andrewducker

I do sometimes eat all of meat, fish, milk and eggs. But I don't eat very much meat and it's often freegan. I also cut out milk and eggs if there are easy vegan alternatives (e.g. soya milk). So I kinda drift down towards the vegan end of the scale but if you want to apply an exact category, it's "omnivore".

I'm taking the answers in the "100 years from now" question to mean "vegetarian/vegan as an ethical choice", because I assume that is what's meant in the context of the Guardian article. If the icecaps melt and we lose a load of farmland, then it might become the norm to eat a diet which is vegetarian or vegan for practical purposes, but still happily eat meat or cheese if you got the chance; and before I followed the Guardian link I thought this was what you were referring to.

Naah, it's whether morals will change and our descendants will view our barbarous animal-eating ways with disgust.

Of course, we'll all be living in The Matrix by then, so it won't matter :->

Vat-grown meat. And I don't mean Soylent green.

Oh. I was answering it on the basis of meat-eating being radically unsustainable in the long term unless it's massively reduced - probably to the point where practically speaking, vegetarian is the norm for most people.

Same here.

I'm not sure about the 2nd question - veg*nism becoming the norm certainly seems plausible, but I don't have any confidence that it will.

I do wonder whether people in the future will look back on our eating of meat with the same horror that we now look back at slavery - and wonder what kind of evil fiends their ancestors were.

Assuming that 100 years from now we still have canine teeth as well as molars and incisors, I certainly hope not.

-- Steve thinks that a Western diet may be richer in meat than the one we evolved to handle, but humans certainly evolved the ability (arguably need) to consume meat.

I have the ability to do all sorts of things which many people would not consider moral.

And I suppose some people have "needs" that many would not consider moral... but, still, human metabolism work better with ample sources of protein, and our gut length and digestive systems can't extract or synthesise it well enough from most vegetable sources. Until very recently excluding animal proteins from one's diet led to shorter people in poorer health.

Powdered milk is an important part of emergency relief supplies for a reason.

-- Steve could certainly see a drift away from using livestock to synthetic sources (aka "carniculture" or "vat meat") but not a complete renouncement of animal tissues.

PS: Or maybe I could, with a thriving black market in dog steaks and rabbit legs as a result. Speakeasy grills... now, there's a SFnal idea I haven't seen used much.

I don't think a meat-eating need is at all "arguable" when there are plenty of people who never eat meat, and are completely healthy.

Will we?

I doubt it somehow - meat is tasty.

Also does this mean that in 100 years there will be a synthetics versus real produce movement?

Decrying the eating of plants because they are made up of living cells also?

Well, 12% of my friends list already think that vegetarianism is the way forward. It's really hard to predict the future morals of society.

I think it's pretty unlikely. Sheep are my prime counter-example; they live on land that is otherwise non-productive, they eat wild grass, they produce fantastic unbeatable wool, and why on earth wouldn't you stew them at the end of their life? Chickens too; You can keep half a dozen chickens in your back garden, feed them kitchen scraps and collect the eggs. What's the harm in that?

What I think is much more likely is that our current habit of feeding food that people could eat to farmed animals, killed young, to provide much of our protein will be much reduced.

fantastic unbeatable wool

It's not that great, or at least, people don't seem to think it is. Perhaps "heavy unsaleable wool" is closer to the mark. Sheep farmers have been complaining for years now that the price of wool is considerably less than the price of paying someone to shear it off. Shearing of sheep these days happens for animal welfare reasons.

And while some sheep graze on land that is otherwise non-productive, an plenty of them don't (e.g. almost all lowland breeds).

I suspect that keeping chickens as you suggest is sensible too, but (in)famously there are zoonotic risks to large scale domestic poultry farming, and I have never seen a comparison of the numbers over incineration, anaerobic digestion and/or composting. (I expect they work out better but I haven't seen them.)

That's the wool on sheep grown for their meat though (or rather for the meat of their lambs). If you are considering a future where we eat much less meat, it's not inconceivable that we would be either raising wool breeds but eating them anyway, or raising old-fashioned breeds that do both. I am not an expert in sheep husbandry though; I've got to the end of my thinking on this. So I could just be wrong.

