Comment by telchior | Hacker News Reader

Comment by telchior | Hacker News Reader

Yet unlike other American social trends, it doesn't seem to be spreading to some countries that fast. I'm somewhat interested in being vegetarian but ended up marrying someone from another culture who absolutely refuses to have a main meal without meat in it.

Living with her, and in other countries, also forced me to realize how weird and distanced American culture is toward meat. Growing up, I was sort of taught / sort of allowed to be grossed out by many cuts of meat. E.g. on a chicken, I'd be kind of horrified by the bits near the bones and focus on the rather anonymous bits like the breast, where you can almost pretend it's not meat. Organs, cartilage, tendon, etc were all utterly unthinkable. Even particularly dark pieces of meat (again, on chicken) were kind of just... avoided.

Not so much in other cultures. My wife gleefully eats just about any part of an animal. And as I've come around to trying things I've discovered that all those weird bits are wonderful. Even intestine, in the right preparation.

Which presents a quandary. What if we split up and I wanted to try being vegetarian, with fake meat / meat substitutes? Well, those fakes are decent at replacing something like chicken breast, or a piece of sausage. But I can't imagine that anyone is rushing to find an alternative to fried cartilage, or sliced liver, or marrow in the bone, or stewed tendon. And I'd miss the hell out of those things, now that I've learned to enjoy them.

A friend of the family will absolutely refuse to eat chicken on the bone. When my wife was visiting recently, the grocery store was out of boneless chicken pieces, so she bought bone-in thighs instead. Our friend was horrified until my wife said she was planning on deboning them. Very strange mindset.

I grew up eating chicken on the bone, and it was just understood that you eat around the gristly bits. I guess eating nothing but nuggets and tenders warps your sense of what food is.

It's because a vast majority of modern meat eaters don't ever get it into their heads (thanks to the neat packaging) that they are eating a once living being which has a similar body structure to theirs.

The grossing out is purely subconscious thought about this reality. Of course, for those that do enjoy even the cringy bits, this thought is pushed even further deep down. There is not much difference between closing the eyes and eating what ever is kept in the mouth purely relying on sense of taste and opening the eyes and eating a living thing when the sense of taste is dominating everything else.

Eh, I dunno about that. If I, say, flip over a chicken thigh and eat the kidney that's nestled on the back side (which can be found there depending on butchering method), seeing that organ inevitably makes me think of where it was, and what its function was, in the living creature.

Without having done the butchering myself -- I've seen my meal walking around a couple hours before eating it, and thought about the living animal while I was eating its dead body. That's not really a thought that's "pushed down". I seriously doubt the farmers I'm eating with, who actually are killing the animal and taking it apart, have any difficulty at all with the facts of what they're doing. (Of course, on the other end, people who work in commercial-scale meat processing plants do sometimes have issues with it, but that's a very different environment.)

There is an argument that we should feel disgusted, that there should be a flinching away or buried horror to eating meat, but should does not always result in is or does.

Farming is a way for folks who work with their hands to achieve some degree of self-sovereignty and freedom — laudable goals. Unfortunately, this is often accomplished through gross ethical violations.

All we can do is educate consumers about the benefits of a whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet.

I challenge anyone to watch both The Dominion [1] and Forks Over Knives [2], and not walk away from the experience at least semi-curious about WFPB.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtnlwqEii2I

I've now been taught to rip right into the gristly bits. That cartilage cap on the end of a chicken leg is nice and crunchy. The tips of chicken wings are great when they're crisped. But yeah, I was also taught to kind of navigate around those.

The weird thing is, my mom was from Pennsylvania German culture and had been raised to eat all kinds of off cuts. So in theory, I should have learned from her. I guess my family got caught up in some kind of wider American zeitgeist about food (probably the same one that foisted Red Delicious apples and white eggs on us).

After 7 years being vegan, I've learned that most people actually dislike the idea of eating sentient beings, but years of mental dissonance and conditioning trained them to be fine with eating meat and meat products, so long they don't resemble the able.

> I've learned that most people actually dislike the idea of eating sentient beings

Sentient being is a very flimsy and arbitrary definition.

To me veganism is just another attempt to be on a high horse of morality and look down upon those who dont follow your values as evil, basically a kind christianity.

This is a consequence of poor (starving) vs. rich (affluent) nation histories. The scarcity mindset affects its people long term and sticks to the culture. Ex: "rich ppl problems"

Hypothesis: Maybe this is why there seems to be a propensity for the affluent to treat animals better than humans.

Note: Please don't downvote just because you disagree, bring meaningful discussion, thanks

Wouldn't be quite correct to say her country of origin is "starving". A very small percentage of the population may be at that point, but not the majority. However, meat was (prior to her generation) a status symbol. Now it's more of a class signifier; people won't be impressed, per se, but the fact you're eating a lot of meat places you in a particular group.

It's not that wide a gulf. "A chicken in every pot" was a popular slogan in the USA 2-3 generations back. But I doubt history will take exactly the same course in these other countries that are experiencing commoditized meat for the first time. American food is increasingly seen as bland and boring, rather than some ideal to aspire to.

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