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Interesting that the article thinks 50 to 65 is the boomer generation. Poor Gen X will be forgotten until they are no more.
I’m definitely represented in this article. I basically don’t buy beef anymore despite being raised with it was the centerpiece of my diet.
I’ve learned to embrace plant-based alternatives generally find them as enjoyable if not more so than beef.
I don’t mind being forgotten, but I mind being lumped with the boomers.
Damn boomers can’t even keep to their own generation
Get off my decade!!
Amen brother.
I think of Gen X as people born in the 70s or late 60s, so that age range is pretty much split between X and Boomers imo. They also mention later on that both generations are responsible for similar rates of meat consumption
Can confirm. I’m Gen X and we buy beef by the cow from local farmers.
Best way to do it imo
That’s totally fair and it’s a great article, it just made me laugh. Thanks for sharing.
I think both points still stand! Boomers go to the mid sixties which means the upper range of 50 to 65 covers boomers. However, the bottom range is definitely Gen X and the authors forgot you!
Having made the mistake of forgetting Gen X in a comment the other day my eyes have been opened.
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The article says
aged 50 to 65—roughly correlating with the baby boomer generation
My phrasing does seem a bit awkward. I was trying to say “the article uses the age range 50 to 65 and Boomers fall into the upper half of that age range. Gen X is solidly the bottom half of that age range.”
Baby boom began in 1945, after the war when the troops came home.
The oldest of the baby boom are almost 80.
Not sure how the article did the math, but…
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Boomers/Old GenX still act like Millennial, a generation in their 30s and 40s, is a word for children or young adults.
Who would have guessed, a generation that is constantly struggling on money can’t buy expensive meat at the same rate the generation that got everything handed to them has been. Who could have known that there were unforseen consequences to economic strategies that have produced one of the greatest period of economic disparity of all time!
It’s almost as though massive wealth consolidation and the maintenance of an economic underclass as we prioritise unproductive shareholders over productive workers is bad for the economy.
Who’d have thought?
Great, it’s terrible for the environment and fairly insane animal welfare-wise. So it’s cool that we can just stop doing that. The business already doesn’t make economic sense and has been heavily subsidized in various ways by the government for decades. I thought capitalists loved the theory of supply and demand?
*Heavily subsidized by taxpayers
I used to love eating meat, till I had to actually think about ethics beyond “whatever the bible says is right” and recognize that all sentient beings are morally relevant
Do you mean sapient? Because plants are also sentient; all sentience is is the ability to react to senses. Sapience on the other hand is the ability to have higher thought, like tool use, teaching, recognizing yourself in a mirror, etc… Finally there is the ability to feel pain which I do not think has a word. Plants from what we can tell cannot process pain, but can process negative stimuli.
No, to the best of my knowledge plants aren’t sentient. By sentient I mean “the ability to experience feelings and sensations”, which I think is the primary way that word is used. Something could be sentient with no way to react to senses (a paralyzed person for example), or able to “react” to “senses” without experiencing anything (a computer, chemical reaction, or to the best of my knowledge, plants would be examples of this)
the main reason I don’t think sapient (as you describe it) is a good marker for who/what is morally relevant is that we can likely agree there are pretty obvious cases where sentient, but not sapient, beings are morally relevant. The first example is baby humans, next is adult humans who are not sapient (terrible injury, disability, etc, could lead to a loss or lack of sapience while retaining sentience), and then even for nonhumans I think we can agree that kicking a dog is a morally relevant action (there could be circumstances where it’s justifiable or even good, e.g. kicking them out of the way of a car. But kicking them for fun is wrong)
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Sentience may not necessarily mean moral relevance.
For example to be a member of a moral community, which are groups of people who agree to uphold and undertake certain actions with a shared belief of what is good or bad, requires more than just sentience.
For me personally the ability to hold someone accountable for their actions in some way is an important component of moral community membership.
Animals are not held accountable in the same fashion as humans and so it could be argued they don’t deserve membership in our moral community.
