I would hesitate to call food consumption “consumerism” —save perhaps gluttony and fancy restaurants.
Now, perhaps they mean that they productize something which is unachievable by most people at home (few would attempt to make homemade beyondmeat protein for food) and so they are facilitating the consumption of something that otherwise would not get consumed...
Ethical excess clothes, unneeded cosmetics, frivolous throwaway home items, etc., yes sure, I’m sure there are ethical alternatives just as there are “organic” poisons too.
A possible key alternative source of proteins I don’t think merits the label/adjective “consumerist”
Hey HN: I’d like to read a compelling counter to the above versus seeing it turn grey without any meaningful discussion via drive by downvoting.
That said, mc32, with regards to food and consumption as you’ve put it, and in this specific context-I wonder if “post-consumerism” is a turn of phrase that you would consider apt? Rather than being against the machinations of excess known to be associated with industrial meat production, it seems to be moved beyond, and dispassionate towards “fixing” these machinations in favor of entirely different ethical choices.
Post-consumer(ist) would reframe it such that we evaluate it as something existing after transcending consumerism. We may get there, some day.
I’m against calling something that’s basic to human sustenance “consumerist”. We might disagree with peoples choices of food or the source of those foods or whether it’s a small farmer or BigAg.
I remain opposed to calling basic foods (contrasted with luxury foods) part of consumerism. Meats and such have been part of human nutrition for quite some time. Unlike clothing (and other things) you don’t typically buy unnecessary excess for the sake of it or to fulfill some non essential need that’s already been met.
As I admit we can reproach people for unwise choices in food but I can’t consider it consumerism (I would allow some narrow exceptions).
I admit the tone is heavy, which makes introspection (reflecting about self consumerist tendencies) unpleasant. But as I understand it, consumerism is a spectrum, just like veganism.
The term "ethical consumerism" is unfortunate, because it contains the word "consumerism", whose meaning has gained negative connotations. A frequent alternate term for the concept is "ethical consumption", which sidesteps the unintended value judgments that some people hear in the other term.
That works for me. “Consumerism” is unfortunate in that it carries baggage, intended and maybe unintended because it’s used to describe people’s attitude towards their buying habits in a negative light. Often this is rightly pointed out —cheap disposable things which can have upstream and downstream impacts that often offer poor long-term value to the buyer.
I am very happy that plant-based meat substitutes have come so far and are able to provide competition to the meat industry. Many parts of the meat industry have cited high demand as justification for unethical practices and this new competition should help do away with that.
However, I think the "meat is bad" sentiment bandied about by this article and Beyond Meat is painfully reductive. It's great for their marketing... for now, at least... but it is also a very divisive statement that will probably end up creating as much opposition as support.
Can't we just let both options exist? Margarine doesn't need a "butter is bad" campaign to stay relevant.
I can empathize with that perspective. I personally find the "guilt and shame" tactic less effective and more divisive which is why I tend to avoid going that route. However, there also is truth to the statement "meat is bad" if "bad" means "has negative consequences" and I think those negatives definitely need to be talked about, but I do think it is hard to strike a good balance between effectively and honestly stating the position while also not turning more people off in the long term vs. how many are convinced.
If we can eat foods that don't cause the death and suffering of other creatures, then that is objectively better than eating foods that DO cause the death and suffering of others.
Death and suffering are bad, although meat eaters will tie themselves in knots to try and pretend it isn't.
The meat industry does not inherently cause suffering, but the death part is certainly unavoidable. It's not a question of whether or not death is "bad". It is a question of whether or not death is "worth it".
In my experience, most people put a relatively high value on life (especially human), but not an infinite one. Most societies agree that human life must be highly valued; however, I think you will find that many people do not value the lives of livestock so highly. For many, even human life can be traded for something of great enough value. Ultimately, the value of a life is a matter of opinion.
I'm not trying to challenge your opinion here. I just want to remind you that not everyone shares that opinion, and you'll have to convince them before you can use it as justification for declaring "meat is bad".
Margarine only gained popularity because of the sentiment that butter was bad! And margarine is barely relevant any more, since it's widely understood that trans fats are bad.
I'm in Germany, and I currently struggle to come up with anyone who doesn't use margarine. I haven't heard the transfat angle mentioned yet in relation to margarine, so I had a quick look. Apparently margarine in the EU contains about 1-2% of transfats, which is within the limit that the EU will enforce starting next year (2% transfat per fat).
