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

No I would say that people dont care about eating meat and see it as being perfectly natural, in the same way you eat plants yet are totally dismissive of them actually being alive and therefore you kill them to live. You certainly don’t care about them do you.

Well there you go again, always on with the personal attacks, dyna-ti this, dyna-ti that distracting away from the original question, like you’re afraid to answer or examine it in any detail.

That’s no ‘attack’, for Pete’s sake get a grip! It was a direct question to @thisisnotaspoon re their comment ‘punching down’. I was confused by both the term and it’s use in context (and still am tbh).

dyna-ti:Why not follow it up though with something by Michalak. Especially that one about the Vegetarian diet and its association with mental disorders.

thisisnotaspoon: Offffffftttt punching down much?

My question, that in order to ‘punch down’ the ‘puncher’ must rank above their target? Correct? Rank needs defining in order to qualify the title. Get it now?

But back to your getting hoppity about ‘personal attacks’. Seriously?

The only thing that I would have rated as an ‘attack’ on this thread was you going from zero to jugular on a vegetarian for them having answered a direct question about why they chose not to eat meat.

My mention of ‘projection’ was contained in my quote (ie you accused the person you were accusing of having ‘psychological’ reasons, (ie having the ‘same’ reaction to meat that you claimed to have about certain non-meat foodstuffs)

The animated gif was a (hopefully) light-hearted illustration of you seeming unaware of doing just that. ie you were/are attempting to infer that vegetarian/s have psychological disorders because they react to some foodstuffs in the ‘same’ (your word) way that you react to some foodstuffs, while simultaneously attacking them for being (sic) ‘defensive’ and ‘militant’. Cue ‘projection’.

Get it now? That’s all.

Now, what was the question again? Any vegetarians care to ‘weigh in’ to see again what happens when they find a stranger in the Alps? 🙄

you eat plants yet are totally dismissive of them actually being alive

Not at all. Wherever possible I try to eat plants that are still alive. Even if they are plunged screaming into boiling water.

*When they ‘find a stranger in the Alpen’?

What does TOTW mean?

Thread of the week

Your qualms about plant-eating would soon disappear after a few days of hunger. If you don’t give-in early enough, you might eventually end up reaching straight for the cheese and meat.

I would say that people dont care about eating meat and see it as being perfectly natural, in the same way you eat plants yet are totally dismissive of them actually being alive and therefore you kill them to live.

I have a question, and I apologise in advance if you interpret this as an attack because it’s not intended as such. I ask merely for information.

Are you intentionally trolling or are you an idiot?

Thanks for clarifying Cougar. I thought you were probably exaggerating as I have never met anyone with a strong aversion to seeing someone eating meat, although I see now that you weren’t.

I mean, as an adult I try just to not focus on it. I wouldn’t get bent out of shape about it because it’s bugger all to do with me what anyone else eats. But if someone was chowing down on something that was bleeding about the place, I’d try and look away.

It must have caused you problems going to restaurants with friends or family, or just seeing people eating meat produce in public.

I’m not sure it this is sincere or cynical. But yes, going to restaurants is difficult for me. Not really because of what anyone else is eating, as discussed I don’t really care, but because I don’t know what I’m going to be presented with. “Oh, I’m not really hungry, I’ll have a bowl of chips” he lied.

I must admit that I find it off putting when queuing up at a checkout in Tesco and someone slaps a lump of raw meat on the conveyor belt in front of me. Especially for some reason chicken legs, there’s something about plucked bird body parts which I find particularly unpleasant.

Kinda where I was coming from. Yet you’d still eat it? I find that weird, and I totally hold my hand up that that’s on me not you / anyone else.

To my screwed-up ASD brain, eating is invasive. It’s putting something inside myself. So if I’m not comfortable handling something – a leg on a conveyor for instance – then I’m light years away from wanting to eat it once someone’s turned it brown.

But it has never made want to throw up. I would just rather not look at it. In the same way that I would rather not look at the corpse of a recently killed fox or badger whilst cycling along a road.

Likewise, and that’s a perfect analogy.

It doesn’t make me want to throw up, but it does make me queasy in the same way that roadkill would.

I have a question, and I apologise in advance if you interpret this as an attack because it’s not intended as such. I ask merely for information.

Are you intentionally trolling or are you an idiot?