If that’s the case then they have some kind of diminished moral standing.
You may then argue that a fetus or comatose person also has diminished moral standing so what obligation do we have in those instances?
One answer to that would be to hold the belief that although a fetus or comatose person is unable to have complete membership to a moral community they are impeded by other circumstances and if those impediments were removed they would be full members. A cow on the other hand will always retain the cognition of a cow, excluding it from full membership.
by that logic, a human with severe brain damage or other severe mental illness could be excluded from the moral community. That seems like a red flag.
What do you think about dog or chicken fights?
Have you heard of the veil of ignorance? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
it’s a really useful thought experiment, and once you understand it I think it becomes clear why it matters every time any being suffers or experiences injustice and/or exploitation
I have!
Yes it’s an interesting thought experiment and I am guessing you believe it is relevant because you could imagine yourself as an animal and it would be a poor world if you were treated the same way as animals used for food are?
My argument against it would be that the veil of ignorance focuses on members in the society and this isn’t extended to animals.
Yes, if I were in the original position and there was a chance I could be born into a life of being treated like property with no autonomy and completely incapable of improving my lot in life, that would be unacceptable.
From the original position it doesn’t matter how you interact with a society, if the society affects you it is relevant and worth considering from the original position. For a human-to-human example, a slaveowner could use that logic to say that slaves aren’t members of society so therefore the original position doesn’t extend to them. But it does extend to them, they are affected by the society even if they don’t get to make decisions about how it operates or interact with it freely, the society’s norms, values, and what it accepts heavily influences their life and experience of the world, and so they are very much worth considering from the original position. From the original position, there’s a chance you could be the one born under the heel of societies boot, and that society might not view you as part of their society and use that to justify your abuse and exploitation. All the more if you’re not human and can’t advocate and fight strategically for your own freedom the way humans can
Edit: obviously a human slave, once freed, would be able to participate in society in a way that a nonhuman animal couldn’t, but even then there are humans with severe brain damage or severe mental illness who would not be able to participate in society much. From the original position they matter too, even if they can’t participate in society or be held responsible for things
The veil of ignorance only teaches you about yourself. there is not a universal lesson to be learned from it.
all sentient beings are morally relevant
under what ethical system?
that’s not my ethical system. most people don’t subscribe to it.
Right, most people subscribe to their holy book(s) of choice
even among professional philosophers the prevailing ethical system is deontology
sentientism is compatible with deontology
according to some, but kant never went in for it. the strongest attempt to marry them seems to be from korsgaard, but howe treated her argument pretty roughly in “why kant animals have rights” (2019)
I’ve found a lot of people in my generation (Millennial) don’t eat red meat, not because they don’t want to but because they can’t. It gives me incredible heartburn, and many of my friends become physically ill if they eat it.
Wasn’t there a disease going around that made people sick when eating red meat?
It’s from a tick bite, not something we can spread to one another.
Not even by biting and sucking each other’s blood?
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are you suggesting tick-born illness has been weaponized by…? what, the soy milk mafia?
do you have any idea how staggeringly, mind-numbingly stupid that sounds?
Not OP, but since it is feasible, it sounds like it would make a decent movie. I’m thinking something like Red Dawn or an eco-terrorist plot.
Are… you stoned? I do have to admit I thought about how vegans would love an airborne version. I read too much science fiction.
People would just move to poultry, which I suspect would be worse to ethical vegans.
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Tick bites can cause it. Something about your body building immunity to a protein transferred by the tick that closely matches those found in beef or something like that.
There’s a kind of tick that, once it bites you, causes you to be deathly allergic to red meat from that point forward.
Not always! Last I heard, it can and does wear off. Might take 6-months, might take years. I gather the effect is so rare we don’t have a ton of data.
But I’m often full of shit! Look it up yourself.
You are probably full of shit every day. Until you visit the loo. So don’t hold it against yourself!
For a non-tick response- Prion contamination resulting in Mad Cow Disease. One meal and your brain eventually rots in moldy cheese.
