Comments
  1. Outside OnlineRowan Jacobsen7/31/1913 min
    23 reads12 comments
    9.5
    Outside Online
    23 reads
    9.5
    You must read the article before you can comment on it.
    • tom7james4 years ago

      Dope. Big fan of this transition, but more for reasons of climate change than nutrition.

      On that note...I’d hope people at least start with a healthy skepticism that injecting processed plant protein into a greasy Whitecastle meal somehow makes it a good idea to eat there :)

      • bill
        Top reader of all time
        4 years ago

        Big fan of this transition, but more for reasons of climate change than nutrition.

        +1. Exactly how I feel.

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      4 years ago

      PS This article’s crushin’ it.

      10 reads Rating = 9.7 Someone tweet Rowan. ;)

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      4 years ago

      Had several great IRL conversations about this piece, last night, with 4 or 5 other Readupers, as individuals, and a group, over beers and BLTs.

      There seems to be universal agreement that the beef industry will decline. The question is by how much and how fast. Opinions vary widely on that, and all are totally valid, informed by a good blend of personal experience and reading.

      We talked about various triggers - regulations? price? culture/attitude shift? climate change? - but, naturally, it will actually pan out to be a combination of all of those things, and more, happening simultaneously, which makes it very hard to forecast any kind of timeline.

      I found myself in a weird position because I think that there’s a good chance we’re all going to be traveling around in nomadic packs, with guns and whatever food we can carry, within the next 100 years. So do I think that vegans are gonna take over? Fuck yeah. And I’m psyched about it. And yeah, that also means that I think feedlots will be a crazy thing of the past. Soon. Almost as unspeakable as slavery.

      A return to self-sufficient agrarian is, I think, the most likely vision for what will be happening on the land we currently call America in 500 years.

    • monstertuck4 years ago

      Nobody will miss these shitty little brown things when they’re gone - love this quote.

      • bill
        Top reader of all time
        4 years ago

        Great find! Nice binoculars ;)

      • bill
        Top reader of all time
        4 years ago

        Lol. That cracked me up too! This author has a great voice.

    • tdsimpson904 years ago

      Love this, how inspiring! My mom and I were at Unforked the other day and she ordered a normal burger and I ordered an impossible burger and the server gave us the wrong ones. We had both eaten half our burgers before we realized the mistake. The impossible burger is incredible. My mom is a convert now. Completely agree with the author, beyond meat is eh, but impossible is unreal.

      • bill
        Top reader of all time
        4 years ago

        Fascinating! I'll take your word on that! I was legit surprised that the author was SO positive about Impossible and SO negative about Beyond. I was expecting more of a pros-and-cons-to-both approach, but it seems like there's an obvious, undeniable winner here.

        This is an absurdly positive endorsement for Impossible: "It’s shine-up-the-Nobel-Prize good. Not only does it taste like ground beef, it looks and acts like it, too."

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      4 years ago

      Beef is a headache. It comes with a lot of baggage to worry about: antibiotic resistance, E. coli outbreaks, animal welfare, climate change. It’s the kind of icky biological variable that corporate America would love to leave behind—and as soon as beef becomes less profitable, it will.

      That quote is really excellent. It reminds me that consumerism is a two way street. On the one hand, people want certain things and industry responds. But on the other hand, corps can shift our tastes and our demands. They're good at (sneakily) making us want certain things.

      In other words, if powerful forces want us to start not liking meat, it will happen. Profitability is a key driver of culture.

    • Montelemar4 years ago

      Anybody else think about that South Park episode “cow days” where their was a fair specifically about cows?

      • bill
        Top reader of all time
        4 years ago

        I must have missed that episode! But I do remember that cows were obstacles in the road in the video game South Park Rally.