Ask Lemmy

This is the thing. In isolation, enjoyment is a decent argument for anything. But you have to step back and look at the impact of things to see if it's a good or bad thing.

In the case of animal consumption, the pros are:

• it tastes good
• it's convenient
• it means people don't need to change.

(People often add "it's nutritionally necessary" here. I know I did. But that's a myth. You can get everything you need from plants. If that wasn't the case, vegans would be unable to live whole lives without issues, but that's happening)

The cons?

1. It causes millions of land animals to be killed every single day, many in a very scary painful way. If you include fish, that jumps up to hundreds of millions
2. Animal farming contributes to a big portion of the emissions that are causing climate change.
3. It's an extremely inefficient way to produce food for humans. Just think: in order to produce one pound of meat, how much input grains/grass/whatever was there? Why not skip the middleman and eat the plants directly?
4. Industrial fishing is destroying our oceans, which also contributes to climate change.

I could go on, but I digress.

But these are the things I came to learn when I went vegan last year. So it came down to a simple question in the end: do the pros outweigh the cons? Do my tastebuds matter enough to contribute to all those problems? The answer was clear enough for me