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The western world needs to switch to plant-based diets. We stuff our bellies with 100+kg of meat per capita per year (not counting fish, iirc), we produce a lo

• philliphaydon 4y ago
  [dead]
• ChatGTP 4y ago
  Personally I tried to be vegan I was tired, hungry and depressed. I love the idea of it though. I do think we could reduce the amount of meat we eat though. We try do like 3-4 days / nights of week vegetarian, probably mostly vegan really. If everyone started something like this and tried to do more of it it might help. Realistically we just have to many people on Earth, we've also polluted a ruined a lot natural environments. I believe the most healthy/ethical way to consume meat and fish would be if most people do their own hunting, fishing and farming, smaller scale. The problem is the river near my house is full of toxic pollution so I can't fish there, what do you do?
  • colordrops 4y ago
    There's no scientific reason for you to have been tired, hungry, and depressed unless you introduced foods you were allergic/sensitive to, or you did not eat a balanced complete diet. All essential nutrients can be found in vegan diets, other than B12, if you are not eating fortified foods. You may have had a B12 deficiency, which is extremely cheap and easy to supplement. It might be worth trying again and seeing a doctor and getting blood work if you feel off.
    • seb1204 4y ago
      I simply are not up to speed with what to replace the meat with. I know there are alternatives out there but knowing them, knowing where to buy them, prep and cook them is the main hurdle.
      • myshpa 4y ago
        Sorry, I'll recycle my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35229804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35229804
  • myshpa 4y ago
    > tried to be vegan I was tired, hungry and depressed First I've ate what my vegetarian girlfriend was eating. I too was always hungry, and soon gave up. Later when I've decided to switch to veganism I've read a lot about it first (as always with anything new). I've started replacing my favourite recipes with their vegan variants. For few weeks I've counted calories and nutrients (there're apps for that) to make sure I'm eating healthy. I've learned to cook and replace meat products with their plant-based versions. There are many ways how to eat vegan, not all of them are healthy (junk) or wise (raw / fruit only). > healthy/ethical way to consume meat and fish would be if most people do their own hunting 10000 years ago there were only 5 mil. people on Earth, and they've managed to reduce wild mammals population from 20 mil. tonnes of C to 15 mil. tonnes. Can you imagine doing something similar today, with 8 billion of us? > the river near my house is full of toxic pollution so I can't fish there, what do you do Don't eat fish at all, and maybe take up on activism ... complacency won't save us.
• adam_arthur 4y ago
  If the plant based meat alternatives ever got around to actually being substantially cheaper than meat, this would likely be mitigated to a large extent. Beyond Meat's revenue has actually been declining YoY, which was surprising. It turns out people aren't very excited about paying more for an imitation version.
  • barbazoo 4y ago
    "Plant-based diet" != "Plant based meat". I wish people learned at school how to cook a vegetarian meal. You don't need meat to make something delicious, you don't need meat to get the required amount of protein, it's all bullshit. You get everything you need from non-animal sources.
    • adam_arthur 4y ago
      Sure, but that's not reality. The average person isn't going to give up the taste of meat. If you want to solve problems, work within the realms of the actual constraints. It's far easier to make plant based meat cheaper than to change the taste preferences of billions of people.
      • O__________O 4y ago
        No, the obsession over “meat like” is counterproductive. No “meat” anything. As soon as you make something comparable, no one is going to switch unless it tastes a multi-times better than it’s comparable. Just make nutritious non-meat food that’s delicious and doesn’t impact global ecosystem. As a non-meat eater, I have zero desire to eat meat — unless I eat some plant-based meat, which then oddly makes me think meat would taste better, even though idea of eating meat literally makes me sick.
        • Auracle 4y ago
          Nutritious non-meat already exists. As a non-meat eater where the idea of eating meat literally makes you sick, you're not really qualified to talk about what the rest of us meat-eaters would need to switch to more plants. People would absolutely eat more of it if it tasted just like meat and was the same cost or cheaper. They won't if it doesn't hit the same craving or is more expensive, as we've seen.
• no_butterscotch 4y ago
  We could use less meat but I don't think you should take a "moral" argument to this. There are plenty of cultures around the world for which cuisine plays a big role including being carnivore-based. There are festivals, arts, traditions, culinary heritage, etc. I believe as said we could eat less meat, but I think taking an argument from a "moral supremacist" sort of stand-point isn't the right solution to get people over to that side.
  • barbazoo 4y ago
    > here are plenty of cultures around the world for which cuisine plays a big role including being carnivore-based. You're totally right obviously that there are but also I think we're at a point in the history of humanity where we're informed enough to take the impact of our actions into consideration regardless of how long we've performed those actions.
  • myshpa 4y ago
    > I don't think you should take a "moral" argument to this And I've done that ... where exactly?
• tossaway0 4y ago
  I’m a bit ignorant on this, but what are the projections for consequences to ecosystems if we just keep eating to extinction? I ask because your solution seems to just get us to the same place diet wise: having to eat plants now instead of later. You could see why that alone wouldn’t be a motivation.
  • myshpa 4y ago
    > I ask because your solution seems to just get us to the same place diet wise: having to eat plants now instead of later We will have to eat plants sooner or later. But if we'll start sooner, we'll also may have the functioning land and sea ecosystems and a lot of biodiversity. I know you wouldn't notice it on your plate, and maybe you don't see any value in that, but I'm hoping that many (or at least some) do.
    • NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
      Why not chow down on some bugs, on the way down? Plentiful protein. Less moral ick than eating milky mammals, flappy floofs, and scale wiggles.
      • myshpa 4y ago
        We already get 63% of protein from plant sources [0]. There is nothing magical in animal protein ... all animal protein comes in fact from plant sources [1]. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/land-use [1] https://veganslate.com/does-all-protein-come-from-plants/ https://veganslate.com/does-all-protein-come-from-plants/
• __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  I agree. A good first step would be to figure out how to align the markets with the needs of the ecosystems that support those markets. It's hard to get excited about going vegan when that can of lentil soup costs the same as a can of beef stew despite one being 10x more energy intensive to create. Are you really reducing demand for meat or are you just making making meat cheaper for everyone else?
  • myshpa 4y ago
    You're right that many foods, processed ones, are much more expensive than animal based ones despite them being more energy and land resource intensive. But most vegan foods are the cheapest ones in the supermaket ... I mean raw rice, beans, lentils, vegetables. If you cook that soup yourself, it won't cost more than a bag of lentils, 1-2 onions, veggie stock, few potatoes, salt, pepper, and 20 minutes in pressure cooker (I've done it today :) Delicious too, and you've got 5l of soup for ... 3 USD?
• matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > the developing world is copying our ways Eating meat has been part of our culture for a very long time.
  • myshpa 4y ago
    We eat way more meat/dairy than our ancestors did (after we switched to farming, because we killed off most of the megafauna).
    • matheusmoreira 4y ago
      It's got nothing to do with "copying" developed nations, though. We're simply becoming rich enough to afford it. Eating meat every day used to be prohibitively expensive. That's changed.
      • myshpa 4y ago
        It's cheap because we destroy nature in the process, and those externalities are not priced in ... in fact, most of the meat/dairy production is heavily subsidized. It's affordable, yes. But it's not sustainable.
    • philliphaydon 4y ago
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  • ahzhou 4y ago
    While true, I think the quantity is abnormal in terms of human history, since meat used to be considered a luxury item.
  • krmboya 4y ago
    And there are some cultures that lived exclusively on meat based diets
    • grozzle 4y ago
      Like who? Inuit, who live where plants don't grow? Historical Mongolians, until cereal crops were introduced to their lands? Nomadic Masai who don't stay around for crops? Can't think of anyone else, without a similar exceptional reason.
• dinvlad 4y ago
  Here's hoping that new tech like lab-grown meat will also be there in time to achieve this..
  • myshpa 4y ago
    It may not come for decades ... at scale. Then it may be already late.
• javman 4y ago
  Have you seen what modern plant farms look like? Massive water usage, lowering river levels drastically. Some don't even reach the ocean anymore (see the Colorado River, from Wikipedia: "Since 1960, the Colorado has typically dried up before reaching the sea, with the exception of a few wet years."). Aquifers are running low (here's some info on that from 20 years ago: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-103-03/ https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-103-03/). Pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Massive land use for mono-culture farms, displacing whatever wildlife and native plants were present before the farm. Add more farms and you'll have less wildlife. Everyone switching to plant-based diet sounds nice, but is really not going to fix much. Unless you can change farming to not be so resource intensive? There are just too many people.
