Food Ethics (Poll)

[TexRex]

Pulpo tacos are good.

 

[Joey D]

Tako is good, but the one time I tried sannakji in LA's Koreatown, I thought I was going to throw up. I can't do wiggling food.

 

[TB]

I can't do wiggling food.

 

[TexRex]

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

Tako is good, but the one time I tried sannakji in LA's Koreatown, I thought I was going to throw up. I can't do wiggling food.

No thanks

San-nakji - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

​

Choking hazard​

Consuming sannakji is potentially dangerous due to choking hazard, especially for diners who are intoxicated.[9] Because the cephalopod's limbs contain neurons, the extremities continue to move and the suction cups along its tentacles maintain their gripping power that might attach to one's throat, even after getting detached from the body and doused with sesame oil.[10] Several incidents of choking on sannakji have been reported, one in 2008 in Gwangju and at least one death in 2010.[11][12]

 

[TexRex]

I haven't eaten actual beef since St. Patrick's Day corned beef leftovers and, honestly, I think I'm about at the point I can give it up entirely.

So I ended up going a bit over a year. Had a small amount of beef last night and enjoyed it.

The primary reason for cutting it out of my diet has been health...and I guess I feel better for it? My LDLs have certainly been a lot better since doing so but I don't know that I can correlate that with my own experiences. A secondary "reason" is reducing my contribution to the energy consumption of beef producers--it's not a very deliberate motivator but more of a side benefit.

There have been times that I've craved mostly specific beef preparations and I've been able to satisfy those pretty well without consuming actual beef. My wife's wanted beef on occasions that we weren't going out to eat and I haven't had any qualms about preparing it even if I didn't indulge myself.

 

[Danoff]

The term Vegan seems to be increasingly be substituted for vegetarian. I recently heard Neil deGrasse Tyson refer to bees going "vegan", having evolved from bee forms that hunted other insects. Vegetarian would have been a better description than vegan in this case. There is no evidence that bees care one way or the other about using animal products or benefiting from animal labor. Certainly we know that bees have no issues with benefiting from human labor, of course Vegans don't either. But if an animal hollows out a tree, I think bees are perfectly happy to chase them out and build a hive.

Veganism is much bigger than not eating meat. It's essentially a religion of refusing to commodify animals that can be expressed in different levels of extremism. Veganism actually gets in the way of viable alternatives to using products with large carbon footprints. If there is a desire to get more people to become more vegetarian, we need to stop trying to sell veganism. You'll have an easier time getting people to eat less cow if you don't also ban eggs and leather purses. I'd like to include fish here as well because people largely include fish-eating people as vegetarians even though it's technically not.

 

[TheCracker]

Veganism is much bigger than not eating meat. It's essentially a religion of refusing to commodify animals that can be expressed in different levels of extremism. Veganism actually gets in the way of viable alternatives to using products with large carbon footprints. If there is a desire to get more people to become more vegetarian, we need to stop trying to sell veganism. You'll have an easier time getting people to eat less cow if you don't also ban eggs and leather purses. I'd like to include fish here as well because people largely include fish-eating people as vegetarians even though it's technically not.

I may or may not have said it here before, but i find pescatarianism a peculiar concept. I totally get vegetarianism, i would like to go down that dietery route myself, but as much as i love animals i also love the taste of them too. As much as i admire the thought behind it, i'm not quite ready to commit. Like you say, veganism is too cultish and authoritarian and i feel is just taking things to an unnecessary and perhaps short sighted extreme.

But pescatarianism? So many questions. What is it about creatures of the land that you love so much but hate in equal measures those creatures of the water? Why one and not the other? What have the poor fish and molluscs done to you?

 

[Liquid]

My friend is a pescatarian based solely on the basis that he doesn't like red meat nor white meats like chicken. Nothing but taste. Which is fine but I agree it's an arbitrary line to draw if it's for any reason other than "It doesn't taste nice".

 

[Danoff]

But pescatarianism? So many questions. What is it about creatures of the land that you love so much but hate in equal measures those creatures of the water? Why one and not the other? What have the poor fish and molluscs done to you?

