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If we simply stop eating meat, it would be better for us (less cancers due to red meat and pesticides), for the environment (much less pollution, resources cons

If we simply stop eating meat, it would be better for us (less cancers due to red meat and pesticides), for the environment (much less pollution, resources consumed, deforestation, CO2 and methane emissions - more biodiversity) and for the animals... so in the end it is obviously way cheaper and better but we always find excuses not to do it.

avip 7y ago
It's a good litmus test. If we can't convince people to switch beef for chicken we're doomed.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
> less cancers due to red meat This is the first I’ve heard of this, how strong is the link?
- Spone 7y ago
  Relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouAccsTzlGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouAccsTzlGU
- elorant 7y ago
  Here is a Q&A from WHO. https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
- vlan0 7y ago
  >Red meat was classified as Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans. What does this mean exactly? In the case of red meat, the classification is based on limited evidence from epidemiological studies showing positive associations between eating red meat and developing colorectal cancer as well as strong mechanistic evidence. >Limited evidence means that a positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer but that other explanations for the observations (technically termed chance, bias, or confounding) could not be ruled out.[1] ## Bonus content on processed meats ## >Processed meat was classified as Group 1, carcinogenic to humans. What does this mean? This category is used when there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans. In other words, there is convincing evidence that the agent causes cancer. The evaluation is usually based on epidemiological studies showing the development of cancer in exposed humans. >In the case of processed meat, this classification is based on sufficient evidence from epidemiological studies that eating processed meat causes colorectal cancer. [1] https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
  - npongratz 7y ago
    >Red meat was classified as Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans. They classified coffee, mate, and "very hot beverages" the same way. I'll worry about red meat the exact same way I worry about coffee: not at all, and enjoy every bit I consume. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2A_carcinogens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2A_carcinog...
- Ensorceled 7y ago
  Pretty strong; red meat is classified as a probable cause of colorectal cancer. Canadian Cancer Society recommends reducing red meat intake. Processed meats are classified as a Group 1 Carcinogen.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Be careful there. A probable cause doesn't tell you anything about rates. Alcohol is a probable cause as well, and from what I can tell is more likely to cause cancer than meat.
    - Ensorceled 7y ago
      Be careful? This advice makes no sense. I'm going to go with the Canadian Cancer Society on red meat. They also, as a matter of fact, say alcohol is carcinogenic and to use alcohol in moderation.
      - bluGill 7y ago
        Be careful because risk level isn't included in there.
    - c0nducktr 7y ago
      Almost certainly. I don't think anyone was making the case that meat is more dangerous than alcohol though.
- runeb 7y ago
  Here is some work looking at a possible connection between contact with bovine viruses and colorectal cancer. I wonder how many of human cancers are caused by viruses. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22212999 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22212999
- NikkiA 7y ago
  It's not good news... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47947965 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47947965
Kaiyou 7y ago
There's two sides to everything. Have you looked at the downside of not eating meat?
- Deestan 7y ago
  Assuming you adjust your diet instead of just subtracting meat (increase broccoli/beans/lentils/spinach for iron, etc), are there really any downsides? We've had vegetarians for a thousands of years, and I am not aware of have any health problems that are most efficiently solved by adding meat.
  - kabouseng 7y ago
    Don't eat spinach for iron, spinach is a very poor source of iron...[1] [multiple other sources you can google as well] And vegetarians struggle quite a bit with getting proper dietary nutrition, not just with iron, but also Vitamin B12, Zinc, Omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin D, Calcium, Protein and Riboflavin. So it is not quite just "simply" adjust your diet you lazy meat eater. [1] https://www.compoundchem.com/2018/07/17/spinach/ https://www.compoundchem.com/2018/07/17/spinach/
    - dashundchen 7y ago
      > And vegetarians struggle quite a bit with getting proper dietary nutrition, not just with iron, but also Vitamin B12, Zinc, Omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin D, Calcium, Protein and Riboflavin. So it is not quite just "simply" adjust your diet you lazy meat eater. All of those listed able to be met easily by plant based sources with a well balanced diet. And it's not like the average meat American is eating a healthy diet. I would be shocked if the standard American diet actually met all recommended nutritional intakes. B12 is only in significant amounts of meat because it is heavily supplemented and present in the soil, today's clean produce strips most of those bacteria from the food supply.
