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Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

nature.com

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Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#181

Post by supuun »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #57

It's good to see them putting the emphasis on eating less meat rather than cutting it out entirely. I do eat meat but I find myself eating less and less these days as non-meat alternatives become more appealing to me. I also don't eat "cheap" meat as I'm concerned about animal welfare. But I do take offense to vegans telling me that I'm evil because I don't fully embrace their choice of lifestyle and I'm sure most me…

Not all vegans think like this. I'm a vegetarian, but I really don't think, that I am a better person than meat eater. :)

ETA: btw great job making effort to partly cut out meat from your diet. I myself want to become vegan, but I just can't switch immediately. IMO there is nothing wrong with gradual approach.

P.S. sorry for my broken English.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#182

Post by _0w8t »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #13
Nyandalized wrote: post #2

I don't think people will stop consuming meat if you ask them nicely. You have to make decisions that will hurt the meat industry and make it infeasible. This would likely best be achieved through slowly dropping tax incentives, and transferring them over to alternatives so that people have something equally economical to today's meat.

There is no need to go from one extreme to the other. This is about eating "less" meat. People do not traditionally eat that much meat because meat used to be expensive and its supply limited. This is still the case in poor countries. In developed countries, people started to eat more and more meat as they got richer because we naturally like meat and because of clever marketing. We now eat too much meat, and also co…

My grandmother told me that before the second world war for a typical peasant family in Belarus the meat meant a single chicken 2-4 times in a month for the whole family. Only on big celebrations few times in a year people could afford to slaughter a pig or a caw. Even eggs were considered expensive. Milk was more available as most families had a cow. The real staple food was potato and bread.

In cities meat was more available as workers typically earned more. Option to eat meat each day was considered a luxury.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#183

Post by amriksohata »

Hindu texts, places where yoga came from, often warned about the Kali yuga and the effect abusing a cow would have, Beef is one of the most costliest foods to produce in terms of water consumption and carbon output

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#184

Post by mjlangiii »

trymas wrote: post #116
est31 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Few years back I bought some tofu sausages to try out how they taste. They tasted interesting but not like real sausages. Definitely not a good replacement. Even if I made myself eat them because of moral reasons, ignoring how they taste, many people would still avoid them. As long as meat tastes better than its alternatives, people will use it. We need to bring good meat alternatives to the masses. The theo…

TL;DR: In my opinion meat analogues will not convert meat-eaters to vegetarians, problem is that switching to vegetarian diet requires rather big cultural change on our eating traditions. I hear where are you coming from, though IMHO it's a problem with lack of knowledge/tradition/culture of producing vegetarian/vegan meals. If you would say that you're vegetarian to my grandparents, they'd imagine that you eat veget…

I agree that people think you need meat alternatives because they lack the knowledge of how to make a plant based meal.

I agree with GP that most people don't care what a meatless meal could look like, culturally they just want meat each meal and will only consider an "impossible" substitute.

If we must change our impact on the environment, maybe it doesn't matter that people have a cultural desire to wait on impossible standards for substitutes and to continue harming the environment in the process. I don't know how important it is to change now, but if it critical then I'd be fine with something like rationing meat or some creative ideas towards forcing drastic change.

Also, maybe your grandparents can't imagine meat only once a week, but my grandparents certainly can, not because of current habits but from the great depression. They grew up on farms and had animals but they had more plants and usually ate the plants, only rarely they would slaughter animals for meat. Most meals were plants and that was the most normal thing in the world.

I assume meat at every meal is an extremely recent phenomenon and I think culturally we can easily move on from it, if we take the necessary measures.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#185

Post by _0w8t »

rowanG077 wrote: post #176
_0w8t wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meat taste comes mostly from salt and souses. People who tried home-made sausages or grilled meat without any of those complained that it tasted like nothing. The problem with tofu sausages is that one just cannot add that much salt as to meat without making it feel too salty. That acquired taste can be reset if for 2-4 weeks one avoids any product with added salt or sugar. Then tofu and many other products including…

This is simply not true. I often it "raw" meat without adding salt or any sauce. There are some meats which taste pretty to close to nothing but this isn't even close to the case for most meats.

