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More humane and sustainable forms of animal agriculture would certainly be a step in the right direction from the horrors of the concentrated feeding operations

More humane and sustainable forms of animal agriculture would certainly be a step in the right direction from the horrors of the concentrated feeding operations that supply most of the world's meat supply right now. But those techniques were developed for a reason. There's no way to meet the current and rapidly growing demand for meat without completely setting aside the welfare of the animals and the environment. The idea that we can just return to the idyllic farms of hundreds of years ago and still feed steak to billions of people every day is a pipe dream. The real solution is to reduce the global population but in the meantime switching to a vegan diet will dramatically lower your carbon footprint and help reduce the horrific suffering we inflict on animals every day because we like the way they taste. You might think you understand what it takes to put that bacon on your plate but chances are you have no idea: http://watch.dominionmovement.com http://watch.dominionmovement.com There's also a growing body of evidence that a well-planned vegan diet is not only perfectly healthy but healthier than diets rich in animal fats & proteins.

tdb7893 8y ago
One thing to note is that being vegan is very difficult and most people aren't going to be vegan. One thing everyone can do is to cut their meat intake. People have meat for almost every meal and it's pretty simple to cut back and you still get some health and environmental benefits.
- cageface 8y ago
  Being vegan is a lot easier than you might think, but you're right that reducing your meat intake and trying to buy more humanely raised meat also helps. What I recommend to my non-vegan friends is to just pick one day a week in which they consume no animal products and then expand from there.
  - saosebastiao 8y ago
    Choosing one day a week to be completely miserable sounds like a much worse path to veganism than cutting back one thing at a time.
    - cageface 8y ago
      Different approaches work for different people. Personally I just went cold turkey but for a lot of people it's easier to set aside a day to try it. Whatever works for you is fine, of course. A lot of people find that, far from being miserable, they feel better and enjoy the food they're eating.
    - Djvacto 8y ago
      Also, you don't have to be miserable. There are tons of foods that a lot of people find delicious that aren't meat. You can use substitutes (tvp or lentil/walnuts for tacos, tofu in a stir fry, etc).
    - seba_dos1 8y ago
      As a vegetable hater that was a misconception that I used to have. Turned out that in most cases I even prefer vegan meat substitutes to real meat now for their taste and texture (they can be pretty similar, but the slight differences IMO work against meat).
    - cannonedhamster 8y ago
      You could start by going vegetarian instead by choosing to eat a cheese pizza instead of a hamburger. There's a wide world between carnivore and Jainist vegan. There's also a ton of much better vegan/vegetarian meat replacements available than just a few years ago.
  - seba_dos1 8y ago
    It is hard, you either need to carefully plan your diet or you're risking ruining your health far more than usual. However, it's very easy to greatly reduce your meat intake - just looking around for vegan options lets you put a lot of variety into your daily diet and it turns out that it can be tasty even if you generally hate vegetables, like I do. Even though I sometimes still choose meat out of preference when eating out, I would never expect that I would be able to actively prefer vege and vegan options in so many cases until I tried :) Ended up in me always checking (and contributing to) OpenVegeMap when looking for someplace to eat in a new area.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  > People have meat for almost every meal I'm gonna call BS on this unless you provide a citation. Many people (in the west) eat a breakfast (cereal, pancakes, waffles, bagel, toast) or lunch (PB&J sandwich, salad) that contains no meat every day or every workday. Then you have to account for all the meals where there is no meat (pizza, mac and cheese). You'd need to have a substantial fraction of the population eating meat (almost) literally every meal in order to make up for the people who habitually don't eat meat at particular meals. Edit: I'm talking about meat for the purpose of environmental impact and sustainability here. I'm not talking about meat from the perspective of strict veganism or the milk in your coffee or the eggs in your baked goods, those have negligible impact compared to raising animals to slaughter for food.
  - Spellchamp 8y ago
    I find it amusing that you call out OP for not providing a citation but then list a bunch of examples of things many people eat also without citation!
  - munin 8y ago
