4 ms·

The evidence presented here seems heavily anecdotal, but I have seen this play out in my own life amongst several people formerly "militant" vegan that have und

The evidence presented here seems heavily anecdotal, but I have seen this play out in my own life amongst several people formerly "militant" vegan that have undergone some de-conversion process. During the "movement" I did realize there were some issues with my consumption choices, so about 1x a year for a few weeks I eat entirely vegan and have restricted a lot of my intake of red meat, mostly for health reasons. Some of the environmental arguments are silly to me and not very persuasive, such as environmental destruction from dairy farming - yes, this is a thing, but please go look up how much water is used to make a pint of almond milk and then let's continue that discussion. The problem with a lot of vegans I've known is they tend to think "vegan" means "healthy." For instance, you can eat a diet of entirely french fries and candy and be sticking to what is technically a vegan diet, as long as the oil is not coming from animal products - so I think a lot of people getting "sick" from it is just not paying attention to basic macros and nutrition that you don't usually spend a lot of time thinking about in a "typical" diet. Furthermore, if you try to bring this up, you'll get absolutely dog piled with terrible pseudo science about the diet. It's been difficult to have anything approaching a rational discussion about it for a while because of this.

aguaviva 2y ago
But please go look up how much water is used to make a pint of almond milk and then let's continue that discussion. Okay, let's do that: Cow’s milk has significantly higher impacts than the plant-based alternatives across all metrics. It causes around three times as much greenhouse gas emissions; uses around ten times as much land; two to twenty times as much freshwater; and creates much higher levels of eutrophication. https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  I guess you missed what is really my salient point - if everyone switched to a purely vegan diet you are often trading one sustainability problem for another. Particularly in this example if everyone switched to almond milk from dairy milk - it takes something like a few hundred gallons of water to produce a few cups of almond milk, not even including the water used in the actual milk itself. I'm sure I don't need to sketch out the math of why that wouldn't be sustainable if everyone switched to it, and I'm sure I don't need to talk in depth about the looming drought disaster in the american southwest (where a massive percent of the world's supply of almonds are produced) or the long term impacts of extracting tons of groundwater for farming. Yet, products like almond milk (Again, this is just one example, there are others) that are pitched as the "solution" to the types of problems caused by dairy farming when you can see very quickly on the back of a napkin that almost none of it would be sustainable under current farming practices. That isn't even getting into the heavy use of insecticides and certain types of fertilizers the impact that has on the environment, etc. It's a more complicated subject than you are trying to boil it down to.
  - jjj123 2y ago
    I’m not sure I understand your point here. The person you are replying to says that almond milk uses less than half as much water as cows milk to produce. So why would it be less sustainable if all cows milk production was switched to almond milk?
    - JohnMakin 2y ago
      I disagree with the way that data is presented, it's parroted all around the web for years. Even the graphic is super misleading (as are most bar charts) - the water usage by cattle farms and industrial scale farming are drastically different. For instance, here is a report with hard data about ground water consumption of dairy farming in CA - much of the water is recycled: https://www.milkproducerscouncil.org/_files/ugd/318cf1_1f72adadd76e4bdd846f32cf3fb7c14d.pdf https://www.milkproducerscouncil.org/_files/ugd/318cf1_1f72a... So, based on the research I've seen on this topic, I think claims like these are misleading in a way I don't really feel like debating, because it's exhausting and laden with propaganda (both from dairy farmers and from vegans). In short, looking at things like "water used" is entirely misleading because that's not actually the environmental problem, it's about groundwater depletion - again, these topics are much more complicated than the way they are typically presented.
      - gorbot 2y ago
        https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Acc... This is a good resource, it discusses 'freshwater withdrawals weighted by local water scarcity' which I think is the same as 'groundwater depletion' but perhaps different. Also this doesn't talk about almond milk, only soy vs. cow milk.
      - aguaviva 2y ago
        I don't really feel like debating, because it's exhausting and laden with propaganda (both from dairy farmers and from vegans). If you pull your data from sites like milkproducerscouncil.org, what else do you expect?
    - 2y ago

aguaviva 2y ago

But please go look up how much water is used to make a pint of almond milk and then let's continue that discussion. Okay, let's do that: Cow’s milk has significantly higher impacts than the plant-based alternatives across all metrics. It causes around three times as much greenhouse gas emissions; uses around ten times as much land; two to twenty times as much freshwater; and creates much higher levels of eutrophication. https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks

JohnMakin 2y ago
I guess you missed what is really my salient point - if everyone switched to a purely vegan diet you are often trading one sustainability problem for another. Particularly in this example if everyone switched to almond milk from dairy milk - it takes something like a few hundred gallons of water to produce a few cups of almond milk, not even including the water used in the actual milk itself. I'm sure I don't need to sketch out the math of why that wouldn't be sustainable if everyone switched to it, and I'm sure I don't need to talk in depth about the looming drought disaster in the american southwest (where a massive percent of the world's supply of almonds are produced) or the long term impacts of extracting tons of groundwater for farming. Yet, products like almond milk (Again, this is just one example, there are others) that are pitched as the "solution" to the types of problems caused by dairy farming when you can see very quickly on the back of a napkin that almost none of it would be sustainable under current farming practices. That isn't even getting into the heavy use of insecticides and certain types of fertilizers the impact that has on the environment, etc. It's a more complicated subject than you are trying to boil it down to.
- jjj123 2y ago
  I’m not sure I understand your point here. The person you are replying to says that almond milk uses less than half as much water as cows milk to produce. So why would it be less sustainable if all cows milk production was switched to almond milk?
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    I disagree with the way that data is presented, it's parroted all around the web for years. Even the graphic is super misleading (as are most bar charts) - the water usage by cattle farms and industrial scale farming are drastically different. For instance, here is a report with hard data about ground water consumption of dairy farming in CA - much of the water is recycled: https://www.milkproducerscouncil.org/_files/ugd/318cf1_1f72adadd76e4bdd846f32cf3fb7c14d.pdf https://www.milkproducerscouncil.org/_files/ugd/318cf1_1f72a... So, based on the research I've seen on this topic, I think claims like these are misleading in a way I don't really feel like debating, because it's exhausting and laden with propaganda (both from dairy farmers and from vegans). In short, looking at things like "water used" is entirely misleading because that's not actually the environmental problem, it's about groundwater depletion - again, these topics are much more complicated than the way they are typically presented.
    - gorbot 2y ago
      https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Acc... This is a good resource, it discusses 'freshwater withdrawals weighted by local water scarcity' which I think is the same as 'groundwater depletion' but perhaps different. Also this doesn't talk about almond milk, only soy vs. cow milk.
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      I don't really feel like debating, because it's exhausting and laden with propaganda (both from dairy farmers and from vegans). If you pull your data from sites like milkproducerscouncil.org, what else do you expect?
  - 2y ago