(o) Carnivore
Thanks to

timefortea's diet book.

misremembered John W's LJ name as he hardly posts

You don't eat any vegetables at all? I wasn't expecting anyone to answer that!

I'm pretty sure that in terms of amino acids that could prove to be somewhat fatal... :S

I would draw a distinction between a person who believes that every meal should contain a form of animal protein (my mother; vegetarian food must contain milk, cheese or eggs or it's not a proper meal) and those who think it's perfectly fine to make your main meal out of plants from time to time.

He does eat vegetables so he's lying and is an omnivore, either that or I'll pick everything out of the stew

I think omnivore will still be the norm since it's what the species is built for. I don't think we're going to actually evolve away from it. As for the last part... while I do think that removing meat from the diet is not what humans were MEANT to do, I recognize and accept our choices as a higher-functioning species. I don't find it silly. I just wouldn't do it.

I find *some* vegan, omnivores, pescetarians and vegetarians to be silly or morally objectionable, but not all (or, indeed, most). I think I'm most annoyed by the people who say things like "I'm vegetarian, because eating meat is Wrong! But I eat fish. And chicken."

I think in 100 years time we won't be eating as much fish because most species we commonly eat will have become extinct (cod, haddock, tuna..).

Edited 2010-01-18 16:44 (UTC)

Am omnivore, mainly cos we've evolved to be like that[*] and, like pretty much the rest of mother nature's predators, have a food-chain involving other animals. No one objects to lions not being vegetarian despite their brutal slaughter of gazelles.

I don't find the idea of vegetarianism/veganism objectionable - if people want to be veggie then fine - but I do object to all the activists/campaigners shoving it down my throat (no pun intended), trying to claim the moral high ground over me and telling me I'm wrong for eating meat.

It's as bad as organised religion!

* - that and I love a good rare steak.

*wonders if there would be anything worse than a Christimentalist Vegan* :)

(Christimentalist: Christian Fundamentalist - courtesy of Jenny's wonderfully warped brain)

I don't see the point and think that restricting your diet often introduces unnecessary complication into your life and that of some around you, but silly is overstating it.

You missed, "vegan for values of not eating animal-derived products directly, but consuming cloned meat tissues and other products grown in tanks".

We're a lot closer to being able to grow extruded animal protein product (as opposed to, say, a finely textured sirloin steak) in tanks than most people think. And the logic of factory farming dictates that once it gets cheap enough, vat-grown product will drive out animal product -- there'll be less wastage.

I am looking forward to that. I agree that it's going to be a long while before we can manage the right texture for things like steak, but pate ought to be fairly easy to do, or mince.

Just the other day there was an article about this sort of thing. I believe the trick is flexing the resulting fake muscle tissue in a realistic sort of way so it has the "mouthfeel" of real meat.

See also PETA's $1 million prize for fake meat, and the associated apoplexy among animal-rights / environmental groups.

I wonder what was in the "nutrient-based soup" they used to grow the pig cells. If it's standard cell culture medium it's full of foetal bovine serum, so not really a vegetarian solution :)

They made pig from pig? Think how bacony it will be!

From pig? Bovine serum?

Am I missing something?

Yes, my inability to read while tired.

Still - bacon beef, that's got to be worth something!

I'm sure that once the technology matures there'll be plenty of fake meat base cultures that are perfectly vegan. Besides, even if the resulting meat isn't completely and utterly vegetarian / vegan, shouldn't a vegetarian support non-vegetarians eating such meat, even if they wouldn't themselves?

Also, after a certain point it becomes pretty holier-than-thou to say "Ah, but a dead animal was involved at some point, therefore it's not perfectly pure". If you start off with dead calf foetus stem cells, but then keep that culture going for many kilos or even tons of fake meat while you toss in plant-derived amino acids, isn't that pretty much vegetarian? (Especially if the stem cells are a byproduct of a dead calf that would have been killed anyway.)

It wouldn't be surprising if we master *better* texture than the dead-animal equivalent before all that long...

Good point!

but synthetic meat won't be as profitable to trade between systems :\

Maybe. It very much depends on what the growth medium for the vat-grown animal protein is derived from.