So im an idiot because i dare to suggest the majority dont care about how their dinner is actually killed, and by that i dont mean the process. That to you is idiocy.
And no I wouldnt call that an attack, well not exactly, even though this is your intention, as there is no other reason for such rudeness.

As to the information you seek 😕 What exactly is this info, do you even know ?, or have you added this merely as a vessel to be so rude. Pretty much anything you want to know I’ve already stated, and you’ve gone so far to quote me. So again 😕 Reason for asking escapes me.

But it appears to come down to this
One group says eating meat is so wrong, they are physically repulsed by it. Anyone who eats meat is subject to verbal assault.
A second group states eating meat is fine, they feel it natural, and if you choose not to for whatever reason, that is ok by them.

But somehow you feel the first group have the moral highground.

You claim to be ASD 😕 I find that odd given logic plays a large part of that disorder, and certainly the above is far from it.

As to me highlighting what is clearly a psychological issue, look at some of the language used.
This also isnt an attack, though neither is it an attempt to be rude to another member as you seem to think lends credence to your point of view, but is only there as an example.
” someone slaps a lump of raw meat on the conveyor belt in front of me.”
I would say it is placed, not slapped down, and ‘in front of me’ as if that poster believes that the actions of the customer are a personal assault on their sensibility.

” but it does make me queasy in the same way that roadkill would.”
And how do you feel about your own choice of diet being grown in animal shit 😕 Does that not repulse you ?, or make you queasy.

I think you just don’t like someone using logic to question the vegan lifestyle, and feel the need to insult such a person.

So as to the original question ” If science ever proves plants are properly sentient, whats left to eat?” Have you addressed that point of view, because it appears you havent and all you have done this entire thread is go on the attack against other members whose opinion differs from yours.

When i look back in this thread at your reply to others, the little snipes, the implication that they are lacking intellectually for their choice of diet, and your ignoring the op’s original subject matter, it wouldn’t be too far a stretch to suggest that not only are you a troll, but a complete idiot to boot.

Dyna Ti

Having followed this thread the only person IMO that has acted badly is you. why all the venom and personal attacks?

Having followed this thread the only person IMO that has acted badly is you. why all the venom and personal attacks?

That’s because dyna doesn’t dress it up with false politeness like Cougar :

I have a question, and I apologise in advance if you interpret this as an attack because it’s not intended as such. I ask merely for information.

Are you intentionally trolling or are you an idiot?

I’m not sure if it works for anyone else but I’ll give it a go…..

Cougar please don’t take this wrong, I am merely asking this because I am intrigued and it is not intended as an insult, but do you ever have a day off from being a patronising prick?

Thanking you in advance for carefully thought out response.

Btw Cougar ref : “Kinda where I was coming from. Yet you’d still eat it? I find that weird”, I said that I don’t eat meat, so the answer is no, I don’t still eat it.

One group says eating meat is so wrong, they are physically repulsed by it.

If you’re referring to Cougar I think he feels repulsed by it because he just really doesn’t like it, not because it’s so wrong. I feel the same about mayonnaise.

Interesting – I don’t see cougar and particularly his posts on this thread like that at all.
maybe it went over my head

But it appears to come down to this
One group says eating meat is so wrong, they are physically repulsed by it.

One group says eating meat is so wrong, they are physically repulsed by it.

No, not a ‘group’. That was one person (Cougar). And you even stated that (some) vegetables made you feel ‘the same’ way.

Anyone who eats meat is subject to verbal assault.

Again, no. You were the one who began by (sic) verbally assaulting a single vegetarian, in fact swearing at them for the above. No one ‘assaulted’ you. No one in this thread AFAICS has been ‘assaulted’ in any way for their eating meat?

A second group states eating meat is fine, they feel it natural, and if you choose not to for whatever reason, that is ok by them.

After reading this thread (and come to think of it, some others, especially veggie recipe threads) I find it very hard to believe that you (personally) think that people not eating meat is ‘ok by you’.

You come over somewhat as as an ‘antiveggie’ fundamentalist. Not because you like meat (you most obviously do) or that you specially enjoy killing and cutting up animals (you may or may not do) – but because you appear to dislike and stereotype people who don’t eat meat. Do you not see the irony here? You are aggressively and intolerantly accusing a (passive) vegetarian of being aggressively intolerant because they answered a question about why they don’t eat meat.

