Junduk said:
After I found out the story behind the palm plantations for the production of palm oil I made it my personal mission to completely throw it out of my life.

delayedregistration replied:
"Palm oil is the biggest reason for massive deforestation around the world. South America and Southeast Asia (Indonesia in particular) are producing the most. There are moratoriums on new palm oil plantations, but companies are skirting that issue by paying individuals to start forest fires so that the companies can then buy up the land that is no longer a forest. Deforestation is destroying habitats for animals like orangutans and tigers. And all of the burnings of the forest are also burning peat. Peat is essentially forest detritus that house huge amounts of C02. By burning it we are quickly releasing all of that C02 into the atmosphere. Worst of all, the plantations are only good for one or two cycles, then the land is essentially discarded, and new plantations are made. In my opinion, palm oil production is the greatest ecological disaster in history. It is nearly everything, and essentially impossible to avoid. There are so many different names for it, so it can go unnoticed so easily. Even the supposedly sustainable palm oil production is extremely damaging to the environment it is grown in."

Junduk , delayedregistration Report

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promise_me_jetpacks said:
"Fast fashion. Even a conservative estimate puts that industry as the 5th biggest polluter, globally. Just stop it."

XxsquirrelxX replied:
"Fashion is honestly one of the worst industries out there, up there with electronics and industrial farming. But unlike those other two, we don’t really need it at the scale it’s at right now. Pollution is just the tip of the iceberg, the part we can see and are personally impacted by. What we don’t see is the child labor used to make it, the subtly injected unhealthy body standards in the advertising, the animal abuse for fur when synthetic fur is no different and actually cheaper, and just how much the consumer is influenced to overconsume. I mean who in their right mind would really care about the difference between fall fashion and winter fashion if the advertising didn’t tell us we needed to buy it to make people like us?"

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gonewithfire said:
"Foie Gras."

Sirnando138 replied:
"As a young cook, I worked a few weeks at a farm that belonged to a friend of the chef I was working for. They wanted me to help with all the things to gain a larger respect for the many items we served at our place. Had to kill a few animals while there. Pigs and several fowl. Those were sad to do. One day, I had to work the pump on the ducks and geese being raised for foie. What a strange and emotional experience. I felt bad for them. A few of them didn’t mind it too much but most had to be restrained. It was the worst job I had to do there."

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throwawayannon8675 said:
"People always point at Apple for exploiting Chinese labor but don’t realize that pretty much every company does the same thing and most of them use the exact same factory as Apple. It’s called “Foxconn” not “Apple”. They make everything."

XxsquirrelxX replied:
"Foxconn literally built nets around their factories because workers kept jumping off the roofs. Yeah, a suicide net around a factory. You know conditions are bad when people would rather die than work there."

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"The batteries for electric cars. Approximately 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined by children in the Congo, and cobalt is a vital ingredient in electric car batteries. However, companies like Tesla are attempting to find a way to make batteries without cobalt, but no solutions have been found yet."

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"Not really a product but if people knew how much and often people cut corners in construction, I think housing prices would go wayyyy down. I don't think I was ever on a job where a problem came up, and people were like, "Okay, let's start over and do this right." Or, especially in bigger construction companies, how much time the employees waste running the clock.

Edit: Guys trust me when I say I have put my sweat and blood into the industry. My hands are callused. I'm still working class and it wasn't my intention to call out people that do this stuff as 'lazy' or whatever else. Most people doing these jobs are extremely underpaid, and on top of being underpaid, they're putting their bodies and health on the line every single day. I almost lost a finger, twice. I've almost had a whole granite slab fall on me for 11$/hr. I probably would've died. And many more situations I won't get into. Don't take it out on the workers. Just try your best to work with a smaller company that isn't working 50 jobs at once and has a supervisor/owner around to watch what's going on."

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"I really don't think there is one. If it's because the ingredients or preparation are disgusting, I think most people are perfectly happy to keep eating/using it because the finished product is fine. If it's a moral reason, I just don't think most people would care enough to stop using or eating whatever the product is. We've known for years that Air Jordans are being made with child labor in sweatshops, and sales haven't dipped one bit due to that. And I don't say this as a cynic, I think we should work to improve conditions for all humanity, but the proportion of consumers who would be bothered enough to stop buying a thing is vanishingly small."