I find the views of people who eat what nourishes their bodies well eminently reasonable, and that includes people in all the categories you listed.

it must also exclude some people in all those categories too, as some people do not eat in a way that nourishes their bodies.

I think it is possible that we will have moved to a world where we do not eat any meat or animal products which hasn't been raised humanely, which would still leave us plenty of honey (bee catastrophe notwithstanding) but perhaps not quite a lot of what we're eating at the moment. We may be heading for an ecological disaster on the fish front, but otherwise it should be possible to sustainably eat fish and meat occasionally without serious ethical dilemmas arising. Probably better for us too than either our current diet or a strictly vegan one.

Although I didn't tick any of the boxes in the second part, I do think that people who eat milk but not lamb for ethical reasons are kidding themselves.

I find the views of the following silly/morally objectionable
The only group I find slightly silly are the people who claim to be "vegetarians" but also eat fish.

This.

I find some of vegans' restrictions silly. Where's the harm in eggs, for instance, if you have chickens kept in good conditions, say, in an Eglu in your back garden?

As a veggie who lives with a proper vegan, we've had this conversation. If we had our own chickens, ace - that would be a totally different issue. But we don't, and rather than pay into an industry he disagrees with, he doesn't eat eggs.

I think the environmental impact will be deemed a more deciding factor, rather than morality. I know omnivores who've cut down their meat intake to a couple of times a week because of climate change concerns. I do think (looking at how we see lots of meals of yore) there will be certain dishes where in 50 years people think 'EW! They ate WINGS!'

Surely, though, chicken wings are very much an "all parts of the buffalo" type of meal? It's the abuse of breast meat and chucking away the rest of the bird that's the real moral outrage.

I agree - I would much rather if you're going to eat an animal that you don't waste any of it, but I think an increasingly squirmish society might turn into one which likes meat not to look like animals. They may well still eat wing, but disguised as flat slices of stuff you put on sandwiches.

"100 years from now, the norm will be"

Shurely shome mishtake? 'the nom will be'.... ;)

I think in 100 years time the way we farm meat will become unfeasible. The way we do it right now is a waste of resources.

As a former vege, I found it excrutiatingly irrating to say I was a vege, but be presented with fish. My tag line was "nothing with a face or a mother" - that made it pretty clear. Hence my aversion to pescatarians - they gave true veges a bad name back in the day.
Nowadays, my aversion to a vege diet would be that it is not a healthy diet for humans (in general), and particularly unless you go out of your way to make it so, and are knowledgable about what you eat. Same would probably be said for a vegan diet. But - hey - great if it works for you (it did not for me, or two of my close friends who'd been veges for many, many years).

The one thing I do have to say in support of many vegans I know is that they generally eat better of what they do eat - organic, free range, whatever. I do think that this is really important. I'm putting my foot down with J abouthappy meat from now on, and we're getting an organic vege box too. My reasons are moral, on both meat and vegetables, rahter than dietary (though I'm sure it'll help).

i'm assuming 100 years from now in moral/social terms, rather than what will be possible environmentally.

slight difference between "silly" and "morally objectionable", but fair enough for a shorthand. and if people have genuine medical reasons for their diet, that's fine.

I am vegetarian, but have no objection to putting meat in my mouth if e.g. someone insists on serving it to me on a special occasion, or it would otherwise be thrown away. I think in a hundred years, yes it'll have gone the way of slavery (though we can almost replicate non-meaty meat already).

The only people I have an objection too are carnivores who somehow believe that meat is the only truly tasty substance on earth, and that a dish without meat in it is inevitably bland and unsatisfying - it bespeaks a staggering ignorance of the tastes and textures that can be conjured up without meat. My father-in-law is one of these people, he is very silly. I think most meat-evangelists are just set in their ways and haven't explored alternatives, but after embarking on a diet without meat I find myself healthier, richer, less depressed and less worried about the insane ways my food may have been industrially processed on the way to the supermarket, so it certainly works for me.

If you want to know why a lot of people nowadays seem to believe that meat is for every meal, and not an occasional thing, I suspect there are some rich and powerful livestock farming lobbyists out there who know the answer.

I think most meat-evangelists are just set in their ways and haven't explored alternatives

That's a bit of a sweeping statement there.

