Not for nothing. It can be useful and pleasurable, but taste has a dark side as well. Having a sweet-tooth has been a stab in the back for many modern humans, as it leads to over-consumption of sugar, which can be horrible for one's health. More on-topic, the craving for the taste of meat has led to the suffering and slaughter of countless animals.

Sugar is overvalued by taste buds because of its low availability when our taste buds evolved. This argument does not extend to every other taste.

>More on-topic, the craving for the taste of meat

Meat is craved by the taste buds because it is the most nutrient dense natural food... with very few substitutes. All known surviving human cultures eat one of meat, fish or milk; no exceptions. Certain essential nutrients are not bioavailable to us without those.

>has led to the suffering and slaughter of countless animals.

Animal "suffering" is completely arbitrary view based on shallow view of the ecosystem. Cells die all day but do you mourn their deaths? Zebras die all the time in the savannahs but do you think it is a good idea to capture all lions and feed them fake meat to "reduce animal suffering"? From the ecosystem point of view, individual organisms "suffering" is a part of a much bigger thing where it doesn't matter as much as an individual organism would think.

This exact same argument could be used to dismiss human suffering as well.

True. But we don't value human suffering above everything.

This is why all known human cultures have had some form of soldiers who are ready to die to protect the tribe, the religion, the culture, the nation or what not... otherwise they wouldn't exist.

Not just that, we allow for risky occupations like mining, fishing etc. i.e. things we need for sustenance. We even allow for risky hobbies or sports i.e. just for entertainment.

These are clearly more important than "human suffering".

You wouldn't choose to die to prolong the lives of the few cells in your infected tooth. You'd remove the tooth instead. Similarly, you'd sacrifice yourself to protect the tribe, family, country etc. And the ecosystem would try to sacrifice you to protect the ecosystem if it comes to that.

It’s not a function of having a certain view of ecosystems. It’s as a simple as accepting a few premises:

1. Needless suffering is generally bad 2. In almost all cases amongst those in the developed world, animal products aren’t generally necessary 3. farming animals causes their suffering.

This is why we love our dogs and don’t put them in dog fights. Or why we feel bad when we see someone putting kittens in a bag and throwing it in a river.

Animal fat in human food was mostly replaced by plant oils in the last 100 years by the food industry, causing increased deficiency in fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K in most of the world population. And that is just a few vitamins. There are other essential amino acids which are only available in animal products... and then there are others which nutrition science is still exploring... except nutrition science is ineffective and generally corrupted by the food industry so it takes a very long time to find out what is really true.

What can be believed though is by looking at the history. There are exactly ZERO tribes, cultures, ancient or modern which did not eat animal products.

>1. Needless suffering is generally bad

That has too many assumptions. What is "needless"? "Bad" for who/what purpose/goal?

For instance, one could argue that making humans suffer by depriving humans of essential nutrition for needless reasons like "animal suffering" is generally bad.

>3. farming animals causes their suffering.

Cooking bread causes suffering to the yeast colony. Yeast colonies are super-organisms (which are higher level organisms than individual yeast cells) and they definitely suffer (in their level of consciousness) when you put the dough in the oven... but if you were looking from a human perspective, you don't care about that. Similarly, from a potentially interplanetary species perspective, herbivores dying is not something we should relate to. You can choose to, but then you can also do that for yeast suffering.

First of all, this is wrong. Modern Jains avoid all animal products. Even if it weren't wrong, it isn't any sort of proof that it's required. So we ought not use that fact to justify our continued eating of animals.

> That has too many assumptions. What is "needless"? "Bad" for who/what purpose/goal?

Yeah, thats the tricky part, and you're right that there are situations where it can be difficult to determine if suffering is necessary or not, however those terms are defined. I think in general though people believe this. I reckon you do, too, which is why people tend to have averse reactions to hearing stories of folks imprisoned wrongfully, or people savagely beaten for nothing.

> Cooking bread causes suffering to the yeast colony. Yeast colonies are super-organisms (which are higher level organisms than individual yeast cells) and they definitely suffer (in their level of consciousness)

This is simply false. We have no reason to believe that yeast have any capacity to suffer, in the same way that people generally don't think broccoli can suffer. Sure, they die, but feel no pain and have no ability to understand anything, let alone their own experience.

This is just a version of the fallacy of nature.

I know. The developed world relies on food industry disinformation sold as "science". I believe this is the reason why the developed world has the kind of deficiencies and diseases that the indigenous cultures didn't have.

- Book: Food Politics by Marion Nestle

- Book: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price

- YouTube Video: The $100 Billion Dollar Ingredient making your Food Toxic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQmqVVmMB3k (28 minutes)

Ah, yes, just ask the Romans, who liked to flavor their food with nutritious lead.

(The Romans' lead-based flavoring is an extreme example, but people have been eating pretty dubious things, particularly sugar, for a very long time because they taste good)