      - mcv 7y ago
        B12 is the one I know a number of vegetarians have trouble getting from plant based sources. I've had trouble with it ages ago, and a friend of mine has been told by his doctor that he has to eat meat because of this. The solution is really simple, though: eat less meat. We don't need meat every day. Once or twice a week is more than enough, and if everybody did that, it would greatly reduce this problem.
jelly1 7y ago
More and more people I know have become partly vegetarian and it seems that the meat replacements are also becoming more popular. But I can't say much about the scale of things.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  This is true in the US; and is becoming true elsewhere simply because meat has become so expensive. I know several friends who have gone vegetarian for a combination of health, financial and environmental benefits. It’s pretty common in progressive circles in the US at least.
- rocgf 7y ago
  > it seems that the meat replacements are also becoming more popular Which is very unfortunate, in my opinion. It might get people to switch to a more animal-friendly diet, but I simply can't think of how meat replacements are healthier than real meat.
  - d33 7y ago
    It really depends on what you call meat replacements. There are vegan dishes that can work as a decent barbecue sausage substitutes and I heard that synthetic-heme-based products can have a meaty feel... it's not like meat in super healthy when abused, so I wouldn't be surprised if a plant-based version could actually be better.
  - chimprich 7y ago
    What meat substitutes did you have in mind? How about tofu? Compared to say, cured meats, which contain cancer-causing nitrates, and far more heart disease-causing saturated fats, it's got to be significantly healthier. And they're certainly healthier for the environment.
  - Vinnl 7y ago
    But if health is the main concern, the challenges are far greater than just meat consumption...
KaiserPro 7y ago
This is not universal. Yes, the expansion of agricultural land is almost always bad. Unless its expansion into desert, and isn't depleting water (which is almost never the case). But, sheep, cattle and especially pigs provide useful products in the farming cycle, essential if you want to cut out oil based fertilisers. Thats not to mention that most of the country side of Europe looks the way it does because if farming sheep or cattle. Pasture has its own biodiversity. Simply stopping all animal consumption would leave us more dependent on fertilisers in the short to medium term. It would also cause rapid local environmental changes, that would have interesting side effects.
- Ensorceled 7y ago
  This reminds me of all the small dairy farms that used to exist where I grew up. My grandfathers' farm was pretty typical at 100 acres; 40 acres of rough pasture and wood lot ("the back 40"), almost 60 acres of fields that rotated as hay/grain and temporary pasture. Everything self-contained and fertilized with cow manure until the '70s when everything started ratcheting up.
  - hvidgaard 7y ago
    At some point the land would be useless, unless biomass from the outside was added. Every product that leaves the farm is from the land and it's ability to support that cycle will be depleted sooner or later.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      Biomass does come from the outside though on earth - rainfall and photosynthesis are sufficient to increase the mass unless said farm is a closed cycle hermetically sealed dome. That said it still could run into problems with other requisite elemental depletion in soil even with assistance of things like bacteria. If the plants need calcium and it is all extracted then thr farm would be limited to simpler life that doesn't need any trace elements. If say algae can get by on just atmospheric gas components, water, and sunlight indefinitely then a hypothetical algae farm could run indefinitely. But there isn't much of a market for algae.
whiddershins 7y ago
This viewpoint is expressed often but there are many counter arguments. Nutrition is not a solved equation. We simply do not know how exactly various foods affect our health, the extent that human genetics and microbiome affect “proper” nutrition for a person, what all the essential nutrients are, what the immunoresponse to various foods are, and any number of unknown unknowns about diet. Any claims to the contrary are irresponsible at best. You mention biodiversity but seem to be glossing over the role of ruminants in the ecological system, and the severe lack of biodiversity which can be the consequence of large scale crop production. These and other reasons lead me to be concerned that this viewpoint is to some degree tainted by ideological blind spots.
- darkerside 7y ago
  Completely removing meat is not solved. I think we can say with high confidence that Americans in particular eat way too much meat, in way too large of servings, far too often. If you just start having one meal a day without meat, you'll start to feel how odd it is to eat meat 3 times a day like most Americans do.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  > Nutrition is not a solved equation. We simply do not know how exactly various foods affect our health, the extent that human genetics and microbiome affect “proper” nutrition for a person, what all the essential nutrients are, what the immunoresponse to various foods are, and any number of unknown unknowns about diet. Any claims to the contrary are irresponsible at best. Nevertheless the same applies to the way we changed our diets in relatively recent times, and yet that hasn't stopped us.
