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Comment by kelchm | Hacker News Reader

Actually, I think you'll find that people just really like the way meat tastes.

It's more than that. People are very attached to their food choices, they put a lot of personal stock in what they eat. Food is an essential, ancient part of culture and society.

You not only have to convince people to get over the taste, but you also have to convince people to get over the cultural importance of meat-based foods. Not so hard and some families, but probably serious challenge and many others. "Thanksgiving turkey", "Christmas ham", "high holidays brisket", what have you.

The ones you mentioned are sporadic, celebtratory meals though; the main meat consumption is still the day-to-day stuff. Chicken sandwiches and such.

True, but people are attached to their chicken sandwiches, too. For most people in the US, at least, sandwiches (with a few specific exceptions) are supposed to contain meat. What else would you have, rabbit food on a bun?

Today I just ate one with tofu cooked in sauce and green beans (yeah soy has its own problems, at least in europe where we don't produce it).

But you can also have beans / chick pea or even greens baked into fritters.

I always liked the eggs mayo combo (adding tomato cucumber or whatever), but this is not vegan.

I mean, to be completely honest with you, at this point I do not want to eat a sandwich at all.

No worries, I don't envy your prejudices and close mindedness, and I have no doubt that our world won't leave you much choice later on :)

I'm pretty sure even in the hypothetical brave meatless future I will not be compelled to only eat recipes that work much better with meat.

You're not going to have a Tbone steak without beef, it's true. So you can't have a beef burger without beef, but you can have other flavors of sandwiches that are absolutely tasty too (and can be as fat and unhealthy as meat options btw). Also many recipes do work without meat : I do a kick ass lasagna and stuffed tomatoes. Anything with minced meat basically is not that much reliant on the meat for taste and can be easily replaced with textured soy (closest in taste but also seitan or beans or whatever).

But then again, I don't understand how one can hate food before even trying it, and how one can be so adverse against acting towards a brighter future for everyone, here by having meatless meals more often.

edit : Luckily, I just saw that while you're the most adamant, you're also the single user with such a behavior on this thread, so I still have hope that others will be more receptive.

I don't think you're really following me. There are any number of meatless foods I like -- for instance, pasta with sauce (well, not vegan, and the sauce might have fish broth or something, but still), steamed or stir-fried green vegetables, ma po tofu (usually has pork but it can work without it), whatever. But I find the idea of a sandwich with tofu in place of meat repellent and I'd really rather just give up on the sandwich and have a recipe designed from the start to be vegetarian, rather than one designed to have meat but with a lousy substitute.

> I don't understand how one can hate food before even trying it

Are you completely without the power of imagination? Do you need to try it to know whether you would like pizza with marshmallows and miniature Snickers bars on top?

Culture can change. Meat consumption in Belgium is down more than 16% over 4 years: http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20171103_03168897 (in Dutch). This coincides with several vegetarian and 'flexitarian' campaigns.

See also: the Netherlands becoming a bicycle country thanks to a sustained effort over several generations.

This is it. I'm in agreement with Anthony Bourdain here about vegetarian food in most places. If I lived in India, in particular Punjab it would be far easier to be a vegetarian because stuff actually tastes great (better than meat!) but elsewhere it's hard. Being half decent isn't good enough, the vegetarian food has to taste as good as or better than meat. The worst is places where the idea of a vegetarian meal is taking the meat out of a burger and feeding people the bun and lettuce.

Or worse, replacing it with a substitute meat that "tastes just like meat!" (N.B.: it tastes and has a mouthfeel nothing like meat)

In this context, dairy consumption is also linked to climate change (just like meat is), because it’s the same animals (cattle) who are bred and raised to produce dairy (excreting methane and CO2) and then slaughtered in a fraction of their lifespan when their milk production drops.

If you want to lower your carbon footprint below that of a vegetarian, going vegan is one way to do it.

P.S.: Watch the documentary “Cowspiracy”.

I think we should consider a rule that everybody who wants to eat an animal, has to kill it themselves. At least that will solve the mental disconnect between reality and food consumerism.

If there is an app for that, ok. Otherwise I will only eat chicken, since space is limited around here.

All that would happen is people would quickly aclimate to killing their dinner. We did it for humdreds of thousands of years, it’s part of our genetic make up.

That was never our primary source of food though.

Yes, because it was too expensive, but it has always been a significant dietary compenent. Most people historically have eaten meat when they could get it, and for most of them the slaughtering of the animals was very few degrees of separation from them. Either they did it themselves, someone in their family did it, someone they directly employed did it or they bought or traded for it directly from someone who did it.

Absolutely! And everybody who wants to type a message on HN, has to build his keyboard himself. And his computer. And the internet.

I like to imagine that the internet was better way back when it was kinda sorta that way.

Yeah and if you want light you should have to slaughter a whale and extract the oil yourself.

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