NEW VIDEO: Why Meat is the Best Worst Thing in the World

"because we always did it like this" is not the best basis for an ethical discussion. I thought they presented a fairly balanced view on a complex issue.

Mike Kelso

not sure anything is exactly "clear cut" in ethics. Maybe the point is, take the long view and work slowly and steadily towards an (animal) meat-free future.

Mike Kelso

understood. I think the issue is, it's too hard. As in, we're not going to change the dietary choices of the species overnight. Kurzgesagt seem to understand quite well the complexity of the issues they raise (and probably choose them because they are complex). I think raising awareness, through videos like this, is their positive contribution to a slow-but-steady reduction in meat intake.

Mike Kelso

<a href="https://youtu.be/sroOXBii-CE" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/sroOXBii-CE</a>

Delphox26

To Titan Digital Entertainment; No, they specifically state that meat is not bad. Eating meat as often as we do today is bad.

Delphox26

With so many people being angry on both sides, you just know you struck the right balance. Great job as usual and a very interesting video

Cypherius

This must have been funded by PETA. Stick with the “what-if” scientific videos. I’d rather watch that instead of being preached to about how eating meat, which humans have done since the dawn of time, is supposedly a bad thing.

Titan Digital Entertainment

I cant believe what big influence does Kurzgesagt in me, since i watched this video i started eating more vegetables.

Augusto Napuri

I've come to find that meat is also largely an aquired taste. It is just that we live in a culture where that taste gets aquired as soon as a child is old enough eat it. I've somewhat recently become a vegetarian when I can be. Because my primary motivation is the environmental impact, I will eat whatever I am served by family, friends or restaurants that messed up my order because it is generally more wasteful to have to make a special meal for one person or have the restaurant throw away the meal that was sent back. After only 3 years of being 97% vegetarian, I have absolutely no cravings for meat and don't think that it really adds to the meal when I have it. I think that the preception of meat being good and veggies bad is largely a matter of how they are prepared, as well. Meat is often fried, drenched in sauces, covered in spice, etc. The exception is that many omnivores find something like an unseasoned steak to be very enjoyable, but as above, I struggle to think of something more bland. On the other hand, veggies are almost always an afterthought to an omnivore. They get boiled or served raw and are thus bland compared to the meat. Most veggie substitutes aren't a good solution because they just mimic a meat dish, but never quite do them justice; even if it tastes as good or better, a veggie burger doesn't have quite the same texture or mouth feel that people are used to and so they just seem fake. Most people will be more than satisfied with a dish when meat is optional like a pasta, soup, curry or caserole, or where the veggie is the intended base.

John Mertz

The evolutionary benefit is that an omnivour could better survive in diverse environments before agriculture and animal husbandry. There are many places on Earth with very little, or seasonal produce that could not have been inhabited by vegetarians, such as the arctic or desserts. The modern global food market has resolved this, but our tastes have not changed.

John Mertz

I assume that this is averaged across the population for all sources. By this I mean that it is most likely restaurants which are the primary contributors. It's hard not to have waste when a restraurant is preparing for every eventuality on the menu. For example, if there are 5 sides to choose from and you are expecting 100 patrons, you need to make, you can't expect them all to sell evenly, so you prepare 30-40 of each instead. I imagine food waste in restaurants often approaches 50% of the food consumed. It is relatively easy to mivimize personal waste, but hardly anyone cooks anymore.

John Mertz

The science is in, the future is vegan. Knowing this, I have decided to unsubscribe from Kurzgesagt. It was fun whilst it lasted, but I can't support any popular analysis that publishes such a schizophrenic view on something as clear cut as eating animals. Wake me up when you get the memo on veganism and I'll re-subscribe.

Karlstens

Same, I've been doing something like a meatless day every couple weeks, but I'll have to up that frequency.

Alex Ortiz

I love the video (especially the numbers and facts) but I'm very disappointed by the drawn conclusion. We don't have to change our diet because we can wait for lab grown meat? This is morally absurd. Does that mean I also don't need to give up slaves because the robot workers are coming?

