JubilantJaguar

Agreed on both points. I also found the Beyond burger extremely tasty, sort of too good to be real. The Impossible burger was more realistic but less tasty!

Of course you're right about the social pressure. And it's a crazy situation, given the ecological disaster that beef is. Personally I quite enjoy performatively ordering the vegan burger (I am not fully vegan) and making others squirm when they go for the beef version. I like to insist loudly that this is just my personal choice, that they should get whatever they want, no judgement. And that's true, sort of. Not gonna win any converts by browbeating people. But humans are social animals. Someone has to show the way.

And yet venture investors put a ton of money onto the bet. Mistaken, maybe. "Absolutely delusional" - that's hyperbole.

Since apparently you think this is all a waste of time, what's your solution for getting people off meat?

That's all fine and I basically agree. But I think you need to be aware that you're essentially talking to yourself. In your view, taste comes second or third among your priorities. Again, I somewhat agree. But this is just not the way most people see things. If we want to convince them, we have to acknowledge that fact. And you say explicitly that you do want to convince them.

Sound advice.

PS: punctuation and capitalization are conformist and bourgeois but they do make it easier to read.

Then you're doing exactly what you are supposed to do. Disengagement, hopelessness, resignation, it's all in the authoritarian playbook.

Addendum: To be clear, IMO what you Americans need to do is stay engaged. That doesn't mean protesting everything (personally I think that might even be counter-productive). It does mean voting at every tiniest opportunity, you have lots of them. And if possible getting involved in some form of local politics, even if that is just joining some club or association. It's like a tyrannical boss and his employees, what authoritarians hate most of all is for their subjects to be talking to each other.

We can be cynical and nihilist, or we can take a win, however tiny it is.

Let's remember that for the vast majority of the world's people, meat is either a banal feature of everyday life or an expensive luxury and an object of aspiration.

Changing the narrative is going to be hard. The fact that this is even on the agenda at such an international meeting is progress.

Not sure I understand. My point was that fake meats were seen as a great stealth solution. If only the meat was completely realistic, meat lovers would switch to it. Like smoking and electronic cigarettes, basically. No, it was never a solution that would please purist vegans. But personally I just want people to eat less meat, even tech bros if possible. So I was hopeful.

And it turns out it's not enough. Both Impossible and Beyond are tasty and pretty damn realistic, I have tried them. But the revolution did not happen. The cost differential and dropped and doesn't fully explain it. The psychological resistance is just tougher than expected.

This looks like an extremely dense and well-cited summary of the arguments. But I almost marvel at the earnestness of the author, who is obviously just preaching to the choir (as is this post). Because let's be real: the chances of converting a single omnivore to veganism by means of a fact-packed post on a vegan-identifying blog are essentially: nil.

Humans are social much more than they are rational. If we want people to move towards plant-based diets, we are going to have to act on that fact somehow.

Addendum: Again: downvoting does not make hard facts go away. I mean seriously, I find this totally mystifying. What's the point of this discussion space if people just downvote anything that gives them a marginally negative vibe? Are people so insecure that they just come here for confirmation and validation? I don't get it. Personally, I want people to become vegan or at least eat less meat. Do you? If so, then that is going to mean a fact-based discussion about how to do it.

While waiting for it, the air went out of the fake-meat balloon.

To be clear, I do not think this is a good thing.

Addendum: This information is completely relevant. Downvoting inconvenient facts does not make them go away.

Well if it wasn't you then I apologize.

Yes I was about 20 when mobiles took off. But my "rhetoric" wasn't proved wrong or right. It was just my perspective. You can have yours too and that's fine.

Somewhat true if you have anyone left who wants to talk to you by email.

First people stopped using it for socializing, and now it's slowly on the way out for work communication too IME. Not secure enough. Better to use a secure messenger which requires login. And personally I quite like this, assuming the messenger is on the web and requires no software install.

The reality is that the main surviving use case for email is as a notification engine.

By downvoting my comment you're saying you don't care what I have to say. So that's the end of this debate. Good night.