- trentnix 7y ago
  And there's the whole problem of I don't want to and you're going to have to make me.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- dashundchen 7y ago
zorbash 7y ago
I'm not a vegetarian myself, however I only eat meat products one per week. I can tell you that there's plenty of alternatives that taste good. To name a few Quorn[1] and Beyond Meat[2] and from what I read Impossible Food[3] as well. So with the help of tech, we'll find less and less excuses not to switch, at least partially, to a plant based diet. [1]: https://www.quorn.co.uk/ https://www.quorn.co.uk/ [2]: https://www.beyondmeat.com/products/ https://www.beyondmeat.com/products/ [3]: https://impossiblefoods.com/food/ https://impossiblefoods.com/food/
Bantros 7y ago
"simply"
lnsru 7y ago
I like meat, eat good quality meat 3-4 a week and enjoy it. However I see a bigger problem - insane amounts of food thrown away. Secondary problems imho is good packaging. If I buy 2 bags of food at local LIDL, I have 1 bag of plastic waste at the end. Nobody wants to solve this, zero profit here. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/aug/20/food-waste-alarming-rise-will-see-66-tonnes-thrown-away-every-second https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/aug/20/f...
- avip 7y ago
  The GHG effect of Beef is much larger than wasted food, and it's x10 easier problem to solve.
- wes-k 7y ago
  Reducing food waste comes in at #3 of ways to reduce CO2, while switching to a plant based diet comes in at #4 [1]. That said, #3 is about agriculture/business waste of food, not what you and I are tossing from our plates. > "A third of the food raised or prepared does not make it from farm or factory to fork" Seriously though, the top thing in our control is eating plant based food! 1. https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank
- string 7y ago
  I'm not sure if this is what you were suggesting, but there seems to be some misconception that vegetarians don't like meat. I like meat, in fact I love it. I used to contribute to a food blog reviewing steak restaurants. I love the smell and (the thought of) the taste. I haven't eaten meat for about five years because of environmental reasons, not because I dislike it. Not eating meat is such an easy thing for most people to do, the facts are in front of us and it would make a significant difference. It does not fill with me with optimism that most are unwilling to do even this.
mxfh 7y ago
This is all of this, but not THE single pressing climate issue, food is the one issue where most people from most economies have already cought up, besides some excessive outliers, there is little to catch up in consumption worldwide and it's still a low percentage on climate impact. The big consumer driven issues by climate impact are all other consumption housing and transportation. If we want to allow the rest of the world to catch up to our standard of living, food choices is not the one area where radical change is needed to make this sustainable.
- asterix_pano 7y ago
  Well, this is not really true. Animal agriculture is more or less the same total GHG emissions as the whole transportation sector, and it's technically way easier to switch to a vegetarian diet than stopping people from moving or finding new technological avances. So why not start with the low hanging fruits?
  - mxfh 7y ago
    ? any sources for those percentages. https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/fao-common-flawed-comparisons-greenhouse-gas-emissions-livestock-transport/ https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/fao-common-flawed-com... My point is that food is the one thing that's globally almost evenly distributed part of economy. And even if we all change diet's, it wont safe anyone's climate, if the rest is catching up with "western" lifestyles at their current emmisions footprint. Pretty much anything else is easier to change technically, if it wasnt for lobbyism. I grew up in GDR and still had livestock of our own, this not just about food ethics, but also diversity/robustness of food supply in any more fragile economy.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
ryanmercer 7y ago
An average cow produces 70 and 120 kg of methane a year, with 1.3-1.5 billion cows worldwide that's 91,000,000 metric tons of methane. That's 2.73 gigatonnes CO2 equivalent. Cows are the worst, if we exterminated every cow on earth it would only be a drop in the annual bucket given that we created 37.1 gigatonnes of just CO2 last year. Even if you factor in the fertilizer, fuel, electricity used for those cattle and double the number, it still wouldn't come close to putting us carbon negative. The United States gets roughly 30% of its power from coal, China roughly 70%. Commercial aviation last year was responsible for at LEAST 0.55 gigatonnes of CO2 last year and in a decade the fuel use is up 30.5%. That's also a low figure for the CO2, it could be as much as 13% higher as there are various types of aviation fuel, it also does not include military figures. By the time you factor in all of electricity and fuel use supporting aviation by non-aircraft sources, commercial aviation is likely as bad as the cows of the world. Last year in the United States 142.86 billion gallons of gasoline was sold. If it was all consumed that is 1.3 gigatonnes. That doesn't include diesel or kerosene, and that's just the United States... keep in mind China is adding so many new drivers to the road annually that they have a lottery just to decide who gets to sit for a license. As of last year China alone has 369 million registered drivers. If each of them averages 7.45 gallons of gasoline a week they're using as much as the United States.
