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> Convincing, nutritious, cheap artificial meat could turn the world vegetarian. You wrongly assume people in general want to or need to be vegetarian. We evol

by karol 5y ago

> Convincing, nutritious, cheap artificial meat could turn the world vegetarian. You wrongly assume people in general want to or need to be vegetarian. We evolved to eat and digest animal based foods.

wongarsu 5y ago
Drastically reducing the consumption of real meat, especially beef, would have an impact on our greenhouse gas emissions comparable to making all planes and ships carbon neutral
- ben_w 5y ago
  Yes, yet that doesn’t make it any easier to change peoples dietary preferences.
- agurk 5y ago
  I didn't know these numbers, so I had to look them up: * Ships are responsible for 90% of international transport, their CO2 emissions accounting for approximately 2.2% of the global total of such emissions [0] * Aircraft are responsible for 1.9% of greenhouse gas emissions (which includes all greenhouse gases, not only CO2) and 2.5% of CO2 emissions [1] [0] https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/158911010/Working_Paper_4_Emissions_from_Shipping.pdf https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/158911010/Working_Paper_4_Emissio... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  That is an enormous lie. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... Agriculture in total is 10%. Transportation is 29%
  - dTal 5y ago
    That seems pretty comparable.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      If you consider 10% to be 29% it certainly is very comparable.
      - dTal 5y ago
        Comparable doesn't mean identical. It means they exist on the same scale, or are of similar magnitude. Obviously that's subjective to an extent, but a factor of 3 is only half an order of magnitude - sufficiently similar that "enormous lie" seems a rather unfair description.
        GhettoComputers 5y ago
        Nearly 300% difference is a huge and fitting description of a huge lie. 10% is also all agriculture, not just bovine production, and even if you removed trucks in transportation, I am sure its not going to be similiar at all.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    Emissions in Transportation are dominated by road transport, which I didn't include. Road transport is responsible for about 70-80% of all transport emissions. See for example [1] for a more detailed breakdown. They list Aviation as 1.9% of total emissions, Shipping (by ship) as 1.7%, Livestock & manure as 5.8%. So by those numbers planes and ships add to 3.6, much less than the 5.8 of livestock (and that's not including use of energy or transport for livestock). 1: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      That data is from 2016. It’s rather outdated. That amount of percentage change is rather low for the disproportionate impact it would have, its like convincing others to use a raspberry pi 3 for a gaming desktop to use less energy but ignore the hvac that can be replaced with more efficient energy usage with less of an impact.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  This is largely a red herring. The entire world could become vegetarian overnight and emissions would only be reduced by a couple percentage points. Reducing oil dependence is a far more fruitful endeavor to pursue.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    "reducing oil dependence" is hardly a singular task. "Reduce Meat consumption" would rank lower than "make electricity production less dependent on coal, natural gas and oil" but higher than "find a viable alternative fuel for ships". Luckily we have enough people and resources that we can work on multiple problems at once
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      We already have nuclear as an alternative, it’s just not being used. Using buffalo instead would lower emissions, use less resources and give healthier meat but the war against beef isn’t really looking for solutions, it’s trying to fit the abolishment of rudiments as the only acceptable method.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dTal 5y ago
In the UK under rationing during WW2, during which people ate very little meat, the health of the population soared. Mortality dropped, both in infancy and old age. Children grew taller and heavier. Also during WW2, occupying Germans removed all animal livestock from Norway - so Norwegians had to survive on wholegrains, legumes, fruit and vegetables. Deaths from strokes and heart disease plummeted almost immediately. After the war, the consequent return to eating animal products saw the previous levels of disease return. We eat far more protein than we actually need today.
- lr4444lr 5y ago
  A lot of things were rationed in WW2. What definitively points to excess meat as the culprit?
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  >In the UK under rationing during WW2, during which people ate very little meat, the health of the population soared. Mortality dropped, both in infancy and old age. Children grew taller and heavier. Okay but is it because of eating very little meat, or because of rationing itself? Looks like it's simply because a lot of people got a steady and stable supply of calories and vitamins/minerals, not anything to do with meat.[0] . In other words rationing + more meat could have easily produced even better results. Meat, after all, is an excellent nutritional choice. [0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/9728 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/9728 edit: wowza typos
