> The key is to make sure the plant protein is complete, which is why pea protein and legumes are preferred over things like soy.
1. I thought we were done pushing the complete protein thing? All the essential amino acids are essential (duh), but don't need to be consumed together like once thought.
2. With that said, soy is a complete protein.
3. Soy is also a legume.
> I thought we were done pushing the complete protein thing?
By "complete protein" I just meant that you need to have all the essential amino acids in your diet, not that they all need to be contained in the same dish. However, AFAIK all animal proteins do contain all the essential amino acids in a single dish, which makes it a lot easier to make sure you are getting them all. So any plant protein that is going to be a good meat substitute should have that same property.
> soy is a complete protein. 3. Soy is also a legume.
The day that this complete protein tastes, looks, and behaves exactly like meat..might be the day it's accepted as a substitute, otherwise it's a lost cause. and before that one has to factor in the effort to make that change to the plant protein.
> The day that this complete protein tastes, looks, and behaves exactly like meat..might be the day it's accepted as a substitute
While I'm sure there are people who won't accept anything less than that, I suspect there are many more who, like me, would be quite happy with "fairly close" to meat instead of "exactly like". There are plant protein products on the market now that already meet that goal. Even if such products don't displace 100% of meat consumption, they might still make a huge dent in it.
You're not wrong. I'm still very much a fan of meat, but have swapped out most of my consumption for plant-based versions. Mostly from the Linda McCartney brand. It feels much better post-meal digesting the lighter alternative and the flavour and texture is very comparable imo. The sauce and sides carry most of the flavour in our case anyway. Which is I guess why the "tastes like chicken" line became so widespread.
Haven't found a steak replacement yet, but we eat vanishingly few of those so it's not much of an issue. Will jump on a healthy, eco alternative that's full of iron though.
As it stands, I'm really not interested in labmeat. I'll just save my meat consumption for "special occasions", while using plant-based as the daily driver.
They say they could feed the world on plant-based food, if only they'd give it a fraction of the subsidies meat gets. I think it's an avenue worth taking seriously.
I don't know of any way to answer this question. The only question I know of a way to answer is, how much will animal food cost if it has to compete on a level playing field with other protein sources? We can answer that question by simply having a free market in food. If enough people's preference is to not eat food that involves animal suffering to produce, then the free market will result in that kind of food not being produced any more.
(Btw, it's not necessarily true that animals raised for food will suffer. It's perfectly possible to raise them humanely and kill them when the time comes in a way that causes no suffering. In a free market that might not even cost more than factory farming of animals does today, since animals raised humanely are generally healthier and require much less artificial intervention such as antibiotics, which are routinely fed to factory farmed animals because of the artificial environment they live in.)
For market forces to work, we need to attribute some monetary value to the quality of life of animals.
Eggs from chicken that have more space and can go outside suffer less but are more expensive to produce.
Ignorance or questionable ethics should not be rewarded by monetary gain. That is why relying on consumers to "vote with their wallet" is a fundamentally broken design.
External costs should always be included in the price of a product.
> For market forces to work, we need to attribute some monetary value to the quality of life of animals.
In a free market, there is no "we". Each individual decides what to buy at what price based on whatever criteria they like, and each seller decides what to sell at what price based on whatever criteria they like. They everyone continually adjusts their choices based on what results they observe. There is no central authority that decides what anything is "worth".
> Eggs from chicken that have more space and can go outside suffer less but are more expensive to produce.
Generally, yes, which means you, as a buyer, have to be willing to pay more in order to provide a positive incentive to producers that do this. Which is exactly what my wife and I do when buying eggs (and many other things); we choose to pay more to reward producers that do things in a humane way and thus incur higher costs.
> Ignorance or questionable ethics should not be rewarded by monetary gain.
You are perfectly free to not buy from producers that don't do things the way you think they should be done.
> That is why relying on consumers to "vote with their wallet" is a fundamentally broken design.
If other consumers disagree with you, then the way for you to "fix" that "problem" is to convince them to change their buying decisions. Trying to get a central authority to dictate who can buy and sell what does not work; no central authority can aggregate all of the necessary information. It's mathematically impossible.
> External costs should always be included in the price of a product.
In general, the only viable way to do this is to not have externalities: to allow property rights to be traded so that all externalities get internalized, i.e., they are explicit costs or explicit benefits to one of the parties to the transaction. That ensures that they get properly taken into account.
> Put into context that "carbon footprint" was a slogan invented by the fossil fuel industry, and its clear who is served by shifting the blame to cows.
We should absolutely be scrutinizing the fossil fuel industry. There's also no reason to _shift_ blame; both can be blamed at the same time. Ulterior motives behind the origin of carbon footprints does not negate the impact of our diets - particularly animal agriculture.
Willpower is finite, political will is finite, social capital is finite. We really can't afford to squander those things on low-impact high-pain measures. Farm bills and government subsidies to fossil fuel make your diet not even noise. Its not detectable at any scale. The only way to change diets at scale is price and availability.