I see this all of the time (married to someone who doesn’t eat meat/dairy) and the unintentional irony is deafening (and depressing tbh). Family and friends mealtimes are a quiz/interrogations/‘shaming’ session (delete as applicable) more often than not. Same goes when I choose veggie options. Many/most(?) people seem to have no idea that they are ‘othering’ and stereotyping s stranger/friend/family-member simply because that person chooses to eat what they like to eat. It would never occur to me to interrogate someone (family or stranger) to their face over why they chose to eat/order meat. Yet the same thought rarely occurs vice versa.

No one ‘assaulted’ you. No one in this thread AFAICS has been ‘assaulted’ in any way for their eating meat?

I was meaning as in a verbal assault, not physical.
So by being called an idiot, you would have to agree that is an assault is it not ?.

And its that type of behaviour sets me off, and so I feel the need to stupidly defend myself.

If you’re referring to Cougar

No, i was referring to militant vegetarianism in general, im not singling anyone out here for their views, as i have said constantly. It is the overall generalization of eating meat as being wrong that I am in disagreement of.

Having followed this thread the only person IMO that has acted badly is you. why all the venom and personal attacks?

Only in retaliation and even then hardly venomous, Its not like ive directly called anyone an idiot is it, nor have i implied such, nor have I posted animated gifs to that effect

maybe it went over my head

😕

You come over somewhat as as an ‘antiveggie’ fundamentalist. Not because you like meat (you most obviously do) or that you specially enjoy killing and cutting up animals (you may or may not do)

Again, I’m not the one being abusive, and am only defending against such assaults.

“You may or may not”.
Look there you go again. I may or may not be some psychopathic animal killer who takes pleasure in killing animals.
Can you not see even your words here as being somewhat provocative ?, and as an insult personally directed. Maybe this is just the language you are used to, throwing sarcastic comments and innuendo at members.

*I cant really go on at length with this, think im quite ill currently can hardly breathe and only slept 3 h in the last 48. But if you call me names, then deny anyone is actually being abusive towards me despite those insults being there for you to see, dont be surprised if i call that out.
—————————————
“Militant anti vegetarian” lol first in history I reckon. Maybe I could follow that up by invading a vegetarian restaurant and throwing sausages at the diners 😆
Or even start a thread ‘Meat dishes for the vegetarian’ but wouldn’t that be seen as provocative 😆

Look there you go again. I may or may not be some psychopathic animal killer who takes pleasure in killing animals.
Can you not see even your words here as being somewhat provocative ?

Maybe the words you substituted them for could be taken that way, but mine weren’t intended to provoke. Many (not all) meat eaters enjoy hunting/killing/butchering their own meat. Many don’t. It’s as simple as that in the context of my point. I didn’t wish to assume whether you did or not. My point – that whatever you feel (or don’t feel) about animals and their lives/meat seems to have little to do with your reactions here to vegetarians and veggie recipes. Which (I seem to remember) are are fairly consistent. It’s funny you brought up the veggie recipe threads because they regularly get derailed by the more militant meat-eaters/anti-veggies on a mission. tbh I don’t get it? What’s so ‘provocative’ about people sharing vegetarian/vegan recipes on the forum?

Take a look back on this thread and see if you can’t pinpoint the moment that it began going south. I’d put a fiver on the likelihood that you feel fully vindicated in believing your own account: ie your (sic) verbal assault on the veggie was simply a ‘response’ to the veggie being (sic) ‘provocative’. Feel better BTW. I’ll take the fiver whenever 😉

It’s never too much effort when there’s an important point to be made.

Mun, I cant believe you lot.
By far the most common reasons I hear for people going to a plant based diet is animal ethics, followed by health consciousness. I assume anyone doing it for religious reasons have been doing it since becoming spiritually awakened or birth.
I have since learned some people do it because they are disgusted by the sight, taste and thought of eating flesh. I kind of get that, seeing a rare steak makes me think what on earth that must feel like in the mouth, and the coppery taste of blood going down my throat would make me heave.It seems so unnecessary in a world of cooked food, but who am I to judge?
But the point I was trying to get at wasnt to wind anyone up or watch any of you lot go for each other, in fact some of the behaviour here on both sides has been disgraceful. I was hoping to find out a few things
a) vegetarians. If you are one of those who do so for animal ethics reasons, how would a blurring of the line between animal and vegetable (hypothetically, before the argumentative start again) shake any of your beliefs? Would science be able to change your views which are, at least to me, based on emotion over fact? I count myself as one of these, as thats the reason I wont eat mammals,I see them as sentient and equally deserving of life. I see no point in supporting the meat trade when pain and suffering -free alternatives exist. However I also admit that I did feel healthier when I ate red meat, obviously Im doing it wrong . I am also aware I am able to digest meat so it must be evolutionarily important to my species, which means it must be a benefit historically. Despite all the evidence that eating meat is good for me , I choose not to because I dont want to hurt the cows , pigs and sheep. I notice I dont care about the suffering and pain of fish, which I eat a lot of. I dont know how Id react if science demonstrated the ability of fish to suffer pain and suffering at a level equivalent to that of mammals. Maybe they have already I just dont know about it. I find my hypocrisy thought provoking and I wanted to hear others opinions.