Sherbert

It varies a lot from country to country as well. A lot of the facts regarding animal welfare presented in this video is not relevant in my country (Norway), for example. That's not to say it's perfect or no room for improvement, far from it, but not every country has as inhumane farms as presented in this video. The best you can do for the environment and animal welfare is eating less meat in general. :)

Oh okay. Thankyou!

Will Lienert

Those are two separate attributes. Meat is calorie dense, which is good when you are starving, which is why we evolved to find it delicious. However, meat requires a lot of resources per calorie to create in a farming society, which is bad when this farming society takes up a significant portion of the planet's landmass.

Eric Roshan-Eisner

The opinion presented in video you linked is that humans are morally justified to treat animals however we want. First the author of this video (maddox) argues that humans are in some ways distinguished from the rest of the animals, fair enough. This begs the question whether these differences entitle us to treat animals as we please. Here maddox argues that humans are the only ones that can save animal species from extinction by asteroid and that therefore we’re entitled to do anything we want to animals. By that logic if there was an interplanetary species capable of protecting earth from certain extinction by another cosmic event from which we could not protect ourselves, wouldn’t they be morally justified to do whatever they wanted to humans? Also, wouldn’t it then be morally justified for people to torture their pets?

Or wrong. Who knows.

Grzegorz Kapica

That's a fair point! But even most vegans used to be meat eaters before they were told that abstaining from meat is an option with positive benefits for the environment (and animals). So it's always good to create awareness that this really is an option. But I agree that this video would be a great success if it motivated a large number of people to at least reduce their meat intake :)

Janik

I don't really think it's just about life (because then we might have to think about individual cells in our bodies too) but as I've said, about the range of possible experiences. That seems to be the thing we actually care about. A stone can't experience anything and if it could reproduce asexually and was made of cells that contain DNA that wouldn't change how we view it morally (which is why I think we can easily disregard bacteria: they don't have a range of possible experiences that we would eliminate if we were to kill them and we wouldn't induce any suffering in the process). Why should we care about how we treat other humans? Well, because they have a range of possible experiences. They can feel joy and suffering and by killing them, we would induce suffering (to them and their loved ones) but we would also take away a range of possible experiences. Similarly, if you killed someone's pet, no one would deny that this pet could have had a range of experiences (like joy) that you've just taken away from it. That's why a bacterium and a dog aren't on the same level, even if both are living beings. I think the main idea behind speciesism sums this up pretty nicely: "It's immoral to treat two living beings differently based on morally irrelevant differences". What is a morally relevant quality? I would say, it's the ability to suffer (and this seems to be confirmed when we think about why we treat other human beings with kindness and compassion rather than violence; it has little to do with their intelligence for instance, but rather their ability to suffer). Well, dogs, pigs, cows, can suffer just as much as humans (we have every reason to believe) and therefore it would be morally wrong to treat them differently based on morally irrelevant differences (like the morally irrelevant difference that they belong to a different species. Why is it irrelevant? Because it's only relevant that they can suffer, not that they are a pig or a dog or a cow... or a human. Of course very often it IS relevant, but when inducing suffering, it's irrelevant, because all of them have the capacity to suffer). That's my take on it. I hope that makes sense to you :) I would love to know if you disagree with any of this, I am always open for constructive discussion

Janik

I think people that are ready to completely abstain from meat already know how to do this. For me this video is clearly aimed at an audience who hasn't taken sides yet, and towards them it seems (and in my experience is) more effective to suggest a meat free day, than to suggest abstining. It's better for the world to have a lot(!) of people eating less meat than a few people eating no meat.

Emil Kampp

Damn. I just started a chicken diet, sort of. And while it might be one of the better meats for the environment, that mass slaughter of male chickens got to me.

It's kind of a tough question as most people base importance on contribution to the greater good, but this is often refering to the greater good of humans, I don't believe that any living thing is more important than another but with that mentality you can't be going and killing bacteria in your body. So I prefer to look at it as if I don't think they are less important than humans but at the end of the day it's wired in to our brains that we should do anything that benifits our survival. Most animals don't offer to our survival, and even know it is morally wrong in a lot of our minds, we kill them because it doesn't have any negative impact on our survival. But my question is why is a bacteriums life any less important than a humans life, and a lot of people will say this is a stupid question, bacteria isn't doing anything for the world, but as far as I know neither are we.

