I seem to remember reading somewhere that bacterial counts can be 26 times higher in cooked food than raw, before it's detectable by taste or smell; evidently evolution hasn't had enough time to tune our senses for detecting the quality of cooked proteins!
Sounds suspicious to me. OK, so maybe if you cook your meat in spices, you can't smell the bugs as easily. But cooking kills bugs, most spices kill bugs, salt stops bugs growing and you don't keep cooked meat for long enough for the surviving, or new bacteria to multiply to dangerous levels. If you had a credible reference for the claim I wouldn't be as suspicious.
you don't keep cooked meat for long enough for the surviving, or new bacteria to multiply to dangerous levels
Then why, when I was growing up, did they have all those "you'll be sorry" commercials about not leaving your cooked food out on the counter for more than a couple hours?
OK, so maybe if you cook your meat in spices, you can't smell the bugs as easily.
It's got nothing to do with spices. Compare the smell of room temperature raw meat and cooked meat, left out for a couple hours: the cooked meat emits very little scent, period, while ...
I have noticed that among philosophers, vegetarianism of one form or another is quite common. In fact, I became a vegetarian (technically a pescetarian) myself partly out of respect for an undergraduate philosophy professor. I am interested in finding out if there is a similar disproportion in the Less Wrong community.
I didn't request that this go into Yvain's survey because I want more information than just what animal products you do or don't eat; I'd also like to see nuances of the reasons behind your diet. There are a lot more shades than carnivore/vegetarian/vegan - if you want to be a vegetarian but are allergic to soy and gluten, that's a compelling reason to diversify protein sources, for instance. I'd also like to hear about if you avoid any plant foods (if you think they're farmed in a way that's environmentally destructive or that hurts people or if you have warm fuzzy feelings for plants, maybe). Here are some questions that come to mind: