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Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

I think you're very wrong and pg is spot on.

I remember when Vegan/Vegetarians were sneered at in the UK 25 years ago, but they aren't now.

In the space of 25 years it's gone from being rare to see veggie options, to it being the norm to have at least 25% non-meat options on the menu. Attitudes change, and once it's gone, most people will eventually find the idea of rearing animals to kill repellant.

If you can deliver me meat taste and texture without the environmental consequences of meat rearing, I'd definitely switch. I'd even pay a premium, though in reality it should rapidly become cheaper than the labor/land intensive meat industry.

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I think you’re very wrong.

Vegans/Vegetarians are still sneered at in the US. Any non major city/college town in the South/Midwest is still dominated by meat and the associated culture.

Thanksgiving alone is a nearly insurmountable hurdle. “Tofurky” is still a gross joke to most people.

You and PG are both vastly underestimating the emotional attachment people have to their current way of life.

To me it just seems like the clearest indication of a bubble in Silicon Valley in particular, and the Bay Area in general. Even putting aside emotional attachment, people actually enjoy the taste of meat and don’t see a pressing reason to stop. Aside from some YouTube hype, I’ve never met anyone offline who thinks the various meat subsitutes are remotely like the real thing.

Then again I remember when Soylent was “the big thing that everyone was going to get into” in tech circles. I tried to explain that it just didn’t appeal to 99% of people, and revolted many of them. Fortunately reality does seem to seep through eventually. When it comes down to it, “save the earth” arguments aimed at something other than energy generation, shipping, industry, and transportation are too easy to shoot down.

You're missing pg's point completely.

The present options are rubbish, that's NOT what we're talking about. pg is not talking about Tofurky or tofu, he's talking about lab grown meat.

Lab grown meat tastes, smells, cooks and is textured exactly like meat.

If you can buy something that's much cheaper than meat, but has all the plus sides, why would you choose meat?

Plus on top of that there's been a lot of media coverage the last 2 or 3 years that meat is causing a lot of problems environmentally. So there's an environmental and an economic reason to switch.

Food is one of the deepest and most defining parts of a culture.

Not only that but I grew up in a rural area and have killed my own meat. I don't have any qualms about it. The issues people have with it are purely a side effect of chic urban programming.

And yet we know vegetarianism goes back to at least the 7th century BCE. So perhaps your glib ascription to an urban trendiness is unfounded.

Eating meat goes back like 2 million years. Don't even pretend there was some worldwide trend for veganism in 7th century BCE.

May I ask what point you are trying to address? Did I say that there was a worldwide trend for veganism in the 7th century BCE? Or that eating meat was a recent practice?

You said you had no qualms with killing animals for food, and that "the issues people have with it are purely a side effect of chic urban programming." Even without resorting to a possibly contentious archaeological record, we know from recorded history that the Jains abstained from meat for ethical reasons from all these centuries ago, as they do today, which I think falsifies your claim. If you want to dispute the specific example of the Jains, there are other groups of ethical vegetarians going back thousands of years to cite.

I lived in Indiana from birth until my mid-30's. I've lived another nearly 6 years in Norway.

And sure, most menus were dominated by meat when I left and they are here as well. I'm not completely vegetarian - I eat fish. And honestly, it was easier to find veggie options in Indiana than fish options. But it wasn't too horrible either. Most folks didn't find my eating habits a big deal, even if I just ate the appetiser. A few assholes made fun of others, but that's the case with anything. And it has only gotten better with time.

I don't see how it is a big deal with "Tofurky". Don't eat it. Lots of meat products are like this too.

Most folks aren't that emotionally attached to their meat if they can make it with something else. Foods have trends - the candy isle is full of these trends as are Oreo flavors. Oreos, by the way, have changed greatly over the years - they used to have lard in them and people are still eating them. But folks can still eat their beloved oreos - I don't know why meat would be any different save for the few that decided to be really into meat.

> Thanksgiving alone is a nearly insurmountable hurdle. “Tofurky” is still a gross joke to most people.

I share Thanksgiving dinner with a number of vegetarians. We all enjoy making many different dishes, and the vegetarians just skip the ones with meat. I don't think I've ever heard anyone utter the word "tofurkey" and tofu has never featured in such a meal. (Total veganism is trickier to accommodate)

I think our Thanksgiving dinners would be harder for a person with an aversion to root vegetables to navigate than a vegetarian. I wonder how most people are doing Thanksgiving dinner, is having all meat dishes the norm?

I agree with "eventually" I just think it's further along than PG and you think.

This might be the case where you live, but it's definitely not the case in many countries around the world. I like to travel and part of the reason I gave up vegetarianism is because I was tired of eating the same stuff over and over again while traveling because there were no other options (caprese sandwich in Europe). Not to mention the extreme difficulty of limiting carbs and sugars while maintaining any kind of taste in vegetarian diets. As for synthetic meat, which is what pg is talking about, I can't possibly see it making inroads if it costs more than meat, which it sounds like pg is implying. Most people can barely afford meat as it is.

Restaurants have to have at least one veg option on the menu. This is mostly due to migration from different countries, not Vegans. By offering a veg meal you can serve a halal/kosher/"hindu" dish.

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