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"Foam hand soap. It’s a quarter liquid soap and three-quarters water. It uses a special pump to turn it into foam. Very clever packaging. You're paying the same amount or more for a quarter of the amount of actual soap."

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slashd said:
"Diamonds."

XxsquirrelxX replied:
"I remember seeing ads for chocolate diamonds. Do you know what chocolate diamonds used to be? The waste. An impure diamond that wasn’t considered fit for sale, until some evil genius at Kay HQ figured out that women are stereotyped as loving chocolate, so all they had to do was rebrand the garbage diamond as a “chocolate diamond” and jack that price way up. Hopefully one day we finally colonize that planet made entirely of diamonds so we can tell the diamond industry to go fu*k itself. Both the producer and the consumer get screwed. The whole industry is a scam built on our perceived need to give loved ones gifts so that they’ll love us."

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"Jello is a meat product masquerading as dessert."

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"Monster energy drinks. I have been to their bottling warehouse (I was in college with some guys who became chemists for them while I was working on my doctorate). Some defect in one of the machines caused a bunch of cans to leak. The wood pallets underneath disintegrated like wet paper. Further, the maintenance crew was on a cleaning rotation. They told me that the Monster tanks do not get cleaned unless there is so much buildup that it changes the taste. This is because it is so caustic that bacteria and mold don't survive."

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"Phones. People would still buy phones, but probably demand that their phones be made from materials not mined by child slaves in the democratic republic of the Congo. The miners can be as young as four, get paid as little as a dime(in American value), and work 12 hours a day, all to mine the cobalt(60% of the global supply) that makes (batteries?). I don’t know all the facts, too lazy to read threw all the articles, but I’ve heard things from miners who refuse to work(including children) get limbs chopped off, to 24-hour shifts in deep dark tunnels. It’s a great way to hate the phone that you're probably holding while reading this."

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"Dasani in the UK. Once people figured out it was just the same tap water just “purified” and resold to them they stopped buying it. Tom Scott has a great video on what happened."

carlinares , Tom Scott Report

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"Tropical Fruit! After Spain ceded control of their territories in South America, the U.S. invaded several SA counties to secure access to the Panama Canal and farmland ripe for confiscation and sale to fruit companies. People were slaughtered, dictators propped up, railroads laid, and mangos exported. These Banana Wars were some of the most blatant acts of American Imperialism since Manifest Destiny. Many of these countries still haven't economically recovered (some tired but got coupled), and the Chiquita Bananas you buy today are grown on that legacy, still unseparated."

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"Turkey bacon. It markets itself as a healthier bacon alternative but it is actually a horrifying extruded meat product. It's the hot dog of breakfast."

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DudeGuyVR said:
"A lot of perfumes are made out of musk glands that come from deer. They are killed in order to get it and it’s not pleasant. Also, some vanilla flavoring uses a liquid that comes out from the base of a beaver's tail. It’s not a pleasant experience for them either."

TheWaystone replied:
"Those products are extraordinarily expensive, both castorum and ambergris (you could call it whale vomit), are used in high-end perfumes. Trust me, that bottle of Axe that's been in your bathroom contains no natural ingredients. Musk deer are what musk comes from - if you've ever heard a scent described as musky, it's thanks to them. Almost no musk deer are used for producing musky scents any longer (frankly artificial versions are just as good), they seem to most often be killed for traditional medicines use."

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"Fish sauce. The base for many many Thai dishes. Fish is fermented for 6 months with salt until it breaks down into a thick slurry. It is then strained in the sun and after that stored in containers for years. But you know what, it is delicious and I'm eating it forever."

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"Viscose. I wanted to make myself a viscose dress and thought it was a good idea because it's cotton and it must be as eco-friendly as possible. Turned out viscose production creates tons of waste and is really, really bad for the environment. Needless to say, I'm choosing another fabric."

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"Anyone who enjoys sausage and respects the law should never find out how either is made."

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"Pickles. I am a forklift mechanic and one of our clients is Mrs. Klein’s pickles. They use giant outside vats for pickling and NONE of the vats have any sort of covering on top. Open to the elements. In the Arizona heat. One time when I was on a service call out there I decided to walk up onto the little catwalk where the workers go up to stir the mixture. When I looked in the first one I saw a dead cat(100% ferel), multiple dead rats, and more bugs than I could possibly count. About threw up right there. To this day I haven’t eaten a single pickle and I will DEFINITELY not be eating Mrs. Klein’s product ever again."

