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> Lentils (Lens culinaris Medik.) are produced on over 1.5 million acres throughout the world. They are primarily used for domestic consumption in casseroles, s

by danans 5y ago

> Lentils (Lens culinaris Medik.) are produced on over 1.5 million acres throughout the world. They are primarily used for domestic consumption in casseroles, salads, soups and stews. Lentils provide an excellent source of protein (20 to 35 percent), but are limited in the sulphur-containing amino acids methionine and cystine. However, consumption of lentils with cereals provides a balanced diet high in fiber, protein and essential amino acids. > Lentils in the United States are primarily grown for export. Growing lentils is a great idea, but the developed and developing worlds' palates also need to also change course toward consuming less climate-damaging foods like meat and more lentils, chickpeas, and other pulses. Already today, pea protein is a major constituent of the newer more realistic meat-substitutes, which is a good trend, but if most lentils just end up being exported and used as some sort of livestock feed, it will make little differences to the climate and environmental issues we are experiencing.

reedjosh 5y ago
From the article. > They also lease land to neighboring ranchers, whose grazing cattle aerate the soil with their hooves and add organic matter and nutrients via manure. Meat can and should be a part of regenerative ag. I recently visited a family friend's place/farm. A year ago, the soil was the typical cracked dry light tan clay ground that I have in my yard. It's quite typical in Oregon. This time, the soil was a dark color with tons of organic material and great water retention. This was entirely due to the grazing. They have goats and an alpaca. Ruminants are excellent for soil health, and the meat they produce is also great for human health.
- EricE 5y ago
  Yes - people dramatically underestimate the value of ruminants that can process plants that we can't.
  - pacomerh 5y ago
    I wish more people knew about this. It's amazing how little we know (as a whole) about what we eat
- knuthsat 5y ago
  There's really not that much meat in regenerative agriculture. Given the current per capita consumption of meat in kg, a regenerative ag operation could never accomplish that. Reducing to 4-30kg of meat per capita per year seems impossible. No one can even accomplish that with ruminants. That's why there's so much chicken everywhere, because accomplishing that with ruminants is near impossible, so chicken is advertised massively instead. A nitpick, there's no single food that is great for human health or bad for human health. Diet can contain various things and be healthy and it can also lack meat and be healthy.
  - andscoop 5y ago
    Do you have sources for this? I used to think similarly, but now I’m not so sure. Gabe Brown, the author of Dirt to Soil, changed my outlook on animals place in a healthy ecosystem. On his farmland he puts about 700k lbs of cattle on 1acre of land at a time, rotating those cattle frequently across 40 acres. He claims this practice has been an integral part of his regenerative ag method. http://brownsranch.us/grazing/ http://brownsranch.us/grazing/
    - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
      I don't think that math works out. That works out to around 6 square meters per cow. Google says cows eat about 160 pounds of grass per day.
      - andscoop 5y ago
        Brown has bred his cattle for efficiency. > A large-framed cow is one that requires a higher intake level for maintenance alone https://brownsranch.us/livestock/ https://brownsranch.us/livestock/ My math came out similarly to yours but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for there to be 150lbs of waste high cover crop biomass in a 6 square meter area. Again he is rotating these cattle daily and never depleting the crops of any one area, giving them a chance to grow back by the time the cattle are rotated back through. Another term you can search for to find visuals of what this sort of density looks like is mobgrazing.
