5 ms·

The efficiency of converting plant based protein into animal protein to feed that to humans is very low [1]. A huge portion of the crops are actually used to fe

by jaxr 7y ago

The efficiency of converting plant based protein into animal protein to feed that to humans is very low [1]. A huge portion of the crops are actually used to feed cattle. If humans stopped eating meat tomorrow, we would have plenty of food (we'd better start eating a lot more soy, though) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/105002 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/1...

keymone 7y ago
Cattle doesn’t convert plant based protein into animal protein. Also cattle eats crop that humans can’t eat and which grows in significantly more tough conditions than those required for crops used as feed. Eating lots of soy is not healthy. It’s a very weird and unconvincing argument on your part, to suggest humans should just start eating crops fed to cattle and that would somehow work in terms of sufficiently healthy and available nutrition as well as being net positive on climate change. Cattle eats grass which grows everywhere in the world and cattle produces vastly healthier and nutritious profile of fat, protein, vitamins and other essential nutrients than what you could achieve by growing human edible crops for similar price. Sure you can achieve good nutrition with other expensive vegetables but that’s not what will happen if humans stop eating cattle. Let’s be realistic.
- nmca 7y ago
  Baffled to read this, as I thought it was widely established as grossly inaccurate. Suggest you read Steinfeld, Henning; Gerber, Pierre; Wassenaar, Tom; Castel, Vincent; Rosales, Mauricio; de Haan, Cees (2006), Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options Or alternatively anything about food culture and supply in India. I don't believe your current position is substantiated by any evidence; but I'm happy to look through any relevant numbers if you can find them.
  - ar-jan 7y ago
    I suggest you also read Steinfeld's own correction regarding the 2006 claim that livestock accounts for 18% of GHG emissions: "The comparison measures direct emissions from transport against both direct and indirect emissions from livestock." http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0 http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0
  - keymone 7y ago
    I skimmed through it, thanks for the link, my “rebuttal” is mostly that this report takes into account all cattle while I’m specifically talking about grass-fed. There are plenty of statements that clarify that corn-fed cattle production is much worse than grass-fed, like > The water used by the livestock sector is over 8 percent of global human water use. The major part of this water is in fact used for irrigation of feed crops, rep- resenting 7 percent of the global water use. And, yeah, that’s kind of my point - let’s limit cattle to grass and push it’s production somewhere out to steppes of mongolia or something, which will help recover Amazon rainforests and free-up land for more nutritious vegetables for humans.
- steve_adams_86 7y ago
  Eating lots of soy is not a requirement of a diet without red meat. Cattle can eat grass, but most of them in North America eat very little grass. They eat a lot of grain that is intensively farmed. That feed farming has a significant impact on the environment through regular agriculture practices. By growing food for humans instead, the impact would be reduced simply because not as much crop is needed. Red meat does have a good nutrition profile, but a balanced vegetable focused diet does too. People underestimate how much protein and fat can be had from plants. I'm not sure why you think people won't do this if they stop eating red meat. Why isn't that realistic? I speak as someone who absolutely loves meat and thought much like you do recently. Life without, or with much less meat is fine. I've come to realize I largely eat it out of convenience and comfort.
  - keymone 7y ago
    > Cattle can eat grass, but most of them in North America eat very little grass. They eat a lot of grain that is intensively farmed. That feed farming has a significant impact on the environment through regular agriculture practices. You obviously missed my explicit position against corn-fed cattle and went on to attack some straw man. Please re-think and re-state your argument such that I don’t get an urge to dismiss it based on irrelevancy from the very first statement? In fact in your following two paragraphs you just repeated the same things I already said just using different words. We don’t disagree on much.
    - steve_adams_86 7y ago
      I've read all of your comments now and I did miss your position on this. Sorry about that.
bitexploder 7y ago
I’ll pass on the phytoestrogens, though. This doesn’t really address the fact that there are ways to still eat meat but minimize the greenhouse effects. For example, chicken and pork is dramatically less directly impactful than beef. There is still the feed efficiency problem, but America’s love of red meat is a better place to start than no meat at all. https://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause-of-global-warming-meat-methane-CO2 https://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause-of-global-warming-m...
- rewq4321 7y ago
  The soy/phytoestrogen scare is not scientific/fact-based. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ > Results of recent population studies suggest that soy has either a beneficial or neutral effect on various health conditions. Soy is a nutrient-dense source of protein that can safely be consumed several times a week, and is likely to provide health benefits—especially when eaten as an alternative to red and processed meat. By the way, the reason @jaxr is talking about eating lots of soy is not because we'd need to be heavily reliant on soy for protein if we gave up meat - there are lots of other protein sources, of course. They mentioned eating lots of soy because we currently feed something like 70+% of soy to livestock, so there'd be a lot of it "laying around" if livestock suddenly didn't exist. Of course, it wouldn't actually play out like that.
  - bitexploder 7y ago
    There are too many studies that indicate either way with Soy. Maybe it is just over studied and other common sources of nutrition are under studied. Nutritional discussions devolve into a drain circling effect of studies with no one really convincing anyone else. I monitor my blood and know what keeps me healthy. Why risk it with potentially questionable nutrition?
    - SECProto 7y ago
      Soy is consumed in great quantities by Japan, the country with the longest life expectancy in the world. The evidence against soy would have to be pretty dramatic and clear-cut to base decisions on it.

