Comment on Don't forget where we came from and what shaped us as a species. The Jungle.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 10 hours agoIn light of the west’s heavily animal-centric diets resulting in most of the top causes of death in these places, it’s not exactly accurate to call us omnivores. The centered on whole plant foods our diets are, the better off we are. Animal flesh, dairy, and eggs, at the very least, cannot be consumed without increasing progression and risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes (Ignoring a host of other harmful effects like cancer and autoimmune disorders, which is more contentious).
It would be more accurate to say that we are primarily herbivores, but with an incomplete and dangerous emergency system for omnivory.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
Let’s put it this way, our bodies really like the smell, taste and mouthfeel of meat. So long as our system is focused on compelling people to eat via yummy food, there’s going to be a market for it. It’s not prescription, just description.
That’s why I was saying we’ll have to overcome capitalism before we can really beat this. Otherwise actual balanced nutrition will be a < checks spelling > commodifiable feature of food, rather than its essential point.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 3 hours ago
Estimates have it that in the industrial world, somewhere between 1-5% of people are vegan. That remaining the same until your preferred revolution happens, and your idealized form of governance becomes the reality everywhere: how is your socioeconomic system going to get the remaining 95% of billions of people to stop consuming, committing cruelty to, and exploiting animals? Sorry, but we have to do whatever we can in the here and now, and there is urgency in time. It’s not only a matter of morality. We know that our wanton animal consumption is one of the largest drivers of climate change. We know that our society’s addiction to flesh and secretions have resulted in agricultural systems that not only resulted in one recent pandemic, but we are hanging on the edge of an even worse flu pandemic that can end up happening at any time. 75% of new infectious diseases have a zoonotic origin.
In a world where ideal society has never happened and is always a dream away, we do not have the luxury of an either/or approach of fixing one problem before we think about the next.
The toxic food environment is a reality, and that needs to be fixed in policy. But individual choice matters too, because what we choose to buy is what drives what is sold. Taste is dynamic and subjective. New diets are only temporarily less satisfying until the person develops the knowledge, cooking skills, and palate to start getting more satisfaction out of their foods. Even better, the difference in the way people feel when they adopt a whole-food plant-based diet for even as little as a couple of weeks, is a start contrast to the standard western diet. Experiencing the difference first-hand generates more motivation to continue.
Also, our bodies do not inherently like the smell, taste, and mouthfeel of animal flesh. That is a learned habit. When a person goes long enough without consuming flesh, the very smell of it changes - even the freshest meats smell rotten, and the people who eat these foods smell like rotting corpses.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 minutes ago
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but our elite class seems determined to stay there, and historically violent revolution is what unseats them and allows their wealth to be redistributed from their Scrooge McDuck vaults.
Nonviolent resistance might work, but we haven’t seen the kind of mass wealth dispersion that will be necessary.
And the elite are content to drive us right into extinction via the climate crisis and the plastic crisis. Even if you make technology that disrupts the meat market, they’re going to legally wrest control of it from you (unless you are rich enough to defend it from Nestlé). Regardless, when it comes to the climate crisis, the deal is done. The pooch is screwed. We know after the collapse the upper limit of sustainable population will be about one billion, and that number dwindles with each day of inaction.
Meanwhile the industrial world is choosing far-right parties over the usual neoliberal crap we’ve endured through the latter half of the twentieth century, so we’re not even serious about managing the climate crisis without the aforementioned revolution (and in that case, into some kind of communal government, since the typical outcome of a people’s revolution is a chain of dictators).
Good luck convincing our officials, elected or not, to choose veganism over the meat industry, or even nutrition over junk food. You will need all you can get.