Think this is contingent on what “bad” means, how extensive are the negative externalities of something like meat farming versus the creation of butter or margarine. In that sense, they’re not comparable examples.
Forget ethics, think of taste vs value vs health: can they make meatless burgers taste as good as regular burgers, while being cheaper or healthier? Or can they taste BETTER than regular burgers, while being equally expensive or equally unhealthy?
Long term (10+ years?), I think these plant-based meats are the future. These early/middle stages are important, just like any product, and they'll find their fit in a crowded grocery store.
They are likely to be much healthier than meat (barring some real fun CRISPR gymnastics).
They can taste however you'd want them to taste. Think, Captain America 5 burgers, exclusively at Burger King. It'll taste like the best beefiest burger more so than real beef can. Sauces can help, but the underlying burger still has to hold up.
They're likely to be much cheaper as patents expire and 'store brand' burgers get out there. The competition will drive the price to near the cost of the ingredients, which I think are much cheaper than feeding the animal the ingredients for a few years and then eating the animal.
They're more resilient to shocks in the supply chain compared to animals (mad cow, hurricanes, climate change, etc).
They have a much broader market base than animals due to ethical and religious restrictions.
Barring some medical report that says they give you super-cancer, I think the product is just better suited to the marketplace.
I don't think it's possible nor prioritized. Decades of artificial flavoring pale in comparison to the real thing, and mass produced cultivars are preferred over odd looking yet tastier heirlooms. The food industry knows they only need to hit close enough because the vast majority of consumers buy the cheapest version possible at the grocery store.
As for the physics of a good burger, a lot of that comes from animal fat, blood, sinew, firm and tender tissues. There are some plant based options that are attempting to replicate the blood component, and ground meat is certaintly a more forgiving medium as far as texture.
Even with the existing meatless market, however, the economics are a tough bet for a lot of people. I tried out a vegan clone of In n out that opened in the neighborhood. At $12, it's 3x the price of a double double, and patty was ok but mostly just tasted like something deep fried. The real sting, and this goes for most vegan and vegetarian food I eat beyond ethnic food, $12 left me feeling hungry. The portions, the taste, and the price all combine into this perfect storm that puts off a lot of meat-eating consumers from taking up vegetarian food more regularly.
Beyond Meat just arrived in our market a few months ago and while the product is fine, its price is absurdly expensive.
To produce it's purported benefits, Beyond Meat needs to adopt the Coca-Cola / Mcdonalds approach - license the tech / brand to local franchisees for local expansion and utilize the local agri sector for raw materials.
Or if we started paying the actual price for real beef beyond beef would be the cheaper option. Removed the subsidies and include a carbon and water tax on food.
I’ve visited countries where there aren’t the big ag subsidies and whatnot. People still eat meat. Not to the degree we do in the US, but it’s not “unattainably” expensive and most people will consume some kind of meat with their meals —not 20oz or whatever, but they eat a “healthy” amount.
Um ok. People who subscribe to this theory can calculate the proper offset and donate to their cause of choice or, you know, moderate their food consumption to adequately reflect their opinions on food production.
The point of taxes is that they force people to pay for things whether they want to or not. This is nice because most people wouldn't want to voluntarily pay for negative externalities.
I know that there's no way I would want to pay for the ecological effects caused by my lifestyle choices for example. A tax doesn't give me the option to not pay.
The point is that these taxes help offset costs that you pay for other people, not yourself. If there was a car factory spewing toxic waste into the local water supply, would you say to your neighbors just don't buy the car if you don't like it?
The price will come down. We've had beyond for about a year and at least two other competitors (that taste basically the same) have hit the market in that time, and the price seems to be drifting down. So far it's down to not much more than a good organic / free range burger patty, and when you buy it at a fast food place it's the same price as a normal burger.
economy of scale is starting to kick in and the initial cost of R&D is being recouped. I agree it is expensive, but just like solar, it will only get cheaper the more we support it.
I've enjoyed the run up in stock price, but IIRC their products still aren't 'organic' or otherwise designated as being specifically environmentally conscious (e.g. 'regenerative'). Isn't the value prop mostly about offering vegetarians, whatever their personal motivations might be, something new on the menu?