Pescatarianism I think is a climate-change friendlier choice than eating cows animals. I don't know if this chart will come through:

A lot of "vegans" do it for climate change. But if climate change is your driving impulse, pigs and chickens seem viable as well. Here's some more information on that.

Carbon Footprint Chicken vs Beef vs Tofu (Calculator Shows CO2 Per kg)

Carbon Footprint Chicken Compared. Chicken Carbon Footprint Calculator. Carbon Footprint of Beef Vs Chicken and Fish Carbon Footprint.

8billiontrees.com

Lamb 39.2 CO2 per kg
Beef 27 CO2 per kg
Cheese 13.5 CO2 per kg
Pork 12.1 CO2 per kg
Turkey 10.9 CO2 per kg
Chicken 6.9 CO2 per kg
Tuna 6.1 CO2 per kg
Eggs 4.8 CO2 per kg
Potatoes 2.9 CO2 per kg
Rice 2.7 CO2 per kg
Nuts 2.3 CO2 per kg
Beans/Tofu 2.0 CO2 per kg

Seems like cheese is not a bad place to cut that off in terms of cost/benefit.

 

[Joey D]

Aren't we already overfishing the seas though? Seems like switching to pescetarianism is just adding to that problem until sustainable seafood becomes more prevalent.

 

[Danoff]

Aren't we already overfishing the seas though? Seems like switching to pescetarianism is just adding to that problem until sustainable seafood becomes more prevalent.

This is another place where veganism trips over itself. Farmed fish have a significantly lower carbon footprint than cows, something like chickens or less. But because it has a slightly higher footprint than wild-caught fish, vegans like to ride this train of thought to "well really wild caught is better than farmed, but if you're going wild-caught, that's bad for the fish population, so really you need to not eat fish". In reality, farmed fish carbon footprint is a major improvement over beef, and is much healthier anyway.

That being said, sometimes the estimates for farm raised seem to be less.

The SU-EATABLE_LIFE database also provides some interesting carbon footprint estimates for farmed seafood, especially when compared with other commodities. The value listed for farmed prawns/shrimp is 15.07 while that of wild caught prawns/shrimp is 7.04 (remember these values are simply for greenhouse gas emissions, and by-catch, turtle mortality and benthic perturbations are not included in the estimate calculations). In contrast the estimates for wild caught and farmed trout are very similar, at 4.20 kg and 4.38 kg, respectively. Farmed salmon are estimated to generate a mere 1.61 kg while the wild caught salmon estimate is reported as 3.37 kg. For comparison, bone-in and boneless beef are listed at 17.96 kg and 25.75 kg, respectively.

 

[MatskiMonk]

vegans like to ride this train of thought to "well really wild caught is better than farmed, but if you're going wild-caught, that's bad for the fish population, so really you need to not eat fish"

In my experience that's more of a vegetarian argument since it implies it's okay to do it if only there was population control.

 

[Danoff]

In my experience that's more of a vegetarian argument since it implies it's okay to do it if only there was population control.

My interaction with vegans involves a lot of appealing to things outside of the core belief (like climate change) to justify that the core belief should be adopted. This is because the core belief is hard to substantiate on its own.

 

[MatskiMonk]

My interaction with vegans involves a lot of appealing to things outside of the core belief (like climate change) to justify that the core belief should be adopted.

There's no reason no to espouse secondary benefits, especially if they're relevant to everyone.

This is because the core belief is hard to substantiate on its own.

That would be your opinion of their cause, rather than their reasoning for their belief. If you offer a legalese defence for murder based on the lack of reciprocal understanding of rights, and have an opposing take on arbitrary views on what ex-'living' flesh we can/should masticate, digest, and crap out, then perhaps it's just easier to focus on things that are more likely to negatively affect society, or you particularly (e.g. climate change and the effects of Red meat consumption on your body) -- in other words, if you don't care about those other things that don't affect you, let's focus on the things that do.

 

[Danoff]

There's no reason no to espouse secondary benefits, especially if they're relevant to everyone.

In my experience, and again this is purely anecdotal, "secondary benefits" are what gets lead.

That would be your opinion of their cause, rather than their reasoning for their belief.

