Meat Accounts For Nearly 60% of All Greenhouse Gases From Food Production, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 252
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The global production of food is responsible for a third of all planet-heating gases emitted by human activity, with the use of animals for meat causing twice the pollution of producing plant-based foods, a major new study has found. The entire system of food production, such as the use of farming machinery, spraying of fertilizer and transportation of products, causes 17.3 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases a year, according to the research. This enormous release of gases that fuel the climate crisis is more than double the entire emissions of the US and represents 35% of all global emissions, researchers said.
The use of cows, pigs and other animals for food, as well as livestock feed, is responsible for 57% of all food production emissions, the research found, with 29% coming from the cultivation of plant-based foods. The rest comes from other uses of land, such as for cotton or rubber. Beef alone accounts for a quarter of emissions produced by raising and growing food. Grazing animals require a lot of land, which is often cleared through the felling of forests, as well as vast tracts of additional land to grow their feed. The paper calculates that the majority of all the world's cropland is used to feed livestock, rather than people. Livestock also produce large quantities of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. [...] The difference in emissions between meat and plant production is stark – to produce 1kg of wheat, 2.5kg of greenhouse gases are emitted. A single kilo of beef, meanwhile, creates 70kg of emissions. The researchers said that societies should be aware of this significant discrepancy when addressing the climate crisis.
The researchers built a database that provided a consistent emissions profile of 171 crops and 16 animal products, drawing data from more than 200 countries. They found that South America is the region with the largest share of animal-based food emissions, followed by south and south-east Asia and then China. Food-related emissions have grown rapidly in China and India as increasing wealth and cultural changes have led more younger people in these countries to adopt meat-based diets. The paper's calculations of the climate impact of meat is higher than previous estimates -- the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization has said about 14% of all emissions come from meat and diary production. The study has been published in Nature Food.
The use of cows, pigs and other animals for food, as well as livestock feed, is responsible for 57% of all food production emissions, the research found, with 29% coming from the cultivation of plant-based foods. The rest comes from other uses of land, such as for cotton or rubber. Beef alone accounts for a quarter of emissions produced by raising and growing food. Grazing animals require a lot of land, which is often cleared through the felling of forests, as well as vast tracts of additional land to grow their feed. The paper calculates that the majority of all the world's cropland is used to feed livestock, rather than people. Livestock also produce large quantities of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. [...] The difference in emissions between meat and plant production is stark – to produce 1kg of wheat, 2.5kg of greenhouse gases are emitted. A single kilo of beef, meanwhile, creates 70kg of emissions. The researchers said that societies should be aware of this significant discrepancy when addressing the climate crisis.
The researchers built a database that provided a consistent emissions profile of 171 crops and 16 animal products, drawing data from more than 200 countries. They found that South America is the region with the largest share of animal-based food emissions, followed by south and south-east Asia and then China. Food-related emissions have grown rapidly in China and India as increasing wealth and cultural changes have led more younger people in these countries to adopt meat-based diets. The paper's calculations of the climate impact of meat is higher than previous estimates -- the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization has said about 14% of all emissions come from meat and diary production. The study has been published in Nature Food.
around two years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:around two years ago (Score:5, Informative)
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Vegetables make it easier to lose weight because (Score:5, Insightful)
For the record I'm more or less did the same as what the GP did. So while you're right about the physics of it there's more to human beings and how we eat then calories in calories out.
Re: around two years ago (Score:3)
Re:around two years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on how the meat is cooked - and how fat it is.
When he switched to more vegetables, he likely reduced sugar/carbs. As he most likely has less french fries, and most certainly less ketchup.
I would suggest to read a book about nutrition - and your mods as well.
As you post is most certainly completely wrong. The problem with weight gain is most of the time not calories, but combination of fat and sugar that let insulin levels spike.
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i drastically changed my diet to mostly read meat 3 years ago (I'd reckon 95% red meat, 5% white meat, berries and nuts) and I lose 25kg of weight in the first 6 months and my blook pressure dropped significantly despite a massive increase in salt intake.
I wonder it is on a per calorie basis (Score:2)
Are we comparing apples to apples? (Score:5, Insightful)
But are we comparing calories to calories? Meat is a lot more calorically dense. Yes, a kilo of wheat makes 1/35th the emissions as a kilo of meat, but is that a kilo of wheat flour (the stuff you actually eat) or a kilo of the raw plant? It wasn't clear from the article.
In any case no, we're not all going vegetarian. If you want to fight climate change this is not how you do it. Threatening to take away people's meat will just put them into a defensive posture and lose you supporters.
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But are we comparing calories to calories? Meat is a lot more calorically dense.