I am a vegetarian who eats almost entire vegan. I know a lot of other veg/an and plant based diet people.
My experience for veg/ans matches the article. Substitutes like Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger are almost always a novelty or treat - something you would order out at an omni restaurant, or maybe bring to a cookout where meat eaters were also grilling. It's nice to have as an option but we're used to building our meals around staples like tofu, beans, tempeh, seitan etc.
I hear way more about these newer processed products from meat eaters who think this is what we would eat regularly, or are excited to try them out themselves. After the recent meat shortages and the million pandemic articles about "how to cook beans" I am convinced the actual target market is meat eaters who are looking to build meals around something as close to meat as possible, rather than people who are plant based.
Impossible Burger is not aimed at vegans. It is aimed at carnivores. It's not particularly "organic" or healthy. It just tastes like a Burger King Whopper. It's selling fine, and it has to be very profitable, given the ingredients and the reasonably simple manufacturing process.
Now now, that is a very charitable comment about its taste. As usual in food, more processing -> cheaper and lower quality. Sure, it might have similar macronutrients but real health is in getting enough micros.
It wasn't considered "overprocessed" when it was sold at high-end restaurants for too much money. Only after they got it into volume production did the foodies get upset.
Burger King sells a meat-based Whopper burger and an Impossible Burger based Whopper burger. So you can easily make a direct comparison at any Burger King outlet.
At least for their adoption in places like burger king et al, it's a great way to expand an already massive market. Without that burger, those chains would just have fries and coke for vegetarians, and for many, road trips might today consist of planning stops around the next taco bell for a sure source of black beans.
Yeah, as a reducetarian I feel like these products are aimed squarely at me and even if they're more expensive right now I feel like I'm helping with the learning curve for reducing their price when I buy them.
> Importantly it should be noted that 93% of Beyond Meat’s consumers are in actual fact meat–eaters, not vegetarian or vegans as popularly perceived.
From their website:
> We hope our plant-based meats allow you and your family to eat more, not less,of the traditional dishes you love, while feeling great about the health, sustainability, and animal welfare benefits of plant protein.
Doesn't sound like their value proposition is really built around vegetrains/vegans at all.
I'd argue that it is built around aspiring vegetarians. If you're used to eating meat at almost every meal it can be intimidating to try to plan and prepare meatless meals. Beyond burgers and similar products provide something meat eaters understand and can easily incorporate into their diet to reduce meat consumption.
"Doesn't sound like their value proposition is really built around vegetrains/vegans at all"
you are right - it's not. They care about convincing people to eat less meat because that's where the greatest impact is. Veg's already don't eat meat - this is just a beneficial option that they can choose.
It's fundamentally a bet that the technology is now good enough to unlock a market (basically the same as betting on Tesla a few years ago). The value prop is the tech eventually moving down-market and becoming a filler in some yet unknown 60/20/20 (just pulling reasonable sounding numbers out of my ass here), with the last 20 being plant based, ground beef that will be so close to conventional ground beef that consumers will default to it and billions[1] of pounds a year will fly off the shelves of Walmart, Costco and the like.
The article claims that "93% of Beyond Meat's customers are meat-eaters", but also acknowledges that "no ethically aligned solutions immediately spring to mind".
* It's potentially safer than meat during the pandemic
* I support any advancements that may enable humanity to phase out killing animals over the long term, such as clean meat (lab-grown meat) and plant-based meat
* It's one of a very small number of high-quality (high-PDCAAS and low-carbohydrate) protein sources that I'm aware of
* Enjoyment-wise, it's a close enough substitute for my taste
* I'm somewhat concerned about it being a heavily processed food as well as reportedly having its pea protein isolate sourced from China, and I wish they would reduce (or eliminate) the canola oil in favor of more coconut oil, but afaict there's nothing obviously terrible in it
I mean, in an ideal world no one would ever die or be unhappy, but I won't pretend to be an expert on all the legitimate reasons that we kill things.
I should have phrased that as phasing out specifically killing animals for food. I fish myself, and I'm not advocating for any kind of drastic short-term change; over the long term, it's conceivable to me that use cases like recreational fishing could be addressed with AI robot fish and/or highly immersive VR/AR.
My take: beyond as a company is long-term worthless. Not because this isn't where people's diets are headed - fully convinced that's going to happen. But there are at least two competitors in my area and they taste essentially the same as name-brand beyond.