b) meat eaters. I already know that you are not all cut from the same cloth. Some are fastidious about where your meat comes from, some couldnt care less and price is the deciding factor, and every shade in between, plus more. My entire family eat meat and I dont judge them for it, I dont judge you for it either, its just not for me. I’m looking at the way some meat eaters have described vegetarians as aggressive fanatics,etc. You have a point in some cases, but in others you are the arsehole. I was wondering whether , in a world where the ethical difference between taking an animal life and plant life had become blurred, whether you would double down on meat eating as you were now no longer the barbarous primitives eating the poor sentient animals, that in fact the vegetarians were now just as culpable as yourselves in causing suffering. Or, whether the the new view that all life is connected and sentient would make you reconsider your whole stance on eating meat. In the same hypothetical world as above, obviously.

C) everybody. I was wondering what other sources of nutrition might people reconsider , given that plant and animal life are now ethically equivalent. Bacterial? Algae? Would palatability win over ethics at this point? That kind of thing.

What I hoped would be obviously intelligent and articulate people on both sides of the argument presenting fact and counter facts , maybe with links to interesting research I hadnt heard of, turned into a slagfest and pissing contest. I didnt care about people putting the boot into me for my contributions, they were abstract, daft and unresearched, but for a forum which has such intelligent people contributing, it was a disappointment to see the way it degenerated since.

That was a good post OP. I attempted to write a summarised ‘answer’ last night and didn’t post it (saved it in notes) mostly because of the way the thread was headed. I’ll post last night’s response at the end of this. I also failed to ‘summarise’ but your question is enormous and tbh I could ramble on forever about the subject of tomato ketchup. Publish and be damned.

I don’t quite know which of your categories I fit into, because I eat meat yet I (variously) don’t feel comfortable about it most of the time for quite a wide variety of reasons that are sometimes (yet not always) connected. The one thing about this question/thread that frustrates me has been the polarising and stereotypical nature and framing of much of the discussion. ie A vs B. ‘meateater vs veggie’ / ‘ethics vs the environment’. Care about nothing vs care about everything and it’s microbe.

It is surely more likely that most people fall somewhere along a spectrum of consideration vs inconsideration for all of the above?

ie I eat meat, I like the taste and texture of meat, don’t eat all meat, not happy just to eat it from anywhere, sometimes not all. Increasingly unhappy about it.

I have killed and dismembered many wild animals for curiosity (as a child), for the pleasure of hunting/killing (teenager), and for the pleasure of eating (as both child and adult

Not much in the last twenty years. But I’ve bought plenty of meat in that time, so have killed/butchered by proxy.

Some of these concerns in my adult life (as with many of you?) change and grow/wither, mutate etc. In brief (as with most) – these concerns are from my perspective of myself as a consumer and as individual/soul/contributing member of society/the environment/other living creatures/souls. But this is about sentience.

Last night’s answer (TLDR)

No I would say that people dont care about eating meat and see it as being perfectly natural, in the same way you eat plants yet are totally dismissive of them actually being alive

‘Some’ people, surely?

For instance I eat meat yet don’t at all feel way that dyna-ti describes. Or rather don’t ‘not care’ about life/sentience, neither do I feel ‘dismissive’

I’d put the word ‘sentient’ here, ie:

totally dismissive of them actually being alive sentient.

To attempt to answer the OP question:

Not everyone understands and/or feels the same way about sentience in general. This is for varying reasons/factors (ie environmental/religious/cultural/conditioning/psychological/socio-psychological, etc etc…)

I’d offer that the word ‘sentient’ remains ill-defined or at least differently understood by each one of us, and that’s before even throwing in all of the other variables around species, neurology, group psychology, hierarchy and taxonomies, or questions around freedom, ‘right’ to exist, welfare, killing, etc etc.

