The main reasons I’ve seen from vegans for not eating meat seem to be all about the morality of eating a sentient animal, the practices of the modern meat industry, and the environmental impact of it. And don’t have anything to do with the taste of meat.
Since lab-grown meat doesn’t cause animal suffering, and assuming mass production is environmentally friendly, would you consider going back to eating meat if it were the lab-grown kind?
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Do people know for sure that consciousness emanates from the brain only?
I would not mind eating lab grown and I think it is great if people would eat that instead but ive been vegan for so long that i have no interest in meat. I hardly eat mock meats, its only in social situations to not stand out to much.
Seconded. When I was vegan I’d already been vegetarian for years. Meat, including fake meat, held no appeal.
Fake meat has more of an appeal to me than lab grown meat, or it used to. It was kinda interesting when they were unique flavours marketed as alternatives rather than accurate immitations.
Honestly the food science is one of my favourite things about being vegan, I can cook way more interesting meals than I could as a carnist because I’d just use meat as the main flavour which works but it’s kinda lazy. Let me make something with a little miso and shitake broth and you’ll be in love
You got me drooling - any recipe suggestions? I’ve both ingredients in my fridge!
I don’t have any written recipes I’m afraid, I’ve been making them up as I go.
I usually use that combination for a ramen base. I used dried shitake and soak them in a ton of water overnight in the fridge. The dried shitake are honestly kinda inedible even after being rehydrated so I don’t always use them afterwards. I should also soak Kombu but I keep forgetting to buy it.
If you mix that broth with the right amount of miso paste then you’ll get the amazing combination of msg and nucleotides that gives you some amazing flavours. Soy sauce helps too, some garlic, ginger and sesame oil make it perfect.
Good luck working out ratios because I just guess everytime based on the size of my bowls 😅
Thanks so much for sharing! I’ll have to experiment for dinner tomorrow (I’m blessed to have a local eco store that sells everything you mentioned).
Hell yeah!
Good luck and have fun!
Same. I stopped eating meat in the mid 90s, was pescatarian until 2019, and have been vegan since. I don’t miss meat at all. I’ll eat an impossible or a beyond burger occasionally because it’s sometimes my only option, but I could just as easily skip them.
I wouldn’t judge anyone else for eating lab meat, though. I don’t have any moral issue with it, it just isn’t something I’m personally interested in.
it’s* only in
Ill let it slide, because you seam to have made it youre hole identity, butt ill note its knot relevant to this discussion
Meat is delicious, you should try it if theres no reason not to
I eat meat, but I’ve gone months at a time on a vegetarian diet, and the smell of cooking meat could be nauseating at times. I don’t think as many people would eat meat if it wasn’t so ingrained in our society
Ah, so witty! Here is more.
Wasn’t trying to be witty.
If it’s cheap, sure.
I don’t have any ethical issues with it, I just don’t find meat appetizing anymore. I’m all for having the option for people who want it though.
Same
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I dated a vegetarian, and I love to cook. It was wild how little it took to break through the “meatless” thing. We didn’t last but I kept the skillset, and eat vegetarian at least a few nights of the week.
I love being able to taste things at every stage without worry about food safety. Like if I don’t think a sauce is quite right, I can always try a bit. Once you kind of break through, meat freaks you out a bit… and I still eat meat!
Edit: I’ll also add: giving up cheese and eggs would be hard as hell though… I get where that would be more exciting than meat.
I saw lab grown milk at the grocery store the other day! It’s still pretty pricey and there’s only whole milk but I’m excited that accessible lab grown milk is on the horizon
It’s a lot of effort to solve an issue that’s already solved by being vegan so eh, I’m pretty indifferent to it at least at face value. If it can compete with a vegan diet in terms of climate and ecosystem impact then I’ll support it but I’ve no interest in it personally. I don’t really have any justification for not being interested, I’m just not.
I’d be much more interested in seeing artificial cheese made from proteins created by yeast or bacteria tbh.
Growing plants outdoors takes a lot of water, and growing them indoors takes a lot of energy for the lighting.
Since lab grown meat won’t need all that light, energy costs might be lower, but maybe the energy to keep the growth happening at the right temperature will be quite high. You could offset some of that though with where its grown. Ultimately if we can do it close to room temperature that would be ideal, but I have no idea what the requirements are.
Overall though it might be exceptionally environmentally and climate friendly in it’s own rights, not just compared to raising the animals to kill them.
The energy for lab grown meat has to come from somewhere - thermodynamics is always king. You can provide it via sugars/carbohydrates which the cells can motabolise, but you’ve got to put energy into making the sugar/carbs which is easiest by just growing some sugarcane/potatoes/etc. There’s more steps for meat vs plant and it’s very unlikely you can make 100 calories of lab meat with lower total system energy input than 100 calories of plant matter. (N.B., I’m a chemist, not a astronomical biologist, so if an expert refutes me and my assumptions, Place more trust in them)
Oh you’re right about the food for it. I wasn’t thinking about that. I can’t see any way they’d get those to parity even if it was room temperature.