But, I Am Not A Capitalist, so... maybe they'll manage to entrench themselves thru brand recognition or supply chain monopolies.
I'm hoping that lab grown meat takes off. I believe that this is on par with expanding solar power and electric cars in terms of combating global warming.
I hope so too. This seems like one of the most important things to tackle, but how safe is it? What's the chance that 50 years down the line we figure out that this has some damaging effect on the human body?
- driving a car 1 mile to school is not ethical: who mined that ore? drilled for that oil?
- buying mass produced clothes is not ethical: who slaved for pennies to make that shirt?
- having a smart phone is unethical: cheap laborers build the components in arrangements they can’t exit
living in the 1st world is a world of hypocrisy. everything we do is possible because we have built on the backs of those less developed and outsource our costs so our living standard is high.
i accept this, do all the things above, and eat meat
agreed. We have enough nihilistic, "all or nothing" thinking. There are almost ALWAYS ways to improve incrementally and the magnification of those improvements by many people cannot be ignored.
I think it's important to keep in mind that people can improve the situations you allude to without extreme measures and/or complete cutoff.
- if you're driving a car 1 mile each way, consider biking. consider biking one or more days a week, and use your car for the days you need to go on longer trips like for errands.
- buy higher quality clothing from reputable dealers that try to balance out externalities. learn how to repair clothing that fails, or pay someone who specializes in it. bonus opportunity to support a local business and a worthwhile trade/specialty.
- don't upgrade your smartphone every year. Apple iPhones can receive software/security updates for ~5 years.
- try cooking or purchasing a vegetarian meal once a week. try a vegetable you've never tried before. try to find a way to prepare a vegetable you traditionally dislike until you find a way that is palatable to you. (edit to add: try growing some vegetables, even just a basil plant or sprouts on your windowsill)
It sounds like your position is "everything in the 1st world has a downside so why bother". It is certainly possible to live in a first world in a more conscious, less impactful way.
Others bear the cost, only if the meat consumption supports the producers of externalities aka factory farms and CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). If the meat you consume comes from small-scale, grass fed, local producers, there are no externalities (or fewer than cultured meat could produce) and thus eating meat can still be ethical.
Most people who choose not to eat meat for the ethical reasons do so based on the foundational belief that killing another conscious animal for food is unethical. "small-scale, grass fed, local producers" do not negate that belief.
If you mean carbon footprint, Beyond Meat appears to be on par with chicken and not much better than pork. Beef and lamb are worse, but I don't think this is the main ethics angle they're on.
Most don't agree with because for many it's part of their identity, it's what they grew up eating every day with their parents. To find their way of life being classified as unethical is jarring to say the least, so they put up a barrier to doing so.
I do not find fault in that attitude either, to be human is to have emotion, and to feel a sense of belonging. For someone who grew up on barbecue that's hard to reconcile.
However, a rigorous impartial analysis always categories eating meat as not ideal on both moral and ethical grounds. It probably has higher consensus among philosophers than climate change does with climate scientists. The irony is that I doubt all philosophers are vegetarian/vegan, so they themselves are probably the biggest hypocrites (or they have built up some system of ethics where being unethical on this is okay).
I come from a country where even if you're not vegetarian, your dose of meat is a few pieces of chicken once a week. It was very straightforward for me to choose vegetarianism and even then I struggled with it. I have nothing but respect for someone from rural Texas who chooses to be vegetarian though; that is just infinitely harder.
> Most don't agree with because for many it's part of their identity, it's what they grew up eating every day with their parents. To find their way of life being classified as unethical is jarring to say the least, so they put up a barrier to doing so.
When you make up a reason for someone to believe something, sure it's easy to argue against it. Many people balk at finding eating meat unethical because it simply isn't. There is no consistent system of ethics that finds it unethical.
Deciding that some forms of life are "conscious" and should be protected and other forms of life are not is completely arbitrary. Living things consume other living things to survive. Surviving is not unethical, or if it is your system of ethics is self-defeating and will lead to your own extinction, which makes it useless.
Can you cite a single acceptable literary citation that says eating meat is not unethical? What's acceptable? Probably not a blog post, ideally a work by an academic philosopher. Something in between can be murky for sure.