- aoeusnth1 7y ago
  I'm getting the feeling you think those numbers are supposed to make me give up on fighting climate change and feel like reducing meat is pointless, but if anything, you made and extremely compelling case for removing cow products from our diets. Thanks!
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    No those numbers are supposed to make you go "Oh my god! We need to stop taking vacations, road trips, ordering crap from China on AliExpress once a week, stop eating fruit and veg out of season unless it is canned, start buying local, stop commuting 20 miles to work each way, stop streaming tens of gigabytes a day and hosting everything on multiple cloud solutions, cut down our beef consumption, reduce-reuse-recycle, garden, buy used, stop buying a new phone/tablet/macbook every 18 months!!! I need to tell all of my friends and family about this, I need to show them the facts, it's going to take a lot more than just me to correct course! And crypto currencies, for the love of god, we have to stop with this nonsnese, it is responsible for tens of TWh of electricity usage!!!" An estimate that is several years old puts the world at 3 BILLION hours of video games a week. Assume an average of 50w per hour (to factor in handhelds as well as modern consoles on giant televisions and hardcore gaming rigs) and that is 7.8TWh of electricity just for video games, using U.S. electricity source averages, thats' 1.77 gigatonnes of CO2. Another older figure puts U.S. gamers over the age of 13 spending 6.3 hours a week playing games, this was before games like fortnite so may be higher now. imagine just shaving that in half and reading library books, gardening, taking a walk, using a reel mower instead of a gas powered mower, riding your bike to a friend's house instead of driving, walking to go get your food instead of uber eats... a small change in lifestyle and we could save a quarter or a half a gigatonne of carbon. Now what if we could get lots of people to make lots of changes! People, however, generally don't like change and when you have a lot of startups marketing things that rely heavily on fossil fuels - Cyrpto companies rely on massive amounts of processing directly or indirectly (exchanges), cloud-based services have gobs of power hungry servers with data often kept in multiple copies, food delivery services, subscription box services, even more established companies like Amazon encourage impulse buying instead of planning out what you need to buy and getting it once a week or month when you go to the store "get it in 2 hours!" "same day delivery!" "next day delivery!" "free shipping!". We need a radical shift in companies and consumers or our energy demands, and our greenhouse gas emissions, are only going to continue to climb. Air travel fuel use for example is up 30% in a decade because travel is 'in' and 'influencers' are pushing it with their curated lifestyles and we're just shipping a whole lot more by air, now look at a dozen of other industries and you see similar. When I was a kid in the early 90's it was "4-6 weeks delivery" standard for everything, now you can get a stranger to go to the grocery for you and drive it to your house without leaving your couch because you want some chips and dip.
bin0 7y ago
I don't need an "excuse" to continue eating meat. I like it, I eat measured amounts in a health way, and don't believe in this "veganism is healthier" nonsense. I'm going to continue eating it unless some one gives me a darn good reason not to.
panzagl 7y ago
Statements like this just prove that climate change is intellectual Puritanism adapted to the 21st century- we're doomed unless we all live lives of ascetic contemplation the way Emerson or Cotton Mather would have advocated.
asdff 7y ago
Take a road trip to the central valley and take a look at what's being farmed. Almonds. Cotton for mattress stuffing (too shit a grade for anything else). Lettuce. All very high water use crops that don't give you hardly any nutrition save for the almond. There are dozens of crops that we can and absolutely should dispense with. The problem with agriculture is farmers don't farm what uses the least resources and brings about the most nutrients per land area, they farm what returns the most. We also subsidize a lot of these crops.
- asterix_pano 7y ago
  1 liter of almonds milk require about 350 liter of water, while 1 liter of milk is about 1000 liter of water. So, still better to grow almonds than using dairy. Soy and oat are also better than almonds milk.
  - whycombagator 7y ago
    The problem is these alternatives need to have other nutrients added to them and be fortified with the things they lack compared to milk. Go and look at a decent resource like nutrition data and compare what you get with milk vs the alternatives. Milk is far more nutritionally dense, and I'm not just referring to calories/macros. It has vitamins, a lot of minerals, and even omegas.
justnotworthit 7y ago
You thought climate skeptics had too many "we don't know the full story..." type arguments? Trying convincing people to give up meat, as you're experience now. "Other people give up their SUVs" is easy sell to people who don't drive SUVs.
chrisdfrey 7y ago
Even just eating less beef would make a big difference; it has a much higher carboon footprint than other forms of meat: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46459714 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46459714

