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If you are interested in this, you might want to read the well-researched article of OurWorldInData on food production and its impact. Some things like producin

If you are interested in this, you might want to read the well-researched article of OurWorldInData on food production and its impact. Some things like producing meat locally are, maybe surprisingly, worse solutions than replacing it with vegetables even when these were shipped around the globe. Transport has a low impact on the total emissions (and also producing beef is sooo bad) that you could e.g. ship a kilogram of peas several times around the globe and the peas would still win emission-wise against a kilogram of locally produced beef. If you pick another metric, like energy content ('calories') or compare emissions per mass of contained protein, beef is still worse. https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

_Microft 6y ago
What a coincidence: Max Roser, the founder of Our World in Data, shared an article [0][1] on Twitter about the importance of the choice of diet and local production a mere two hours after my earlier posting. [0] https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1294928556036956162 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1294928556036956162 [1] https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
kebman 6y ago
Don't you think it's a little unfair to compare peas to meat? First of all, most people aren't going to replace their meat with veggies, and most veggies already have to be imported anyway. Compared to importing other meats, it is of course much better to have the meat produced locally, especially considering that the land can't really be utilized well in other ways. Which is also a question of avoiding dependencies, btw. In any case, beef is just a part of what is produced, as mountaneous areas are for instance better suited to mutton. Then there's the question of sorely lacking amino acids in pea proteins, meaning that it's not really fair to make one-to-one comparisons. Even if there are benefits from replacing all meats with veggies, the taste and texture just can't compare to meat, which again means that very few are going to voluntarily make the switch even for conscientious reasons.
- _Microft 6y ago
  Not at all, the topic of ressource efficiency in the form of the trophic level of different foods was exactly how our sub-thread of the discussion started. I have not argued about any other aspect of meat other than it being a pretty awful way of extracting ressources.

_Microft 6y ago

What a coincidence: Max Roser, the founder of Our World in Data, shared an article [0][1] on Twitter about the importance of the choice of diet and local production a mere two hours after my earlier posting. [0] https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1294928556036956162 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1294928556036956162 [1] https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

kebman 6y ago

Don't you think it's a little unfair to compare peas to meat? First of all, most people aren't going to replace their meat with veggies, and most veggies already have to be imported anyway. Compared to importing other meats, it is of course much better to have the meat produced locally, especially considering that the land can't really be utilized well in other ways. Which is also a question of avoiding dependencies, btw. In any case, beef is just a part of what is produced, as mountaneous areas are for instance better suited to mutton. Then there's the question of sorely lacking amino acids in pea proteins, meaning that it's not really fair to make one-to-one comparisons. Even if there are benefits from replacing all meats with veggies, the taste and texture just can't compare to meat, which again means that very few are going to voluntarily make the switch even for conscientious reasons.

_Microft 6y ago
Not at all, the topic of ressource efficiency in the form of the trophic level of different foods was exactly how our sub-thread of the discussion started. I have not argued about any other aspect of meat other than it being a pretty awful way of extracting ressources.