Will Lienert

This was an eye opening video, but I can't get my head around the fact that meat is so nutritionaly inefficient. What I don't get is why we like the taste of meat so much more than other foods. It must have an evolutionary benifit. Right?

Will Lienert

That pound of food per day statistic about food waste always makes me cringe. Thanks for another great video.

Science Mom

As someone who sometimes teaches environmental science, thanks for this clear video. The only issue that I have with the presentation is the implication that all grazing land could be converted to cropland, thereby allowing humans to eat lower on the food chain. As has been pointed out, some land that is presently grazing land could not produce human-edible crops, even with irrigation and fertilizer. Other than that, great video!

Ian Hecht

I love how you guys sell SkillShare, so well integrated into the video, absolutely masterful advertising!

Samuel Batista

I like how the pro-meat argument basically boiled down to "meat is awesome" - but treating that as a legitimate reason instead of a mocking point. Signed, an omnivore trying to eat a bit less meat.

Kirk Lane

Thank you! I'm extra glad now that I decided to sign up for a pastured meat CSA this summer. I won't get the first meat from it until November or December, but it's 5lb/month and the animals are treated well and are heritage breeds. I've been working on reducing my meat intake since I'm an ever-conflicted omnivore.

evistre

Can anybody find a reference for the claim at 2:05: up to 25kg of feed is required to make 1kg of beef? The figures I've seen online are between 3 and 7kg, this is the first time I've seen a figure that high, and can't find a reference to back it up.

Dan Kiwi

There are two things that I really admire about Kurzgesagt, the beautiful animation/production and even more than that, the even handed factual approach to divisive issues. There are not a lot of places that offer such a well researched unbiased dissemination of information, keep up the good work!

Stan Hartley

Yes, I suppose that's pretty much where we disagree. I agree that everything is ultimately meaningless, but I also think that it's possible to hold moral beliefs that contradict each other even if the ultimate basis of those beliefs are subjective (like accepting the statement "the worst possible misery for everyone is bad"). And that we should avoid such contradictions (like the contradiction of treating pigs and dogs so vastly different even though they have roughly the same capacity for suffering). I do however think that you can make objectively true inferences about morality as long as you accept this single statement and then you can objectively say that the suffering of 100 billion pigs/cows/chickens is objectively worse than satisfying the taste buds of 7 billion humans. (Again, I can really recommend the talk I have linked to above, even if you disagree with my moral stance on non-human animals). But yes, I agree that it was a good talk! Thanks!

Janik

Well, I guess you pretty much sumarised our contradicting points. I do sincerely believe that humans are in the peak of natural evolution, and as such, have the power to manage every inferior stament as we see fit. I guess we can end this discussion in a good note, though. I think we can agree that some ethics are set on feelings rather than from facts. And well, from a cosmic perception, everything is ultimately meaningless. This statement alone makes all morality as a whole to not have a logical ground. We can only depart from our perspective. It really all boils down to wether you sympathize with other species' pain more than the happiness that a well done steak brings to you. Mirror neurons vs oxytocin. Take a side and defend it, but I don't think there is much discussion to do from that. Anyways, good talk!

StormTiger

I'm sorry, I thought your "might is right" argument was your personal justification. I still 100% disagree with what you just said. There are moral reasons for why we treat other human beings the way we do and these moral reasons are grounded in objective facts: other humans beings have brains that are capable of generating experiences such as suffering which we subjectively label "bad". Other animals, however, ALSO have these brain functions and that is an objective fact. If we call the brain functions bad in humans (regardless of whether we do so for subjective reasons) then must also call these brain functions bad in other animals. And if we don't, then there is an objective moral contradiction. Of course you can logically make moral arguments against treating animals a certain way. If you think we can do this for humans and not animals, then this appears to me as hubistric anthropocentrism, and nothing else. What makes humans so special that we can make moral arguments on how to treat other humans but not other animals? Why are animals exempt from this even though our moral arguments are based on what brains do (e.g. suffering) and yet we can measure brain activity of these animals just as much as we can measure our brain activity. We can see the subjective response in animals when we induce suffering just as much as we can with other humans. I feel like you draw an artificial moral boundary between humans and non-human animals where none exists. Humans aren't located on some sacred peak of what nature can ever possibly hope to accomplish... humans are animals and we are linked to all other animals through evolution which also means that we can look at how our nervous system is related to other animals and what this means for experiences such as suffering (and we can study this objectively). Again, I can highly recommend this talk: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww</a> where some of these ideas are touched (e.g. you can make objective moral statements if you only accept that axiom that the "worst possible misery for everyone" is "bad" which I find a very interesting and convincing argument since you can then look at how certain brain activity leads to suffering and how certain brain states are objectively worse than others and what this must then mean for our moral arguments).

