worms.
You also seem to favor no life at all than a short span? Would you prefer not to be born if you were to know your life will end up tragic (i.e in car crash, or eaten by a lion)?
While the suffering argument is entirely valid, it's obviously not a successful driver of change. The climate change/pandemic/health angle is easily more appealing to the average consumer.
For some reason, only vegans get called out for making substitutions.
Burgers aren't a huge deal in Asia, for example.
Asia is a big place, but for example in China pretty much everything has a small amount of pork as a minor ingredient/seasoning; "vegan" dishes are the pitiable food of the poor; and the word for household is literally a roof with a pig underneath it
Or, tl;dr: You do realize soy milk is very popular among vegans, right?
What I am trying to say is that vegans are trying to engineer a product. So this product the opposite of natural, so what is with the claims of health?
I don't know why I used the word "bad"
I find it frustrating as a person who only eats meat and vegetables to have to tolerate vegans who claim health benefits. Most vegans I've met are fat.
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/24473/20191218/a-group...
People usually make your argument in bad faith because even when corrected you never had a moral interest in “minimizing plant suffering” to begin with. You just thought you had a good gotcha.
Not really. A person who eats both doesn't typically agonize over the morality of eating animals or plants like many vegans do. It's pointing out the fallacy of advocating veganism on the basis of animal suffering.
That of course is only one argument for veganism among many much stronger ones, but it doesn't make it a bad argument to make.
The reasons might be environmental, ethical, moral, or religious, etc... Not important, just that a vegan or vegetarian is simply someone who did a cost-benefit analysis where, to them, the costs of meat (environmental degradation, massive suffering, personal guilt, my-god-said-so, whatever) outweigh the benefits (taste, convenience, social acceptably). That's merely it!
It's not cognitive dissonance to want to enjoy some of the benefits of something without some of the costs - that's what vegan "meat" (at least attempts) to do.
It's like creating a protein based pea that tastes exactly like a pea in every way but made with animal protein and I call it carnivore peas. What you are saying is that you are trying to reverse engineer something for hedonism's sake.
There's no contradiction or dissonance, it's "I find raising and slaughtering animals for food unethical" on the one side and "I like certain flavors" on the other.
Move to a remote island if you want to be a saint. But don't posture to be a holy man or even more simply "a better man" by not eating animals and byproducts.