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Notes -
Technology as politics.
Feminism is more a product of the washing machine, the pill and air conditioning than it is political organizing. It is less an ideology than it is a set of opinions enabled by a certain level of technological advancement.
Anti-racism is more a product of the steam engine than it is of any moral progress. All of human history no one thought to free the slaves, until one day from out of nowhere.....the richest and most technologically advanced society on earth invented a way to turn fossil fuels into energy and all the sudden slavery and the racism that supported it isn't strictly necessary. Hence "moral progress".
Today, we all benefit from less-than-free labor in third world nations making us cheaper consumer products. In the most technologically backward parts of the world slavery still exists. That is not because those are worse people than those of us who can afford to pay for the labor that supports our first world lifestyles.
The "moral" arc of history bends toward whatever options technology provides.
What this means for the age of AI is anyone's guess.
The obvious extension to this is that vegetarianism/veganism will become much more popular if or when tasty and cheap cultured meat becomes available. It's the only (at least somewhat) likely path to "vegan cultural victory" I can see, and if they were strategic they'd invest as much money and clout as possible to make it happen.
I even think "cultured meat" will be a dead end and plant based substitution products will win:
https://www-merkur-de.translate.goog/verbraucher/als-vegan-variante-unternehmen-sieht-langfristige-entwicklung-ernaehrung-wurst-klassiker-jetzt-nur-noch-92781805.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
I'm seeing an awful lot more vegan products in supermarkets, and often they're quite good. They wouldn't shift me from meat eating just yet, but get a product out there that looks and tastes as good as meat, be that cultured meat or plant-based, and can be easily swapped into recipes where meat is used, and I'd give it a try.
So I agree that working on that (sausages that can be cooked like 'the real thing' etc.) instead of the moral sledgehammer to the head approach ("you are evil and wicked if you eat meat, because you support, condone, and approve of rape, torture and murder of sentient beings who have emotions and feelings and memories and moral worth every bit as much as a human does") will convert more people. I don't care if momma cow 'cries' over her calf being taken away for milk production, I do care if you can provide me with a 'steak' or 'roast' that isn't much worse than the original product.
You don't seem to be taking nutrition into account. Meat is very good for you. Pea protein blended into a seed oil slurry isn't.
Meat, good for you? Probably. It's very nutrient rich, and the dangers lie in overdoing it or going for red meat or processed forms (at least when it comes to colon cancer).
I don't know if pea protein is bad, for some reason, and I remain unconvinced about the recent hubbub over seed oils.
I will find it hard to be convinced that the 27-ingredient hyper processed slurry being sold as a ‘burger’ is as good for you as either a steak or some good old rice and beans, but it’s fairly plausible that it’s not worse for you than a Big Mac.
It seems to me that the most replicable finding in nutrition science is that extremely processed foods(like soyrizo or the impossible burger, although also candy, Cheetos, hot dogs, Diet Coke, etc) are very bad for you, but that it’s impossible to define ‘processed foods’ well enough to cover the options and only the options. With that in mind I think we should be very cautious about vegan meat substitutes being healthy.
I suspect that it is not so much "processing" (why would blending up pork scraps and extruding them into a sausage shape change the nutrition) but specifically preservatives which are bad over time. Unfortunately, preservatives are usually introduced into processed foods to make them more consistent and less prone to spoilage, making them cheaper as well.
This seems plausible but IIRC there’s some noticeable trend discontinuities on it. Not sure though so don’t quote me.
In any case I suspect mass market vegan ‘meat’ will have even more preservatives than sausages and cheap ground beef do today.
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