The French government issued a decree Tuesday banning the term “steak” on the label of vegetarian products, saying it was reserved for meat alone.
The French government issued a decree Tuesday banning the term “steak” on the label of vegetarian products, saying it was reserved for meat alone.
That’s not the discussion at hand.
I tried very hard to have this discussion without getting into ethics, and I won’t have that discussion either, even if you try to force it on me, even if your personal set of ethics is all you care about in the world at the expense of everything else, including seeing other people’s point of view.
This is about labelling, in particular non-confusing labelling. And how “plant steak” is just as confusing and misleading as “meat cauliflower”.
Just as confusing and nonsensical as “plastic paper” or “liquid mug”. Are you cognitively capable of looking at those latter two terms without moralising? If yes, why not the the previous two?
You go into it. Not me.
Tell me what part of which animal “Steak” is and show me there are no variants and you win.
It is not only steak, it is milk where the industry lobbied hard to prevent the use even though plant milk is older than the milk of other species.
You are the one who brought up moral, maybe that is a you problem you should take care of without projecting.
You did:
You don’t even notice it, do you. You’re the walking, talking, stereotype of a preachy vegan, leaving out no opportunity to signal how oh superior you are to everyone else because you stick to a certain set of behaviours you call ethical. Tough luck: I’m not going to treat you as a saint for that but just like any other human with dietary preference for any random reason, and that’s for your own good.
What. You mean the Indo-European Urpeople ground nuts into paste and diluted them with water? They definitely had millstones but that’s a lot of work for what reason exactly, you can eat nuts and drink water without preparing them while meanwhile, they were nomadic pastoralists. It’s where the lot of Europe and India have our lactose tolerance from. Indians even kept the whole religious status of cows thing.
Might look differently in other parts of the world but generally speaking pastoralism is way older than agriculture and with it millstones, much less electricity to make the whole process worth doing for anyone but kings out to impress people.
You asked for reasons
And I gave reasons
Your cognitive dissonance fries your brain.
“It is for certain people” is not a reasoning. How is it for those people? What is the benefit they would gain from that? Is that benefit marginal, or significant? Does it impact other people? How do those things balance out? Should we ignore interests of other people because we judge them morally inferior, even if it’s a seemingly innocuous thing as a word continuing to signify what it has signified since time immemorial? Politically/strategically speaking, is pissing those people off by infringing on their language making it more or less likely that they adopt the set of morals we think they should adopt?
In the same way people who don’t want to get drunk drink alcohol free beer if they like the taste. And there is no moral assessment in drinking one or the other. I gave you a possible reason. Just like the person which drinks alcohol free beer might have to drive. It is a reason, you get all emotional and I think you should work on that or else you end up like the antivegan meatflakes. Good luck
Alcohol free beer is made from water, malt, and hops. Meat-free steak is not made from animals.
Do you acknowledge that that makes a difference? If I want to sell something that’s made from water, sugar, carbon dioxide and raspberries, I’m free to call it a soda, but not beer, because beer is made from specific ingredients, because it always has been, and thus is what people expect when they buy beer.
You can’t just say “but, well, both are beverages and when other people drink beer I drink soda”: That does not even begin to make soda and beer interchangeable because calling them the same does not make them substantively the same, they’re still different products (or categories thereof). Ask a biologist: Barley, hops, raspberries, all completely different species.
You gave an analogy. An analogy is not a reason, or reasoning, but a way of saying “here this thing is similar, and for that thing there’s a reasoning and it also applies here”. Thing is: Neither did you show how the two are sufficiently similar (and I just showed how they’re fundametally different), you also failed to give a reasoning why alcohol-free beer should be allowed to be called beer (the reason, btw, is that beer with negligible levels of alcohol is just as old as beer that makes you drunk).
You’re not even half as thorough with any of this as you think you are. You may feel strongly about it but on its own that only means that your conviction is strong, not that your reasoning is. Doubling and tripling down on “But I really think this is the case! I feel it very strongly!” isn’t going to convince people: Conviction isn’t contagious. If you want people to follow in your footsteps you’ll have to do better. And if it isn’t for wanting for people to follow in your footsteps, to come over to your position, why are you arguing on the internet?
IDGF about what you eat. I’m arguing about food labelling. Also have you even skimmed that study, I’ve never even heard about r/antivegan but things like this:
or
don’t exactly paint a damning picture.
I have made none of those points you ask me to defend? I answered one your hopeless stupid questions and now you come up with with points nobody made.
You are done and not entertaining, just worrying.
I’m not asking you to defend anything. I’m waiting for you to give the reasoning you promised me, the reasoning of why it is prudent that “steak” shall cease to refer to meat products, and meat products only. Why we should treat this instance any differently than when saying that if you write “strawberry” on jam there need to be strawberries in it, and at least so and so much percent.
I’m not here to entertain you but to make you back up your claims with sound reasoning. Believe it or not, I do that as a service to veganism: I harbour no ill will, I want you folks to do better. I’m flexi and when I read shit like “I stopped veganism because my period stopped” I pity you. Vegans, of all people, should be on fucking top of nutritional science.
And that, btw, is not intended to make you defend anything, either. I just wanted to give my motive. Yes, a vegan diet can be 110% healthy. You also need to be thorough with it, and not reflexively deflect critique with “But it’s morally the right thing!”: Because that’s how you end up not being thorough enough, thus incur health damage, thus discourage others from trying it for themselves (they may share your morals, but are apprehensive), and also fuel the flames of idiots who think it’s outrageous that there’s a “vegan” label on their bag of frozen veggies. I’d be fucking worried if that bag wasn’t vegan.
We didn’t speak about nutrition at all – but it’s the same pattern. In another thread possibly on another site I dealt with a vegan claiming that there’s no such thing as essential amino acids, which is utter bunk: There are. With a half-way balanced diet you don’t need to worry, but they didn’t want to believe in it because they somehow considered it an attack on veganism. They understood “make sure you eat healthy” as “vegans are necessarily malnourished”. They could not give a reasoning of how they came to that association: Same as you can’t give me a reasoning as to how you came to the conclusion that it must be permitted to call saitan steak because otherwise… what? What’s the danger to veganism that is incurred by not being able to use the word “steak” for what you eat? Is the future of the world depending on it?
And you don’t even have to tell me. Just figure out and know for yourself and believe it or not, the world will become a little bit of a better place because there’s going to be a bit more self-knowledge. And with that I’ve given you the deep motive behind the superficial one. If that approach worries you that’s understandable: Humanity doesn’t know jackshit about itself and that lack is indeed scary. People might even attack you for knowing yourself, out of jealousy. But that shouldn’t stop you from looking, that’d be defeatism.