I gave up on ethical consumption, and I want to explain why.
I don't come from a particularly wealthy family, and I work an ordinary job. But when I was a teenager, I spent a surprising amount of time thinking about ethical consumption. I'm not even sure what initially pushed me toward it. We hear about the problems of consumerism and exploitation all the time, and this isn't exactly a new issue.
Whenever I saw news about labor exploitation in manufacturing, for example in the clothing industry, I obviously didn't support it. Especially as a worker myself, the idea of someone being exploited to produce something I buy has always bothered me.
For a long time, I tried to buy only from so-called responsible or ethical producers and to avoid mass-market brands whenever possible.
Eventually, I realized that I simply cannot afford to live this way.
I understood this particularly well a few months ago, when I decided that I wanted to become vegetarian for ethical reasons and stop eating meat. I quickly ran into a very practical problem: a lot of the products marketed toward vegetarians are simply too expensive for me.
There is a bio supermarket in my city where I can barely afford to buy anything. The prices are genuinely enormous from my perspective. Looking around, I often get the impression that the people shopping there are considerably wealthier than I am.
I already know someone will want to tell me that being vegetarian can be cheap. I'm not interested in arguing about that. I'm just describing my own situation. I don't feel properly fed by eating salads, and meat is one of the cheapest and most practical sources of calories and protein available to me. Grains, meat and other basic foods make up the foundation of my diet.
Clothing is much the same. I simply cannot afford to buy clothes exclusively from ethical or sustainable brands. Sometimes H&M is what I can afford, and that's the end of the discussion.
And I don't say this to make some dramatic statement about how poor I am. My point is something else:
If you are poor, ethical consumption is often not realistically available to you.
And yet modern society constantly encourages us to feel guilty about our consumption.
Don't buy this. Don't eat that. Don't use plastic. Don't buy fast fashion. Buy organic. Buy sustainable. Buy ethically sourced. Check where everything was produced.
But why does so much of the responsibility fall on the consumer rather than the producer?
Am I really responsible for more plastic waste than Coca-Cola? Is my decision to buy a cheap T-shirt more important than the industrial system that produces millions of them? Why are individual consumers constantly asked to make morally perfect choices while companies are allowed to structure the entire market around making those choices difficult or unaffordable?
I don't think ethical consumption is inherently meaningless. I understand why people want to make better choices, and I don't think exploitation or environmental destruction should simply be accepted.
But I've started questioning the idea that the burden of solving these problems should primarily be placed on individual consumers.
Because if the ethical option is only affordable to people who already have enough money, then ethical consumption isn't really an individual moral choice available to everyone.
It's a privilege.
I don't want to argue about this. And it's not because I don't know much about the subject or because there are certain products I'm unfamiliar with. First of all, I just find Asian food difficult to eat; I prefer Central European cuisine.
Secondly, I do eat things like rice, of course. But I can't just eat rice by itself. I don't know whether your culture has this concept or not, but in my mind, there should be a main component, which is basically some kind of grain or starch, such as rice, potatoes, buckwheat, bulgur, or something similar. Then there should be something that complements it and gives the dish its main flavor, and that part is harder to substitute. Usually, for me, that's meat.
Then there's a separate category: salads. They're served in a separate bowl, and that's it. Ideally, there should also be dessert at the end.
And, you know, just eating rice by itself somehow feels... well, you know. I don't want to go into this in detail because I don't want to turn it into a whole culinary debate. I consider this a very personal matter.
The entire comment you're responding to was almost nothing but recommendations for ingredients that would fit this purpose.
Choices which have victims are not "personal matters"
I'm talking about taste preferences. Chill
Your taste preferences have no bearing on what is ethically justifiable.
By all accounts, humans taste a lot like pigs. If I killed you and cooked you, you would be delicious. Would that justify my doing so?
First of all, you're talking nonsense. Secondly, you completely misunderstood what I'm talking about. Sorry, mute.
What was the nonsense in Kefla's comment?