  • myshpa 4y ago
    Animal agriculture uses 3x more land than plants. Do you really think that those things you've listed (water, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, displacing wildlife...) are solely a problem for plant farms? I must have misunderstand you. > Everyone switching to plant-based diet sounds nice, but is really not going to fix much We could save 75% of those lands. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
    • philliphaydon 4y ago
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    • ajmurmann 4y ago
      And a lot of the plants we grow are to feed livestock.
  • andbberger 4y ago
    irrelevant given efficiency losses when raising livestock. where do you think the food your chickens eat comes from
• stainablesteel 4y ago
  > The western world needs to switch to plant-based diets. i've never seen any data to back up this viewpoint, and its always coupled with other alarmist messages. i'm skeptical of comments written this way.
  • myshpa 4y ago
    That's my viewpoint. The data is there, but most choose to ignore it, together with all those reports of environmental destruction.
• DiscourseFan 4y ago
  I was vegetarian for a while and then vegan for a whole year. I understand where you're coming from but it's simply not healthy for most people to go without any animal products in their diets, especially for growing children and those who cannot consume hight amounts of fiber (crohns disease). Perhaps the tax breaks enjoyed by the beef and dairy industries should be removed, but most sources of animal protein are remarkable environmentally friendly--farmed fishing is far less carbon intensive than almost all plant-based sources of protein[1]. Once you look at the facts of the matter, veganism has more to do with how someone feels about harming animals than actually helping the environment: most vegans still eat a lot of heavily processed foods, drive cars, fly on planes, have most of their food and consumer goods delivered to them via trucking. These are not issues that can be solved on an individual level but systemic and society wide problems that need to be addressed with public policy. No individual(s) are to be blamed. It is a collective, social responsibility. [1]https://news.asu.edu/20190621-solutions-environmental-impact-protein-we-consume https://news.asu.edu/20190621-solutions-environmental-impact...
  • myshpa 4y ago
    > it's simply not healthy for most people to go without any animal products in their diets That's not true, sorry. https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/ https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/ > Salmon and tuna also ranked high for efficiency, but only when they were wild-caught. Do they also account for by-catch? Do they account for the fact that 40+% of marine plastics is fishing nets & equipment? https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts > most vegans still eat a lot of heavily processed foods, drive cars, fly on planes, have most of their food and consumer goods delivered to them via trucking There are many things wrong with our society. But I don't agree with you here. Plant-based is one of the best things an individual can do the lower his carbon footprint (together with reduction of driving & air travel).
    • DiscourseFan 4y ago
      >> it's simply not healthy for most people to go without any animal products in their diets >That's not true, sorry. https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/ https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/ Please cite a neutral source on the matter. In the end, the food you buy, clothes you wear, even the computer you're using right now, no matter animal based or not, is, as I said, almost certainly shipped to you by some sort of carbon-emitting vehicle, usually one, like a truck, that emits far more carbon than any car you might drive. The industrial processes involved to create these, everything in your life, emit carbon--certainly worse than that, your computer was built with rare earth minerals that were probably extracted with near or actual slave labor. Your existence, on this planet, as a human being, is harmful in some sense to the environment, there is no getting around the fact that you, as an embodied ego, has to cause some level of destruction to the life around you in order to continue living. And there is no getting around the fact that the industrial revolution has radically improved the quality of life around the world for the better, and that nobody, I assume yourself included, as you responded to me on an online forum, would ever abandon all the luxuries it brings. That doesn't mean that we can't improve things as they are. On the contrary, for instance, when you said: >Plant-based is one of the best things an individual can do the lower his carbon footprint That only applies to a developed economy. India has some of the worst pollution in the world on account of their backwards agricultural practices, and their population is something like 50% vegetarian, it is only on account of technology that we have been able to feed the large populations of the US and Europe without destroying local environments. When that technology is employed for the benefit of people who work together to improve their conditions, then society flourishes. But technology, scientific and social development are all developed collectively, and they are the only way to improve our environmental conditions--nobody alone, no individual responsibility, as I said, will change what the mass of society will do. If you let individuals alone to do what they like, on the sole condition they eat plant-based diets, I'm sure you will get something a lot closer to what they have in India than anything else.