No it isn't. Carbohydrate, 4 calories per gram; Protein, 4 calories per gram. Fat is higher, but it doesn't matter whether it's animal fat or vegetable oil.
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That's wheat flour compared to meat. Same calorie density. But the weight in the article is raw plant, not flour.
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except that meat != protein and vegetable != carbohydrate. This is obvious even to the most uneducated layman. Just not obvious to you.
Meat is far more calorically dense, this is not even controversial. Furthermore, the question of whether a kilo of wheat is the whole plant or the resulting edible food product isn't even addressed.
Then there's the issue of nutrition. A 100% wheat diet is deadly, a 100% meat diet, as it turns out, is not. See Masai.
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It is uninteresting to consider environmental impacts of various diets when the diets are not normalized for suitability and overall nutrition is not considered.
The problem is that environmental considerations, particularly when manipulated, will drive dietary guidelines to become even more unhealthy than they already are. We already have a diet way too biased toward unhealthy substances like processed carbs, simply sugars and seed oils, and these poisons will become increasingly featured if animal protein
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P.S. I'm curious to know why there are so many emissions from "diary production."
It’s the methane.
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"But that isn't the whole story."
It sure isn't, in fact what you are quoting is quite misleading.
You don't eat wheat in the form of processed, uncooked flour alone. You use flour to in preparation of food. What's the difference? Moisture content. Flour has none, beef is about 60% water. Beef is an end food product, wheat flour is not.
Now, if you want to normalize for moisture content, since the wheat at the time you consume it will have water in it, you will need to multiply the beef numbers by 2.5x (1
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you need to think a lot more...and then maybe not post.
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I think the more pressing item of interest is that food production in general is only about 10% of the greenhouse gas production out there. So focusing on meat is science geek at best, but more likely about controlling public opinion of environmental policy. Given that most of the greenhouse production is industrial or transportation related and the ready solutions there might cost some rich people some of their riches, I'm leaning towards the latter.
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The real question is whether you can produce something that tastes just as good with lower greenhouse emissions.
People aren't going to stop eating meat just because New York City might flood.
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At best animals can concentrate calories in their meat, but as you point out they can't offer more calories than they themselves consumed, only far fewer in fact.
So the question is, is farming plants to collect calories less efficient than allowing an animal like a cow to collect them and then eating its flesh? And the answer is no, the losses are great enough and the emissions from cows high enough that it's better to grow crops that humans can eat and harvest them with a machine.
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It's not a threat. It's reality. The house is burning down, and we're busy trying to rearrange the furniture. Is it a threat if someone tells you your house is burning down?
And calling it a threat is just another excuse. The reality is you will be eating less animal products in the future. We have to progress, similarly the car you're driving consumes less gas (or none.) If you want to drive a high MPG car, it's becoming less and less an option.
The comparisons are almost always actual 'food', there's also a
The real question (Score:2)
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No competing interests declared? (Score:5, Insightful)
The paper lists no competing interests, but one of the authors is from PlantPure Communities, Inc, whos mission includes helping "educate people about evidence-based nutrition that shows that optimal health may be achieved through a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet."
When they're the ones coming up with the evidence, it seems like they might possibly have a particular outcome in mind when starting the study.
Re:No competing interests declared? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, true when the population was small and people only lived in areas that were warm, which could support crops all year around. Not really a good point if that was your intention. Good thing innovations became a thing. Now we can enjoy meat all the time, just like we can enjoy eating produce in the winter.
And Nobody knows if they're wrong because they were involved in writing their own source material for their own study. They don't get into any logical specifics, like the pollution involved in processing the wheat. Nor do they compare caloric intake and instead compare weight.
They also don't go into specifics on the affects if everyone went vegan. Like, if everyone were eating plants instead of meat, then you are going to need to mow down thousands of acres of forests. How will that affect photosynthesis and CO2? Where will all the fresh water come from when the western US dries up every year? Can you imagine the land required to end meat production? Like many have said, much less land is needed for livestock, and you can use land that isn't able to support crops for that. If the whole world stopped eating meat then half the planet would be mowed over for farming. An exaggeration but I think you get the point.
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The farms that today are growing food for cattle
Cattle live most of their lives grazing on prairies. The farm raised stuff they feed them is a small part of their diet fed to them mainly to fatten them up for slaughter. I suppose you could call the production of hay 'farming' for the purpose of tweaking statistics in your favor. But that's uncultivated, unfertilized and in many cases not irrigated. Just mowed and baled.
