[npongratz]

> As many people speak of this difficulty to evolve and change their diet, I have come to theorize that people have a deep seated cultural need for sacrifice -- something must die for their meal to be legitimate.

Of course something must die, but it's not because of culture. Even the most devout vegan would surely concede that the plants they eat must die in order to render sustenance from them. The reality we live in, even if we don't like it, is the simple fact that something must die for us to continue living.

[dmurray]

> Even the most devout vegan would surely concede that the plants they eat must die in order to render sustenance from them.

Let me (far from a vegan) try to disagree: you can sustainably harvest the fruit or the bark of a plant without killing it, and you can certainly argue that those parts aren't alive in themselves. You could stretch the argument to include the sap and the leaves. Does a mother have to die to suckle her baby?

A really enlightened follower of this argument might limit himself not only to renewable parts of the plant, but also of animals: it's OK to eat eggs, dairy products, honey, blood pudding, but not meat, potatoes or carrots.

Of course, we don't farm those products in a way consistent with not killing the non-productive animals, with the possible exception of honey. But in principle one could.

[aaronblohowiak]

> dairy products

There is no dairy without lots of dead male cows. “Lacto” vegetarians for ethical reasons are frequently unaware or ignorant of this.

[GrzegorzWidla]

If we had no emotional attachment to specific recipes, shapes, colors, textures of food, we'd plausibly move away from "of course something must die" quite fast. We have the tech to produce a nutrient dense food from "thin air", from waste, from any number of things that do not require destroying sentient or non-sentient life. Notable in the press was https://solarfoods.com but that's just one example of many.

Still, there is a clear and significant distinction between killing sentient life (most animals) and non-sentient life (plants or mushrooms), and there are very few people here who could not feasibly switch to the latter.

[datadrivenangel]

Life feeds on life feeds on life

[npongratz]

Some might even chant, "This is necessary," over and over.

[jajko]

Since we can't do photosynthesis or break down some rather toxic molecules like our more primitive siblings, we must eat organic matter that once was alive. No need to delve too much in some militant vegan fantasies and rationalizations.

Plant vs animal makes little difference from rational point of view, both feel pain and we have no clue telling which one more, not that it matters in this topic. Health wise plants are better, but ideal is as always some middle ground.

Biohack our guts and we can go on whole lives without harming much, jainists would probably be interested.

[aziaziazi]

> both feel pain and we have no clue telling which one more

I never understood that dumb argument. After so much evolution lead us to being an empathic species, of course we have clue of others pain.

Tear off some leaves of a tree in a public space

Tear off some pets legs in a public space

Observe people around you reaction. They’ll have a clue.

[47282847]

The argument as I understand it is that empathy and the “clues“ are imprinted based on social norms. Little children will happily rip out plants but will start to cry if they see or hear somebody else crying. One theory is that it is all about self-preservation: An environment where one animal cries without being taken care of is considered dangerous and inherently unsafe for self. Not so with plant life.

[olddustytrail]

Why? I mean we only need the molecules from the ingested food, so why can those chemicals only come from things that were living?

Is there any entirely artificial food that doesn't require a previously living thing?

[Barrin92]

>so why can those chemicals only come from things that were living?

Because food is a way to consume order. In Schrödinger's terms, the food chain is "life feeding on negative entropy". As you go up the food chain more and more complex organisms need to consume more low entropy things to maintain their more and more sophisticated internal structure. There's more energy in the matter of a rock than you'll ever need, but you can't gnaw on the thing to sustain yourself.

That said "life" doesn't necessarily mean "sentient animal". You can certainly expend energy to create artificial food sources but they'll always be lifelike, that is ordered for the reason Schrödinger lays out.