On 12/04/2009 10:48 PM, Kyle Mcallister wrote:
Just one more thing, apologies to Columbo: Stephen, you stated your feelings against laboratory grown meat, as it would lower the price potentially further, putting it even more in the price range of the 'poor.' If that was not your implication, it certainly seemed that way.
It wasn't; I was mostly thinking in terms of people being encouraged to eat more of it if it's cheaper. But in any case, people who switch from a largely plant-based diet to a largely animal-based diet suffer, as a group, for the switch. All else being equal, making that switch easier isn't likely to benefit anybody. And in the United States, where obesity is a big problem, making calorie dense foods cheaper doesn't seem ideal.
Of course, very few people in the United States are actually "poor" by world standards, and starvation is not a big problem (feel free to correct me on this). In fact, last I read, in the United States, obesity tended to be less of a problem for the wealthy than the "poor", which suggests that many poor people in the United States already suffer from a superfluity of calories; however, I don't know if that's still true.
[I can't find world median household income just now, which is what's needed to back that claim. GDP per capita world wide seems to be on the order of $5500, which makes median household income in the U.S. about ten times world GDP per capita, but that's a seriously apples-to-oranges comparison...]
...you would prefer the poor continue to scarf $0.99 McDonald's double cheeseburgers,
Now here you are putting your finger an extreme sore spot in all this, which is that meat, dairy, and fat-laden foods in general are subsidized, directly and indirectly, which makes them far cheaper than they should be. (Free access to Federal land for grazing is one example of such a "subsidy".)
It makes no economic sense that a meat diet, with meat made by very inefficiently post-processing soybeans through cattle, should be less expensive than a diet based directly on soy and other plant products.
instead of potentially eating real meat, without insecticides, bovine somatotropin, God knows what antibiotics and such (no need for these chemicals in a sterile lab...), and knows what else in it. Why did you not think of this before posting this?
What makes you think I didn't? (The comment was, in fact, not entirely serious...)
Here is your actual quote: "So, pardon me if I don't cheer too loudly for something which may reduce the price of too-rich food even farther than its current dirt-cheap level." People ate real, unadulterated meat long ago, when heart disease rates were lower.
They ate darned little of it compared with a modern American diet. Don't fog the issue -- the pesticides aren't causing heart disease; it's the corn-fed cattle. Corn isn't exactly an adulterant, but it sure changes the character of the beef, and it wasn't fed to cattle a couple centuries back, and far fewer cattle were fed to humans a couple centuries back, as well. (Actually it is an adulterant -- I understand it's a highly unnatural component of a bovine diet, and the diet fed to them on feed lots actually makes them sick; they get Tums by the ton to, in part, counteract the effects of the too-rich diet.)
What makes you think the test-tube beef which finally hits the market won't be every bit as "well marbled" as the corn-fed beef which is most likely already killing folks you know? You don't need pesticides for that -- all you need is the right blend of fat and muscle cells.
Check out what happened to heart disease rates when Japanese immigrants, coming from Japan with a very low-meat diet (beef was historically extremely expensive there), started eating a standard American diet. That comparison was, in fact, at the core of one of the first major studies which showed a link between diet and heart disease.
Ask yourself what would be better. Kids cramming fast food down their necks, or eating real meat that NOTHING HAD TO DIE FOR, and which has none of the truly dangerous artificial things that we have no evolved protection against?
From an ethical point of view, of course, the latter is better. From a global warming perspective, it's better, too. In fact from *nearly* all points of view, it's better .... But...
From a health point of view, there's not a spoonful of difference. Heart disease is likely to get them before any of the potential but relatively low-kill-rate problems caused by the petrochemical "additives".
It's easy to yell about pesticides, growth hormones, and God knows what all garbage they put in beef but it's kind of hard to point to an obvious bad consequence of any of it, except the antibiotics, which are being "burned out" at a terrible rate by overuse in animals. On the other hand, the bad consequences of the fat in the beef are so obvious and universal in the United States that it's positively grotesque.
I do not ask for a profound reply. I ask that you do not insult me in response.
I sincerely hope I didn't. You generally make a lot of sense and a lot of the time I agree with what you say.
And I'll close this with what seems like an appropriate image. This is not the ideal we should be striving for...
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