    bacon with your waffles? hot dog for lunch? meat lovers pizza for dinner?
    - ianai 8y ago
      Many many many foods have eggs or dairy products in them that simply don’t need them. The bread for that pbj could very well have milk, eggs in it. Butter on toast is a dairy product. Eggs are a common ingredient in veggie burgers!
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        Dairy and small amounts of egg (usually added for it's chemical/material properties) in baked goods don't count as meat for discussions about food sustainability because they don't require raising animals for slaughter. A dairy cow can produce many gallons of milk and a chicken can lay many eggs over its lifetime. They're a drop in the bucket compared to the environmental impact of meat raised for direct consumption. That's like complaining about oil products used to patch roads in a discussion about the environmental impact of oil.
- yread 8y ago
  It's also healthy to cut back on (red) meat consumption. NHS recommends 70g/day. One proper steak means no meat for the rest of the week. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/meat-nutrition/#how-much-red-and-processed-meat-should-we-eat https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/meat-nutrition/#how-mu...
  - naasking 8y ago
    Actually, later studies found that red meat isn't the issue per se, it's processed red meat that is the real culprit. So basically, raw ingredients of any kind are good to eat, processed food is not so good for you.
  - hultner 8y ago
    I've been trying to keep my average under 90g/day since about 2010 and most weeks nowadays I average half that. However I wouldn't call 500g a proper steak, only time I've seen stakes at that size is as novalty items on menus of burger/grill joints, and even then very rarely.
    - jamie_ca 8y ago
      Yeah, when we get steak for dinners, we wind up with 500-600g for a family of four. And that's 2-3 cuts.
  - simonsarris 8y ago
    Why would you think that is true? Here in the USA we eat less red meat than we did 45 years ago, and are way less healthy. NHS and the USDA make all kinds of boneheaded dietary prescriptions that are terrible (eat lots of grains, eat trans fats, avoid eggs, avoid butter). Since the 1970s, at least: * Americans eat less red meat and more white meat than they used to in the 70's. * Americans get fewer calories total from meat than they used to, yet eat way more plant material (hint: carbs) than ever before. https://imgur.com/a/LgqUMJz https://imgur.com/a/LgqUMJz * Americans and Brits are way more overweight than ever before, with the obesity "trend" starting in the late 70s or early 80s. Obesity should concern you, it kills 10 times the people that the US opioid epidemic does (300K deaths/year vs 30K deaths/year), but culture makes it much harder to take 10 times as seriously. Or talk about at all for that matter. What's a minute increase in bowel cancer comparatively? Why fear (unprocessed) red meat in 2018, and why on earth listen to the NHS on the subject? Are people who listen to NHS guidelines actually healthier than people in the 1970's, who ate more red meat?
danbruc 8y ago
The real solution is to reduce the global population [...] Why such a drastic solution, why not just lower the meat consumption per capita? Or switch to lab-grown meat?
- toine_toine 8y ago
  There must be a cleansing.
naasking 8y ago
> The real solution is to reduce the global population Why is that the "real solution"? We're close to factory-scale lab-grown meat, which seems like a perfectly viable alternative too.
jversd673 8y ago
> well-planned vegan diet Love the weasel wording Translation It means B12 (Yeast has poor bioavailability) Zinc Iron D2 Pills (No such thing as D3 on plant based foods) and a ton of Carbohydrates from grains potatoes legumes rice fruits etc and people still wonder why the majority of Vegans return back to meat.
- cageface 8y ago
  Nonsense. The only supplement vegans require is B12, but most meat eaters are deficient too. Everything else is readily available from a sensible vegan diet. Complex carbs are perfectly healthy, despite the best efforts of meat industry propagandists to confuse the issue. Meanwhile the typical meat-heavy diet is deficient in a number of important nutrients, most notably fiber. The American Dietetics Association's official position is that vegan diets are healthy for people at all stages of life but don't that that distract you from your favorite bro science blog. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864
- strls 8y ago
  B12 must be supplemented, the rest is wrong. Not sure what's your point regarding carbs. Source: I do plant-based and perform blood tests for all the things you mentioned and more.
mcv 8y ago
Going full vegan may not be necessary, but we do need to drastically reduce our consumption of meat. I know a lot of people who eat meat twice per week, for example. That seems like something that could work for everybody. And if we eat less meat, we can more easily afford to get the meat we do eat from these kind of organic pastures.

