• fart@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      it’s about the scale at which these items are consumed - eating meat every day was pretty much unheard of until the advent of capitalism

        • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Fresh or preserved (salted or dried) meat has existed as long as people have paid for them. Even ice was used for a while prior to refrigeration.

            • kralamaros@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              You are totally missing the point. American?

              Edit Refrigeration is optimal, and we agree on that. Yet, meat was notconsumptwed by regular folks because aristocrats were the only ones who could afford it (and I recall that many of them died of a disease that comes from meat overconsumption). Regular folks ate meat only on special occasions. And driying it makes it last for months if not years (source: the dry sausages that I buy in my granfather’s town, hand made by people, last for 14 months)

        • new_guy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          If I were to be fair then my answer would be neither as I don’t believe capitalism is forcing us to consume meat and there was methods to conserve meat for long periods of time before refrigeration was a thing.

          I guess meat can be healthy. What certainly isn’t healthy is highly processed meat like burgers, hot dogs and deep fried turkey

          • fedditurus_est@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Science suggests that meat consumption always comes with risks e.g. of genetic mutations. So if you can meet your demand of nutrients and trace elements without meat you probably should.

                • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  There’s been a lot of back-and-forth. B12, like iron and Protein, are digested differently by the gut (with different efficiency) based on how they are consumed.

                  If absolutely all you care about is nutrition and nothing else, you should be eating a small amount of non-processed red and white meat (and/or seafood) on a regular basis because it is the best and healthiest source of those three things. Key term “small amount”

                  • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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                    1 year ago

                    Interesting that you say this because the high amount of B12 in the meat people buy is because it is artificially supplemented to the animals they slaughter.

        • fart@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          capitalism has led to never before seen economies of scale, allowing for dirt cheap food prices never before seen in history. if we were to look at capitalism through that metric and that metric only then it would be wildly popular…

          • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            did capitalism do that, or did technologies like aircraft and refrigeration do that?

            why would economies of scale not exist under a different socio-economic system?

            • fart@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              because prior to the advent of capitalism the priorities were not on the consumer, but on the aristocracy. while the end results of free market capitalism are clearly destroying the planet, it is insanely more equitable than anything that came before it.

              the economies of scale exist due to the consumer pressure, which didn’t exist in other market systems.

              i don’t get why people are downvoting that. i’m not saying capitalism is the best thing in the world and nothing will ever be better than it. i’m saying it allowed people to eat more meat and is democratic compared to feudalism or mercantilism

              • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Because people can’t seem to understand the difference between ‘criticizing stuff while also being aware of and acknowledging its benefits’ vs ‘mindlessly bashing something whenever you get the chance bcuz tribalism’.

                Hell, even Marx praised capitalism for the immense wealth that it has generated for the masses, which so many so-called ‘socialists’ don’t seem to understand.

            • kralamaros@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Because the focus wouldn’t be on profit just for profit’s sake. That is the main problem with capitalism. The technologies just allowed it. Plus, technologies are not sentient, you can’t blame a technology…

              • Primarily0617@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                Because the focus wouldn’t be on profit just for profit’s sake

                what socioeconomic system has existed where increased productivity was viewed as a bad thing?

                e.g.:

                • pure feudalism would’ve led to economies of scale because it would make the king of the castle wealthier.
                • any kind of socialism with a centrally planned economy would’ve led to economies of scale because it enables the government to more easily meet the needs of the people.
                • even pure marxist communism probably would’ve led to economies of scale eventually because any communities that worked together on a global scale would’ve been more prosperous for their community members, which is still a goal of the system

                The technologies just allowed it

                or in other words, their invention led to it, which was the original quote I was responding to

                Plus, technologies are not sentient, you can’t blame a technology…

                • socio-economic systems aren’t sentient either
                • nobody’s “blaming” a technology—there isn’t even really a consensus in this thread on whether economies of scale leading to increased meat consumption is a good or bad thing
                • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  I wouldn’t call “profit” synonymous with “productivity”. Quite the opposite. Profit is intentional market inefficiency for individual gain. I’m just calling it because so many people do make the mistake of treating them as the same, presuming the former is inherently good because productivity is.

                  Pretty much everything else you said I agree with.

        • TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com
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          1 year ago

          Both. Refrigeration is what allows us to store and (I would argue more importantly) transport large amounts of meat, and is as such essential to the industry. However, Capitalism is also key to the meat industry because its lobbyists constantly push for meat subsidies, which is the main reason meat is cheap enough to be something we have every meal instead of once every couple of days.

      • mydickismicrosoft@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        In some circumstances you’re absolutely right. In many parts of the word, meat was either scarce or difficult to preserve. In other parts of the word, some peoples survived almost exclusively on animal products. The natives on Alaska are the first that come to mind.

        Of course “meat” was a very important part of their diet, they relied heavily on organ meats for their essential vitamins and nutrients. They were significantly more humane and less wasteful than we are today.

      • oldfart@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        *until the advent of mechanized agriculture and fertilizers, which allowed feeding large amounts of livestock in capitalist and communist countries alike

        • fart@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          communism requires capitalism to exist … at its invention, capitalism was the cutting edge that allowed massive economies to form. free market capitalism allowed the creation of extremely complex and vast logistical networks that did not exist prior.

          this is not some sort of “capitalism vs communism” thing. this is saying that capitalism was miles more efficient and liberating than anything that came before it. inshallah whatever comes after it will continue the trend

    • emidio
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      1 year ago

      Nobody ate meat before very recently. And cheese was not your typical daily treat. Remembers it takes a long time to produce

      • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Huh? Humans evolved in a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Before the advent of farming, it was impossible to get sufficient calories for a tribe or village without hunting and bringing down big animals on a regular basis. Meat was quite literally the “meat” of human diet for most of history.

        After the advent of farming, you could pack a lot of calories with things like breads, for when you didn’t have meat (or in early civilization) when the rich folks got the meat.

        As for cheese, it really doesn’t take that long to produce unless you’re talking about aged cheese… But that’s a different topic (and both aged/fresh have different health benefits)

    • s_s@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Proof you only have to live 15 years to reproduce doesn’t mean much for someone wanting to live 80 years.