One of my boorish ‘gotcha’ philosophical questions is to ask my wife whether or not she would eat a sea sponge? And if not then why not? She answers (wholly sensibly):

‘Why would I need to eat a sea sponge?’
‘Just because’
‘That doesn’t make sense?’
‘Ok just imagine you’re starving and all there is to eat are sea sponges’
‘wtf?’
‘OK if I told you that it was an ‘animal’ rather than a ‘plant’ would you be more or less inclined to eat it’
‘Less, of course’
‘OK but what if I told you that it had no brain, would you be less or more inclined’
‘Er…’
‘Ha! OK whatabout a mesodinium chamaeleon?…’
‘A what? An areyouanarse-hole-eon?
😬

Etc..

She doesn’t understand my resultant glee (and neither do I, tbh)

Globally it seems that most everyone has at least some ethical, cultural, psychological, empathic etc dilemma regarding their food choice and how they treat other living things. Even if their only ‘taboo’ is to not to kill and eat their own kin. The sentience issue is a very wide spectrum both in understanding an attitudes. Not always in line with practise.

Bright-eyes anecdote: I do have some ‘city friends’ who used to laugh at what they referred to as ‘the bunnies’ being killed as they were driving. They would speed up at rabbits to hit them. To them it was like watching funny furry rocks being bowled around by their car-wheels. Same with pheasants. It was like a game of whackamole. Living sentient creatures occupied the same space in my friend’s minds as do some polyester fuzzythings popping up in a fairground attraction.

They had (AFAICS) no feelings about it whatsoever except as a trivial form of ‘entertainment’. It was quite a sickly surprise to me. There was no thought whatsoever that the ( not always killed outright) animals were suffering (or if there was, then it was entirely concealed in mirth). I couldn’t help but see this as some kind of failure to understand ‘sentience’ in animals (?)

There was no suspicion of intentional cruelty as they saw the animals as non-sentient ie ‘rocks with fur’ (or if there was some intent, then maybe I didn’t wish to recognise it in my friends?)

But then again, I sometimes take a bizarre (if small) pleasure in seeing ‘our’ feral cat dispatching numbers of the many rats we have. It’s complicated, then. I have a history of keeping rats as pets and yet simultaneously loathing wild rats near the house. But I like to think that I take no pleasure in their (wild rats) suffering. And then I catch myself grinning at (with) the cat when I see him dragging off with his latest kill.

But nonetheless, as with mine, sentience and rights to life/autonomy/freedom of other lifeforms are a sliding scale in most people’s minds?

I’m sure there are those who would chance upon a (say) family of orang-utans being burned in the forest and think nothing more deeply than ‘BBQ’. How is that different than a pig on the spit?

And that may be their (chosen?) limit to their understanding of the situation. May as well be some carrots being boiled ‘alive’. But the ‘truth’ of course does not lie wholly in interpretation? The creature (in and of itself) is an objective subject, not a subjective object?

A behaviourist/veterinarian/neurologist/psychologist/zoologist (ie someone like Jane Goodall) etc would have a diametrically opposite/different understanding about the matter. The conviction of recognition of our fellow creatures as sentient and deserving of (?) is (variously) viewed as this or that.

I personally struggle with a lot of it, in all honesty. Even moreso watching largely fake online ‘culture wars’ emerge and dominate debates which spill over into real life attitudes.

It’s a tricky subject, and as far as ‘sentience’ goes – unless I try (have tried and failed) to just squash it down and ignore it then it’s always a factor for me along the scale and in life.

Shrimp sentience doesn’t feature highly in my food concerns. The farming methods do because of their environmental effects. Dogs and pigs feature highly for me on the sentience scale. All mammals do, really. But I’d still not be cruel to a shrimp or insect, or fish. Fish I prefer to catch and then dispatch instantly rather than fund to be suffocated slowly in a net along with tonnes of bycatch.