tdb7893 8y ago

One thing to note is that being vegan is very difficult and most people aren't going to be vegan. One thing everyone can do is to cut their meat intake. People have meat for almost every meal and it's pretty simple to cut back and you still get some health and environmental benefits.

cageface 8y ago
Being vegan is a lot easier than you might think, but you're right that reducing your meat intake and trying to buy more humanely raised meat also helps. What I recommend to my non-vegan friends is to just pick one day a week in which they consume no animal products and then expand from there.
- saosebastiao 8y ago
  Choosing one day a week to be completely miserable sounds like a much worse path to veganism than cutting back one thing at a time.
  - cageface 8y ago
    Different approaches work for different people. Personally I just went cold turkey but for a lot of people it's easier to set aside a day to try it. Whatever works for you is fine, of course. A lot of people find that, far from being miserable, they feel better and enjoy the food they're eating.
  - Djvacto 8y ago
    Also, you don't have to be miserable. There are tons of foods that a lot of people find delicious that aren't meat. You can use substitutes (tvp or lentil/walnuts for tacos, tofu in a stir fry, etc).
  - seba_dos1 8y ago
    As a vegetable hater that was a misconception that I used to have. Turned out that in most cases I even prefer vegan meat substitutes to real meat now for their taste and texture (they can be pretty similar, but the slight differences IMO work against meat).
  - cannonedhamster 8y ago
    You could start by going vegetarian instead by choosing to eat a cheese pizza instead of a hamburger. There's a wide world between carnivore and Jainist vegan. There's also a ton of much better vegan/vegetarian meat replacements available than just a few years ago.
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  It is hard, you either need to carefully plan your diet or you're risking ruining your health far more than usual. However, it's very easy to greatly reduce your meat intake - just looking around for vegan options lets you put a lot of variety into your daily diet and it turns out that it can be tasty even if you generally hate vegetables, like I do. Even though I sometimes still choose meat out of preference when eating out, I would never expect that I would be able to actively prefer vege and vegan options in so many cases until I tried :) Ended up in me always checking (and contributing to) OpenVegeMap when looking for someplace to eat in a new area.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
> People have meat for almost every meal I'm gonna call BS on this unless you provide a citation. Many people (in the west) eat a breakfast (cereal, pancakes, waffles, bagel, toast) or lunch (PB&J sandwich, salad) that contains no meat every day or every workday. Then you have to account for all the meals where there is no meat (pizza, mac and cheese). You'd need to have a substantial fraction of the population eating meat (almost) literally every meal in order to make up for the people who habitually don't eat meat at particular meals. Edit: I'm talking about meat for the purpose of environmental impact and sustainability here. I'm not talking about meat from the perspective of strict veganism or the milk in your coffee or the eggs in your baked goods, those have negligible impact compared to raising animals to slaughter for food.
- Spellchamp 8y ago
  I find it amusing that you call out OP for not providing a citation but then list a bunch of examples of things many people eat also without citation!
- munin 8y ago
  bacon with your waffles? hot dog for lunch? meat lovers pizza for dinner?
  - ianai 8y ago
    Many many many foods have eggs or dairy products in them that simply don’t need them. The bread for that pbj could very well have milk, eggs in it. Butter on toast is a dairy product. Eggs are a common ingredient in veggie burgers!
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      Dairy and small amounts of egg (usually added for it's chemical/material properties) in baked goods don't count as meat for discussions about food sustainability because they don't require raising animals for slaughter. A dairy cow can produce many gallons of milk and a chicken can lay many eggs over its lifetime. They're a drop in the bucket compared to the environmental impact of meat raised for direct consumption. That's like complaining about oil products used to patch roads in a discussion about the environmental impact of oil.
yread 8y ago
It's also healthy to cut back on (red) meat consumption. NHS recommends 70g/day. One proper steak means no meat for the rest of the week. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/meat-nutrition/#how-much-red-and-processed-meat-should-we-eat https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/meat-nutrition/#how-mu...
- naasking 8y ago
  Actually, later studies found that red meat isn't the issue per se, it's processed red meat that is the real culprit. So basically, raw ingredients of any kind are good to eat, processed food is not so good for you.
- hultner 8y ago
  I've been trying to keep my average under 90g/day since about 2010 and most weeks nowadays I average half that. However I wouldn't call 500g a proper steak, only time I've seen stakes at that size is as novalty items on menus of burger/grill joints, and even then very rarely.
  - jamie_ca 8y ago
    Yeah, when we get steak for dinners, we wind up with 500-600g for a family of four. And that's 2-3 cuts.
- simonsarris 8y ago
  Why would you think that is true? Here in the USA we eat less red meat than we did 45 years ago, and are way less healthy. NHS and the USDA make all kinds of boneheaded dietary prescriptions that are terrible (eat lots of grains, eat trans fats, avoid eggs, avoid butter). Since the 1970s, at least: * Americans eat less red meat and more white meat than they used to in the 70's. * Americans get fewer calories total from meat than they used to, yet eat way more plant material (hint: carbs) than ever before. https://imgur.com/a/LgqUMJz https://imgur.com/a/LgqUMJz * Americans and Brits are way more overweight than ever before, with the obesity "trend" starting in the late 70s or early 80s. Obesity should concern you, it kills 10 times the people that the US opioid epidemic does (300K deaths/year vs 30K deaths/year), but culture makes it much harder to take 10 times as seriously. Or talk about at all for that matter. What's a minute increase in bowel cancer comparatively? Why fear (unprocessed) red meat in 2018, and why on earth listen to the NHS on the subject? Are people who listen to NHS guidelines actually healthier than people in the 1970's, who ate more red meat?