There is a famous recipe of winning a cocking competition. Just add more salt and sugar. So for quite a few people that defines a taste. But if for some reasons one do not exposed to that, then I suppose food without salt or sugar tastes normally.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#186

Post by adamsvystun »

I think people in this thread suggest policies that are not centered around the problem that we are trying to solve.

Do we want to reduce meat production or do we want to reduce the negative climate impact of meat production?

It matters because the correlation is not straight forward. Different types of meats produce different environmental harm. Each meat type can be produced with different climate impact depending on production methods.

So the best policies would be centered around reducing (proportionally to other industries) environmental impact of meat production. So things like emissions tax, climate-friendly land use rewards make sense, while putting taxes on all meat production makes less sense.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#187

Post by harimau777 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #13
Nyandalized wrote: post #2

I don't think people will stop consuming meat if you ask them nicely. You have to make decisions that will hurt the meat industry and make it infeasible. This would likely best be achieved through slowly dropping tax incentives, and transferring them over to alternatives so that people have something equally economical to today's meat.

There is no need to go from one extreme to the other. This is about eating "less" meat. People do not traditionally eat that much meat because meat used to be expensive and its supply limited. This is still the case in poor countries. In developed countries, people started to eat more and more meat as they got richer because we naturally like meat and because of clever marketing. We now eat too much meat, and also co…

A challenge that I could see with convincing people to adopt a more plant based diet is that there is a carbon cost associated with shipping food across the country, but in many parts of the US a plant based diet might be much less appetizing if it is restricted to local crops. For example, much of the country wouldn't have access to citrus fruits, bananas, pineapples, or avocados.

Maybe a solution would be to tax food based on how long it was shipped but to exempt fruits and vegetables from the tax.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#188

Post by jbob2000 »

harimau777 wrote: post #187
mytailorisrich wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no need to go from one extreme to the other. This is about eating "less" meat. People do not traditionally eat that much meat because meat used to be expensive and its supply limited. This is still the case in poor countries. In developed countries, people started to eat more and more meat as they got richer because we naturally like meat and because of clever marketing. We now eat too much meat, and also co…

A challenge that I could see with convincing people to adopt a more plant based diet is that there is a carbon cost associated with shipping food across the country, but in many parts of the US a plant based diet might be much less appetizing if it is restricted to local crops. For example, much of the country wouldn't have access to citrus fruits, bananas, pineapples, or avocados. Maybe a solution would be to tax fo…

Na, that's a red herring. We can reduce our meat consumption and not replace it with anything. Americans are over consuming food, we can definitely reduce meat intake without needing to replace it with foods shipped in from out of county.

Also, most of the US population is around the coasts. Shipping a bit of food inland to the people there isn't that big of an impact.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#189

Post by perfunctory »

CommieDetector wrote: post #59
Nyandalized wrote: post #2

I don't think people will stop consuming meat if you ask them nicely. You have to make decisions that will hurt the meat industry and make it infeasible. This would likely best be achieved through slowly dropping tax incentives, and transferring them over to alternatives so that people have something equally economical to today's meat.

What gives you the right to control what people eat?

Do you mean we should ban McDonald's ads and food marketing in general? Because that sounds like a great idea.

Which makes me think. I wonder how much meat would people eat naturally, if they were note exposed to an image of a BigMac on every corner.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#190

Post by est31 »

andrenth wrote: post #153
est31 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% is a lot. It's enough to swing an election. And no idea what the 80% would think. Also, I'm interested in global solutions, not ones that are effective in one country only. Globally, there are varying degrees of support for fighting climate change. Especially third world countries want growth and say it's the responsibility of developed economies to fight it because we have polluted so much historically. The goal…

How about we make it impossible for Trump or Merkel or Abe or Xi Jinping to sell their coal-powered production to any country in the world? The question is rhetorical and is meant to show that 1) this proposal is not a “global solution”, as punishing a single country would hardly make any difference; and 2) you’re personifying a country’s exports, associating them to an administration you disagree ideologically with,…

I just meant Bolsonaro as an example. Part of the goals of his government is to expand the meat industry and people in that industry love him. This has nothing to do with disagreeing or not disagreeing with him.
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