4 ms·

> where roughly 10 units of plant create one unit of meat Those units are not remotely fungible. Protein quality of plant protein (as measured by PER or other

by wyager 4y ago

> where roughly 10 units of plant create one unit of meat Those units are not remotely fungible. Protein quality of plant protein (as measured by PER or other metrics not explicitly designed to favor soy) is horrendous compared to beef. Much of the plant material fed to cows is also not even slightly edible to humans, like soy meal. I would rather have 1lb beef than 10lb nominally edible soy extractives (or wheat, or grass, or inedible soy meal, or other inputs to cattle production).

roflyear 4y ago
They are comparable in many ways. The fact is it takes more land to make meat than it does to make plants we can eat.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Much of the land cattle are raised on is not suitable for growing crops.
  - countvonbalzac 4y ago
    We're not talking about land that cattle graze on, we're talking about land that is used to grow grains that are then fed to cattle.
- wyager 4y ago
  Once again, you are trying to compare units which are not fungible. There is more land on which you can make meat than land on which you can make plants. Animals can graze on non-arable scrubland, grassland, etc. Growing staple crops is harder on the land than raising animals. Staple crops deplete soil nitrogen and other nutrients. Raising crops typically requires massive importation of fertilizer from petrochemical plants, whereas cattle grazing (for example) does not require significant additional petrochemical input. A classic tale of how animals unfairly take the heat for plants: we often hear about how the amazon is being cut down "for cattle". If you actually look into it, what's happening is that farmers are cutting down the amazon to grow soy for around 3 years, until the soil is totally depleted, at which point they will put some cattle on the land because the cattle can extract value from land destroyed by soy and helps the farmers maintain land claims.
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    This is misleading. We raise very few animals purely through grazing on non-arable land. If nothing else, they need feeding through part of the year in many climates, and more typically, supplementary feed to increase intensity. Pure free range non-arable grazing ruminants constitute a relatively low percentage of total meat produced. A somewhat more common thing is to raise cattle on arable fallow land between crop cycles. This is better than keeping permanent pastures, but nowadays we still often supplement the feed or intensively finish. Battery farms, which is purely fed on crops grown where humans could grow food, accounts for about 70% of beef and 99% of pork and chicken. Often the soy being grown in the rainforest is to support these animals. The other thing is a lot of "non-arable" and fallow land is actually a lot more arable with modern agriculture than it used to be, it's just more profitable to grow animals. A lot of the plant matter that used to be considered as only usable for animal feed can also now be processed for further use in human food. Meat production isn't quite as bad as people sometimes suggest, but it's still pretty bad. There are some cases where it is still a good option (e.g. low intensity lamb grazing on rocky/hilly terrain) and if we scaled our meat production to only these cases, we'd be in a much better situation, but there's also be way less meat.
    - wyager 4y ago
      > Battery farms, which is purely fed on crops grown where humans could grow food They are mostly fed on the byproducts of human food production. Human-edible material has higher margins than cattle feed, so cattle feed either comes from human ag byproducts (like soy meal) or from land that probably isn't good for much except hay.
      - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
        are you saying that livestock mostly eat product that humans CANnot, or that livestock mostly eat products that humans simply currently DO not? the distinction here is critical
Scoundreller 4y ago
Where do other beans/pulses fit in vs meat?
- wyager 4y ago
  Black beans, for example, have a PER of 0 (unrealistically low) and a PDCAAS of 0.75 (unrealistically high, vs 1 for egg). A realistic comparison can't be reduced to a single scalar, but for my own personal dietary requirements, I would probably want to eat 5-10x as many grams of nominal protein from black beans as from beef. This would be very challenging. I think some other beans like kidney beans fare somewhat better, although I don't recall numbers. Still not close to mammal meat.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    can you explain for those of us less knowledgeable in this field, what math equations led you to the numbers, "5-10x"? thank you
- OrvalWintermute 4y ago
  Some beans can be large sources of anti-nutrients [1] . Because over consumption of anti-nutrient foods can seriously impact your overall health, it is important to think about when getting a balanced diet. Another example is soy, which has been studied some [2] . The problem is with longterm vegans that consume a huge amount of soy over a long term. [1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/anti-nutrients/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/anti-nutrients/ [2] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    What's the problem with vegans consuming soy long term? Your second link talks about soy fairly positively and your first link only mentions soy once in the context of a lot of other foods (and really it's rare for a food to be purely good, e.g. lots of plants contain toxins). Based on those links I'd probably conclude soy consumption is very far down my list of foods to be concerned about. There's even this quote: "Studies on vegetarians who eat diets high in plant foods containing anti-nutrients do not generally show deficiencies in iron and zinc, so the body may be adapting to the presence of anti-nutrients by increasing the absorption of these minerals in the gut." indicating that it may not be a real problem to eat foods that contain these 'anti-nutrients'.
otikik 4y ago
> I would rather have 1lb beef than 10lb nominally edible soy extractives The argument is not "eat soy extractives instead of meat". It's more like "lunch on veggies 2 or 3 days per week instead of having meat on every meal, including breakfast". It obviously includes repurposing some of the land used to raise cattle into other things more suitable for direct human consumption. No one is talking about making you eat grass.
- wyager 4y ago
  Vegetables also have horrendous nutritional profiles. For the most part, the only parts of plants with anything approaching good nutritional qualities are fruits. Human resistance to various poisons also makes certain root vegetables like potatoes acceptable, but they are not great. I will continue extracting the preponderance of my nutrition from meat.
  - honkler 4y ago
    preponderance!

