Uber driver had a reason for being vegetarian I hadn't heard before: "if you add up all the hamburgers people eat, there aren't enough cows for that, so meat must be fake"
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Uber driver had a reason for being vegetarian I hadn't heard before: "if you add up all the hamburgers people eat, there aren't enough cows for that, so meat must be fake"
@jonny …given his reasoning/understanding of things, how sure are you that he is accurately describing his own diet…?
“Oh but chicken wings don’t count”, that sorta thing.
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@jonny Two things:
1. Your driver greatly underestimates how many cows there are.
2. Most fast food burgers aren't 100% beef. I forget what the limit is, but the USDA permits up to a certain percentage of TVP added to beef before it has to be labelled differently. 20%? If I remember correctly, above 20%, it starts to no longer taste or feel like real meat.Alternatively for #1: he greatly underestimates how many burgers you can make from a single cow
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@jonny The funny thing is there actually has been some work to create "synthetic meats" where it's basically just meat grown in a vat and honestly I for one would be 100% ok with that. (Heck, it's about 100,000x more likely to be safe compared to real meat, would be more consistent and more controlled, wouldn't have certain gross features of real meat probably no one here wants to hear, and you don't get more zero cruelty than than just meat cells grown in a vat.) But of course that will never go over in this society.
@nazokiyoubinbou @jonny MAGA was freaking the fuck out about it a couple years ago and they like made it illegal in Florida and shit. Near about the time of the great gas stove panic.
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@mathew @chris_e_simpson @jonny A cow is just processed vegetables.
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@jonny The funny thing is there actually has been some work to create "synthetic meats" where it's basically just meat grown in a vat and honestly I for one would be 100% ok with that. (Heck, it's about 100,000x more likely to be safe compared to real meat, would be more consistent and more controlled, wouldn't have certain gross features of real meat probably no one here wants to hear, and you don't get more zero cruelty than than just meat cells grown in a vat.) But of course that will never go over in this society.
@nazokiyoubinbou
I have been waiting for and am a proponent of vat meat, surely it must be more efficient than raising a whole animal, and it resolves all the ethical concerns I have with meat (while raising a few more smaller in magnitude concerns), but I believe the meat lobby is too powerful for it to get beyond prototypes - I think it is proactively illegal in TX before it even exists as a commercial reality -
@jonny It takes all kinds to make the world and human society the glorious mess that it is.
@r343l
Yes definitely my takeaway too. Always love chatting up the cab drivers when I take them -
@nazokiyoubinbou
I have been waiting for and am a proponent of vat meat, surely it must be more efficient than raising a whole animal, and it resolves all the ethical concerns I have with meat (while raising a few more smaller in magnitude concerns), but I believe the meat lobby is too powerful for it to get beyond prototypes - I think it is proactively illegal in TX before it even exists as a commercial reality@jonny Agreed 100%. And yes, if it's not exponentially more efficient than raising animals both in cost and actual resource usage (if applied at scale of course!) I will eat my shoes.
And yes, I am 100% certain that it will never ever be allowed here. Not because there is anything at all wrong with it but because it would disrupt profitable industries.
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@jonny did you say, holy crap nobody ever thought to add it all up before.
@wtfwtf_ok
As far as I know nobody is on making sure both sides of these counts even out except him -
@jonny …given his reasoning/understanding of things, how sure are you that he is accurately describing his own diet…?
“Oh but chicken wings don’t count”, that sorta thing.
@WhiteCatTamer
His description of his diet was that he buys fruits and vegetables directly from farmers, and with that kind of intentionality i am not going to try and fact check him lol -
@jonny Agreed 100%. And yes, if it's not exponentially more efficient than raising animals both in cost and actual resource usage (if applied at scale of course!) I will eat my shoes.
And yes, I am 100% certain that it will never ever be allowed here. Not because there is anything at all wrong with it but because it would disrupt profitable industries.
@nazokiyoubinbou @jonny Bless y'all for thinking controlled environment agriculture is 100% safe but it ain't unless everyone follows the regulations and the regulations are strict af. See also: diarrhea lettuce.
Source: did my thesis on vertical farming in the near-Arctic
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@nazokiyoubinbou @jonny Bless y'all for thinking controlled environment agriculture is 100% safe but it ain't unless everyone follows the regulations and the regulations are strict af. See also: diarrhea lettuce.
Source: did my thesis on vertical farming in the near-Arctic
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@nazokiyoubinbou
@Linza
Yeah I could see horrible things going wrong in a meat vat facility, but I just assume the default mode of agriculture is "unsafe except for strict enforcement of regulations" since it is sort of the main thing that caused there to be industrial regulations in this country at least -
@nazokiyoubinbou
@Linza
Yeah I could see horrible things going wrong in a meat vat facility, but I just assume the default mode of agriculture is "unsafe except for strict enforcement of regulations" since it is sort of the main thing that caused there to be industrial regulations in this country at least@jonny @Linza Seriously, all the times I've heard of e. coli outbreaks and etc because of the fertilizer used... Yep. "Safer" and "100% safe" are definitely not the same thing here.
Also, wasn't there some big outbreak of "mad cow disease" a good while back?
So yeah, all I claim here is that vat-grown meats are safer because at least they are mostly going to be given plain nutrients and not, you know, that stuff.
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@jonny @Linza Seriously, all the times I've heard of e. coli outbreaks and etc because of the fertilizer used... Yep. "Safer" and "100% safe" are definitely not the same thing here.
Also, wasn't there some big outbreak of "mad cow disease" a good while back?
So yeah, all I claim here is that vat-grown meats are safer because at least they are mostly going to be given plain nutrients and not, you know, that stuff.
@nazokiyoubinbou @jonny mmmm microbe soup
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@jonny Two things:
1. Your driver greatly underestimates how many cows there are.
2. Most fast food burgers aren't 100% beef. I forget what the limit is, but the USDA permits up to a certain percentage of TVP added to beef before it has to be labelled differently. 20%? If I remember correctly, above 20%, it starts to no longer taste or feel like real meat.@jonny As of 2026-01-01, the USDA reported 86.2 million head of cattle in the US, of which 27.6 million were beef cattle, specifically.
This is a historically low number.
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/29/nx-s1-5719511/beef-cattle-herd-food-prices
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@jonny As of 2026-01-01, the USDA reported 86.2 million head of cattle in the US, of which 27.6 million were beef cattle, specifically.
This is a historically low number.
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/29/nx-s1-5719511/beef-cattle-herd-food-prices
@gcvsa
There are so many goddamn cows -
@nazokiyoubinbou @jonny mmmm microbe soup
@Linza
@nazokiyoubinbou
There is some incredible broth potential in bioengineered scobylike organoids designed exclusively to be broth tissue -
@Linza
@nazokiyoubinbou
There is some incredible broth potential in bioengineered scobylike organoids designed exclusively to be broth tissue@jonny @nazokiyoubinbou yeah but you gotta be even more on top of hygiene because you can't run it through UV-C on the way out, it's got particulates.
Solar Foods is doing some cool shit. https://solarfoods.com/
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Uber driver had a reason for being vegetarian I hadn't heard before: "if you add up all the hamburgers people eat, there aren't enough cows for that, so meat must be fake"
@jonny if it’s fake then every burger eater is already a vegetarian.
