#TOTW If science ever proves plants are properly sentient, whats left to eat?

on an average human 2-6lbs of us is bacteria and there are approximately 30 trillian cells in human, there are approximately 40 trillion bacterial cells in a human,

A gotcha question? Please elaborate, Im not trying to catch anyone out, I’m genuinely just asking people about whether long held beliefs would be shaken by seemingly unbelievable evidence is all.Im interested in how and why people do things which are considered outside of societal norm is all.

Ok @cougar , I would be interested to know your personal reasons for your vegetarian / vegan/ other diet. Health? Palate? Do animal concerns figure at all into your dietary choice? Were you raised vegetarian and know nothing else?

@molgrips yes I understand this thanks, this is not what the thread is about.
The second part of your answer is what I wanted.

None of us here, as far as I know are Nobel Prize winning biologists

Nobel prize-winning perhaps not, but I would be absolutely astonished if we didn’t have knowledgeable biologists amongst our number.

and Ive never pretended to be.

You don’t say.

I’m an omnivore and have the teeth and guts to prove it.

You’re an omnivore and you have the teeth and guts to allow you to be so.

Ok @cougar , I would be interested to know your personal reasons for your vegetarian / vegan/ other diet.

Happy to answer that, though I’ve answered it many times on previous threads. However I’m about to stick a film on so I’ll get back to you in a bit.

whether long held beliefs would be shaken by seemingly unbelievable evidence is all.Im interested in how and why people do things which are considered outside of societal norm is all.

Wait, I thought you were just ‘bored’? 😉

But as to your question, maybe if I phrase it similarly yet to a different ‘abnormal’ group (ie cyclists in the UK), then you might see how difficult it is to answer. ie

If cycling was one day found to be responsible for climate-change/holocene extinction to a greater degree than cars, then how would the cycling crew’s long-held beliefs be shaken? Answer me that!

@cougar, what film is it?
Let us know if its any good, might watch that tomorrow instead of starting bullshit threads on here lol.

Wait, you cant be bored and wonder something at the same time then 🤔

Perhaps plants aren’t just sentient – maybe they’re cleverer than us. Like the Eloi and the Morlocks the twist in the tail might be that as advanced and sentient as we thing we are its actually us that are being farmed -we’re the crop not them. The plants have cleverly co-oerced us into nurturing their young, into shaping and plowing the land for them, irrigating  them, we shape the climate around them by building special houses, we even drill wells and transform crude oil into synthetic fertiliser just for them – all that money, resource and effort to make food that we ourselves can’t eat but they can.

Species of plants have been able to migrate all round the world thanks only to us, we’ve even taken them into space and we’re even trying to figure out how to take them to mars.

They must think we’re a right bunch of muppets

Wait, you cant be bored and wonder something at the same time then 🤔

You certainly can , I was just being a bit of a winker.

Let me slightly rephrase my question:

If cycling was one day found to be responsible for climate-change/holocene extinction to a greater similar degree as ICE cars, trucks, etc, then how would the cycling crew’s long-held beliefs be shaken? Answer me that!?

Bonus question: If passive and rhetorical questioning was one day found to be less rhetorical than active non-rhetorical questioning, then what would the rhetorician crew make of that? How would their long-held beliefs be shaken? 🤔

Sorry for the slight digression here but
Most trees and plants are linked into underground networks of fungal networks via their root tips and exchange resources they need from each other. The fungi gain energy which the trees produce by photosythesis and the trees get vital elements which the fungi can tap into. There is still a lot to be discovered about this “wood wide web” but it may be a form of information transfer between plants via fungi.This does not make the plants or fungi sentient beings though. Who’s pimping Who? The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.
Have a read of Entangled Life by Marlin Sheldrake for more about the fungal world.

I think @cougar and I are on the same page re meat.

Why would you eat that shit? It’s the flesh of dead things.

Why would you eat that shit?

(between 6 months and 23yrs of age) for bioavailability of micronutrients necessary for cognitive development?

Why would you eat that shit?

Because its natural to do so 😕

Or should i say normal 😉

So, OK.

I would be interested to know your personal reasons for your vegetarian / vegan/ other diet.

I think @cougar and I are on the same page re meat.

Why would you eat that shit? It’s the flesh of dead things.

This isn’t a million miles away. I find it revolting. It’s that simple, really.

I don’t want to eat meat. And I’m fortunate enough to live in a society where it’s not necessary to eat it. So… why the heck would I?

Why (assuming you do) do you eat meat?

Because,

Because its natural to do so 😕

Or should i say normal 😉

… “we’ve always done it this way” is the worst justification to be doing anything. I’ve put some thought into my diet and made a decision. Have you? Or are you just doing what is “normal”?