If you're going to go by whatever "academic philosophers"[1] say instead of thinking for yourself, I really don't know what to tell you.
[1] By and large, over-privileged people who've never done anything useful in their lives. It's easy to preach to people about what they should eat when you've always had plenty of food.
Here's a question: Is it immoral for lions to eat zebras?
Here's another question: Imagine the entire Earth is actually a factory farm for aliens. Every time someone dies, their body is actually secretly used for alien food. Would you want Earth to cease to exist?
Or perhaps a closer analogy, imagine super-powerful aliens take over Earth and terraform Mars and Venus, which they use as human farms. Maybe 30 billion humans live on Earth, Mars, and Venus, leading full lives with everything provided to them that a human wants, but killed at 18 years of age.
Alien human-rights activists wish to stop the humans from breeding, and let the population fall to several thousand. They will devote the planets to instead growing Alien Corn.
Have you seen how an industrial farm looks from the inside? I'm a meat eater and I love the taste and stuff, but you need to admit that many animals didn't have a great life at all. So beyond meat solves a real problem. Some folks want all meat production to be banned, I disagree. There are forms of farming which are better for animals, make their lives worth living. They are just more expensive regarding resources as well as money, so can't scale as well as industrial meat production. In the ideal world we've done away with industrial meat production but still keep a limited number of animals for meat production, real meat still being available but most people don't buy it for everyday consumption because it's expensive.
> Here's a question: Is it immoral for lions to eat zebras?
Lions must eat meat to survive. We can choose not to eat meat and still survive. That's a morally relevant distinction. If you are arguing that because meat-eating is natural then it must be moral, I would direct you to the appeal to nature fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
> Here's another question: Imagine the entire Earth is actually a factory farm for aliens. Every time someone dies, their body is actually secretly used for alien food. Would you want Earth to cease to exist?
No, but I fail to see how this runs counter to the moral claim that humans eating meat is bad. The correct analogy to your hypothetical would be to imagine that all animals live their full lives and are only consumed upon their death. It would not be morally wrong to eat them then.
> Or perhaps a closer analogy, imagine super-powerful aliens take over Earth and terraform Mars and Venus, which they use as human farms. Maybe 30 billion humans live on Earth, Mars, and Venus, leading full lives with everything provided to them that a human wants, but killed at 18 years of age. Alien human-rights activists wish to stop the humans from breeding, and let the population fall to several thousand. They will devote the planets to instead growing Alien Corn.
This analogy is not close at all. Animals do not lead full lives with everything provided to them that they could want. The vast majority of farmed animals live horrific lives that are not worth living and are killed very young. Chickens, for example, are artificially grown to reach a large size very quickly and then slaughtered shortly after.
The correct analogy to this hypothetical would be a so-called "humane" or "ethical" farm where the animals are free to live in a close-to-natural environment before being slaughtered. I would agree that that is much better than factory farms, and perhaps even morally acceptable if the animals' lives are worth living and they would not have existed otherwise. But, this is not how most farmed animals live. Not even close.
I don’t think lions eating zebras is a good comparison.
We have evolved and flourished with agriculture and so we don’t have to consume meat unless the agricultural produce has gone way down.
I also think the general argument is how animals are treated with so many horrific videos out there which are just torture in my opinion and not a clean kill.
If someone is doing a clean kill without the animal suffering and making sure it’s living in good conditions, that’s a right step in many ways.
We can't survive without Vitamin B in various forms, which is not found in plants at all (some fermented soy products do contain some, but it's incorrect to say we evolved to not eat meat).
That’s fair. One of the hardest parts is being conscious and cognizant when shopping for food what we’re buying-ways to do this could include actively reading nutrition tables on food packaging and through this you start to get an idea of what certain foods do for you and you begin shopping with a purpose versus shopping to make the fridge look full.
Strategically Replacing meat with certain veggies and legumes for example can get you that protein and carb kick but also are a great source of fiber while being easier to digest. Depending on your personal diet choices you might find a bag of beans not only costs less but can get you the same amount of carbs and proteins per serving across multiple servings than a single serving cut of meat.
I agree with you that eating meat is fine and ethical, but I also think that finding new alternatives that compete with existing supply chains on sustainability and efficiency is also an ethical imperative.
