Vegan

Where is impossible just a fad? I feel it's pretty much impossible (lol) to find a black bean or other veggie burger in a restaurant now, while everywhere (even burger king) has impossible or beyond. But this is in Berkeley so it's highly likely I'm just in a bubble.

Meat eaters don't genuinely care about the ethics of meat. They give no shits about factory farming.

I do and will switch to lab grown meat as soon as it's available for ethical reasons. Clearly I'm not invested enough in the issue to go vegan, but I don't think I'm alone here. I like meat. I can have meat without animals having to suffer? Sounds good to me, even if it's more expensive.

I think you stereotyping a bit. Everyday people don't feel strongly about food in either direction, but if they see meat in a shop advertised as "no animal had to die for this", many will think "that's nice" and buy it.

I also think that there is some much potential in the dishes we eat. Western Cousine is mostly structured around a protein and side dishes but there is so much more out there. We could have a much healthier, more diverse and interesting diet that is basically better in every regard and doesn’t require highly processed plant proteins to work. But this requires a certain amount of dedication and resources on the cooking side of things. We should start taking proper food for the population more serious as a national health concern and provide a easy way to get cheap and healthy food for everyone. This is also vital because of how the society changed, more single households and less of the traditional family. In my naive mind I never understood why food is not something like health care, water services, sewage or what ever. Everyone needs it to survive. This would be better for health (care systems), the planet and local food independence. Instead we let huge food companies sell us more sawdust per candy bar every year and exploit workers in the south.

There is an issue with the idea of pre industrial production. In ecoremediation we need to rewild large tracts of land to restore biodiversity. Most of this land is now used for farming and while a good portion of that land for half the crops in rotation goes to animal feed, it wouldn't be enough to simultaneously feed the population and rewild enough land if we stick to pre industrial methods. What we need is a clean, sustainable industry of agriculture. We are already on the fragile precipe of this new form. In the Netherlands we can find automated greenhouse operations that are increasingly becoming ecologically sane in their use of pesticides, fertilizers etc. They achieve an output almost double of traditional farming on a quarter of the space on method alone. In both the netherlands and singapore vertical farm projects are started to integrate city planning and farming, further reducing the need for space. In northern europe kelp farms are started to farm kelp and seaweed. There are probably many more examples but they are all post industrial practices which rely heavily on the scalability of industry. It really is the only way forward if we truly want to restore the plenty provided by a balance in nature. Restore the biodiversity, rewild the world, use less space.

The moment I can swap to lab based meat, I will. I care about the suffering caused by my diet, but I don't have the mental capacity to change it right now. I have no idea what proportion of the meat eating population is like me, but it might be more than you expect.

You can go ahead and call me a terrible person, I don't care, I've given up self hatred for lent. Just trying to do the best I can.