How to Make a Nation of Meat Eaters Crave the Humble Bean
How to Make a Nation of Meat Eaters Crave the Humble Bean
When it comes to food, pleasure is what changes the world.
However, no one is born loving hot dogs or disliking broccoli and Brazil nuts; our food preferences are learned.
30This is one study. Both the author of this article and you should not be so quick to draw strong conclusions.
For instance, the idea that early humanoids took the form of "cavemen" who ate a ton of meat is debated, and largely built on assumptions made from finding hunting tools.
More recent evidence of the oldest known fossilized human feces has shown very amounts of dietary fiber - much more than our modern diet. The amount of meat eaten in the USA today is not historically common.
82nd reply, because when I wrote my first one, your reply was just the first line.
For instance, the idea that early humanoids took the form of โcavemenโ who ate a ton of meat is debated, and largely built on assumptions made from finding hunting tools.
I think they were highly seasonal. You had periods where you could gather a lot fruit and plants to eat, your hunting season and your "bare" season where you had to rely on surpluse and preservation. Diet would be highly variable depending on where and when and what resources and technologies were availbible.
The amount of meat eaten in the USA today is not historically common.
Not on average, for sure. But as I said in my first replies, there are examples of early communities that lived almost entirly of meat. Not even a side of fries.
2Yeah, it's just one study but it's part of a bigger picture.
Once humanity discovered fire and basic techniques for preservation it became viable for groups of people to work together and produce a surpluse of highly nutritious food and the ability to store it for later. And the majority of very early human history is centred around either hunting or fishing communities. That's how most humans lived before we eventually came up with agriculture, which was just around 10.000 years ago. We were hunter-gatheres for like 200.000, maybe much longer. That's a timespan that allows for minor gentic adaptations like that, especially if there is a strong evolutionary pressure. Some extreme example would be early civisations in the arctic regions, which sometimes entirly depened on one food source (very often seals).
So I'm pretty confident in saying that taste not just "learned behavior". Of course there are genetic factors involved, it would be aburd if there weren't. We are just animals afterall.
2
However, no one is born loving hot dogs or disliking broccoli
But we ARE! Doesn't anyone remember the whole kerfuffle about the 'bitter' gene and PTC sensitivity?
8This is plain false.
4Cooked doesn't have to mean meat.
-3I'm sure there are also preferences towards other cooked foods, but the study I linked is specifically talking about cooked meat.
18
Just make falafel. A good falafel wrap is just delicious on its own. Deep fried chickpeas. Absolutely amazing.
21I've had some amazing black bean burgers, and they opened my eyes to how awesome beans can be.
A great food experience is crucial to letting people see that it's not so bad cutting back on meat.
11Black beans with bulger and spices, miam miam!
It does not do well on a grill, though, so be warned
1
I was at a comic con where when you wanted a burger or something you had to wait in line for like 30 minutes. They also had. A stand with vegan wraps. I don't know exactly what was in it, but i think it's some sort of fried chickpeas. It was one of the best things i ever ate, and there was no pine at all.
5
Make them pay full price of meal and inspect factories?
Beef patty would triple in cost.
17I had the argument with my sister that meat and dairy is too cheap. She looked at me like she tried to kill me. I pay 3 times as much for oar milk as she does for regular milk. Milk, the thing you beed a cow for, go through all kinds of machines, labour testing whatever. Compared to basically water and oat. The dried meat she buys is cheaper by a good bit than the dried beets that i buy. I wanna see people shit their pants when a steak is 50 bucks while whatever the plant based alternative is a dollar.
13
A good place to start might be to look at the huge number of ethnic dishes built around beans. People around the world have been inventive in this regard for centuries.
For the North American diet, it would help if fast food offered more bean options. There's Taco Bell and the like, I guess. And hummus and falafel are working their way into places that sell wraps. But while burger joints are increasingly offering veggie burgers that are presumably using some kind of bean or pea-based protein, I wonder why they don't try offering a chili? We have a chilli festival where I live and it's hugely popular with around half the recipes being bean-based.
15Lemmy is the perfect demographic for such an article.
13People already eat fucking tons of beans. Wtf is this non-article?
9I think that holds internationally, but the USA eats a massive amount of meat and less beans comparatively.
8
Make bean memes great again!
6Can we just have landlords instead? /j
3Idea scratchpad:
- Hire celebrities and late night talk show hosts to endorse the product and/or do skits about the product
- Incentivize the product by offer pairing, example: offer free donut or free burger and fries along with product
- Schedule airtime for industry experts to proselytize the product's efficacy
- Offer different versions of product from loosely "competing" vendors. The natural human tendency to form tribes will carry the promotion of said product.
- Overtly threaten your potential consumers: "If you don't consume <Humble Bean> then you're going to lose your means of income!"
- Tie the consumption of product to their natural rights, while sneakily rebranding rights simply as "privileges" that can be revoked in response to product refusal.
These aren't my own ideas. I'm just borrowing them from some experts in the field.
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