danbruc 8y ago

The real solution is to reduce the global population [...] Why such a drastic solution, why not just lower the meat consumption per capita? Or switch to lab-grown meat?

toine_toine 8y ago
There must be a cleansing.

naasking 8y ago

> The real solution is to reduce the global population Why is that the "real solution"? We're close to factory-scale lab-grown meat, which seems like a perfectly viable alternative too.

jversd673 8y ago

> well-planned vegan diet Love the weasel wording Translation It means B12 (Yeast has poor bioavailability) Zinc Iron D2 Pills (No such thing as D3 on plant based foods) and a ton of Carbohydrates from grains potatoes legumes rice fruits etc and people still wonder why the majority of Vegans return back to meat.

cageface 8y ago
Nonsense. The only supplement vegans require is B12, but most meat eaters are deficient too. Everything else is readily available from a sensible vegan diet. Complex carbs are perfectly healthy, despite the best efforts of meat industry propagandists to confuse the issue. Meanwhile the typical meat-heavy diet is deficient in a number of important nutrients, most notably fiber. The American Dietetics Association's official position is that vegan diets are healthy for people at all stages of life but don't that that distract you from your favorite bro science blog. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864
strls 8y ago
B12 must be supplemented, the rest is wrong. Not sure what's your point regarding carbs. Source: I do plant-based and perform blood tests for all the things you mentioned and more.

mcv 8y ago

Going full vegan may not be necessary, but we do need to drastically reduce our consumption of meat. I know a lot of people who eat meat twice per week, for example. That seems like something that could work for everybody. And if we eat less meat, we can more easily afford to get the meat we do eat from these kind of organic pastures.