Janik

Although a bit controversial, my opinion on this matter can be summarised through this rather now old video: <a href="https://youtu.be/V4jZ_BV4MQ4?t=15s" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/V4jZ_BV4MQ4?t=15s</a>

Ayyy please don't strawman the point out of the question. It is obvious I'm talking about the way humans treat other beings. I won't extrapolate that to anything else. I feel like I need to say that I'm trying to justify why we are where we are, not that I personally, entirely agree with it. Setting that aside, it's fairly obvious that there are morals that have no logical, and much less scientifical origin. Killing is bad. But why? Why is inflicting, sooner than naturally, an inevitable state of existence frowned upon? There are some ethics that are set in stone. Don't steal, don't kill. Humans are superior than other sentient beings, which are superior to other non sentient beings. Again we, as a society, "naturally" empathisize with living beings that van experience pain, because it's something WE humans can experience too. Everything revolves around us. The fate of every single living being rests in our sloppy hands. That is why we consider ourselves the most important species. But you see, you can't argue for the protection of a, objectively speaking, "inferior" being while also rejecting your own superiority. And there we fall in a paradox. If we are superior, sure, we can protect them. Sure, we can take their lives in the swiftest and the most painless ways possible (which I try to support as much as I can, the industry right now IS fucked up). But no, you can't say that you do it for moral reasons. You do it out of pity and nothing else. Which is not bad at all, mind you! It just isn't based in a logical argument.

StormTiger

First time patreon. This comment section reads like a producers huddle more than a fan board lol. I’m always appreciative for the accessible education on uncommon topics you provide!

Ross Logan

Wow, if your basis of morality really is "because we can" then I simply hope that you don't extend this principle to other kinds of behaviors. Please don't treat other humans a certain way simply because you can. You really should take into account whether they can suffer (regardless of whether they're a human or a dog or a pig) and whether your actions induce suffering. And if you don't recognize that that's how we should think about morality, then I really don't see a point in arguing with you since rejecting the "might is right" mentality feels like ethics 101 to me. If we can't agree on that, then we won't find a common ground here. It was nonetheless an interesting discussion, thanks :)

Janik

Why are pigs in our tables and dogs besides it? Because we can. That's the answer. People ate dog food and pig foos. People ate all kinds of food, once. It has been statistically provem that herbivore meat tastes much better than carnivore meat. There are no ethic or morals behind that decision, just egocentrical subjectiveness. And here is the main point of my argument. Humans are egoistic. Humans are the best species in the world because the species who can decide which are the best in the world are, you guessed it, humans. We can't discuss logically a totally arbitrary decision made by every single individual. Uh oh, natural fallacy incoming, it turns out every being on Earth takes itself as the most important (for them). We can't ignore this as we can't disregard feelings, or necessities.

StormTiger

First of all, this is not about “in case of need”. Our default moral rules are never framed in “case of need” because we would obviously do a lot of stuff in extreme circumstances that we would never do (or allow others to do) in every day life. And for good reasons. It’s not necessary to eat meat for many (if not most) people around the world because they can easily get nutrients from other food sources. Furthermore, I don't see why "being as important as a human" is your be-all and end-all. This begs the question of why humans are so important in the first place and I think the answer is our capacity of having a wide range of mental experiences and given how closely related cows, pigs, dogs, cats, dolphins are to us, it would be irrational to deny that their capacity is close to ours regarding experiences that we give great moral weight (like pain), not just with animals, but with other human beings. The hypocrisy I see is petting a dog with one hand while eating a pork chop with the other, because this requires not only total ignorance about the neurobiology of these animals (pigs are just as much capable of feeling pain as dogs) but also total moral disregard for those qualities that give rise to moral consideration in the first place (if it's not the ability to suffer that makes us give moral considerations to other human beings and non-human animals including our pets, what is?). If you would never kill a dog (in normal non-extreme circumstances where your survival doesn't depend on it) for its meat but have no problem having people kill pigs and cows for you, then I think there's a moral contradiction (and possibly some knowledge gaps in biology) that require examination.