by wyager 4y ago

roflyear 4y ago

They are comparable in many ways. The fact is it takes more land to make meat than it does to make plants we can eat.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
Much of the land cattle are raised on is not suitable for growing crops.
- countvonbalzac 4y ago
  We're not talking about land that cattle graze on, we're talking about land that is used to grow grains that are then fed to cattle.
wyager 4y ago
Once again, you are trying to compare units which are not fungible. There is more land on which you can make meat than land on which you can make plants. Animals can graze on non-arable scrubland, grassland, etc. Growing staple crops is harder on the land than raising animals. Staple crops deplete soil nitrogen and other nutrients. Raising crops typically requires massive importation of fertilizer from petrochemical plants, whereas cattle grazing (for example) does not require significant additional petrochemical input. A classic tale of how animals unfairly take the heat for plants: we often hear about how the amazon is being cut down "for cattle". If you actually look into it, what's happening is that farmers are cutting down the amazon to grow soy for around 3 years, until the soil is totally depleted, at which point they will put some cattle on the land because the cattle can extract value from land destroyed by soy and helps the farmers maintain land claims.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  This is misleading. We raise very few animals purely through grazing on non-arable land. If nothing else, they need feeding through part of the year in many climates, and more typically, supplementary feed to increase intensity. Pure free range non-arable grazing ruminants constitute a relatively low percentage of total meat produced. A somewhat more common thing is to raise cattle on arable fallow land between crop cycles. This is better than keeping permanent pastures, but nowadays we still often supplement the feed or intensively finish. Battery farms, which is purely fed on crops grown where humans could grow food, accounts for about 70% of beef and 99% of pork and chicken. Often the soy being grown in the rainforest is to support these animals. The other thing is a lot of "non-arable" and fallow land is actually a lot more arable with modern agriculture than it used to be, it's just more profitable to grow animals. A lot of the plant matter that used to be considered as only usable for animal feed can also now be processed for further use in human food. Meat production isn't quite as bad as people sometimes suggest, but it's still pretty bad. There are some cases where it is still a good option (e.g. low intensity lamb grazing on rocky/hilly terrain) and if we scaled our meat production to only these cases, we'd be in a much better situation, but there's also be way less meat.
  - wyager 4y ago
    > Battery farms, which is purely fed on crops grown where humans could grow food They are mostly fed on the byproducts of human food production. Human-edible material has higher margins than cattle feed, so cattle feed either comes from human ag byproducts (like soy meal) or from land that probably isn't good for much except hay.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      are you saying that livestock mostly eat product that humans CANnot, or that livestock mostly eat products that humans simply currently DO not? the distinction here is critical

Scoundreller 4y ago

Where do other beans/pulses fit in vs meat?

wyager 4y ago
Black beans, for example, have a PER of 0 (unrealistically low) and a PDCAAS of 0.75 (unrealistically high, vs 1 for egg). A realistic comparison can't be reduced to a single scalar, but for my own personal dietary requirements, I would probably want to eat 5-10x as many grams of nominal protein from black beans as from beef. This would be very challenging. I think some other beans like kidney beans fare somewhat better, although I don't recall numbers. Still not close to mammal meat.
- ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
  can you explain for those of us less knowledgeable in this field, what math equations led you to the numbers, "5-10x"? thank you
OrvalWintermute 4y ago
Some beans can be large sources of anti-nutrients [1] . Because over consumption of anti-nutrient foods can seriously impact your overall health, it is important to think about when getting a balanced diet. Another example is soy, which has been studied some [2] . The problem is with longterm vegans that consume a huge amount of soy over a long term. [1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/anti-nutrients/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/anti-nutrients/ [2] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  What's the problem with vegans consuming soy long term? Your second link talks about soy fairly positively and your first link only mentions soy once in the context of a lot of other foods (and really it's rare for a food to be purely good, e.g. lots of plants contain toxins). Based on those links I'd probably conclude soy consumption is very far down my list of foods to be concerned about. There's even this quote: "Studies on vegetarians who eat diets high in plant foods containing anti-nutrients do not generally show deficiencies in iron and zinc, so the body may be adapting to the presence of anti-nutrients by increasing the absorption of these minerals in the gut." indicating that it may not be a real problem to eat foods that contain these 'anti-nutrients'.

otikik 4y ago

> I would rather have 1lb beef than 10lb nominally edible soy extractives The argument is not "eat soy extractives instead of meat". It's more like "lunch on veggies 2 or 3 days per week instead of having meat on every meal, including breakfast". It obviously includes repurposing some of the land used to raise cattle into other things more suitable for direct human consumption. No one is talking about making you eat grass.

wyager 4y ago
Vegetables also have horrendous nutritional profiles. For the most part, the only parts of plants with anything approaching good nutritional qualities are fruits. Human resistance to various poisons also makes certain root vegetables like potatoes acceptable, but they are not great. I will continue extracting the preponderance of my nutrition from meat.
- honkler 4y ago
  preponderance!