Electric cars are sold to wealthy people so they can maintain their lifestyle with a fresh narrative of being the solution. Meanwhile, a few meters of road being built releases massive amounts of crap to the air.
Lab-grown meat is the same. Bioreactors taking resources from states away to pump out goo for people to eat states away is not sustainable and will never be sustainable.
We need to return to the land, but governments work hard to ensure every last human is a citizen, and produces wealth for someone else. People who resisted were met with violence and their land seized. The system is going to collapse, I really don't have hope. But the least you could do is spare people the party line of blame and shame.
/doomer-rant
>I always like to point out that before the Europeans decimated the American bison, there were more head of bison roaming the west than there are head of cattle today.
I don't think that's true. Most estimates of the peak Bison population I've seen put them at about 30 million. Some estimates are as high as 60 million. Today, we have about 94 million head of cattle down from a peak of 104.
Additionally, your linked article is incredibly unconvincing. It's riddled with Appeals to Nature and attempts to use a single instance of questionable behavior by a single company to poison the well for all alternatives to raising animals for slaughter.
> As someone in that cohort who was also there for the "glory" days of early FB (when you had to have a college email to sign up), I have to agree that at this point the idea of making friends on FB weirds me out. How? Why?
I was a freshman when Facebook was introduced and required a .edu email. I've used it on and off since the beginning. I've made lots of friends there - both local and in other states/countries. It usually comes down to interactions in groups for niche interests. Why is this so striking to you?
I just don't know people that still use Facebook with any regularity. I understand selection bias is at play (I'm inclined to hang out with people like myself, and I think Facebook is a flaming trash-pit).
I made friends on Facebook years ago. I felt fundamental changes in both the user-base and use-cases that I don't find enjoyable. I assume most people under the age of 40 feel similarly, and those that don't aren't the type of person I'd want to be around.
I'll rephrase: It's not that I assume nobody is making friends on Facebook in this day and age, just that I'm less likely to want to befriend them myself and I was applying this personal assumption unilaterally.
I completely understand avoiding Facebook; I haven't deleted my account yet, but I've been off it for the past year and a half. I also understand it not being your choice for a people meeting platform. But there is such a variety of users there - I think it's a bit silly for you to think that there's no one there you'd be willing to befriend on Facebook.
I specifically said "less likely". Less is not always "none". I may be willing to befriend .00001% of their userbase today compared to .0001% 10 years ago.
Let's bring this back: Of course there are interesting, worthwhile people on Facebook (presumably you are, and I"m taking time to talk to you). But who cares?
If they're in communities that I'm actively engaging, then I'll find them through those channels. If they're not...I don't care. There are billions of people I will never interact with. And that's fine.
I don't want Facebook. The cons outweigh the pros. This doesn't mean there aren't any pros. I realize now that other people still like Facebook for purposes I don't have.
Meeting people online before you know them offline is always a risk. People are good at misrepresenting themselves online (either on purpose or by accident).
> Everything that applies to a fetus also applies to a coma patient dependent on life support
Except that coma patients are not dependent on another specific individual to stay alive. If one needed your kidney to live, but you refused and they died, you would not be responsible for their death.
Requiring another person to be alive does not make one not alive. Your argument doesn't suport that it does and I more or less agree with your argument, which is one reason that I supoort abortion. Perhaps you read too much into what I wrote.
> It has human DNA unique from the mother and, in this case, an independent heartbeat.
I don't know why people use DNA uniqueness as a qualifier of anything. Are identical twins and clones not alive? Heartbeats aren't a measure of life either and, at 6 weeks, there is still no functioning heart. So despite the colloquial usage of the term, there is no heartbeat.
I believe the burden of proof would be the other way around. It's not hard though to establish a pattern if all gay people are refused service. Even in a singular instance, if you are willing to help a customer after seeing their shirt, but wait until discovering their orientation to refuse helping them, that makes a pretty strong argument it's about the latter and not the former.
Beat to the reply by a few other people on the accuracy across populations. The only thing I'll add is that BMI is a much more accessible measure. The more accuracy we want, the more invasive and expensive it is to collect. Just about anyone who's ever been seen by a healthcare provider has their height and weight taken so it's a very easy metric to capture across an entire population.
I don't actually disagree with anything you've said... but I don't know what point you're trying to make in the context of replying to the parent comment.
I still don't understand where you were trying to go with your comment. If one person comments about the fact that marital rape and other forms are rape are treated differently and your response is to be wary of false accusations, I'm going to have an uncharitable reading of your comment. I'm just trying to understand what your actual intention was.
1. I thought we were done pushing the complete protein thing? All the essential amino acids are essential (duh), but don't need to be consumed together like once thought. 2. With that said, soy is a complete protein. 3. Soy is also a legume.