      - 5y ago
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Yes, meat is a good component of a healthy diet, but as with many things, Americans take the quantity about 10 miles past the advisable point.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  I do work at a farm and around farms that use regenerative grazing. It works great. However as a vegan my hope is that we eventually let animals graze and simply do not kill and consume them. One could argue “the meat is there” but that meat is beings with a heart and a mind. When I see the grazing animals with their babies in toe, I think about how they will be separated and the pain the mothers will go through. We can take great care of our soil with regenerative grazing but that is quite apart from whether or not we need to treat those animals as mere property and eat them.
  - matmatmatmat 5y ago
    I'm a meat-eater (have been my whole life), but I've always been partial to this argument. This is why I'm looking forward to lab-grown meat and would pay a bit of a premium for it.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      Lab grown meat is promising, for sure. FWIW I am now in year three of veganism and it feels like I have made it past all the "teething" stages to the point where I am absolutely loving my vegan meals. It is rare for me these days to eat a meat or cheese substitute - more like the occasional junk food throwback than a normal meal. Lentils, tofu, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, brown rice, peanut sauce, lettuce, zucchini, and just some of the foods that bring me joy to eat. Hopefully you're already learning to make vegan meals but if anyone out there is on the fence I highly encourage you to learn how to make delicious vegan food. It's so tasty and you won't feel the guilt of eating meat.
      - inreverse 5y ago
        Are there any chefs who unify veganism with traditional cuisines that use lots of animal products, e.g. french or chinese? I would love to be vegetarian but I'm lucky in that my partner makes fantastic traditional food and I don't want to give it up. Vegan modifications along the lines of 'substitute the meat in your burger for mushroom' seem depressing, like they're unengaged with the balance of flavours in the dish.
markdown 5y ago
> Growing lentils is a great idea, but the developed and developing worlds' palates also need to also change course toward consuming less climate-damaging foods like meat and more lentils, chickpeas, and other pulses. Forget about the developing world. This is all about the developed world. You are to blame. Most of the pollution is by the US and Europe, regardless of whether it happens at home or as pollution outsourced to China.
- daddylongstroke 5y ago
  If you're using a computer of some kind to type this message on a message board, surely you recognize that you too are to blame.
pdonis 5y ago
Has there been any work on meat substitutes using lentils or chickpeas?
- danans 5y ago
  Most of the meat substitute burgers available today (impossible, beyond) use pea protein. Not sure if it's chickpea but they could always substitute. There have long been chickpea based "chikn" patties available at grocery stores. Also try IKEA's plant balls, which are made primarily of chickpea flour.
Animats 5y ago
Growing lentils is a great idea, but the developed and developing worlds' palates also need to also change course toward consuming less climate-damaging foods like meat and more lentils, chickpeas, and other pulses. If you like lentis, you too can experience the joys of the US Humanitarian Daily Ration, NSN 8970-01-375-0516 [1]. It's vegetarian. It's kosher. It's halal. It's cheap to manufacture. It can survive being air-dropped without a parachute. It's heavy on lentils.The US military gives it out to starving people. [1] https://www.dla.mil/TroopSupport/Subsistence/Operational-rations/hdr/ https://www.dla.mil/TroopSupport/Subsistence/Operational-rat...
- danans 5y ago
  Not sure what your point is. Lentils are used in thousands of recipes that aren't the US Humanitarian Daily Ration that most people would much rather eat.