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  They were worried about famine, people were starving and children didn’t get proper nutrition and were prone to more disease, girls stopped menstruating. Some Norwegians were lucky and grew their own food including animals. The fact your cited the malnourishment of these unfortunate people as a citation to justify your propaganda of poor nutrition and eating habits is evidence that nobody should take you seriously, it should only be seen that your dreadful beliefs as the opposite of what to do unless they agree with your advocacy for stunted children, non menstruating females, and being prone to illnesses such as diarrhea, pneumonia and meningitis, which will kill them before heart disease and they won't live long enough to have a stroke either. https://www.kubenarendal.no/Eydehavn/undervisning/barndomungdom2/view.html https://www.kubenarendal.no/Eydehavn/undervisning/barndomung...
ben_w 5y ago
We evolved to do a lot of things we no longer tolerate, and we have invented many things that do better than evolution. As for “need”… what is good for one human is often very different to what’s good for humanity — tragedy of the commons, Nash equilibrium, there are many examples. And as a vegetarian, I’m an existence proof that it’s fine, though not any evidence of it being better or worse than an omnivorous diet.
- 1_player 5y ago
  > We evolved to do a lot of things we no longer tolerate Such as?
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Food hygiene is the big one, in this case. We used to eat whatever we could hunt and kill (or gather) without knowing what bacterial infections looked like, much less how to eliminate the pathogens. Even cleaning bowls and cutlery is only possible after the invention of those things, and soap is much more recent, circa 5000 BC according to a quick Google (and then apparently used for curing ailments rather than as a general thing? IDK how much to trust first hit on the web).
    - 1_player 5y ago
      Do you think you'd die if you were to eat with your hands off the floor? Rich Western citizen probably have weaker immune systems than people living in the middle of the jungle, but they're all the same species, it's not a matter of "we've evolved to need to eat with a clean fork." Even the Rich Western person is much more resilient than you think they might be. You can survive, perhaps not thrive, off half rotten carrion if need be. Evolution works on much bigger timescales.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        > Do you think you'd die if you were to eat with your hands off the floor? No, that’s putting words into my mouth. I’m saying we won’t tolerate bad hygiene, not that it will kill us, and our floors are generally quite clean these days anyway. Food poisoning is however a thing, and from what I’ve heard (never had it myself) quite unpleasant.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lm28469 5y ago
> We evolved to eat and digest animal based foods. I doubt we evolved to eat large quantities of (mostly low quality processed) meat two or three times a day though, that's a very very modern lifestyle.
- symlinkk 5y ago
  “Low quality” “Processed” These words are meaningless.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    Eh... so a chicken breast and a hot dog sausage are the same ? The beef from the farm across my parents' house is the same as an antibiotic fed beef from a large scale US exploitation shipped over the atlantic ? A frozen burger patty vs a locally sourced beef piece minced by your local butcher ? A bag of dehydrated potatoe crumbs vs home made mashed potatoes ? An apple and a banana vs an industrial sugar and preservative ridden compote ? I know removing or altering the meaning of words is a big trend these days but it seems dishonest to not see the difference here. I honestly think you'd have to be severely uneducated or straight up lying not to see it
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      So your gotcha is that he or all meat eaters equate hot dogs and chicken breasts and you’re trying to call him uneducated or a liar with this genius logic?
      - lm28469 5y ago
        No gotcha, read the comment I'm replying to. “Low quality” “Processed” definitely have a meaning
        GhettoComputers 5y ago
        There’s a lot of implications you’re making, like a frozen beef patty is never higher quality than one that is from a butcher. Your examples aren’t convincing.
krageon 5y ago
> We evolved Nutrition is poorly understood so being conservative with changes is reasonable, but making claims about what is and is not good because of the environment we evolved in doesn't make sense at all. Evolving in a specific environment emphatically does not say what you are optimal for, just what you can tolerate acceptably enough to function. That we can function while eating meat is not in doubt and every other claim based on evolution is an appeal to authority to an authority that doesn't support what you say.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Nutrition isn’t poorly understood. If what you said was true, vegans wouldn’t need to take tests to check their micronutrient profile or need so many supplements. You have no evidence to support your claim, there has been 0 vegan civilizations; for good reason. There is no dimension where a vegan does not need to check their iron levels and supplementation is a must: if you care about your health and getting what your ancestors did from meat.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    If nutrition is as well understood as you claim when you criticise vegan diets (I don’t know, not my field), then we must also know how to create a vegan food item that can replace meat and dairy, and the question is then one of taste and cost.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      They made that a long time ago and achieved it (vegans that supplement), dog food like vegan products like Soylent exists. Although it exists you'll have to convince people to consume it since its not preferable.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        So you agree the question is then one of taste and cost.