avip 7y ago

It's a good litmus test. If we can't convince people to switch beef for chicken we're doomed.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

> less cancers due to red meat This is the first I’ve heard of this, how strong is the link?

Spone 7y ago
Relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouAccsTzlGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouAccsTzlGU
elorant 7y ago
Here is a Q&A from WHO. https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
vlan0 7y ago
>Red meat was classified as Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans. What does this mean exactly? In the case of red meat, the classification is based on limited evidence from epidemiological studies showing positive associations between eating red meat and developing colorectal cancer as well as strong mechanistic evidence. >Limited evidence means that a positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer but that other explanations for the observations (technically termed chance, bias, or confounding) could not be ruled out.[1] ## Bonus content on processed meats ## >Processed meat was classified as Group 1, carcinogenic to humans. What does this mean? This category is used when there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans. In other words, there is convincing evidence that the agent causes cancer. The evaluation is usually based on epidemiological studies showing the development of cancer in exposed humans. >In the case of processed meat, this classification is based on sufficient evidence from epidemiological studies that eating processed meat causes colorectal cancer. [1] https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ https://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
- npongratz 7y ago
  >Red meat was classified as Group 2A, probably carcinogenic to humans. They classified coffee, mate, and "very hot beverages" the same way. I'll worry about red meat the exact same way I worry about coffee: not at all, and enjoy every bit I consume. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2A_carcinogens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2A_carcinog...
Ensorceled 7y ago
Pretty strong; red meat is classified as a probable cause of colorectal cancer. Canadian Cancer Society recommends reducing red meat intake. Processed meats are classified as a Group 1 Carcinogen.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Be careful there. A probable cause doesn't tell you anything about rates. Alcohol is a probable cause as well, and from what I can tell is more likely to cause cancer than meat.
  - Ensorceled 7y ago
    Be careful? This advice makes no sense. I'm going to go with the Canadian Cancer Society on red meat. They also, as a matter of fact, say alcohol is carcinogenic and to use alcohol in moderation.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      Be careful because risk level isn't included in there.
  - c0nducktr 7y ago
    Almost certainly. I don't think anyone was making the case that meat is more dangerous than alcohol though.
runeb 7y ago
Here is some work looking at a possible connection between contact with bovine viruses and colorectal cancer. I wonder how many of human cancers are caused by viruses. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22212999 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22212999
NikkiA 7y ago
It's not good news... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47947965 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47947965

Kaiyou 7y ago

There's two sides to everything. Have you looked at the downside of not eating meat?

Deestan 7y ago
Assuming you adjust your diet instead of just subtracting meat (increase broccoli/beans/lentils/spinach for iron, etc), are there really any downsides? We've had vegetarians for a thousands of years, and I am not aware of have any health problems that are most efficiently solved by adding meat.
- kabouseng 7y ago
  Don't eat spinach for iron, spinach is a very poor source of iron...[1] [multiple other sources you can google as well] And vegetarians struggle quite a bit with getting proper dietary nutrition, not just with iron, but also Vitamin B12, Zinc, Omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin D, Calcium, Protein and Riboflavin. So it is not quite just "simply" adjust your diet you lazy meat eater. [1] https://www.compoundchem.com/2018/07/17/spinach/ https://www.compoundchem.com/2018/07/17/spinach/
  - dashundchen 7y ago
    > And vegetarians struggle quite a bit with getting proper dietary nutrition, not just with iron, but also Vitamin B12, Zinc, Omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin D, Calcium, Protein and Riboflavin. So it is not quite just "simply" adjust your diet you lazy meat eater. All of those listed able to be met easily by plant based sources with a well balanced diet. And it's not like the average meat American is eating a healthy diet. I would be shocked if the standard American diet actually met all recommended nutritional intakes. B12 is only in significant amounts of meat because it is heavily supplemented and present in the soil, today's clean produce strips most of those bacteria from the food supply.
    - mcv 7y ago
      B12 is the one I know a number of vegetarians have trouble getting from plant based sources. I've had trouble with it ages ago, and a friend of mine has been told by his doctor that he has to eat meat because of this. The solution is really simple, though: eat less meat. We don't need meat every day. Once or twice a week is more than enough, and if everybody did that, it would greatly reduce this problem.

