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Vegetarian diets are not going to save the planet

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Re: Vegetarian diets are not going to save the planet

#11

Post by cies »

TL;DR: Terrible article, I suggest not waste your time on it.

Why?

* Author writes """it’s more accurate to say that vegetarian diets are “less awful,” not “better,” than omnivorous diets""". He gives no hard numbers to back it up. Less awful IS OBVIOUSLY the same as better. According to many sources, that are well presented in the Cowspiracy documentary (among others) it is shown that a vegetarian diet, and specially a vegan diet, is A LOT less awful then an omni diet both environmentally, ethically and considering health impact.

* He argues vegetarians eat more staples. And that they are usually grown as mono crops, thus bad for the environment. He forgets that animals slaughtered for meat have been eating staples all their lives. A large part of the staples are grown for life stock; this makes meat so inefficient in the first place. The author is seems to know that it is also grown for life stock, but then continues that vegetarians are responsible for the monocrop disaster. Clearly misguided he is.

* Showing pictures of hippies to re-enforce the idea that vegetarians/vegans are some treehugging margin group. Whoever lives in a cosmopolitan city knows this is not true, or not anymore.

What I do agree on: eat with the seasons. But simple economics of "eat what is cheap" should help with that. It is that supermarkets choose to put the "high price" on produce all year long, except for a discount crop maybe. This is because produce does not pull customers.

What pulls customers? Cheap meat, and cheap beer. That's why there's always some meat on offer that costs less per kilo then bell peppers in the supermarkets near where I live.

If we want to save the planet from the rather imminent "mass extinction" (lets not call it "global warming" that sound waaay to nice), we should not optimize for consumerism but for sustainability. And meat eating is simply not sustainable.

Re: Vegetarian diets are not going to save the planet

#12

Post by dm03514 »

i was in NYC for work during the holidays, etsy had a pop up exchange in Chelsea market and it was absolutely nuts. After seeing it, the need to create a food market to connect, and incentivize, local producers and consumers was obviously apparent.

I think garden tech is a wide open space with room for even small application of tech mentality to have a huge impact on yield

Re: Vegetarian diets are not going to save the planet

#13

Post by codebolt »

bananicorn wrote: post #4

>Most of these staple crops — especially corn and soy — wind up in animal feed and fuel; Exactly. So why should eating less of the same food than is necessary to produce a substantially smaller amount of meat be discouraged? Using less resources overall is still better, right? edit: formatting

Yeah this article is completely half-baked. If we had only grown enough of these staples to feed humans, it would require a whole lot less than growing enough to feed animals who feed humans. The author here is making it sound like there wouldn't be much difference.

Re: Vegetarian diets are not going to save the planet

#15

Post by LoSboccacc »

hannob wrote: post #3

I'm not sure what to make out of such a text. Basically what the text says is that plant-based food usually is less resource intense and thus better for the environment, but there are also other factors and plant-based food production isn't perfect. (Independent of the question whether all the other things he says are true.) So the headline is obviously strictly true, but highly misleading. A more accurate one would…

There are many facet to preserving the planet and optimizing food production so the jury is still out.

One quick interesting discussion point is that no land can indefinitely sustain intensive farming and some plot will only ever be able to sustain grazing animals.

So let's reduce these constraints for the sake of argument: the world is two field as such. what's more eco friendly? A corn farm and a shrubland, or a forest and a sheep herd?

Re: Vegetarian diets are not going to save the planet

#16

Post by lukasben »

I don't eat meat not to solve any sustainability problems. I don't eat meat because of how the meat industry is treating the animals and the nature (By the way, most soy and grain is produced to feat our animals). I can give you a lot of examples for the planned economized genocide on other races than humans. But people, like the author of this text, don't want to hear arguments or examples like that. They don't buy at the local market, they buy the cheapest meat at the supermarkets and care about their wallets more than they care about others. We totally lost the connection to the lives of the animals we eat. Additionally I don't eat meat because 80% of our antibiotics is produced to feat it to animals. Just Google MRSA and find out how much your government is doing about that issue. Some scientist, here in germany, call the resistance against antibiotics an equal threat to the mankind like nuclear weapons. This issue brings meat consumption and therefore the meat industry in a total different perspective.

Re: Vegetarian diets are not going to save the planet

#17

Post by stupidcar »

hannob wrote: post #3

I'm not sure what to make out of such a text. Basically what the text says is that plant-based food usually is less resource intense and thus better for the environment, but there are also other factors and plant-based food production isn't perfect. (Independent of the question whether all the other things he says are true.) So the headline is obviously strictly true, but highly misleading. A more accurate one would…

Uh, no. That is not what the article says at all.

The text explicitly says that vegetarian diets are not part of the solution. Either now, or under the system he proposes.

He's very clear that eating a fully vegetarian diet now is worse, footprint-wise, that eating a mildly omnivorous one.

He's also very clear that while eating a vegetarian diet under his proposed system would be just about possible, it is built around the assumption that most people will be eating meat, and that it would form a primary food source for the months of year when plant-based sources were scarce.

Re: Vegetarian diets are not going to save the planet

#18

Post by eeZah7Ux »

cies wrote: post #11

TL;DR: Terrible article, I suggest not waste your time on it. Why? * Author writes """it’s more accurate to say that vegetarian diets are “less awful,” not “better,” than omnivorous diets""". He gives no hard numbers to back it up. Less awful IS OBVIOUSLY the same as better. According to many sources, that are well presented in the Cowspiracy documentary (among others) it is shown that a vegetarian diet, and speciall…

The author is also playing the false dichotomy vegetarian omnivorous, while people in the "omnivorous" category can eat varying amount of meat, and from 21 times a week down to one.
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