Hurting animals unnecessarily is unethical. And since we don't need to eat meat to survive or even to be healthy, then we are just killing and hurting other beings for our own pleasure.
Most people are wrong! By any defensible ethical system, it's wrong to kill sentient beings when you don't have to. This goes double when it's terrible for the environment.
Why is it wrong to kill animals (humanely) if you don't have to? A cow will live and die blissfully unaware that it's purpose is to be eaten by humans. Is a death by a captive bolt gun worse than death by coyote or disease?
Of course the discussion should be around the conditions that livestock spend their time living in because animals obviously are "happier" when living in natural conditions, but as far as I am aware animals do not have any preference on when or how they die (as long as it is not painful and drawn out).
it's very interesting to me how many people seem to have all of the sudden become very concerned about the perceived consciousness of plants.
My question usually is: "Your interpretation of 'plant consciousness' and consciousness in general aside - do you personally see no difference between a flower and a cow?"
Are you saying that you actually believe it is by definition ethical to do things that society agrees is good for people (regardless of what actually is good for people or for animals)?
Or are you saying that what society deems ethical (regardless of what actually is, in fact, ethical) tends to align with actions that are good for people?
Cows are more like me. A flowers are less like me. So I'm biased against flowers because they are less like me. But I don't know if it's more ethical to act based on my bias.
It's useful to distinguish eating meat from the way most livestock is raised in the US.
My understanding is that most livestock are raised in small pens, never get to go outside, and are physically debilitated in one way or another. In what would amount to animal cruelty if they were pets. I'd love to see statistics on the matter, though no one involved is incentivized to share information so I doubt there's much to find.
Merely eating meat is one thing; participating in the factory farming system that produces the meat you find at the grocery store is quite another.
It is pretty clearly not. This is clearly a piece on marketing, and it seems abundantly clear that it's written from a detached perspective. "Ethics" is presented as an issue of opinion only, and the focus is on how Beyond Meat harnessed changes in that conventional wisdom to sell a product. In fact, I'd say someone who actually believes in ethical vegetarianism has more to complain about in this piece than you do.
Another implication is that ethical consumerism is profitable, which is debatable. Most "ethical" products are chosen because they are healthier, such as organic food or green cosmetics, not because they are more ethical. Remember Toms shoes? I doubt that "synthetic" meat will be proven to be more healthy than regular meat any time soon given that there is still a lot of debate over whether or not meat itself is healthy.
The implication is that plant-based meat substitutes are seen by some consumers as a choice that fulfills their desires for ethical consumption; therefore, the lessons learned from the market fit and economics of plant-based meat substitutes are relevant to the larger context of ethical consumption.
Shrug. Are ethics decided by popular opinion? Many folks regard vegetarianism as an issue of morality. The omnivore who looks deeply at our methods of meat production may well gain much to think on.
Their phrasing is a response to your something most don't agree with, this comment doesn't reply to their meaning.
What they mean is, historically, the majority has not always been correct when it comes to ethical issues. That's different than arguing that majorities have always been wrong.
Going to look back on modern factory farming (the source of the VAST majority of meat eaten in America) as something so abhorrent (Both for the process of it and the external costs) we’ll be embarrassed to tell our grandkids about it. Although as I’ve been downvoted for saying here before, if you’re having kids and grandkids, you’ve already done uncorrectable damage to the environment so go ahead and eat meat or whatever. Doesn’t matter at that point.
I hope (but doubt) that killing animals for food (whether by hunting or smaller-scale farming) will also become completely unacceptable outside of very specific situations.
So I Believe I understand where you are going with the kids comment. At some point as a species we need to procreate, so what method / system would you recommend?
If you’re alive today and care about doing something significant for the environment, don’t have a kid. That’s all there is to it.
There’s absolutely no shortage of people who a) will think this is bad advice that doesn’t apply to them because they are very smart, b) just don’t care, c) don’t have access to birth control, d) just really want a kid, etc.
Now, perhaps they mean that they productize something which is unachievable by most people at home (few would attempt to make homemade beyondmeat protein for food) and so they are facilitating the consumption of something that otherwise would not get consumed...
Ethical excess clothes, unneeded cosmetics, frivolous throwaway home items, etc., yes sure, I’m sure there are ethical alternatives just as there are “organic” poisons too.
A possible key alternative source of proteins I don’t think merits the label/adjective “consumerist”