Link to the scientific article which the news article is based on: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Thanks! Wowzers I've never heard of Nature Food, didn't realize this journal had such a high impact factor. A few things of interest to me from the article...
- Vegans are one standard deviation younger than heavy-meat-eaters and eat fewer calories... although they should have adjusted for the difference
- This didn't show on the fancy Monte Carlo simulation they did, but vegans emit much, MUCH less methane than any other group
- Literally any group is significantly better than heavy meat-eaters, especially low meat-eaters or below
The questionnaire they used to determine categories:
- Do you eat any meat (including bacon, ham, poultry, game, meat pies, sausages)? (Vegans, vegetarians and fish-eaters respond ‘No’.)
- Do you eat any fish? (Vegans and vegetarians respond ‘No’.)
- Do you eat any eggs (including eggs in cakes or other baked goods)? (Vegans respond ‘No’.)
- Do you eat any dairy products (including milk, cheese, butter, yoghurt)? (Vegans respond ‘No’.)
And meat-eaters are divided by grams of meat eaten per day: <50 g/d, 50-100 g/d, >100 g/d. Apparently one patty from McDonald's (Big Mac has two) is like 45 grams of beef so...
I mean the conclusions aren't anything surprising, cows are literally one of the major sources of environmental damage... But it does provide some way moving forward I suppose. I suspect banning steakhouses would have a much better impact than forcing everyone to be vegan lol
There sure is a lot of effort currently to distract from the fact that most greenhouse gasses are created from industrial sources & not individual diets.
This is an industrial source, the meat industry.
I still don't understand this logic. Every single product made is consumed by an individual or a business in a chain that eventually sells products to individuals.
Industry exists to supply consumption, and the only customer is humans.
but when you dont regulate corporations they will exploit and destroy anything and everything to monopolize and capitalize to the fullest extent. its not that the consumption of meat is bad, from a responsible regenerative agroforestry standpoint raising animals can help your regenerative agriculture system. it is monoculture and monopolization of the industry, pushing out responsible small scale community providers etc. that produce in a more ecologically responsible way. not to negate that populations consuming a lot of meat daily do end up becoming a market for irresponsible producers that "need to keep up with demand" to continually profit.
Meat is in fact bad, you have to grow plants to feed animals and the ratio of feed to meat produced is really really low, around 1:10 If you use those plants to instead directly provide nutrition to humans the ratio is 1:1
Responsible meat production uses orders of magnitude more land, which there simply isn't enough of if we wanted to replace our current meat consumption levels.
Either we can reduce consumption, keep polluting, or look at some of these alternative technologies like lab grown meat.
i actually kinda like the impossible burger/beyond meat burger. But... somehow, plain old ground beef is like 1/5 the price. Seriously. The technology is supposed to use less farmland and produce less waste and all that... but it's literally 5x the price at the supermarket.
In many countries, meat is subsidized.
Lentilles. Don't use them to substitute ground beef, learn to use them and you'll gladly reduce your ground beef consumption
Bulk refrigeration. There are equally cheap bulk items that fit in a plant based diet.
1/5 the price of branded stuff, but very similar to the price of dry TVP, which replaces ground beef very well in casseroles or chili (properly seasoned, and with oil added to the recipe to make up for the near-total lack of fat in TVP), and is workable in more exposed applications like meatloaf. Also great for sausage, in my opinion, though strictly speaking that’s a case of replacing pork or turkey.
(If you’re curious, the trick is 1 tsp seasoning blend added to 1 cup TVP while dry, then soaked in 1 cup hot water (vegetable stock is better, but not essential), let it sit for about 15 minutes, and, hey presto, you just skipped the part where you dump a pound of raw meat in a pan, brown it, and drain off the fat preparatory to adding it to a recipe. Add oil during cooking as appropriate, or don’t, and a little soy sauce is always good to add umami, but I find it’s enough to get some herbs and spices in at the start, and just adjust seasoning in the final recipe if necessary. It will be chewy, and it will stay chewy no matter how you cook it, which I like, but be aware. I find it way easier and more fun to cook with than meat).
(I know this sounds like an infomercial, lol, but I was initially intimidated by TVP since I didn’t know what to do with it, and now it’s a staple in my kitchen, so I thought others might want to know).
I hope it is only to pay off R&D and marketing using current monopolistic position. Also not having big market.
We will see in five years.
Scientists: massive, massive reductions from Veganism
Spencer: I'd like to see genetically modified cows
Scientists:
I think it's closer to 90%, but 75%, for sure. Livestock farming is hugely more resource intensive than crop farming. And there are good plant based substitutes for the nutrition you get from livestock products.
The environmental impact is what motivates me to eat plant based food over livestock based. Also the cruelty in industrial livestock farming. There are positive health benefits in removing livestock based food from your diet, but that's actually a lesser motivator for me. I'm not strict about it by any means, but I take any opportunity to avoid livestock products when I can.
When we include refrigerating and preparation needed for meat, it probably goes well over 90%.
Water usage is also big part of the problem.
I get it that not everyone has to be vegetarian, but at least reducing meat consumption is important.
They haven't even got into the micro-footprints found in the huge variety of food crops available across the world with a plant based diet. It's the opposite of hunting. The more we plunder, the more successful that plant becomes.
expired
Doesn't matter, simply won't happen because pro-vegan supporters pay less than pro-meat supporters. Unless we're talking Mosanto level, in which case they're as dirty as the meat industry.
I'm not changing my diet just so the rich can keep polluting more than I ever will in my lifetime
Dont sell yourself short, you pollute way more than you think.
But you will have a shorter life span and that will make up for it
Each of us has an individual responsibility to making the world a better place and apathetic inaction like this is what allows the rich to flourish. You have more power than you think.
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