Engaging in the commodificiation of suffering beings is a preference to inflict more suffering, not just taste. I don't usually argue with carnists but your arguments in support of eating meat are not consistent.
What does this even mean
"Central european cuisine" enjoyers be like
Don't want to pile on to OP so I'll just add this here
Come on
They already deleted their account so rip
not good posting but damb
Calling for a complete and total ban on weird bad posting until we can figure out what the hell is going on.
HAVE YOU SEEN A WEIRD BAD POST?
Cornsider this:
You may be dealing with…
AN AUTISTIC TEENAGER
PROCEED WITH CAUTION!
Some actual thoughts
I was a bit hesitant to make my own comment in the pile-on, and now that the user is deleted I'm thinking, "Damn, did we overdo it? Am I culpable?" — Alas, it can be hard to find the balance between people's right to be upset, and not letting that right turn into just, like, bullying people. OP was being a self-serving sophist with speciesist and racist brainworms who refused to take any criticism whatsoever por la buena o por la mala, which is a sign that OP probably would've just started doing wrecker stuff here if left unchecked, so it would've been best for OP to leave Hexbear early anyways; but at the same time, y'know, like this?Yeah this is why I avoided directly piling on.
Are you memeing right now? Gammon spotted
Asian food is like... A huge variety of cuisines
Have you never heard of vegetables? Herbs? Spices? Unless you are just eating plain meat with no additions of any kind then my friend your dishes "main flavour" is not coming from the meat.
I say this as a carnist - It really does sound like you're not familiar with 'real' vegetarian cooking. Which is fine, a lot of people aren't, you just should realise it. You're referencing "salads" and "plain rice" and meat subsitutes as if these are staple vegetarian dishes - they're not.
My immediate thought to all your objections is Beans beans BEANS.
Significantly cheaper and often as proteinous as meat. I'll be amazed if there isn't some variant of cheap bean/pulse/legume you don't enjoy. Chickpeas, frozen edamame, lentil, pinto, cannelini, black beans - you can buy all of these, dried, for absolutely bugger all. I love all of them and they're fantastic food.
My latest obsession is dried lentils - Boil 'em down to a mush, throw in various spices, veg if you want, some kind of fat, basically anything else, ugh it's godly. I've basically re-invented the western version of a tadka dahl.
This and same. I did my best to be vegetarian and only really stopped because of health reasons (My copper was above 200 for a bit and high starts at 50. Guess what has a lot of copper? Tofu, chickpeas, etc. It was terrible) and I became the only in a house full of people. Which is a whole thing on top of disabilities to manage. I still when I can avoid meat when I can and certainly don't touch red meat. Honestly no idea how people aford beef.
I will say back in my propaganda day I thought people only eat salads too. I originally went vegetarian to try and change my eating habits to force myself to try new things. Though, god damn I don't know how I would of managed back in SE OK if you don't grow your own produce. Its a god damn fucking meat nightmare down there. I saw someone talk about just walking to your local Asian Market. Unless you are driving 3 hours thats probably not happening unless something changed in that area. When I was in college the Asian Market honestly saved my whole Vegetarian life style at the time. That and Mexican food.
It would appear that the audience has started throwing assorted fruits and vegetables at you. Grab a net and see how much you can save on your grocery shopping!
I eat a lot of rice and never eat it on its own I always add a protein and some vegetables or gravy
so you can't be vegetarian because its expensive or because you want the taste of meat? you are contradicting yourself and not approaching the subject with an open mind
okay a lot of which is vegetarian anyhow because meat used to be a rare occasion up until sometimes the 70s and a lot of is is also really easy to make vegetarian with no expensive ingredients.
My culture certainly does have this concept. We eat rice and flat bread usually with stir fried veggies, boiled veggies in broth, or with lentil/beam soup.
If you categorically rule out entire continents from your eating, then uh, idk what to tell you. In theory you could try to europeanise Asian cooking. It's basically what I do since I'm living alone and don't have the time to follow my mother's recipes to the letter.