My attitudes towards my own sourcing and eating of mammalian (and bird) meat in the last decade have been more directly informed by working with livestock (as a sheep-herd and cowhand), with behaviourists, vets, horse-trainers, farmers, (and also a friend runs a farm-animal sanctuary and also breeds/provides eggs from rescued hens). Have also done a lot of reading about animal psychology. In previous life I worked with profoundly autistic/LD children. I learned first that even profoundly mentally-disabled and non-verbal children weren’t all ‘vegetables’. Same goes for the non-verbal profoundly physically-disabled. This may seem cringingly obvious to parents and teachers who are familiar, yet the rough attitude in my state secondary-school and familial upbringing towards those so disabled was more towards assuming they must have the ‘sentience of vegetables’. Working with same provided the revelation required to make me realise how trivially easy it is to be so excusably yet radically wrong about matters of sentience

From there I began studying psychology (human) and subsequently animal behaviour/animal psychology. This was to support my respective careers. Such study has also undeniably affected the way I view the world and other minds/lives, both emotionally and analytically. It’s endlessly fascinating, but (IME) revealingly troubling. I’m largely convinced that at any time our cultural and personal attitude towards other animals mirror our attitudes towards both the miracle of life, the living planet, and even towards each other.

in a world where the ethical difference between taking an animal life and plant life had become blurred, whether you would double down on meat eating as you were now no longer the barbarous primitives eating the poor sentient animals, that in fact the vegetarians were now just as culpable as yourselves in causing suffering

Guessing I’d be absolutely mind-blown/disbelieving. I’d still be the ‘barbarous primitive’ (except now increasingly/universally/expansively)

Don’t think I would take any pleasure in the (recognised) increase in mortally-suffering lifeforms. Likewise would likely feel no pleasure in a widening of ‘culpables’?

Seriously, if in Hypotheticaland there truly was no doubt at all of a carrot’s sentient/emotional life being indistinguishable from that of an orang-utan’s – then I might instead go Apocalypse Now on everything. Laughing into the Great Nothing, raging red in tooth and claw. Because if everything is everything – then nothing is also everything. ‘Death is life, so more death equals more life’.

And now every rabbit eating grass is equivalent to a cat idly tearing the living head from a mouse (or a lion chewing a man-child’s living neck.

Take your hypothesis further? Imagine if every blade of grass or leaf or vegetable screamed (‘death scream/fear scream’) audibly, loudly as it was being munched on alive by their many insect/animal predators? As it was being stepped upon/cut by mower/squashed by mountain bicycle and hefty rider. A highly audible and constant grassy cacophony of terror heard always by us, all day and night?

Surely I’d need to source either less-sentient food, or else seek some strong kind of religion/drugs/philosophy/earplugs/brain-plugs in order to squash reality into a more easily-palatable situation? Other meat-eater’s mileages will vary, but you did ask.

As for ‘doubling down’? That’s one behaviour/reaction that although I understand the psychology of it, I genuinely dislike it (especially when I see it erupting from self). So no I probably wouldn’t kill more animals in order to ‘double down’.

I’d be totally mind-blown, trying to find a way to eat and live and yet retain my conscience/sanity.

ie not attempt to deny the facts, but to try and shape them into a more palatable philosophy (hopefully other than ‘Apocalypse Now’)

Eventually no doubt all of the endlessly screaming veg would either send us mad/psychotic or else we’d have to wear earplugs for life. New tech startups would develop human ear-defenders to filter out plant-scream frequency.

Another view: Yours is an interesting hypothesis because we already overwhelmingly ignore 72 billion land animals and over 1.2 trillion aquatic animals killed for food around the world every year. So what would be more difficult in ignoring zillions of veg?

One group says eating meat is so wrong, they are physically repulsed by it.

No, not a ‘group’. That was one person (Cougar).

And I didn’t say that, even.

I have never said that I think it’s wrong for other people to eat meat, I’ve said (repeatedly) that I couldn’t care less what anyone eats. I sure as hell don’t claim any moral superiority, when eating out I feel closer to embarrassed than smug.

Family and friends mealtimes are a quiz/interrogations/‘shaming’ session (delete as applicable) more often than not.

Yup. It starts to get tedious after the first 30 years or so.

It would never occur to me to interrogate someone (family or stranger) to their face over why they chose to eat/order meat. Yet the same thought rarely occurs vice versa.

And yet seemingly the world is full of preachy vegans and militant vegetarians. Can’t move for them.

(OP, I’ll get back to your lengthy post shortly, I’m playing catch-up.)

Mind you, you dont see me or any other meat eating member of the forum or public in general posting up threads about eating meat.