by danans 5y ago

reedjosh 5y ago

From the article. > They also lease land to neighboring ranchers, whose grazing cattle aerate the soil with their hooves and add organic matter and nutrients via manure. Meat can and should be a part of regenerative ag. I recently visited a family friend's place/farm. A year ago, the soil was the typical cracked dry light tan clay ground that I have in my yard. It's quite typical in Oregon. This time, the soil was a dark color with tons of organic material and great water retention. This was entirely due to the grazing. They have goats and an alpaca. Ruminants are excellent for soil health, and the meat they produce is also great for human health.

EricE 5y ago
Yes - people dramatically underestimate the value of ruminants that can process plants that we can't.
- pacomerh 5y ago
  I wish more people knew about this. It's amazing how little we know (as a whole) about what we eat
knuthsat 5y ago
There's really not that much meat in regenerative agriculture. Given the current per capita consumption of meat in kg, a regenerative ag operation could never accomplish that. Reducing to 4-30kg of meat per capita per year seems impossible. No one can even accomplish that with ruminants. That's why there's so much chicken everywhere, because accomplishing that with ruminants is near impossible, so chicken is advertised massively instead. A nitpick, there's no single food that is great for human health or bad for human health. Diet can contain various things and be healthy and it can also lack meat and be healthy.
- andscoop 5y ago
  Do you have sources for this? I used to think similarly, but now I’m not so sure. Gabe Brown, the author of Dirt to Soil, changed my outlook on animals place in a healthy ecosystem. On his farmland he puts about 700k lbs of cattle on 1acre of land at a time, rotating those cattle frequently across 40 acres. He claims this practice has been an integral part of his regenerative ag method. http://brownsranch.us/grazing/ http://brownsranch.us/grazing/
  - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    I don't think that math works out. That works out to around 6 square meters per cow. Google says cows eat about 160 pounds of grass per day.
    - andscoop 5y ago
      Brown has bred his cattle for efficiency. > A large-framed cow is one that requires a higher intake level for maintenance alone https://brownsranch.us/livestock/ https://brownsranch.us/livestock/ My math came out similarly to yours but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for there to be 150lbs of waste high cover crop biomass in a 6 square meter area. Again he is rotating these cattle daily and never depleting the crops of any one area, giving them a chance to grow back by the time the cattle are rotated back through. Another term you can search for to find visuals of what this sort of density looks like is mobgrazing.
    - 5y ago
spoonjim 5y ago
Yes, meat is a good component of a healthy diet, but as with many things, Americans take the quantity about 10 miles past the advisable point.
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
I do work at a farm and around farms that use regenerative grazing. It works great. However as a vegan my hope is that we eventually let animals graze and simply do not kill and consume them. One could argue “the meat is there” but that meat is beings with a heart and a mind. When I see the grazing animals with their babies in toe, I think about how they will be separated and the pain the mothers will go through. We can take great care of our soil with regenerative grazing but that is quite apart from whether or not we need to treat those animals as mere property and eat them.
- matmatmatmat 5y ago
  I'm a meat-eater (have been my whole life), but I've always been partial to this argument. This is why I'm looking forward to lab-grown meat and would pay a bit of a premium for it.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    Lab grown meat is promising, for sure. FWIW I am now in year three of veganism and it feels like I have made it past all the "teething" stages to the point where I am absolutely loving my vegan meals. It is rare for me these days to eat a meat or cheese substitute - more like the occasional junk food throwback than a normal meal. Lentils, tofu, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, brown rice, peanut sauce, lettuce, zucchini, and just some of the foods that bring me joy to eat. Hopefully you're already learning to make vegan meals but if anyone out there is on the fence I highly encourage you to learn how to make delicious vegan food. It's so tasty and you won't feel the guilt of eating meat.
    - inreverse 5y ago
      Are there any chefs who unify veganism with traditional cuisines that use lots of animal products, e.g. french or chinese? I would love to be vegetarian but I'm lucky in that my partner makes fantastic traditional food and I don't want to give it up. Vegan modifications along the lines of 'substitute the meat in your burger for mushroom' seem depressing, like they're unengaged with the balance of flavours in the dish.

markdown 5y ago

> Growing lentils is a great idea, but the developed and developing worlds' palates also need to also change course toward consuming less climate-damaging foods like meat and more lentils, chickpeas, and other pulses. Forget about the developing world. This is all about the developed world. You are to blame. Most of the pollution is by the US and Europe, regardless of whether it happens at home or as pollution outsourced to China.

daddylongstroke 5y ago
If you're using a computer of some kind to type this message on a message board, surely you recognize that you too are to blame.

pdonis 5y ago

Has there been any work on meat substitutes using lentils or chickpeas?

danans 5y ago
Most of the meat substitute burgers available today (impossible, beyond) use pea protein. Not sure if it's chickpea but they could always substitute. There have long been chickpea based "chikn" patties available at grocery stores. Also try IKEA's plant balls, which are made primarily of chickpea flour.

Animats 5y ago

Growing lentils is a great idea, but the developed and developing worlds' palates also need to also change course toward consuming less climate-damaging foods like meat and more lentils, chickpeas, and other pulses. If you like lentis, you too can experience the joys of the US Humanitarian Daily Ration, NSN 8970-01-375-0516 [1]. It's vegetarian. It's kosher. It's halal. It's cheap to manufacture. It can survive being air-dropped without a parachute. It's heavy on lentils.The US military gives it out to starving people. [1] https://www.dla.mil/TroopSupport/Subsistence/Operational-rations/hdr/ https://www.dla.mil/TroopSupport/Subsistence/Operational-rat...

danans 5y ago
Not sure what your point is. Lentils are used in thousands of recipes that aren't the US Humanitarian Daily Ration that most people would much rather eat.