The Gaming Den

...Yeah, I haven't yet suggested that you shouldn't eat meat.

Two of my favorite fast food joints are In and Out and Burgerville.

Take that what you will. One of those doesn't have a real vegetarian option.

-Crissa

Kobajagrande wrote:Don't forget vast chemical plants for the mass-production of those protein tablets everyone will need.

What kind of idiot are you?

(I dunno, how many kinds are there?)

You're the idiot who thinks meat is somehow required for a balanced diet. Not only that, but fatty, bacteria-ridden, mammal-meat.

I hate to rain on your parade, but eating meat is not a requirement for human survival. There is no evidence of such, although much to the contrary...

Don't bother responding to the troll, at least Prak has his laziness as an excuse for wanting cheap meat.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:Don't bother responding to the troll, at least Prak has his laziness as an excuse for wanting cheap meat.

Prak_Anima has argued that the inhuman conditions for producing hamburger is not required.
Though he did say that he uses the cheap factory meat, he asked where he could get non factory meat.

Crissa wrote: What kind of idiot are you?

*sight*

That's what I should be asking.

Crissa wrote:You're the idiot who thinks meat is somehow required for a balanced diet.

OMG, how idiotic to think of meat as humanity's main source of protein!

Crissa wrote:Not only that, but fatty, bacteria-ridden, mammal-meat.

Lets go through this again. Do you seriously think that raw meat which you see in supermarket is produced from happy little cows that live their lives peacefully, in sunshine, grazing on the green pastures of untouched nature, until the moment they are led with their friends into the slaughterhouse and put to sleep with magical fairy dust?

For the record, allow me to thank you for chosing to ignore the troll that I am. At least that way, we shall stop having to talk about a topic you have absolutely nothing of value to contribute.

clikml wrote:For the record, I am in the crowd that does not feel the necessity to be humane to my food. It is a luxury to be able to do so, and luxuries are optional.

I agree completely. I cannot imagine telling a starving person to not eat offered meat. I do not eat (much) meat because I can afford to do so; I have a very high-end blender to prepare a lot of delicious otherwise unpalatable vegetables.


Also, cashews. Or peanuts. Or soy, or whey. Or basically any nut or seed. They're all excellent sources of protein and generally healthier due to the lack of cholesterol.

Kobajagrande wrote:OMG, how idiotic to think of meat as humanity's main source of protein!

If only there were some other source of protein on the planet. That'd really be amazing.

Draco_Argentum wrote:If only there were some other source of protein on the planet. That'd really be amazing.

Teach me your powers of selective reading and missing the keywords, oh great one!

Draco_Argentum wrote:If only there were some other source of protein on the planet. That'd really be amazing.

If there were some other sources of protein on the planet that I wasn't allergic to (nuts) or that would make me impotent because of all the female hormones (soy).

Besides, it's a stupid slippery slope argument, haven't you ever seen Dr. Who or the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Killing plants is wrong!

tzor wrote:If there were some other sources of protein on the planet that I wasn't allergic to (nuts) or that would make me impotent because of all the female hormones (soy).

Wheat?

There is a good source of protein on the planet...Soylent Green. Not only is its name green, but it is eco-friendly. You don't have to plant it in the ground for a time, you just harvest it when the time comes. It pretty much takes care of itself and you don't have to worry about taking care of it.

Some may even be flavored with beer, wine, or other spirits and flavours.

I don't even know wtf people care about animals for.

Health wise, getting enough protein for the entire population would be basically impossible with plants, not to mention people allergic to nuts, which i frankly didn't even think about.

And moral wise, fuck! Why is killing animals wrong but plants okay? Why is killing animals wrong? What about all those animals we kill just for shits and giggles/utility, like termites and lice?

Well, I don't know about killing, but what is clearly wrong is making animals suffer needlessly. And the vast majority of all livestock do suffer for the entirety of their lives. Bred in darkness, with barely enough room to stand, not quite sick enough to die and then they get loaded onto trucks or trains, are transported to a place that reeks of pain and blood and fear and made to wait while they are slaughtered, one by one. However you care to look at it, that is evil.

Now, your local farmer who lets the chickens run across his yard and knows his three cows by name until he kills them - I do not think that man is evil. I would prefer it if no animals had to die and perhaps one day we will be able (and willing) to live without doing so, but until then we will kill living, breathing, feeling beings just because they are tasty (no, you do not need animal flesh. Plenty of vegans and even fruitarians do just fine). But the way we treat our animals before we kill is something we can change. Allowing a cow to see the sun, smell fresh air and walk around is not asking that much, is it?