On the contrary, we do indeed see us always posting threads about eating meat.
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/barbecuetrackworld-meat-n-charcoal-content/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/horse-meat/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/bacon/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/bacon-express/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/bacon-butties-how-hard-is-it/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/massive-slab-of-topside-advice/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/elk-meat/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/animal-lovers-and-eating-meat/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/pork-pie/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/goat/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/what-is-the-weirdestmost-exotic-creature-you-have-ever-eaten/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/whats-your-manliest-recipe/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/steak-bloody-lovely-steak/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/steak-mmmmmmmm/
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/becoming-a-vegetarian/

That’s as many as I can manage in the 15 min edit window (you have to past each the link in the link popup otherwise it twkes uo the whole page with previews of each link)

Obviously we (meat-eaters) do, but why do you think it’s weird us (meat-eaters) posting threads about meat/s? (sourcing of, eating of, prepping of, feeling of, and cooking of, and curing of and tasting of and ethics of different meats, etc)

Same as we also post threads riding certain bikes/not riding certain bikes, riding bikes in general, growing apples, driving cars/not driving cars, making love/dating, taking out a mortgage, renting a tent, curing a hangover/not curing a hangover?

I dont know how Id react if science demonstrated the ability of fish to suffer pain and suffering at a level equivalent to that of mammals.

Come again?

So yeah. As above,

It’s complicated, then.

I simply don’t have the same reaction to eating a carrot as I would a chicken nugget. Would that change in your hypothetical scenario? I honestly don’t know but I don’t expect so. A few other things to consider though:

Some things are grown explicitly to be be eaten. Many plants reproduce by dropping tasty fruit which gets eaten by animals, then the seeds get pooed out half a mile away. We’re back to H2G2’s cow again.

If an apple falls from a tree then – sentient or not – it’s dead or dying by that point anyway. Are we not in fact putting it out of its misery? And surely even if we accept some sort of neural ‘web’ of plant life, it’s now disconnected.

By extension, what if we applied that back to animals? Would a typical vegetarian eat meat from a sheep that had lived a good life and died of natural causes? What about sausages from a pig whose leg had spontaneously just fallen off? The animal may be sentient but its leg ain’t.

Lab-grown meat is becoming a reality. Would many vegetarians eat that? It’s an easy question for me (🤒🤮) but must be a moral quandary for those who are vegan / veggie for ethical reasons. If your only reason for not eating or using animal-based products is welfare, well, this stuff has never seen an animal. Happy days, vegan-friendly beefburgers with actual beef, right?

The flipside to that, people like Beyond Burger are striving to create veggie products that are as close to meat as possible. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that. It must be great for people who don’t eat meat but miss it, or for omnivores who want to eat less meat but can’t quite bring themselves to do so (and believe me, there’s a lot of those). But for me personally I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever thought that although my veggieburger was great I just wish it bled a little more, and even knowing that it’s red food colouring it’s kinda still a bit boak.

I don’t think there are any simple answers here, certainly not that can be applied to an entire demographic en masse.

I am also aware I am able to digest meat so it must be evolutionarily important to my species, which means it must be a benefit historically.

AIUI our evolutionary superpower isn’t that we’re carnivores, it’s that we’re omnivores. We can life off a lot of different foods, we can adapt. We could survive on nuts and berries when Uncle Thag’s hunt was unsuccessful, and on roasted megabadger during winter when all the crops are dead.

There are some deep trenches on this thread!

I eat meat, but do care about animal welfare. I am reassured that we have good animal welfare standards in the UK, even if some aspects of food production are distasteful. I also care about the environmental impact of our diets, and wince every time my wife buys blueberries that are flown in from Uruguay.

I found The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter by Singer and Mason a good place to start. All consumers are not equal, and not all choices are available to all. Sometimes it is about finding our own, least bad way.

To the OP’s 1st question I would have to answer
fungi, bacteria, and protists, the latter including all the single-celled forms that are not bacteria. Plus non living stuff like minerals. That would have been a rather short thread. But the aim of the question was to lure in non meat eaters to hit them, and only them, with a pseudo-philosophical question loaded to provoke those of a non meat eating persuasion. I eat meat so can’t answer that one but boy did it work.

Brilliant couple of posts back there @p7eaven . Very thought provoking, although I don’t really need that.

I was a non-meat eater for the best part of thirty years and eventualy went back to eating a little meat occasionally. It was the smell of bacon that did it, that old cliche. And to answer the OP, I would most likely carry on exactly as I do now. Sourcing my food as responsibly as I reasonably can.