Janik

I can assure you that in case of need, I would eat dogs or cats if there are no other means of consumption. I can agree, based on what I just said, that we could classify living beings in "living priority", which we already do, by the way. But at no point an animal, plant or cell will be as important as a human. Legally or ethically. Assuming this, there are no clear lines to draw regarding animal rights without falling in hypocrisy.

StormTiger

But then one might ask: Do you also eat dogs and cats? What about dolphins? If they get some of your moral considerations, it might be interesting to explore why they do and why pigs and cows don't. What gives another human being moral consideration in the first place? I think it's the range of experiences that that being is capable of having (including pain). Dogs have a far greater range of possible experiences (including pain) than a mosquito which is exactly why dogs get far more of our moral consideration. As you can see, you don’t need to draw a line because it’s a spectrum. A spectrum of possible experiences. And I think that all vertebrates that humans currently consume have such a great range of possible experiences that I would consider it wrong to kill them (or pay someone else to kill them for me). Edit: Btw, I can really recommend these two talks: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0VrZPBskpg&vl=en" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0VrZPBskpg&vl=en</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww." rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww.</a>

Janik

Good video! I only wanted to say that not all farming land is able to grow vegetables for human consumption. There's a lot of so-called farming land, specially in arid and sub-arid zones, that is only suitable for goat pasture. We tend to have a very "all the world has got a temperate and humid climate" view of the world.

Francisco Vilariño

Well, I have to disagree. It IS really a "yes or no" answer. Wether a species is as important as humans or there are none. NOW, we can discuss that there are beings that we regard in more value than others. There is no comparison between a mosquito and a dog. Or is it? (*VSauce theme*) The thing is, where do we draw the line of morality between species? Beings that can experience pain? But why exactly that? Is not killing an irrelevant being just as bad as a sentient one? Why do we put there the difference between moral or inmoral? That's why I don't put a line at all. Everyone is welcome in my stomach. No discrimination.

StormTiger

Great video! though I think you should have made it more explicit that abstaining from meat and other animal products entirely is also an option. Of course it's not the only option. Reducing the amount of meat intake is a great start and buying only organic meat is better than buying meat from factory farms. But as you've said yourself, if everyone bought only organic meat, the resource problem wouldn't be fixed, it would become even worse since more resources are necessary. But other than that, really informative and beautifully animated, as always.

Janik

I feel like they made it quite clear that they were talking about suffering in living beings and since plants can't suffer, it wasn't really necessary to include them in their moral considerations. Also, I think your question of "whether other species' lives are as important to ours" and that there's only two possibilities is a false dichotomy. Of course there are reasons to stop eating meat even if your answer is no. I don't think an animal's life has to be classified either as "as important as a human life" or "not as important as a human life". It appears to be a spectrum based on the range of experiences that that living being is capable of experiencing (humans have a much greater range than pigs, sure, but pigs arguably have a greater range of possible experiences than fish, etc.). The world isn't just black and white.

Janik

Pretty solid video! While most of the information was presented in a clean, factual way, I still encountered a couple of allusions. First, the video tries to question the lack of morality of killing animals, classifying them as "living beings" while completely disregarding the fact that plants are living beings aswell. Later, we are presented with the dilemma of putting animals together in an unnatural way. I don't think I nedd to explain the natural fallacy here. It could be easily countered by saying that humans naturally eat meat, and naturally want to distribute it in the most effective way possible. The real problem sits in wether other species' lifes are as important as ours. If you answer no, there is no real reason to stop eating meat. If you answer yes, well crap, I have bad news for you. Overall, nice video like always. Just wanted to add my 2 cents.

StormTiger

Dude. I felt like trash while watching. I guess a meatless day is due.

Andres Gonzalez

even if the information is hard to swallow, you produce high quality videos about it. Thank you!

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