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My gut instinct is that humans followed animal herds and transitioned to nomadic herding well before sedentary agriculture existed. It's just too easy to follow a herd of animals around, letting them eat whatever they find, and periodically killing them. It's only really hunting even when the herd is wild because animals can be dangerous, either due to size or herd defensive tactics.
You don't even have to care much about plants for your own food at this point since meat provides so much nutrition.
The kind
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If this were an article about clean coal or something like that and it turned out one of the authors belonged to a group that's in favor of coal energy you wouldn't be nearly as charitable
Problem isn't meat ... (Score:2)
People account for 100% of greenhouse gas production.
There are too many people. We are the problem.
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ahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Well said!
Bug (Score:2)
I'm not going to eat bugs. Ok? Just putting that out there...
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I'm not going to eat bugs. Ok?
I'll take that lobster off you then.
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I stopped caring about climate when.. (Score:4, Interesting)
...the EU allowed open-loop scrubbers on container ships. https://www.hellenicshippingne... [hellenicshippingnews.com]
If governments really cared about the environment they would install nuclear reactors everywhere. But they don't. Most of them really like to burn fossilized dinosaur while I'm being lectured by a plant-eater.
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EU bashing again?
Your article has nothing to do with the EU. It is about the IMO - International Marine Organization.
If governments really cared about the environment they would install nuclear reactors everywhere.
Governments can not do that. Only companies can do.
And they need a permit, which in theory the government got give.
But: next election the government would be gone.
Because: against popular believe, it is not the government or even parliament which has the big say in nuclear, it is the population.
No
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If governments really cared about the environment they would install nuclear reactors everywhere. But they don't.
It's just as well that nuclear is dirt cheap and the onlything standing in the way is the evil gubbmint. Oh wait it isn't and there are plenty nuclear friendly nations in the world that aren't building reactors everywhere because unlike your fantasy world there are very real problems with building nuclear reactors today that have nothing to do with the government itself.
As for your pointless EU bashing, maybe try and understand the difference between an atmospheric emission and an ocean discharge. Hint: One
Soylent Green is people! (Score:2)
We'll get there.
Eating Meat (Score:2, Insightful)
My brother once said: "If we are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?"
The human digestive system -- from teeth through the stomach an into the gut -- is that of an omnivore, eating both meats and vegetables. We are advised to minimize our consumption of processed foods. The new "meats" synthesized entirely from vegetables, however, are the ultimate processed foods.
Seems low to me (Score:2)
I was expecting over 80%. Even ignoring methane farts, meat requires a lot more prep work, transportation, refrigeration, etc.
Plants convert C02 to oxygen.
To me this is not a call to action, but instead a note to look elsewhere for major environmental gains
Let's just be honest (Score:3)
...the problem is population, not cows.
It's just that the message 'we have to get rid of all the cows' is a lot more palatable than 'we have to get rid of some people'.
Beef alone? (Score:2)
Beef alone accounts for a quarter of emissions...
Holy cow!
Are they worse than the buffalo? (Score:2)
I once tried to work out how many tons of grass-eating ungulate were on the North American plains before and after ecological warriors offended by ungulate methane killed 60 million bison.
There are now over 100 million cows in the "North American Herd", and they produce 3X as much methane towards the end when being fattened up, but about the same while just grazing.
But the bison lived a full life if they made it past childhood, so 80% of a given herd were adult size, which hit over a ton on the males. The
Less is more (Score:2)
Lifetime of Methane (Score:4, Informative)
So, on the one hand, Methane isn't THAT critical, because it's effect is relatively short-term - but on the other hand, it is so potent that it can accelerate other positive warming feedback loops.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissio... [epa.gov]
And, what' s worse.... (Score:2)
And, what's worse, food accounts for nearly 100% of emissions from food production. The world needs to stop producing food right away to curb climate change.
Address industry and transportation sources (Score:2)
Bollocks (Score:2)
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It's right in the summary, where they say
So we get 70kg divided by 2.5kg equals 28 times as much (i.e. 2800%) greenhouse gases.
How did they get "nearly 60%" from 2800% is puzzling.
Re:Only twice? Impossible. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's right in the summary, where they say
So we get 70kg divided by 2.5kg equals 28 times as much (i.e. 2800%) greenhouse gases.
How did they get "nearly 60%" from 2800% is puzzling.
That's a "for example". For the total number calculation, you need to multiply the ratio of emissions per kilogram by the number of kilograms of meat divided by the number of kilograms of all food.
And those numbers are comparing beef to wheat, not comparing all meat to all vegetarian food. Since a large portion of the emissions calculated comes from clearing land for grazing cows, I'll expect that other meat, such as chicken, has a much lower ratio.