by karol 5y ago

wongarsu 5y ago

Drastically reducing the consumption of real meat, especially beef, would have an impact on our greenhouse gas emissions comparable to making all planes and ships carbon neutral

ben_w 5y ago
Yes, yet that doesn’t make it any easier to change peoples dietary preferences.
agurk 5y ago
I didn't know these numbers, so I had to look them up: * Ships are responsible for 90% of international transport, their CO2 emissions accounting for approximately 2.2% of the global total of such emissions [0] * Aircraft are responsible for 1.9% of greenhouse gas emissions (which includes all greenhouse gases, not only CO2) and 2.5% of CO2 emissions [1] [0] https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/158911010/Working_Paper_4_Emissions_from_Shipping.pdf https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/158911010/Working_Paper_4_Emissio... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
GhettoComputers 5y ago
That is an enormous lie. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... Agriculture in total is 10%. Transportation is 29%
- dTal 5y ago
  That seems pretty comparable.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    If you consider 10% to be 29% it certainly is very comparable.
    - dTal 5y ago
      Comparable doesn't mean identical. It means they exist on the same scale, or are of similar magnitude. Obviously that's subjective to an extent, but a factor of 3 is only half an order of magnitude - sufficiently similar that "enormous lie" seems a rather unfair description.
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        Nearly 300% difference is a huge and fitting description of a huge lie. 10% is also all agriculture, not just bovine production, and even if you removed trucks in transportation, I am sure its not going to be similiar at all.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  Emissions in Transportation are dominated by road transport, which I didn't include. Road transport is responsible for about 70-80% of all transport emissions. See for example [1] for a more detailed breakdown. They list Aviation as 1.9% of total emissions, Shipping (by ship) as 1.7%, Livestock & manure as 5.8%. So by those numbers planes and ships add to 3.6, much less than the 5.8 of livestock (and that's not including use of energy or transport for livestock). 1: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    That data is from 2016. It’s rather outdated. That amount of percentage change is rather low for the disproportionate impact it would have, its like convincing others to use a raspberry pi 3 for a gaming desktop to use less energy but ignore the hvac that can be replaced with more efficient energy usage with less of an impact.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
This is largely a red herring. The entire world could become vegetarian overnight and emissions would only be reduced by a couple percentage points. Reducing oil dependence is a far more fruitful endeavor to pursue.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  "reducing oil dependence" is hardly a singular task. "Reduce Meat consumption" would rank lower than "make electricity production less dependent on coal, natural gas and oil" but higher than "find a viable alternative fuel for ships". Luckily we have enough people and resources that we can work on multiple problems at once
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    We already have nuclear as an alternative, it’s just not being used. Using buffalo instead would lower emissions, use less resources and give healthier meat but the war against beef isn’t really looking for solutions, it’s trying to fit the abolishment of rudiments as the only acceptable method.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dTal 5y ago

In the UK under rationing during WW2, during which people ate very little meat, the health of the population soared. Mortality dropped, both in infancy and old age. Children grew taller and heavier. Also during WW2, occupying Germans removed all animal livestock from Norway - so Norwegians had to survive on wholegrains, legumes, fruit and vegetables. Deaths from strokes and heart disease plummeted almost immediately. After the war, the consequent return to eating animal products saw the previous levels of disease return. We eat far more protein than we actually need today.

lr4444lr 5y ago
A lot of things were rationed in WW2. What definitively points to excess meat as the culprit?
kspacewalk2 5y ago
>In the UK under rationing during WW2, during which people ate very little meat, the health of the population soared. Mortality dropped, both in infancy and old age. Children grew taller and heavier. Okay but is it because of eating very little meat, or because of rationing itself? Looks like it's simply because a lot of people got a steady and stable supply of calories and vitamins/minerals, not anything to do with meat.[0] . In other words rationing + more meat could have easily produced even better results. Meat, after all, is an excellent nutritional choice. [0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/9728 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/9728 edit: wowza typos
GhettoComputers 5y ago
They were worried about famine, people were starving and children didn’t get proper nutrition and were prone to more disease, girls stopped menstruating. Some Norwegians were lucky and grew their own food including animals. The fact your cited the malnourishment of these unfortunate people as a citation to justify your propaganda of poor nutrition and eating habits is evidence that nobody should take you seriously, it should only be seen that your dreadful beliefs as the opposite of what to do unless they agree with your advocacy for stunted children, non menstruating females, and being prone to illnesses such as diarrhea, pneumonia and meningitis, which will kill them before heart disease and they won't live long enough to have a stroke either. https://www.kubenarendal.no/Eydehavn/undervisning/barndomungdom2/view.html https://www.kubenarendal.no/Eydehavn/undervisning/barndomung...