Do animal concerns figure at all into your dietary choice?

Only in so far as it’s a happy side-effect.

Were you raised vegetarian and know nothing else?

Quite the opposite, my family were dairy farmers. They sold up when I was quite young so I only have very vague memories of the farm, but my upbringing was a long chalk from being raised veggie. Hell, my gran being elbows-deep in gore might well have contributed to tipping me in the opposite direction.

Perhaps plants aren’t just sentient – maybe they’re cleverer than us. Like the Eloi and the Morlocks the twist in the tail might be that as advanced and sentient as we thing we are its actually us that are being farmed -we’re the crop not them.

Kinda like the mice in HHGTTG experimenting on us.

And mice have tails; plants don’t.
Or is that just what they want us to think??

I think @cougar and I are on the same page re meat.

Why would you eat that shit? It’s the flesh of dead things.

It’s actually very nutritious. Humans evolved as omnivores, with animal flesh a major part of our diet. Most humans find meat to be delicious, although I’m guessing that most don’t know how sausages are made.

To the OP’s question. Plants aren’t sentient, they don’t have feelings in the same way that animals do because they don’t have nervous systems.

There is a thing called a Sentient Vegetarian diet. It separates sentient, static and mutative foods – sentient being those that provide vital energy to the body and are important for spiritual development.

The people that adhere to this diet are called Ommmmnivores.

Most humans find meat to be delicious, although I’m guessing that most don’t know how sausages are made.

I do. Well obviously
But there is a misconception, and you’ve highlighted it exactly, and in a negative manner that many play into simply because they dont understand the facts and reasons behind that noble art of making sausages.

I shall explain.

(This is obviously a retail establishment, ie a small family run butchers shop)
Sausages are meat based, but where does that meat and fat come from.
From the carcass of the cow(or bullock rather) that every other product in the shop comes from.
It’s all a matter of what something costs, and making best use of that to maximize profit and to keep wastage to an absolute minimum.
So you buy a bullock as a side(2 sides per coo), and that side costs you for example £1 per lb, which weighs about 450lbs, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less but about that.
Now. That side consists of muscle(the meat) fat, connective tissue(tendons, whats termed gristle and bone. Each part cost you £1/lb So the fillet steak cost you a £1/lb, and the fat cost you a £1/lb and the bones etc etc.
In preparation you need to trim fat and connective tissue from the mean to make it lean enough to sell, as customers now prefer lean over fatty cuts. Subtract the bone, the excess fat, the rest and it straight away reduces the weight by about a 1/3. So what you have left you have to cost to make up the original cost of the side, plus the profit, plus the staff wages, overheads etc etc.

So when trimming it you are left with the trimmings, and that is what goes into the sausage.
If you cannot sell or utilize those trimmings you are going to go out of business, so when you use them for sausagemeat, it needs to be of such quality, that the customer isnt put off, by for example it being too fatty, or gristly. If the customer rejects, or finds the sausage not to their liking, then they dont sell and if you cannot sell your trimming, again you go out of business, and usually within 6 months.
Mince. From your side you can produce certain cuts – Steaks for frying, quality like fillet and sirloin, rump, others suitable to casserole, other cut into pieces for stewing steak. The steaks will make you so much, stew is easy to produce from any cut, but again its a matter of you have so much and you need to sell the best for the most, and theres no point chopping sirloin into stew or mincing it or making sausage or burgers out of it. Theres more to it that this obviousness, as in you cannot easily fry meat from the forequarter because it will be tough, or the rump end because it will be dry.
So frying steak will make you so much, stewing cuts so much, casserole and so on and so forth. And the trimming is left over.
The trim is fat, but also meat, and the leaner parts of that trim can be minced, the fattier(to some degree) sausage. Its a bit of a weight up. Sausage is meat and fat, but not too much fat or the customer will reject it.
So to remain viable, you need to be able to sell your trimming in the form of mince and sausage and in any retail butchers shop, those are the two most important products. If the customer finds either not to be of the highest quality, then you cannot sell the trim, you lose profit, you cannot pay your bills and you go out of business.

So in a butchers shop, no matter how much or the grade of the beef(which will 99% of the time be grade A) the sausages and mince will always be the best of quality. They have to be.

Nobel prize-winning perhaps not, but I would be absolutely astonished if we didn’t have knowledgeable biologists amongst our number.

I have a PhD in wild flowers!

huh, hence Scarlet Pimpernel…makes sense now.

There is a thing called a Sentient Vegetarian diet.

Jains aren’t supposed to kill anything to eat it. So their diet strictly speaking shouldn’t include (for instance) root veg, but only things that can be picked or plucked from trees and bushes.

huh, hence Scarlet Pimpernel…makes sense now.