Evangelists, n.b., not ordinary meat-eaters.

To want to hammer into other people that meat is the only right and proper food smacks of some kind of imagination failure to me. I feel the same way about Christianity evangelists and indeed atheism evangelists.

Ah ok, that does make more sense. :)

For ethical considerations, presumably a reasonable comparison would be how societies in the past have adopted other ethical shifts. Which do happen, but generally take a long time, and generally there's some other country which is busily rejecting those selfsame ideas at the same time.

I've Just been to a lecture on biodiversity and seriously, we are going to be eating a tiny fraction of the meat and fish we in the West are eating at the moment. Either because we each reduce our personal consumption voluntarily over the next few years, or because we do the Newfoundland cod fishery manoevre on the lot and the human population crashes. I prefer the former and dine accordingly, and urge others to do the same where possible.

I'm trying to be better 'morally/ethically' when I get meat now. I've been buying free range chicken for a while but now I'm taking it a step forward by avoiding microwave meals or anything else that contains chicken in it where I don't know the source.

Having seen Kill It, Cook It, Eat It recently I'm going to try to to buy pig-based meats without it being free range too. Which is going to make bacon hard to come by.

I find the idea of being a pescatarian a bit silly. Why are fish any different from any other animals? I find the views of all objectionable when they think they're on the moral high ground. I'm particularly reminded of the vegan in Kill It, Cook It, Eat It who didn't even believe in putting a sick animal to sleep. He believed it better to let it die naturally in pain than to put it out of it's misery. But generally, I don't find any morally objectionable!

I really really hope that we remain omnivores and we remain farming. A lot of people don't seem to realise that the farming of animals is part of what keeps our countryside looking the way it is. If we suddenly stopped farming sheep I dread to think what the Welsh hillsides would look like...

Where's the "would prefer to be a carnivore" box? ;)

Or as it seems to be at the moment, the meat-in-a-roll diet.

I'm vegetarian, have been for the past 19 years (though I have been tempted back by the lure of bacon sarnies, but haven't succumbed yet!)

Personally, I reckon there's nothing wrong with eating meat provided it's sourced from a decent free-range, organic farm - not because it produces meat that's healthier for us (because it's looking more and more like it doesn't), but because that at least means that the animals are well treated and lead healthy and active lives before being turned into cutlets, steaks and burgers.

In 100 years time, I reckon the average diet will be omnivorous, but unless vat-grown meat has really taken off, there will be a lot less meat and fish (probably something like WW2 ration levels). People won't think we were barbarians for eating as much meat as we do, but rather for keeping animals in the horrendous conditions present in most industrialised farms.

So is a piscatarian the same as a pescatarian, or is pescatarianism something to do with the eating of Joe Pesci?

Piscatarians presumably only eat animals born from early February to mid-March.

After *vast* quantities of experimentation with various foodgroups, elimination diets and general arsery, I ended up full vegan for a few years. it didn't work. I discovered that all the major vegan foodstock disagreed with me something chronic - can't eat soy, chickpeas, tofu is right out.

A few months ago I experimented with meat after trying a normal haggis [prompted by buying one for a ladyfriend] and discovered I could handle it fairly well. Then abject poverty drove me to buying chicken from FarmFoods, which to my overwhelming surprise I can eat with no problems at all.

I still avoid dairy and eggs because they are pure concentrated evil. Likewise soy and chickpeas. And fish. Thus I am no longer a living biohazard, and can survive on 20p a week.

I don't find any of the groups morally objectionable or silly, but I have met quite a few offensive animal rights activists who were vegans. The problem was mainly that the individuals in question were idiots, not that they were vegans.

Things that do wind me up are:

- pontificating vegetarians / vegans wearing leather
- people who eat dairy, but object to my free range organic chicken due to 'cruelty'
- just about anything to do with Peta
- militant animal rights activists (I'm thinking the idiots that set lab animals free, fling paint at eople & harass people trying to work for a living).

The vast majority of vegetarians / vegans I know are none of the above, make their choices for their own reasons & generally refrain from pontificating.

Oh aye & Heather Mills makes me want to buy a fur coat & lump of foie gras ;)

I think you win the seal of my approval for typing what I was thinking :)

Nom!

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