Kaelik wrote:To be fair, Crissa's actual complaint is the following:

1) Cows are higher up the food chain than other food we can eat.
2) A cow provides you with 100 calories for every 500 calories it consumes (obviously, numbers are made up).
3) Feeding people is purely a matter of calories (or vitamins/minerals/protein/ect can be arranged in better ways, or the gain in calories would allow us to feed more people in such a way that it would produce net gain)

This is only my position vis-a-vis 'starving people' and factory farms. Factory farms buy up foods that starving people could eat and produce meat at below what others can match in price while not paying for any of the downsides.

There are more than enough sources of protein from plants and microbes that anyone who espouses 'must eat beef!' or 'not enough from vegetables!' is an absolute idiot. It's a position that cannot be defended. Hundreds of millions of people don't eat 'meat' and don't suffer any ill effects. Billions of people eat less meat in a month than Americans eat in a day and suffer no ill effects. No one is dying for lack of hamburger nutrients.

But none of that was my point about the American hamburger, it's all smoke and mirrors to defend an unsustainable system which tortures humans and animals in the name of cheapness.

Letting a cow graze on fresh grass for two weeks would eliminate 90% of the excess, disease-causing bacteria in their gut. Is that really too much to ask instead of over-medicating them, washing the meat in ammonia several times?

Using trained, union cutters instead of untrained would stop 99% of the errors in gutting which cause the spread of bacteria.

Testing each carcass with modern technology takes only a day and would stop 99.99999% of the bacterial infestations.

There literally is no reason one or all of these could be implemented and make the burger safer and more humane in some way.

And yes, at the majority of stores I buy from, they do one or more of these things to their process. Costco tests meat before they use it. The have union employee grind the hamburger. Safeway doesn't test, but in each store that has a butcher, they have union employees and buy from union shops. Whole Foods doesn't use union employees but buys from places that use grass-fed to clean the cattle before they're slaughtered, and tests them before they're put into packages. In and Out has union employees and uses smaller suppliers which use more grass.

So yes, the hamburger at my store wasn't made the way I described - but it also isn't 90% of the burgers sold in the country.

-Crissa

Murtak wrote:Well, I don't know about killing, but what is clearly wrong is making animals suffer needlessly. And the vast majority of all livestock do suffer for the entirety of their lives. Bred in darkness, with barely enough room to stand, not quite sick enough to die and then they get loaded onto trucks or trains, are transported to a place that reeks of pain and blood and fear and made to wait while they are slaughtered, one by one. However you care to look at it, that is evil.

You missed a step. How the fuck is that evil? They are property that would literally never exist at all if I didn't want to eat them. Why is it evil to treat food like food? If you want to argue that needlessly doing those things is evil, I would at least respect your argument. But instead you argue that doing those things at all is automatically evil, even though they are done for obvious purposes.

Murtak wrote:(no, you do not need animal flesh. Plenty of vegans and even fruitarians do just fine)

I also don't need to live in an air conditioned house with more than 20x20ft of space. But it is clearly better for me to do so. Likewise it is healthier for me to have access to meat, and be able to live life as a buff frisbee player on a college team than it is to not have access to those possibilities because I arbitrarily confine myself from eating meat.

Crissa wrote:And yes, at the majority of stores I buy from, they do one or more of these things to their process. Costco tests meat before they use it. The have union employee grind the hamburger. Safeway doesn't test, but in each store that has a butcher, they have union employees and buy from union shops. Whole Foods doesn't use union employees but buys from places that use grass-fed to clean the cattle before they're slaughtered, and tests them before they're put into packages. In and Out has union employees and uses smaller suppliers which use more grass.

So yes, the hamburger at my store wasn't made the way I described - but it also isn't 90% of the burgers sold in the country.

What, specifically, are the prices like at those stores?

Prak_Anima wrote:What, specifically, are the prices like at those stores?

Should I go around the neighborhood and shop for you?

Costco, Safeway. I can't find Whole Foods (they're expensive anyhow) or In and Out prices on the web that are current. I do know, however, that if you have an immigrant community in your area, follow their local butcher. They're highly likely to have good prices and Halal or Kosher or otherwise local sources which follow a different path.

-Crissa

Kaelik wrote:Health wise, getting enough protein for the entire population would be basically impossible with plants, not to mention people allergic to nuts, which i frankly didn't even think about.

Bollocks. Turning plant protein into meat is hugely inefficient, we could feed the planet a whole lot more easily without all those damn meat-eaters.

Like me, I admit.

Orca wrote:

Kaelik wrote:Health wise, getting enough protein for the entire population would be basically impossible with plants, not to mention people allergic to nuts, which i frankly didn't even think about.

Bollocks. Turning plant protein into meat is hugely inefficient, we could feed the planet a whole lot more easily without all those damn meat-eaters.

Like me, I admit.