Edit: Oh just a thought, but if we were able to somehow able to get the nutrients from things we were going to compost. But I have a feeling that’s not how that would happen, and that they wouldn’t be the proper nutrients for growing. Maybe way out in the future though like in Back To The Future, Mr. Fusion garbage fuel! Fresh meat from waste!
That’s certainly the hope, but I don’t think that’s the way it’s going so far. The little I’ve read about it suggests it’s going to use a considerable amount of energy, there’s probably going to be a lot of research on the environmental impact. Other considerations include water usage, raw materials and waste, and at this stage it’s too early to say what those are going to be like.
I’m honestly not keen on just hoping it’ll work out, especially when capitalism is involved. It’ll be great if it does and I’m legitimately hoping for that, but there isn’t a great track record with this kind of stuff. Especially with the meat industry basically funding laws to stop it from being available in the first place.
I guess I’m worried about it being another failed magic bullet, and I’m just sitting here completely fine without it.
Greenhouses aren’t lit, usually. What are you talking about?
I was thinking indoor hydroponics. Vertical farming.
Way less water than traditional growing. Like 90% less or something like that, but the LEDs aren’t cheap and use a lot if power. Also a lot less space.
My ethics and my mouth think it’s a great idea.
But I feel like my intestines would complain a LOT.
They would, at first. You might have a very uncomfortable few days but then your guts would get up to speed and it’d be fine. Happens all the time to people.
Was vegan, not anymore. Meat takes a little while to readjust to but eventually it’s fine, dairy is the real problem.
For sure
No, I dont like the taste or texture
So, you’ve already tasted lab-grown meat?
Given that the point of lab grown meat is to stand in for butchered meat, I think it’s fair to assume they’ll target the same taste/texture. Honestly, what’s even the point of the discussion without that premise baked in?
I think they mean they don’t like the taste/texture of meat already so why would they go over to lab grown.
Vegetarian here. It’s not something I’d personally buy or use in meals, as I don’t really have the desire to eat meat. That said, if it happened to be in a dish I really want to try at a restaurant, sure I’d eat it.
For me the main benefit of it would be the ability to try local/cultural dishes while travelling, if lab grown meat was an option.
It would depend how this lab grown meat affects the environment or who produces it, how, what price it is… I’m not opposed to it, just need to see the details.
And whether screams in inarticulate horror at being conscious without senses other than pressure and pain.
But hopefully that’s not how it goes
Lab-grown meat might not have nerve-endings or nerve-endings that connect to nowhere. You will need a brain or spine for the nerves to connect back to for the nervous signals to get recognized and processed before the screaming and “conscious” state of the brain can potentially exist.
So in essense, the lab-grown meat will just be like tissue cultures kept artificially alive but not a living organism.
Perhaps then it screams at the horror of having no nervous system to organize its consciousness into a time-bound shape.
Maybe the more a creature’s consciousness morphs into the shape you and I inhabit, the more protected its consciousness is from the unshaped horror of formlessness.
Maybe the only reason we have anything other than pure yelp as our existence is because evolution built these structures to give us some relief from a background agony.
Perhaps when we try to engineer flesh that doesn’t suffer, we instead make flesh that lacks the dopaminergic insulation from suffering that higher-order structure enables.
Probably not though
pure hell not pure yelp lol
I’ve been vegetarian my whole life and vegan for ~4 years or so, and I would definitely eat lab grown meat (assuming the conditions you stated).
I almost certainly wouldn’t eat it often but there is sooo many cultural dishes I haven’t ever tried due to them containing meat, which I would love to try sometime.
Admittedly I expect that most things I would not end up liking, but the ability to try would be really nice.
Admittedly I expect that most things I would not end up liking, but the ability to try would be really nice.
Man, what a great attitude. I wish everyone was this open about food.
Vegetarian not vegan, but I wouldn’t really have an issue if ethical. Nutrition is another matter to consider.
+1, I was fully veg for about 15y until I started having dreams about turkey sandwiches. I’m weekday veg now and only eat meat/eggs/etc that isn’t sourced from factory farming. Shit’s expensive and if lab grown meat has the same nutritional profile without the animal suffering I’d happily switch.
Well damn I want turkey now lol
I don’t eat meat because it causes suffering in another. Plants have no concept of pain without a brain, nervous system or even nerve endings. So to me, the question becomes if the lab grown meat was ever attached to a brain that could feel suffering.