jelly1 7y ago

More and more people I know have become partly vegetarian and it seems that the meat replacements are also becoming more popular. But I can't say much about the scale of things.

wayoutthere 7y ago
This is true in the US; and is becoming true elsewhere simply because meat has become so expensive. I know several friends who have gone vegetarian for a combination of health, financial and environmental benefits. It’s pretty common in progressive circles in the US at least.
rocgf 7y ago
> it seems that the meat replacements are also becoming more popular Which is very unfortunate, in my opinion. It might get people to switch to a more animal-friendly diet, but I simply can't think of how meat replacements are healthier than real meat.
- d33 7y ago
  It really depends on what you call meat replacements. There are vegan dishes that can work as a decent barbecue sausage substitutes and I heard that synthetic-heme-based products can have a meaty feel... it's not like meat in super healthy when abused, so I wouldn't be surprised if a plant-based version could actually be better.
- chimprich 7y ago
  What meat substitutes did you have in mind? How about tofu? Compared to say, cured meats, which contain cancer-causing nitrates, and far more heart disease-causing saturated fats, it's got to be significantly healthier. And they're certainly healthier for the environment.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  But if health is the main concern, the challenges are far greater than just meat consumption...

KaiserPro 7y ago

This is not universal. Yes, the expansion of agricultural land is almost always bad. Unless its expansion into desert, and isn't depleting water (which is almost never the case). But, sheep, cattle and especially pigs provide useful products in the farming cycle, essential if you want to cut out oil based fertilisers. Thats not to mention that most of the country side of Europe looks the way it does because if farming sheep or cattle. Pasture has its own biodiversity. Simply stopping all animal consumption would leave us more dependent on fertilisers in the short to medium term. It would also cause rapid local environmental changes, that would have interesting side effects.

Ensorceled 7y ago
This reminds me of all the small dairy farms that used to exist where I grew up. My grandfathers' farm was pretty typical at 100 acres; 40 acres of rough pasture and wood lot ("the back 40"), almost 60 acres of fields that rotated as hay/grain and temporary pasture. Everything self-contained and fertilized with cow manure until the '70s when everything started ratcheting up.
- hvidgaard 7y ago
  At some point the land would be useless, unless biomass from the outside was added. Every product that leaves the farm is from the land and it's ability to support that cycle will be depleted sooner or later.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Biomass does come from the outside though on earth - rainfall and photosynthesis are sufficient to increase the mass unless said farm is a closed cycle hermetically sealed dome. That said it still could run into problems with other requisite elemental depletion in soil even with assistance of things like bacteria. If the plants need calcium and it is all extracted then thr farm would be limited to simpler life that doesn't need any trace elements. If say algae can get by on just atmospheric gas components, water, and sunlight indefinitely then a hypothetical algae farm could run indefinitely. But there isn't much of a market for algae.

whiddershins 7y ago

This viewpoint is expressed often but there are many counter arguments. Nutrition is not a solved equation. We simply do not know how exactly various foods affect our health, the extent that human genetics and microbiome affect “proper” nutrition for a person, what all the essential nutrients are, what the immunoresponse to various foods are, and any number of unknown unknowns about diet. Any claims to the contrary are irresponsible at best. You mention biodiversity but seem to be glossing over the role of ruminants in the ecological system, and the severe lack of biodiversity which can be the consequence of large scale crop production. These and other reasons lead me to be concerned that this viewpoint is to some degree tainted by ideological blind spots.

darkerside 7y ago
Completely removing meat is not solved. I think we can say with high confidence that Americans in particular eat way too much meat, in way too large of servings, far too often. If you just start having one meal a day without meat, you'll start to feel how odd it is to eat meat 3 times a day like most Americans do.
Vinnl 7y ago
> Nutrition is not a solved equation. We simply do not know how exactly various foods affect our health, the extent that human genetics and microbiome affect “proper” nutrition for a person, what all the essential nutrients are, what the immunoresponse to various foods are, and any number of unknown unknowns about diet. Any claims to the contrary are irresponsible at best. Nevertheless the same applies to the way we changed our diets in relatively recent times, and yet that hasn't stopped us.
trentnix 7y ago
And there's the whole problem of I don't want to and you're going to have to make me.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dashundchen 7y ago

zorbash 7y ago

I'm not a vegetarian myself, however I only eat meat products one per week. I can tell you that there's plenty of alternatives that taste good. To name a few Quorn[1] and Beyond Meat[2] and from what I read Impossible Food[3] as well. So with the help of tech, we'll find less and less excuses not to switch, at least partially, to a plant based diet. [1]: https://www.quorn.co.uk/ https://www.quorn.co.uk/ [2]: https://www.beyondmeat.com/products/ https://www.beyondmeat.com/products/ [3]: https://impossiblefoods.com/food/ https://impossiblefoods.com/food/