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"Grocery store food. Even the “fresh” stuff. Not how it’s made, but how it gets to you. I worked as a picker in a grocery warehouse that serves seven states. Trainees get the night shift. 20 years ago, it paid $13/hr for four 10-hour days per week (6:30 pm to 5 am with an unpaid “dinner” break). Meat juice everywhere. The “wet aisle” sometimes flooded. With gray water. But all the rotting fallen vegetable matter made it a dark brown sludge that smelled like a sewer. The regular floor was concrete... under an eighth of an inch of pallet jack grease, tire residue, and general filth that resembled a solid mat of rubber. Did anything fall? Pick it up, and throw it on the jack. You’re evaluated on your number picked per hour, and your wrong picks... no time to clean up. If a container busts, there’s a repacking room. And no, they don’t wash anything. And this doesn’t even cover the injuries and another insanity. So many stories... Always wash your vegetables."

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throwaway36295224 said:
"Fruit smoothies. People think they're getting their daily dose of fruit, but that's mostly ice, yogurt, and high-sugar juice with only a few pieces of solid fruit. Source: I work at Boost."

Reddit user replied:
"Same. Worked at a place called “Blenders.” I would tell everyone that what they’re getting is essentially a dessert/ice cream shake. See, you had yogurt it sounds, as your primary ingredient (we did too, but it was used more as a different choice), but ours was “ice milk”, which was basically ice cream."

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"This reminds me of a documentary series my dad once watched. Garlic. The garlic industry is a hell of a lot darker than most people would think. I don't remember everything, but apparently, a lot of Chinese companies that sell to restaurants overseas use prison labor. These inmates have to peel the garlic completely by hand, with no tools whatsoever. There were a few inmates missing fingernails. If I recall correctly, one man said that he had a friend who had to resort to using his teeth because he didn't have any nails left. They work unimaginably grueling shifts, in which they have to meet a quota for the day or face consequences. They get paid very little if anything at all. They all seemed so miserable. The series is titled "Rotten", you can find it on Netflix."

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hi_im_a_coffeeholic said:
"Mica products. I watched a documentary about mica mines in areas where child labor tends to be exploited and the interviewer asked this girl about her experience and she described how her sister died in the mine and she's still working there. Mica is in almost all beauty products and due to the change of hands it can be hard to determine if natural mica is actually ethically sourced. However, after watching some soap-making videos, I've discovered that Mad Mica sells sparkly stuff that neither puts children at risk nor destroys the environment with microplastics. For those who want their cake and want to eat it too."

akemikemss replied:
"I watched this Refinery29 video and was compelled to go through every makeup product I own. It takes a lot of research to find ethical or synthetic makeup products nowadays."

hi_im_a_coffeeholic , Refinery29 Report

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"Menopausal people, if your doctor tries to prescribe you Premarin, ask for an alternative! The hormones in this drug are extracted from pregnant mare urine (it’s in the name, don’t have to look too hard). These horses are tied in a straight stall, hooked up to collection devices without adequate room to move or lay down. Once the foals are born, they are re-bred as soon as possible to continue the collection cycle. What happens to the foals? Some get sold/adopted to loving homes, the rest get shipped off to become IKEA meatballs. They’re just a byproduct all in the name of getting rid of your hot flashes. (Not a crazy PETA vegan, I just own a 21-year-old cast off from this industry who has had a lot of issues to work through as a result of his early life experiences.)"

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"Food. As an old, ex waiter most people would be shocked at how their food is prepared and the lack of quality/effort that goes into it. I’m not covering fine dining as I never worked in those establishments. I’m referencing the average dining experience for most people (ex Olive Garden, Applebee’s, you’re a local sports bar, etc.) everything was low cost and low quality. Watch the movie “Waiting” for an example, 80% of that goes on at an average chain restaurant."