ben_w 5y ago

We evolved to do a lot of things we no longer tolerate, and we have invented many things that do better than evolution. As for “need”… what is good for one human is often very different to what’s good for humanity — tragedy of the commons, Nash equilibrium, there are many examples. And as a vegetarian, I’m an existence proof that it’s fine, though not any evidence of it being better or worse than an omnivorous diet.

1_player 5y ago
> We evolved to do a lot of things we no longer tolerate Such as?
- ben_w 5y ago
  Food hygiene is the big one, in this case. We used to eat whatever we could hunt and kill (or gather) without knowing what bacterial infections looked like, much less how to eliminate the pathogens. Even cleaning bowls and cutlery is only possible after the invention of those things, and soap is much more recent, circa 5000 BC according to a quick Google (and then apparently used for curing ailments rather than as a general thing? IDK how much to trust first hit on the web).
  - 1_player 5y ago
    Do you think you'd die if you were to eat with your hands off the floor? Rich Western citizen probably have weaker immune systems than people living in the middle of the jungle, but they're all the same species, it's not a matter of "we've evolved to need to eat with a clean fork." Even the Rich Western person is much more resilient than you think they might be. You can survive, perhaps not thrive, off half rotten carrion if need be. Evolution works on much bigger timescales.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      > Do you think you'd die if you were to eat with your hands off the floor? No, that’s putting words into my mouth. I’m saying we won’t tolerate bad hygiene, not that it will kill us, and our floors are generally quite clean these days anyway. Food poisoning is however a thing, and from what I’ve heard (never had it myself) quite unpleasant.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lm28469 5y ago

> We evolved to eat and digest animal based foods. I doubt we evolved to eat large quantities of (mostly low quality processed) meat two or three times a day though, that's a very very modern lifestyle.

symlinkk 5y ago
“Low quality” “Processed” These words are meaningless.
- lm28469 5y ago
  Eh... so a chicken breast and a hot dog sausage are the same ? The beef from the farm across my parents' house is the same as an antibiotic fed beef from a large scale US exploitation shipped over the atlantic ? A frozen burger patty vs a locally sourced beef piece minced by your local butcher ? A bag of dehydrated potatoe crumbs vs home made mashed potatoes ? An apple and a banana vs an industrial sugar and preservative ridden compote ? I know removing or altering the meaning of words is a big trend these days but it seems dishonest to not see the difference here. I honestly think you'd have to be severely uneducated or straight up lying not to see it
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    So your gotcha is that he or all meat eaters equate hot dogs and chicken breasts and you’re trying to call him uneducated or a liar with this genius logic?
    - lm28469 5y ago
      No gotcha, read the comment I'm replying to. “Low quality” “Processed” definitely have a meaning
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        There’s a lot of implications you’re making, like a frozen beef patty is never higher quality than one that is from a butcher. Your examples aren’t convincing.

krageon 5y ago

> We evolved Nutrition is poorly understood so being conservative with changes is reasonable, but making claims about what is and is not good because of the environment we evolved in doesn't make sense at all. Evolving in a specific environment emphatically does not say what you are optimal for, just what you can tolerate acceptably enough to function. That we can function while eating meat is not in doubt and every other claim based on evolution is an appeal to authority to an authority that doesn't support what you say.

GhettoComputers 5y ago
Nutrition isn’t poorly understood. If what you said was true, vegans wouldn’t need to take tests to check their micronutrient profile or need so many supplements. You have no evidence to support your claim, there has been 0 vegan civilizations; for good reason. There is no dimension where a vegan does not need to check their iron levels and supplementation is a must: if you care about your health and getting what your ancestors did from meat.
- ben_w 5y ago
  If nutrition is as well understood as you claim when you criticise vegan diets (I don’t know, not my field), then we must also know how to create a vegan food item that can replace meat and dairy, and the question is then one of taste and cost.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    They made that a long time ago and achieved it (vegans that supplement), dog food like vegan products like Soylent exists. Although it exists you'll have to convince people to consume it since its not preferable.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      So you agree the question is then one of taste and cost.