Yep, there is, it spreads though tic bites, and once bitten you will allways get sick after eating red meat.
Alpha-gal syndrome. It’s not that common that it will affect entire populations.
Alpha gal syndrome sounds like a compliment
Millennial here and I’ve had a similar experience. I ate a ton of red meat growing up, but once I got to my early-to-mid 30s, I noticed beef would give me a lot of stomach issues. I switched to eating chicken and sometimes (depending on the dish) substituting the meat entirely for black beans and found my stomach issues got a lot better. And it’s still just as tasty to me, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.
I’ll usually find that burgers/steaks etc at restaurants are what usually bother me more than if i go and buy/season/cook myself. Not sure if it’s just over seasoned meat, or the type/quality. Even then, I usually prefer chicken or turkey-based (lower fat) alternatives or mixes (like a turkey ground chuck).
I haven’t really gotten into plant-based alternatives, though I’m not opposed to it…as long as it tastes good! Lol
The two go hand in hand. Food service-grade ingredients are notoriously bad and cheap. They then compensate for this by heavily seasoning it so you don’t notice how bad it is. In the rare case that a restaurant uses high quality ingredients (e.g. serving prime rib), they are unlikely to season it as heavily.
When I had Celiac undiagnosed, all I could figure out was that I felt awful after meals. My theory was I needed to eat more healthy. I started eating whole and organic foods, which didn’t help, then became a vegetarian, which didn’t help (and some people sure were dicks about it). But yeah, anything that leads to eating more veggies and fiber can help with certain digestive issues and overall health.
I don’t get heartburn, but I also don’t poop for a few days.
I don’t not eat beef/meat, but I also don’t really eat it either.
Oh no. Anyway…
Only in the Northern hemisphere. Current industry trends indicate some major meat-craving markets gearing up as we speak (e.g., Brazil). Likely a growing demand continues far into the future right now, even if some developed nations are seeing the pendulum swing the other way.
The problems of meat production on the climate are NOT going to go away on their own.
China is also driving a lot of the global growth in beef consumption. Any recently industrialized country really
Just in time for alt-meats to become cost-comparable and palatable enough to compete I’m genX, voting with my dollars for that, despite beef being so delicious
The only reason plant based meats haven’t been way cheaper than animal meat the entire time is because of how heavily subsidized the animal agriculture industry is. Without the government literally single handedly propping up the industry it wouldn’t be a viable way to make money.
Am I the only one who doesn’t care for red meat? It’s good but there’s a lot of good food out there. I’d take pizza, sushi or campero with papasa over beef any day. Where’s this obsession with beef coming from? Is it just good marketing?
I hear it goes great with leaded water.
I used to eat a LOT of red meat, but I have started getting bored with it.
So now, I am eating more chicken, and most of the red meat I still buy comes from a nice farm shop, I realize it is a luxury, but I can afford it and it is tastier than store bought meat.
I have stopped eating as much beef mostly for economical reasons. I used to eat steak since I loved it and its easy to cook. However, its now way too expensive to buy casually. I love a good steak at a restaurant so that is mostly the only time I eat it now. That it is bad for my health and the environment are mostly secondary.
If you mean to cook at home, I’ve done well by not caring about the cut and buying whatever is one sale. Not like, old and discounted, but often the stores near me have sales when they have a lot of something or who knows. I bought a 2.2 lb roast for $9 the other day for instance, which is enough for me to eat for days and is even cheaper than ground beef.
It’s worthwhile if it’s on sale. Just got to find the right time. Hard to plan around it since you never know when it’s cheap enough.
Roasts I might start doing more than steaks. Since steaks never go on sale near me
We buy beef like twice a month. Just trying to maintain a healthier diet.
Self reducing demographic
I guess beef isn’t what’s for dinner.
This is ludicrous, especially in the US. Demand has skyrocketted, processing is at all time highs, and prices are reflecting this.
I think someone is smelling their own farts.
Demand is up because population is up. Per capita consumption is down, per the article that part doesn’t seem to be disputed