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"Not exactly a product, but certain legal services. A lot of times lawyers are just filling in blanks from a template when drafting documents, and many problems can be resolved with a two-minute online search if you know where to look. If the public had the knowledge of and access to the resources available to lawyers, there's an awful lot people could figure out for themselves. Of course, that's not to say it's a good idea to DIY a legal matter if you don't know exactly what you're doing. Just that the prices people pay for certain legal services aren't commensurate with the amount of time and effort they actually take the lawyer to complete.

I am a lawyer myself, and I'll echo others' comments by saying that you can seriously screw yourself or your loved ones over by doing even something as simple as a will incorrectly. In matters above a certain level of complexity, it would be insane to even consider representing yourself. The point still remains that my clients might think twice about how much they paid me if they watched me draft their deed in six minutes."

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djdat said:
"Processed meats. Some of it is truly nasty. Most people don't think twice before shoving that burger in their mouths."

XxsquirrelxX replied:
"Eh, I don’t think the main issue lies with how it’s made. It essentially reduces waste. Pig snouts don’t sound appetizing but hey if someone wants to eat that, go ahead, less wasted pig and more full bellies. The real issue is how insanely unhealthy they can be with all the additives and sodium."

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RedditDevoursSouls said:
"Honey. I'm thinking of the process of converting it, done by bees."

Reddit user replied:
"Store-bought honey. I live in a rural town where a cowboy sells honey he harvested himself. I asked how he tames the bees, and he said he's never had to use a smoking gun or anything. Beekeeping runs in his family and he's been doing it for years, so I guess the bees trust him. Natural honey tastes better than any store-bought bottle I've ever had."

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"Certain signed artwork. Used to work at an art printing company where we did signature editions of certain pieces. Guess who did the signing me and some coworkers, we were all design and art majors so they just had us learn all the artist's signatures, we even had machines that could mimic the signatures too, I wish I had a picture of the devices they were pretty cool. It was in the fine print that we were doing it and was approved by the artists but I guarantee most people would never buy the prints if they knew the signatures were forged. So always read the fine print when buying items, especially "special" editions of stuff."

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todunsinane said:
"Silk."

dreadedxalchemy replied:
"Extracting raw silk starts by cultivating the silkworms on mulberry leaves. Once the worms start pupating in their cocoons, these are dissolved in boiling water..."

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Mroder1 said:
"I’ve worked in 2 different meat departments in 2 separate grocery stores. The meat in the case that has had work done, (marinated or like put into kabobs) is usually the old meat we didn’t sell that is about to go bad. That marinade is hiding how sh*tty the meat looks."

Reddit user replied:
"That bright red color is from carbon monoxide gas treatments and food coloring additives like Red #40, and lycopene extract. The actual color of the meat is dark reddish purple within an hour after removal from the carcass. Basically, ANY meat that is red is fake."

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"Mirrors. It involves sending miners into deep arctic caves to retrieve the element Mirrorium. It's a crystal in its natural state and apparently, you could make a 10' x 10' mirror out of just a "pen tip" sized amount. I'm obviously making this up because I don't know how mirrors are made and they scare me."

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"Most low to mid-tier vodkas. I work at an industrial distillery where we make millions of gallons of very high-purity ethanol from corn. We have customers in the beverage market that literally just dilute our product to 80-proof or so, run it through a filter, and bottle it to sell. Those customers sell their products for anywhere from $8-$50+ for a liter. And you know what the main difference is? The more expensive vodka’s bottle is “fancier”. It’s almost all brand perception with these corn-based vodkas."

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"Fresh juices are not so fresh apparently. A friend whose family owns a mango orchard told me these companies buy the leftover stock that doesn't sell directly and leave the rest to strong artificial flavoring for uniform taste."

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"My job is to fumigate grains with phosphene. Wheat, barley, and oats are all susceptible to rusty grain beetle and weevil infestation. We are talking lbs of insects in a 600-ton bin. Well I gas those suckers and there are no means of removing them, so off to the mill, they go to make your bread. The gas itself is depleted by the atmosphere so it leaves zero traces behind, just 100s of thousands of little Beatles to enrich your food with a bit of protein. I’m assuming “the O natural” bread you all love is even extra spicy! Less processing. Now not all grain is infested but it does happen when the conditions are just right, I’m proud to say we do a great job of keeping the bugs to a minimum in my facility."

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"Coffee and cockroaches are linked in several ways..."