Re: Only twice? Impossible. (Score:2, Insightful)
They also gloss over the fact that in many cases, grazing l
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No, it's basic science and fact. It's not a hit piece. It's showing just how much of an impact a heavy meat eating society has. The vast majority of farm land is used to grow feed for animals that get consumed which is destroying the ecosystem. It should be the other way around with the majority of farm land growing food for humans to eat. For one thing you'd need a lot less land to do that and most of it wouldn't be getting turned into methane. I'm not saying stop eating meat, but eat less meat, a lo
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Depends, in the Scottish Highlands for example, the hill farms are way too steep to plant crops and harvest them, but sheep will quite happily climb up and down them and eat the grass.
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True. See the Sandhills of Nebraska. When settlers first moved in they saw all this open space (almost no trees) with nothing but grass as far as the eye could see. What a great place to put down crops, right?
Wrong. Almost no crops grew and what did took
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I hate to say it, coming from a cattle family line, but beef is not at all efficient. Maybe in the past when cattle graze on pastures that weren't irrigated. But these days a lot of food is grown just to give to cows - alfalfa and corn primarily. This is a huge amount of water use, which may not mean that much until you realize that much of that cattle is being raised in the drought heavy west; The Colorado river water is being restricted in Arizona and farmers there growing water intensive alfalfa are m
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The use of cows, pigs and other animals for food, as well as livestock feed
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The use of cows, pigs and other animals for food, as well as livestock feed
They're using ground up parts of animals too shitty even for sausage to add bulk to feed. This is an obviously horrible idea but it doesn't make the system less efficient, far from it.
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Well, it's fine to feed meat to pigs, they're omnivores and can digest it well enough. Feeding cows to cows is you you get mad cows.
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Lets see. We have CO2 in the air. Grass takes it from the air to grow. Cow eats grass. Cow becomes air pollution. I don't see how this works, unless the cows are eating oil and coal. Cows also eat mostly grass, which is grown mostly on areas that are not suitable for growing human food.
Obviously there is some fossil fuels used for transportation, freezing, processing etc. but I have to wonder are their numbers correct.
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Re: Only twice? Impossible. (Score:3)
Growing cattle feed takes water, which doesn't go to permanent plants like trees.
Growing cattle feed requires tilling, which releases captured carbon in the soil as methane. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. So not all "carbon" is the same.
Cows themselves produce methane through burps, farts, and their poo.
Modern agriculture requires a lot of heavy machinery and fertilizer. All that machinery and fertilizer takes energy. Ammonia, which i
cow do actualy eat oil and coal (Score:2)
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Because cows don't just eat grass anymore. Cows are fed with feed. That is, good grown on farms intended solely to be fed to cows. Alfalfa and corn mostly. That takes land, water, fertilizer, equipment, transportation, etc. This same land could be used to grow food for people, which would be more efficient - one pound of crop grown for a person, versus many times that amount of crop grown to generate the same amount of calories in beef.
And corn enters the picture because generally the cattle are fattene
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It seems like they didn't take into account everything needed to produce the food for these animals, which last time I read about it, was something around 5 to 20 times as much plants needed to feed those animals vs people eating (different) plants directly.
Yep. Also the amount of fresh water needed, the amount of land needed (which leads to deforestation), etc., etc.
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It will be hard to get people to stop eating meat. Even harder than getting them off driving ICE cars and trucks.
1. For some people Meat is a necessary part of their diet. Trying to go All Veterinarian or Vegan just doesn't suit them well in the long term. To replace their diets with foods to give the same nutrients as meat, may require people to eat things they don't like the taste of, or is so over processed that it isn't healthy.
2. Especially in America, there is a culture around meat, Summer BBQ, Than
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A lot of the appeal of meat is the protean and the texture, both of which can be substituted. Plant based burgers are quite tasty when done right.
Having said that a lot of the meat we consume is processed, e.g. mince, meatballs, burgers etc. So lab grown meat can potentially replace a lot of that and doesn't have to be a perfect replica of natural grown meat.
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There will still be people who insist on getting "real" meat and I suspect that the market for that will shift to grass fed or organic beef. It'll be the only way it can compete with the mass market lab grown stuff.
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The solution is population control. 1 child, then you get a vasectomy or don't get any tax credits or public services.
Can't tell if serious or...
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That's unfair to all the people who don't want any child.
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That's unfair to all the people who don't want any child.
Childless people don't get tax credits or public assistance designed for people with children as it is, how is it any different from the current system?
Re:Humans account for 100% of AGW (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh, we'll try the China system. Do consider that in a generation, 2/3 of our population will be "elderly". Won't it be fun to live in a society where every man, woman, and child has TWO elderly people that they have to take care of?