Also many years ago, like 15, I got banned so re registered with a smart arsed name….I also like the Scarlets rugby team.

This thread whilst being full of lots of shite does highlight that plants are not just free salad for animals, they have there own complex lives and as we are seeing in the last few decades hugely complex interactions with other organisms.

Jains aren’t supposed to kill anything to eat it. So their diet strictly speaking shouldn’t include (for instance) root veg, but only things that can be picked or plucked from trees and bushes.

Would they be allowed a little slither if beef, or even a leg of lamb, if it didn’t kill the animal?

Has anyone mentioned Breatharians?

I have no idea how they do it, it seems almost unbelievable to me, but they get my utmost respect.

Would they be allowed a little slither if beef, or even a leg of lamb, if it didn’t kill the animal?

No idea, seems that it might go against the spirit of the thing though.

EDIT: A quick Google says that they don’t eat anything from animals that has been produced with violence. So presumably eggs and milk are OK in some circumstances, but not the slice from it’s leg.

Not even if it’s died peacefully in its sleep?

Yes no maybe…I think that’s a bit of a controversy in Jainism. I think some folks see it as a bit of a “get out clause” and others think you still shouldn’t eat it.  Had a long chat with one of my GPs a while back about all this sort of stuff (who is from a Jain background) I’ll ask him

So in a butchers shop, no matter how much or the grade of the beef(which will 99% of the time be grade A) the sausages and mince will always be the best of quality. They have to be.

I’m sold. Sausages for dinner tonight for me.

OP, we become morally obliged to cannibalism. Obvs.

OP, we become morally obliged to cannibalism. Obvs.

We already know what vegetarians and vegans taste like 😉 😆

Why would you eat that shit? It’s the flesh of dead things.

There are many reasons not to eat meat but this isn’t one of them, it’s just playing with words.

Better than the flesh of live things though eh?

 it’s just playing with words.

Ahem…

Better than the flesh of live things though eh?

Less of the ‘we’ please. Some of us happily eat animals regardless of their proven sentience.

“Please don’t make rash generalisations”

It’s the vegetarians who will have a new dilemna.

*makes a rash generalisation*

I’ll rephrase @cougar

What i meant was meat eaters are already reconciled to eating sentient things so they will presumably have no moral qualm with extending that approach to sentient plants.

Vegetarians aren’t reconciled, hence being vegetarian, so will have an additional consideration.

Jeepers that a quoted mess but you get my drift.

You have pre-supposed that everyone who doesn’t eat meat does so out of moral considerations, and that’s not the case. Some people are fine with killing animals for meat, but just don’t like the taste of it themselves, and because we live in 21stC UK,  don’t have to eat it.

If science ever proves plants are properly sentient, whats left to eat?

Oysters.

Vegans, Cougar, you’re welcome.

There are many reasons not to eat meat but this isn’t one of them

… in your opinion. Whereas in mine it’s a primary driver not to eat it, it’s nasty and makes me want to heave.

And I’m not alone even amongst omnivores. It’s relatively easy to be a meat-eater once someone else has done all the wetwork and packaged it up into neat little chunks and slices for you. I’d wager that if everyone was told they could only eat meat that they’d prepared themselves, then were given them a rifle and a skinning knife and dropped in a field with all the chickens, baa lambs and other assorted fauna they could eat, we’d see rather a lot of overnight conversions.

What i meant was meat eaters are already reconciled to eating sentient things so they will presumably have no moral qualm with extending that approach to sentient plants.

Vegetarians aren’t reconciled, hence being vegetarian, so will have an additional consideration.

I think that’s perhaps arse-backwards. Omnivore is (typically) the default, so by definition the vast majority of veggies+ will have given some thought about their diet. Whereas your meat eaters are probably doing what they’ve always done.

(And yes, this is a generalisation of course. I know omnivores who have given it a great deal of thought and decided that, on balance, they’re going to choose to continue to eat meat. But I suspect they’re a minority, certainly amongst the older generation.)

So, with that in mind, how would people on here feel if the only real benefit vegetarianism has , ie the fact you are claiming a non sentient life as food over a sentient firm, was negated.

What about those of us who just really like messing with people who’s self identity is inextricably linked to bacon?

This changes nothing.

Would they be allowed a little slither if beef, or even a leg of lamb, if it didn’t kill the animal?

A bit like the Anthony Bourdain episode where they stab the cow to bleed it?

Dunno about the rest of you, but nope, not OK with that either.

plants are not sentient and science will never prove that they are because they are not.

Evolution can happen quicker than millions of years. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/lizard-evolution-island-darwin