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"RVs. They aren’t insulated fully. Nothing is sealed correctly. All the electronics that are “fancy and new” are outdated and inefficient. The manufacturers use the cheapest materials possible AND all RVs are built in 8 hours. A vacation home. On wheels. In 8 hours!?"

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MasterMirror92 said:
"Parmesan cheese. An essential ingredient in its production is calf rennet, a mixture of enzymes produced only in young nursing calves."

Reddit user replied:
"I remember seeing a ParmesanGate video about the counterfeit Parmesan market -- the import part being only the cows in Italy have the bacteria in their bodies, which then ends up in the milk they produce, which is used to make authentic Parmesan cheese. If you're already eating cheese, I don't feel this is too gross of a stretch."

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"There’s an exhibit in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago that turned me off to store-bought lemon tarts completely. It was an exhibit of white powders. No fruit. Nothing is made in a lab. Once I found out how much Hugh fructose corn syrup is in pecan pie, I stopped eating it."

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FundyFisher said:
"Gelatine."

FundyFisher replied:
"Imagine a giant vat filled with thousands of pig skins, being melted with chemicals (think breaking bad, body in a barrel) the protein is melted away from all the other bits and pieces and separated. The protein is cleaned and deodorized, this is gelatine. The rest is animal goo that gets dumped out. They do this process with bones, cow parts, horse parts, and fish skins too, but multiple animals are never melted together, it’s a gelatine factory, not a barnyard."

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Cozmicshade said:
"KFC Mac n’ cheese. I worked there 16 years ago when I was 14 and have never once been slightly inclined to go near it."

Cozmicshade replied:
"In order to serve you have to peel off an inch of burnt grease and it comes off like a piece of rubber. It’s baked Mac n’ cheese and the grease cooks out and burns on top. And to get through it on the sides you have to hammer a spatula with your other hand to get through it."

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"Crab chips. The one you get from an Asia shop or restaurant. They boil crabs while they are alive. This produces a lot of foam on top of the boiling water. It gets separated, pressed into chip form, and dried. After I knew that I stopped eating them."

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"Soft Served Frozen Yogurt. Every day you scrape off a few inches of bacteria from the machine. This is normal."

jcspring2012 Report

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"When grapes are taken to the crusher for wine, everything is crushed. Grapes, sticks, leaves, bugs, rats, etc. Source: biology teacher ran a grape farm that supplied a major winery."

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"Fast food milkshakes. I used to work at a fast food place and they put in milkshake mix that is already coagulated and sometimes had mold in it. Never eating one again, from anywhere."

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"Kebab meat. Worked in a quality control company for a while, which among other things tested food for bacterial contamination. Kebab meat was so disgusting and full of bacteria we had to adjust standards so we could accurately determine how badly contaminated it was."

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"Simple syrup for cocktails. Boil equal parts sugar and water. Let cool."

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"Automotive vehicles. Have you ever watched the movie Gung-Ho with Michael Keaton? It's not too far from the truth."

amazon.com , Camber-2035 Report

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"Bagoong (Shrimp Paste) In the Philippines, there are either two kinds of seafood to make a version of this food product. A fermented fish or shrimp itself, but shrimp is more common. I shouldn't explain any further, but the gist to make the paste is a person first "cleans" their feet, then puts the shrimp into a large basin, and finally steps on the shrimp until it's decomposed."

reddit.com , GMA Public Affairs Report

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"Most citric acid is made from black mold. This ruined so many foods for me. All that time I thought it was always lemon/citrus juice."

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ugagradlady said:
"A lot of butter tbh. They feed the cows literal garbage, and to get as much milk as possible, they take the cows’ calves away. The cows cry for days afterward."

Tapiooooca replied:
"Not grass, but corn definitely is garbage for ruminants (including cows). Check out “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan. Goes into great depth about corn and a proper diet for ruminants. Unfortunately, corn is the main menu item for most cattle and it makes them beyond sick. They are meant to intensively graze for a variety of grasses... similar to wildebeests and American bison."

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"McDonald’s chicken nuggets. It’s pink slime and looks like a strawberry milkshake. Once I saw the videos of healthy harvest baby chickens and the conditions chickens are kept in, I stopped eating chicken. not only that but the illnesses that those who “care” for the chickens get. From there I just stopped eating meat altogether. But that’s me."

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