Except the part where humans need specific proportions of protein to carbohydrates, and the part where you have to collect like seven different plants for each person each day in order to get all different amino acids. But whatever. The part where we have to grow ridiculously large quantities of many plants in order to ship them around the world to get a bunch of people who have to eat tons of shit in weird proportions.

Seriously, build a fucking super plant taco, I've been waiting for fucking ten years for a single meal that can provide all the right vitamins and appropriate proportions of protein/carbs/fat/ect.

The part where it takes fucking like 30 fucking hours of work to make one of them is the reason we don't fucking have one, and vegetarians are confined to rich people with lots of free time.

You don't need to get the correct proportions of every nutrient in every meal. In fact I'd wager you don't, right now - even if you're a total health-food nut, this requires an amount of information on what you're eating which I think is unfeasible.

A good diet over time is quite possible for rich vegans, fairly easy for vegetarians, and dead easy for people who eat mostly plants with some meat. It's very difficult to eat a good, balanced diet if you're eating meat all the time. Which is the ambition of many people who want a Western lifestyle, and which involves shipping a lot more stuff around than you seem to think.

Orca, the undisputed fact is that you would need more space. Much, much more space. That free space needs to be bought and maintained. Also, since you pretty much changed the flora of a place, you destroyed a local ecosystem. Not that you/Crissa care, right? Also, since you are probably clearing large parts of hillsides/forests (gotta use all the avaliable space, after all), you increase the potential damage from floods/heavy rainfalls.

Oh, and you would need to heavily fertilize that land, because it would get heavily used. Those fertilizers would mostly be synthetic. And I bet you the idiots that advocate not to eat meat nowadays are going to shift to "Do not poison Earth with your chemicals".

Also, you would probably need to use GM seed. Fuck all those organic stuff. We need quantities. However, GM seeds have one catch. Where once you planted several dozens different sorts of the same plant, now you plant only one. In case some disease manages to infect the GM plants, it will spread much more quickly and widely. It is quite literally putting all your eggs in one basket, and you know the basket will one day fall on the ground.

But, now someone, who is at least bit informed of all these matters (which means it will not happen, so I will just say it myself for completeness shake) will say all those additional expenses I mentioned earlier can be covered so it does not affect the market price. How, you ask? Government subsidies! Some estimates say that EU and US subsidies cause 80% of market price disortion for some products.

Only, lets be realistic, money has to come from somewhere. Government gets money from taxes. Increased taxes mean less money for everyone else. It means less savings, less investments, higher interest rates, lower economic growth, higher unemployment. And again, we are talking on a large scale.

Bet you didn't think about all that, right?

Koba, what don't you get about how the production of 1000 calories of meat requires more than 1000 calories of vegetable matter? There is no "we'd need to grow more vegetables"-we already grow more goddamn vegetables than we would need to feed everyone who currently eats meat. If we grew vegetables for humans instead of for cows we would feed more people for less money.

The meat industry is not some magical source of free meat. There are inputs that have to go in, and you get less food than you put in. You just get it in a delicious form.


I mean for fuck's sake, you're saying we'd need more space to grow less food than we currently use. That makes no sense. Zip, nada, nothing. None. You are a moron who is pulling things out of his ass to defend the status quo.

Cielingcat wrote:Koba, what don't you get about how the production of 1000 calories of meat requires more than 1000 calories of vegetable matter? There is no "we'd need to grow more vegetables"-we already grow more goddamn vegetables than we would need to feed everyone who currently eats meat. If we grew vegetables for humans instead of for cows we would feed more people for less money.

The meat industry is not some magical source of free meat. There are inputs that have to go in, and you get less food than you put in. You just get it in a delicious form.


I mean for fuck's sake, you're saying we'd need more space to grow less food than we currently use. That makes no sense. Zip, nada, nothing. None. You are a moron who is pulling things out of his ass to defend the status quo.

Ah, right, I forgot we're supposed to kill the animals to stop being inhumane to them.

Sorry, Cat, I'll have to take that moron badge and put it onto you.

Wait, what? What the fuck are you even saying?

You are the one who apparently thinks that all those herds of cattle we no longer need will magically stop eating the food they do now just because we no longer want to eat them.

Uh, no. That's stupid. You are stupid.

Your argument hinges on the insane idea that if we replace factory farmed meat with vegetarian stuff, we'd have to, for some inane reason, continue having just as many cattle consuming just as many resources.

PROTIP: When you replace something, the original thing isn't produced anymore. Yes the cows we have right now are going to have to die for us to replace them. You know what? They were going to die anyway. You know what we could do with the ones we have now? We could eat them like we would anyway.

Only once that's done, we can produce less cattle. In safer conditions. So that we don't have to expose ourselves to dangerous bacteria and other contaminants.

We don't have to stop eating meat. We just have to stop eating so much meat, and more importantly we have to stop producing it in unsafe ways.