Now as far i understand it, lab grown meat isn’t nessecarily grown in isolation from a cow. But in a solution primarily compromised of blood extracted from living cows. That’s without question better than killing a creature, buuuuuuut we all know that when profits are involved the health of a animal is not prioritized.
So it really depends, while I don’t miss meat, once lab grown becomes widely available I’ll make my choice depending on the exact process of how it reached the grocery store.
Plants have no concept of pain without a brain, nervous system or even nerve endings.
Ehhh, questionable.
No. It’s really not. I know the study you are going to link with the clickbait title that “plants feel pain”, but it’s unscientific garbage.
When you cut a plant, it only reacts with a secretion. That’s not sentience, it has no concept of pain because it literally does not have the required parts to feel it. Pain requires a nerve ending to feel the sensation, a brain to process that sensation in to an threat and a system to connect those two organs. Plants have none of this.
Yes plants release a pheromone when they are cut, but to extrapolate that to pain is a wild leap. If I cut an animal, they bleed, they yell, and they either run away or attack me, they generally do the same for their children. Exactly like humans react when cut. It’s impossible to disprove if plants have some other totally radically different type of intelligence we just don’t understand yet, but there is no evidence to suggest that is the case. I am making my choices based off evidence, not “idk, what if it was true”. It’s the same reason I know the earth is round and not flat, evidence not vibes.
It is intellectually dishonest to say that a potato and a pig perceive the world in the same way.
Consciousness is an open question. A potato does not perceive the same way as a pig, but a pig does not perceive the same way as a human. Plants communicate and make rudimentary decisions. Once you start getting into questions of degree, you subjectively decide where to draw the line. If you can argue that the line is between animals and plants, then someone else can argue the line is between animals and humans.
It’s intellectually dishonest to pretend our understanding of sentience and sapience is simple and unambiguous.
If you can argue that the line is between animals and plants, then someone else can argue the line is between animals and humans.
See, this is where you are just throwing your hands up and giving up on an sort of ethics. Because it’s theoretically possible for plants to feel pain then there is no reason to act moral when it comes to animals who we KNOW feel pain.
It’s like saying “porn with adults is harmful, but so is porn with children, who is to say where the line is? It’s an open question that is all perspective, so consume whatever you like”. When we know for a fact that sexual abuse of children causes suffering as opposed to what consenting adults do for a job.
Saying plants feel pain is motivated reasoning to call vegans hypocrites, not to actually produce a better world. I did not message you with my beliefs, you messaged me with whataboutism. 99% of the food humans eat is living in some sense (aside from minerals like salt), yeast in my bread is alive in some sense, but comparing that life to an animal as a reason it may not be matter? That it’s all perspective? Well then why not draw the line around cannibalism of anyone under a certain IQ. If consciousness is such an open question, then who is to say anyone is real except for myself? If I hurt another human, who is to say that they feel at all? It could all be simulation from a certain perspective so who cares?
This sort of “what if” and “it depends” whataboutism doesn’t actually help anyone. I didn’t bring veganism to you, you brought this to me. This is just naval gazing because calling vegan hypocrites makes you more secure in your own choices. You’re not saying anything of value,
Uh, you do know it’s possible to focus on fruits, which are freely given, right? You volunteered your perspective in the first place, and you’re the one throwing your hands up instead of finding an ethical diet. You’re the one trying to justify your choices based on subjective distinction. You’re the one calling yourself a hypocrite. All I said was that your absolute claim was questionable.
I eat, primarily, botanical fruits (which includes cucumbers, squash, and a surprising quantity of other vegetables freely given by plants for our consumption) as well as meat which would otherwise be thrown away. Once the animal is dead, it is far more respectful to consume it than let it be wasted. I typically buy meat on clearance, at the end of the night, on the expiration date.
I have no desire to “gotcha” people who sincerely want to make a better world, but hypocrites who call out others while justifying their own ethical blind spots are typically more interested in self-righteousness than actually improving the world.
🙄🤦
hypocrites who call out others while justifying their own ethical blind spots are typically more interested in self-righteousness than actually improving the world.
Exactly. I agree completely, but scroll up and remember I didn’t call ANYONE out in my original comment. I came to this thread because my perspective was asked for in the title. You came to me with a “but plants” trying to call MY beliefs out. So think whatever you want, but frankly, leave me the hell alone. This isn’t a discussion I asked for, it’s not on topic and you’re not saying anything interesting.
Once again, I said none of that. Scroll up to verify I didn’t call you out at any point.
This is a public forum, when you make a statement people are free to comment. You made a statement I disagreed with, and all I said was that the statement was questionable. All the rest of this “calling beliefs out” happened purely in your head. Feel how you wish about your choices, but don’t implicate me in your projection.
I’d definitely eat it, especially over ecosystem-destroying meats and dirty meats. Especially if they can work on the price. I’d like to see more farmlands and public lands reforested and taken back to nature.