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Well, the solution is obvious. As soon as people are no longer part of the workforce, cease any and all medical aid. The average lifespan will drop considerably and we won't have any old geezers to take care of.
But since we all really enjoy the idea of living long, I don't really worry too much that this would ever happen.
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We don't need mother nature to do the job of weapons manufacturers. Where's the profit in that?
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With a lot of people it would actually be better if that vasectomy happened before the first kid.
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Yep. Our billionaire overlords would never allow it.
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I'm all for the collapse of capitalism.
Yes, from a comfort of your home or office in a technological society that afford you to safely spew your bullshit. You won't like what will come after collapse of capitalism as it will be significantly worse - anarchy with might makes right or totalitarianism where you are voiceless replaceable cog in the badly run machine.
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Constant growth is something any oncologist is very familiar with.
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The population of the world is forecast to triple by 2100
By whom? Citation very much needed. I can't find anything like that in a few minutes of searching.
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i am willing to eat some bugs as long as they taste okay and i can digest them without a problem, i would hate for beetle shells and cricket legs sticking out of my poo, that would be too weird
I've also wondered about what chitin would be like in the GI tract. It isn't digestible. The whole thing about eating bugs (we all accidentally do) is that it has always been a way of staving off starvation. given a choice between eating a grasshopper, or a piece of cheese, or a ham sammich, most people will choose something other than that grasshopper.
Note - I would try the escamole tacos that are popular in Mexico. They aren't crunchy or weird tasting (or so I'm told) They are supposedly sort of butt
Re:Eat bugs, or Vegan? (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried vegetarianism by the rules for a year, and it screwed my metabolism up badly.
bullshit.
Some people, such as pediatrician Mark Vonnegut, actually went schizophrenic as the result of a vegan diet.
more bullshit.
But the bugvegan crew will latch onto this like a smoking gun of how corpse eaters hate the planet.
and, to no one's surprise by now, even more bullshit.
quite an on-topic post, though, all considering. we are drowning in all the bullshit we produce.
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We already produce about twice as much food as we need. We can already, using what we use today, feed twice the population. The reason we have starving people is political, not a problem with food production.
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Some people, such as pediatrician Mark Vonnegut, actually went schizophrenic as the result of a vegan diet.
Most vegans I've met were crazy too. I was never sure if it was causation or correlation.
Mark said something similar. Philosophical Vegans tend to look at just about everything in a "Is this good, or is it bad" judgement. Whereas most of us do that to an extent, such as "It is good to help people", and it is bad to kill people", they get down to some real tiny levels of good and bad.
Which is a bad road to head down, because you end up analyzing if sleeping on your stomach is evil and on your back is good - or was it the other way around? Driving oneself batshit crazy. I remember how upset I
Re:Did not read. (Score:4, Insightful)
As it turns out, studies like these are part of the scientific method, and necessary in order to gain informed conclusions. This particular study had nothing to do with the nutritional needs of humans, and was focused only on the environmental impact. Any discussion about the feasibility of a vegetarian diet, and the studies that would guide such a discussion, would be separate from this one.
So, why are you really so sick and tired of scientific studies that give us specific facts that can be used in discussions? Based on the length and fact-free nature of your rant, I would speculate it is because you don't like the conclusion.
This conclusion, in particular, suggests a moral admonition to become vegetarian. If you care about the environment, and you want to keep your own carbon footprint low "for the greater good," then giving up meat is a huge step in that direction (based on the data provided here). You, of course, don't want to give up meat, so you immediately jump on the defensive, start calling people who disagree with you stupid, start throwing out your own ill-informed opinions on vegetarianism as if they were evidence that it was harmful, all in an effort to reclaim your moral justification for eating meat.
Well, nobody is forcing you to do anything. Nobody is forcing you to care about the environment. If you DO care, nobody is forcing you to give up meat in order to prove it. It's all up to you, so relax. But DON'T go spreading misinformation in an obvious attempt to justify your moral choices, as it is really obvious to everyone else that you are arguing from preference, rather than from evidence.
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Free range meat is much more rare these days than it used to be. Even the free range beef that does exist is still fattened up for slaughter, and still fed hay in winter. The old west days of free range cattle are mostly gone.
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Even if you what you say is 100% true - we still eat TOO MUCH meat. We don't need a hamburger every day, so why are most of the fast food restaurants focused on beef? We don't need a weekly Sunday steak. You do not need to become vegetarian to eat less meat. Just because vegans are weird is no excuse to eat more meat certainly. Even if we went back to the 1950's diet we'd be eating less meat than we eat today, because meat is cheaper now. If we stopped subsidizing meat production then we'd naturally