by jaxr 7y ago

keymone 7y ago

Cattle doesn’t convert plant based protein into animal protein. Also cattle eats crop that humans can’t eat and which grows in significantly more tough conditions than those required for crops used as feed. Eating lots of soy is not healthy. It’s a very weird and unconvincing argument on your part, to suggest humans should just start eating crops fed to cattle and that would somehow work in terms of sufficiently healthy and available nutrition as well as being net positive on climate change. Cattle eats grass which grows everywhere in the world and cattle produces vastly healthier and nutritious profile of fat, protein, vitamins and other essential nutrients than what you could achieve by growing human edible crops for similar price. Sure you can achieve good nutrition with other expensive vegetables but that’s not what will happen if humans stop eating cattle. Let’s be realistic.

nmca 7y ago
Baffled to read this, as I thought it was widely established as grossly inaccurate. Suggest you read Steinfeld, Henning; Gerber, Pierre; Wassenaar, Tom; Castel, Vincent; Rosales, Mauricio; de Haan, Cees (2006), Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options Or alternatively anything about food culture and supply in India. I don't believe your current position is substantiated by any evidence; but I'm happy to look through any relevant numbers if you can find them.
- ar-jan 7y ago
  I suggest you also read Steinfeld's own correction regarding the 2006 claim that livestock accounts for 18% of GHG emissions: "The comparison measures direct emissions from transport against both direct and indirect emissions from livestock." http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0 http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0
- keymone 7y ago
  I skimmed through it, thanks for the link, my “rebuttal” is mostly that this report takes into account all cattle while I’m specifically talking about grass-fed. There are plenty of statements that clarify that corn-fed cattle production is much worse than grass-fed, like > The water used by the livestock sector is over 8 percent of global human water use. The major part of this water is in fact used for irrigation of feed crops, rep- resenting 7 percent of the global water use. And, yeah, that’s kind of my point - let’s limit cattle to grass and push it’s production somewhere out to steppes of mongolia or something, which will help recover Amazon rainforests and free-up land for more nutritious vegetables for humans.
steve_adams_86 7y ago
Eating lots of soy is not a requirement of a diet without red meat. Cattle can eat grass, but most of them in North America eat very little grass. They eat a lot of grain that is intensively farmed. That feed farming has a significant impact on the environment through regular agriculture practices. By growing food for humans instead, the impact would be reduced simply because not as much crop is needed. Red meat does have a good nutrition profile, but a balanced vegetable focused diet does too. People underestimate how much protein and fat can be had from plants. I'm not sure why you think people won't do this if they stop eating red meat. Why isn't that realistic? I speak as someone who absolutely loves meat and thought much like you do recently. Life without, or with much less meat is fine. I've come to realize I largely eat it out of convenience and comfort.
- keymone 7y ago
  > Cattle can eat grass, but most of them in North America eat very little grass. They eat a lot of grain that is intensively farmed. That feed farming has a significant impact on the environment through regular agriculture practices. You obviously missed my explicit position against corn-fed cattle and went on to attack some straw man. Please re-think and re-state your argument such that I don’t get an urge to dismiss it based on irrelevancy from the very first statement? In fact in your following two paragraphs you just repeated the same things I already said just using different words. We don’t disagree on much.
  - steve_adams_86 7y ago
    I've read all of your comments now and I did miss your position on this. Sorry about that.

bitexploder 7y ago

I’ll pass on the phytoestrogens, though. This doesn’t really address the fact that there are ways to still eat meat but minimize the greenhouse effects. For example, chicken and pork is dramatically less directly impactful than beef. There is still the feed efficiency problem, but America’s love of red meat is a better place to start than no meat at all. https://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause-of-global-warming-meat-methane-CO2 https://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause-of-global-warming-m...

rewq4321 7y ago
The soy/phytoestrogen scare is not scientific/fact-based. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ > Results of recent population studies suggest that soy has either a beneficial or neutral effect on various health conditions. Soy is a nutrient-dense source of protein that can safely be consumed several times a week, and is likely to provide health benefits—especially when eaten as an alternative to red and processed meat. By the way, the reason @jaxr is talking about eating lots of soy is not because we'd need to be heavily reliant on soy for protein if we gave up meat - there are lots of other protein sources, of course. They mentioned eating lots of soy because we currently feed something like 70+% of soy to livestock, so there'd be a lot of it "laying around" if livestock suddenly didn't exist. Of course, it wouldn't actually play out like that.
- bitexploder 7y ago
  There are too many studies that indicate either way with Soy. Maybe it is just over studied and other common sources of nutrition are under studied. Nutritional discussions devolve into a drain circling effect of studies with no one really convincing anyone else. I monitor my blood and know what keeps me healthy. Why risk it with potentially questionable nutrition?
  - SECProto 7y ago
    Soy is consumed in great quantities by Japan, the country with the longest life expectancy in the world. The evidence against soy would have to be pretty dramatic and clear-cut to base decisions on it.