Well, given that you haven't interacted with the vegans I have, I think this is assumption on your part. Generally the vegans I have interacted with were persuaded primarily by GHG emissions, and are more loosely associated with the core of the belief system. They do associate with it, but self-professed loosely. So this is the same set of information that is presented to me. I understand that you're mistrusting of my characterization here, but I've not had any discussions with vegans in person where they attempted to tell me that animals should have rights and that it is unfair to use their labor, etc. But plenty of times I've had vegans in person attempt to persuade me on a GHG basis.

So, I'm letting you know this comment about me misses the mark.

If you offer a legalese defence for murder based on the lack of reciprocal understanding of rights, and have an opposing take on arbitrary views on what ex-'living' flesh we can/should masticate, digest, and crap out, then perhaps it's just easier to focus on things that are more likely to negatively affect society, or you particularly (e.g. climate change and the effects of Red meat consumption on your body) -- in other words, if you don't care about those other things that don't affect you, let's focus on the things that do.

Your argument here seems to be that you think I can't hold a reasonable discussion, and so when the super smart highly refined vegans that I interact with immediately suss out how irrational and dismissive I am of their moral system, they intelligently tailor their interactions with me based on what they think will persuade me. You must have a very low opinion of me. Which is fine, that's your prerogative.

You also assume they know me as well as you do (or something approximating that), which is also incorrect. You've likely read more of my thoughts than they have or ever will. Perhaps if they only knew me better, they would share your low opinion of me.

What has been presented to me by the few vegans I've discussed veganism with in person (not on the internet or through books, lectures, etc.) is that they themselves don't hold to the core beliefs particularly strongly, and that they themselves profess to be mostly persuaded by GHG reasoning. A more academic source than my in person experience is likely to yield more academic reasoning.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Well, given that you haven't interacted with the vegans I have, I think this is assumption on your part.

Perhaps, I would say we have opposing views on vegans and vegetarians - I can respect the behaviour of the former but consider the latter to be hypocrites who are nothing more than meat-eaters with a dietary preference. I completely acknowledge your experience may be the opposite of mine.

I understand that you're mistrusting of my characterization here...

... less so mistrusting, I don't think you're intentionally mispresenting anything, and more than likely it's simply a difference in Midlands UK versus Colorado US vegetarians and vegans.

Your argument here seems to be that you think I can't hold a reasonable discussion,

No, I know you're capable of very well reasoned discussion, and as I've mentioned before, it has informed some of my opinions... that said, I do think you have an inherent (perhaps cultural) bias towards your personal freedom, so whilst issues you've discussed around (for instance) gun ownership, and human rights are in many cases informed/informative and well reasoned, I wouldn't accept they are fundamentally reasonable in every case... with animal rights versus human rights being the real crux of the matter in this debate, I suppose.

so when the super smart highly refined vegans that I interact with immediately suss out how irrational and dismissive I am of their moral system, they tailor their interacts with me based on what they think will persuade me. You must have a very low opinion of me. Which is fine, that's your prerogative.

I don't think how they interact with you affects my opinion of you at all. How you interact with them, probably does.

What has been presented to me by the few vegans I've discussed veganism with in person (not on the internet or through books, lectures, etc.) is that they themselves don't hold to the core beliefs particularly strongly, and that they themselves profess to be mostly persuaded by GHG reasoning. A more academic source than my in person experience is likely to yield more academic reasoning.

Fair enough. My position is based on co-habiting with vegans in one way or another for 30+ years that are all about the animals, and less so the environment, a more academic source than my in person experience is likely to yield more academic reasoning.

 

[Danoff]

Fair enough. My position is based on co-habiting with vegans in one way or another for 30+ years that are all about the animals, and less so the environment, a more academic source than my in person experience is likely to yield more academic reasoning.

Old school vegans are probably more into the core principles. My interactions have been with late-comers. Go back far enough and veganism couldn't even be about GHGs because it wasn't something people worried about.

 

[TexRex]

Aren't we already overfishing the seas though? Seems like switching to pescetarianism is just adding to that problem until sustainable seafood becomes more prevalent.

Aquaculture does exist. The vast majority of fish I consume is raised, with some caught fresh water but that's typically stuff I get directly from those who caught it--friends who go fishing.