Bantros 7y ago

"simply"

lnsru 7y ago

I like meat, eat good quality meat 3-4 a week and enjoy it. However I see a bigger problem - insane amounts of food thrown away. Secondary problems imho is good packaging. If I buy 2 bags of food at local LIDL, I have 1 bag of plastic waste at the end. Nobody wants to solve this, zero profit here. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/aug/20/food-waste-alarming-rise-will-see-66-tonnes-thrown-away-every-second https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/aug/20/f...

avip 7y ago
The GHG effect of Beef is much larger than wasted food, and it's x10 easier problem to solve.
wes-k 7y ago
Reducing food waste comes in at #3 of ways to reduce CO2, while switching to a plant based diet comes in at #4 [1]. That said, #3 is about agriculture/business waste of food, not what you and I are tossing from our plates. > "A third of the food raised or prepared does not make it from farm or factory to fork" Seriously though, the top thing in our control is eating plant based food! 1. https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank
string 7y ago
I'm not sure if this is what you were suggesting, but there seems to be some misconception that vegetarians don't like meat. I like meat, in fact I love it. I used to contribute to a food blog reviewing steak restaurants. I love the smell and (the thought of) the taste. I haven't eaten meat for about five years because of environmental reasons, not because I dislike it. Not eating meat is such an easy thing for most people to do, the facts are in front of us and it would make a significant difference. It does not fill with me with optimism that most are unwilling to do even this.

mxfh 7y ago

This is all of this, but not THE single pressing climate issue, food is the one issue where most people from most economies have already cought up, besides some excessive outliers, there is little to catch up in consumption worldwide and it's still a low percentage on climate impact. The big consumer driven issues by climate impact are all other consumption housing and transportation. If we want to allow the rest of the world to catch up to our standard of living, food choices is not the one area where radical change is needed to make this sustainable.

asterix_pano 7y ago
Well, this is not really true. Animal agriculture is more or less the same total GHG emissions as the whole transportation sector, and it's technically way easier to switch to a vegetarian diet than stopping people from moving or finding new technological avances. So why not start with the low hanging fruits?
- mxfh 7y ago
  ? any sources for those percentages. https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/fao-common-flawed-comparisons-greenhouse-gas-emissions-livestock-transport/ https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/fao-common-flawed-com... My point is that food is the one thing that's globally almost evenly distributed part of economy. And even if we all change diet's, it wont safe anyone's climate, if the rest is catching up with "western" lifestyles at their current emmisions footprint. Pretty much anything else is easier to change technically, if it wasnt for lobbyism. I grew up in GDR and still had livestock of our own, this not just about food ethics, but also diversity/robustness of food supply in any more fragile economy.
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ryanmercer 7y ago

An average cow produces 70 and 120 kg of methane a year, with 1.3-1.5 billion cows worldwide that's 91,000,000 metric tons of methane. That's 2.73 gigatonnes CO2 equivalent. Cows are the worst, if we exterminated every cow on earth it would only be a drop in the annual bucket given that we created 37.1 gigatonnes of just CO2 last year. Even if you factor in the fertilizer, fuel, electricity used for those cattle and double the number, it still wouldn't come close to putting us carbon negative. The United States gets roughly 30% of its power from coal, China roughly 70%. Commercial aviation last year was responsible for at LEAST 0.55 gigatonnes of CO2 last year and in a decade the fuel use is up 30.5%. That's also a low figure for the CO2, it could be as much as 13% higher as there are various types of aviation fuel, it also does not include military figures. By the time you factor in all of electricity and fuel use supporting aviation by non-aircraft sources, commercial aviation is likely as bad as the cows of the world. Last year in the United States 142.86 billion gallons of gasoline was sold. If it was all consumed that is 1.3 gigatonnes. That doesn't include diesel or kerosene, and that's just the United States... keep in mind China is adding so many new drivers to the road annually that they have a lottery just to decide who gets to sit for a license. As of last year China alone has 369 million registered drivers. If each of them averages 7.45 gallons of gasoline a week they're using as much as the United States.