Interesting to see lamb production emissions so high per the data @Danoff supplied. I don't know that I'm surprised, but it's interesting. I do eat lamb as a primary replacement for beef (as in I'll eat lamb in most ways I would have eaten beef) but my lamb consumption is far lower than my beef consumption was. Though it's apparently worse by mass than beef where emissions are concerned, it's also less unhealthy.

If the state stopped subsidizing cattle ranchers (fat chance), beef would become much more costly and so demand would fall more on pork and chicken (which are also subsidized, but not to the same degree) and emissions would be reduced drastically. Not by hurting producers with caps and mandates but simply by not giving them money.

 

[UKMikey]

The local Tesco's supermarket has started selling Beyond burgers so I thought I'd try one on the grill and I can honestly say it's the best non-meat burger I've ever tasted. Obviously it's not indistinguishable from meat but I think if all cows disappeared from the planet tomorrow I'd be okay with eating these for the foreseeable future.

(*This is not a paid announcement)

 

[Exorcet]

I have not tried Beyond, Impossible, or similar in a while, I don't know if they've improved since I last have. However I'm also looking out for news on cultured meat, which seems to be making some progress. In the long term I feel this will be the best substitute since it's not really a substitute, but genuine meat produced without animals. It can also a good candidate for genetically modified food. The genetic components of only the meat to be grown as food could be altered (at least as far as I would guess) which removes any concern about the uncontrolled spread of modified DNA. GMO's should be a staple of food production for all their benefits, not something to avoid.

 

[UKMikey]

The crazy anti vaxxer lady who gives my mum a lift to the shops every other Monday warned me sternly to avoid KFC because they only sell lab grown meat now. In reality they have experimented with growing meat in a lab in the past but all their retail meat is still real and farm approved in the UK.

KFC is developing the world's first lab-grown chicken nuggets

First product expected to be ready for testing by autumn 2020

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Exorcet]

The crazy anti vaxxer lady who gives my mum a lift to the shops every other Monday warned me sternly to avoid KFC because they only sell lab grown meat now.

I can't speak for KFC in the UK as I've never tried it, but given their recent quality where I live, I can't see how lab grown meat could possibly make it any worse. Even from the point of view of a conspiracy theorist.

 

[Famine]

The crazy anti vaxxer lady who gives my mum a lift to the shops every other Monday warned me sternly to avoid KFC because they only sell lab grown meat now. In reality they have experimented with growing meat in a lab in the past but all their retail meat is still real and farm approved in the UK.

KFC is developing the world's first lab-grown chicken nuggets

First product expected to be ready for testing by autumn 2020

www.independent.co.uk

And then undercooked by staff who think wiping their arses with the bare hands counts as "washing".

 

[MatskiMonk]

still real and farm approved in the UK.

Ace.

Fresh, healthy meat and humane conditions guaranteed.

 

[UKMikey]

Ace.

Fresh, healthy meat and humane conditions guaranteed.

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Wow. Is that a Red Tractor farm like the KFC suppliers?

Poultry Standards | Red Tractor

Discover more about poultry standards. Red Tractor poultry farmers work tirelessly to maintain our rigorous set of standards.

redtractor.org.uk

 

[MatskiMonk]

Wow. Is that a Red Tractor farm like the KFC suppliers?

KFC faces backlash over ‘misleading’ portrayal of UK chicken farming

Activist footage appearing to show severe overcrowding and dead birds differs from KFC film by YouTube influencer

www.theguardian.com

"Visiting the farm in February, undercover investigators working on behalf of the vegan food brand VFC described finding severe overcrowding, little fresh straw and sick, lame and dead birds.

Footage published by VFC from inside the farm, which has capacity for 380,000 birds, appears to show the floor sodden with animal faeces and little or no fresh straw. It also appears to show dead birds lying on the floor and sick, injured or lame birds. Bins containing dead chicken carcasses were also filmed."

I don't put too much faith in Red Tractor, personally. Having a standard that's governed by those that need to meet the standard seems to be a waste of time.

 

[Liquid]

I ate seitan the other day and it was excellent; vegan pulled pork burger with soyannaise-based sauces and honestly, it was one of the tastiest I've ever had.

 

[TexRex]

Not today, seitan.

 

[UKMikey]

Not today, seitan.

I bet it makes a great devil's food cake.