aoeusnth1 7y ago
I'm getting the feeling you think those numbers are supposed to make me give up on fighting climate change and feel like reducing meat is pointless, but if anything, you made and extremely compelling case for removing cow products from our diets. Thanks!
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  No those numbers are supposed to make you go "Oh my god! We need to stop taking vacations, road trips, ordering crap from China on AliExpress once a week, stop eating fruit and veg out of season unless it is canned, start buying local, stop commuting 20 miles to work each way, stop streaming tens of gigabytes a day and hosting everything on multiple cloud solutions, cut down our beef consumption, reduce-reuse-recycle, garden, buy used, stop buying a new phone/tablet/macbook every 18 months!!! I need to tell all of my friends and family about this, I need to show them the facts, it's going to take a lot more than just me to correct course! And crypto currencies, for the love of god, we have to stop with this nonsnese, it is responsible for tens of TWh of electricity usage!!!" An estimate that is several years old puts the world at 3 BILLION hours of video games a week. Assume an average of 50w per hour (to factor in handhelds as well as modern consoles on giant televisions and hardcore gaming rigs) and that is 7.8TWh of electricity just for video games, using U.S. electricity source averages, thats' 1.77 gigatonnes of CO2. Another older figure puts U.S. gamers over the age of 13 spending 6.3 hours a week playing games, this was before games like fortnite so may be higher now. imagine just shaving that in half and reading library books, gardening, taking a walk, using a reel mower instead of a gas powered mower, riding your bike to a friend's house instead of driving, walking to go get your food instead of uber eats... a small change in lifestyle and we could save a quarter or a half a gigatonne of carbon. Now what if we could get lots of people to make lots of changes! People, however, generally don't like change and when you have a lot of startups marketing things that rely heavily on fossil fuels - Cyrpto companies rely on massive amounts of processing directly or indirectly (exchanges), cloud-based services have gobs of power hungry servers with data often kept in multiple copies, food delivery services, subscription box services, even more established companies like Amazon encourage impulse buying instead of planning out what you need to buy and getting it once a week or month when you go to the store "get it in 2 hours!" "same day delivery!" "next day delivery!" "free shipping!". We need a radical shift in companies and consumers or our energy demands, and our greenhouse gas emissions, are only going to continue to climb. Air travel fuel use for example is up 30% in a decade because travel is 'in' and 'influencers' are pushing it with their curated lifestyles and we're just shipping a whole lot more by air, now look at a dozen of other industries and you see similar. When I was a kid in the early 90's it was "4-6 weeks delivery" standard for everything, now you can get a stranger to go to the grocery for you and drive it to your house without leaving your couch because you want some chips and dip.

bin0 7y ago

I don't need an "excuse" to continue eating meat. I like it, I eat measured amounts in a health way, and don't believe in this "veganism is healthier" nonsense. I'm going to continue eating it unless some one gives me a darn good reason not to.

panzagl 7y ago

Statements like this just prove that climate change is intellectual Puritanism adapted to the 21st century- we're doomed unless we all live lives of ascetic contemplation the way Emerson or Cotton Mather would have advocated.

asdff 7y ago

Take a road trip to the central valley and take a look at what's being farmed. Almonds. Cotton for mattress stuffing (too shit a grade for anything else). Lettuce. All very high water use crops that don't give you hardly any nutrition save for the almond. There are dozens of crops that we can and absolutely should dispense with. The problem with agriculture is farmers don't farm what uses the least resources and brings about the most nutrients per land area, they farm what returns the most. We also subsidize a lot of these crops.

asterix_pano 7y ago
1 liter of almonds milk require about 350 liter of water, while 1 liter of milk is about 1000 liter of water. So, still better to grow almonds than using dairy. Soy and oat are also better than almonds milk.
- whycombagator 7y ago
  The problem is these alternatives need to have other nutrients added to them and be fortified with the things they lack compared to milk. Go and look at a decent resource like nutrition data and compare what you get with milk vs the alternatives. Milk is far more nutritionally dense, and I'm not just referring to calories/macros. It has vitamins, a lot of minerals, and even omegas.

justnotworthit 7y ago

You thought climate skeptics had too many "we don't know the full story..." type arguments? Trying convincing people to give up meat, as you're experience now. "Other people give up their SUVs" is easy sell to people who don't drive SUVs.

chrisdfrey 7y ago

Even just eating less beef would make a big difference; it has a much higher carboon footprint than other forms of meat: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46459714 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46459714