Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation' • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation'

#51

Post by simias » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 12:42 PM UTC

jiofih wrote: post #47

0_____0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cut down massively on beef during the worst of the California drought, when I found out what the resource consumption looked like. To the "if it's yellow let it mellow" crowd: just the beef in a typical burger has the water usage footprint of something like 40? 50? high-flow toilet flushes. Chicken is about 1/3rd the water footprint, and IMO it's a lot easier to get good texture when cooking it.

The water doesn’t get “spent” though, unless you manage to turn it into some toxic sludge (which I imagine US farms do). In the usual resource lifecycle of a cattle farm, that water goes right back where it came from - 99% is “green water”.

Animal urine and feces are not clean water, if you only have a couple of animals it doesn't matter but at a large scale you need to treat it before releasing it into the wild unless you want to taint the water supply. Of course the water molecules don't disappear, but that's not the point. There's plenty of water on earth, but only a tiny fraction is clean enough for human consumption. If you pour your bottle of mineral water into the ocean, the water doesn't disappear but you still effectively wasted it.

>you wouldn’t have a farm away from a water source.

That's sort of the problem actually. Many aquifers are tainted to various levels because of farming. We need clean water, not cow piss.

Re: Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation'

#52

Post by MaximumYComb » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

UweSchmidt wrote: post #10

afandian wrote: post #4

Here's an interesting thought experiment for meat-eaters: Why not stop eating beef? your response might be a knee-jerk "but I really like it!". Everyone knows the huge environmental costs we are responsible for when eating meat. But it's really interesting to pursue the tension in your own personal logic-brain vs lizard want-it-brain. I've stopped eating most refined sugar and massively cut down on meat in the past f…

The problem is the availability of vegetarian / vegan meals in western society. Sophisticated food culture revolves around meat. It requires planning and work (in addition to dealing with the lizard brain). In particular, as a gym-goer I want my protein, and if soya is out too, then it's quite a bit more difficult. Excuses, I know.

How many calories are you eating daily and how many grams of protein? Unless you're a bodybuilder at the end of a cut it wouldn't be very hard to get enough protein on even 2000 calories. I know this because I'm a large, military serving man who has been full vegan and now chooses to eat vegan where possible.

The big loss is food culture. It revolves around meat and animal products.

Re: Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation'

#53

Post by logicchains » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #31

logicchains wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We're guests here and should behave accordingly. Guests of who, exactly?

Looking at the lens of "who will clean this up", future generations. Looking at "who was there before and will be after my visit", then human civilization outlives each and every one of us.

>Looking at the lens of "who will clean this up", future generations.

And how do we weigh the satisfaction of potential future people against people currently existing? It's not easy; if we assign some value to future people, then that implies we should try to have more children, to maximise the sum total of future people's satisfaction.

>Looking at "who was there before and will be after my visit", then human civilization outlives each and every one of us.

Metaphysically speaking, it's quite possible that every moment of human experience is going to happen anyway, regardless of what we do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain.

Re: Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation'

#54

Post by fock » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #19

UweSchmidt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the availability of vegetarian / vegan meals in western society. Sophisticated food culture revolves around meat. It requires planning and work (in addition to dealing with the lizard brain). In particular, as a gym-goer I want my protein, and if soya is out too, then it's quite a bit more difficult. Excuses, I know.

"Western society" (which is diverse and fragmented) started to eat a lot of meat when it became wealthy. There are plenty of low/no meat dishes in Western culture. The often cited Southern European/Mediterranean diet does not include that much meat. Cereals (expecially in the form of bread and pasta) and vegetables used to be staples that accounted for most of our food intake. While we probably eat too much meat in g…

unfortunately the no-meat dishes of our grandparents are not especially tasty in their "peasant"-version (northern europe) and making tasty vegetarian meals is an art not really known anymore (was it ever?) in my family, nor in any of the everyday restaurants/employee-cafeterias I visit.

Re: Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation'

#55

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

afandian wrote: post #4

Here's an interesting thought experiment for meat-eaters: Why not stop eating beef? your response might be a knee-jerk "but I really like it!". Everyone knows the huge environmental costs we are responsible for when eating meat. But it's really interesting to pursue the tension in your own personal logic-brain vs lizard want-it-brain. I've stopped eating most refined sugar and massively cut down on meat in the past f…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation'

#56

Post by mytailorisrich » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

fock wrote: post #54

mytailorisrich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Western society" (which is diverse and fragmented) started to eat a lot of meat when it became wealthy. There are plenty of low/no meat dishes in Western culture. The often cited Southern European/Mediterranean diet does not include that much meat. Cereals (expecially in the form of bread and pasta) and vegetables used to be staples that accounted for most of our food intake. While we probably eat too much meat in g…

unfortunately the no-meat dishes of our grandparents are not especially tasty in their "peasant"-version (northern europe) and making tasty vegetarian meals is an art not really known anymore (was it ever?) in my family, nor in any of the everyday restaurants/employee-cafeterias I visit.

Well I would suggest you get yourselves a book on Southern European/Mediterranean cooking (or just look around online).

It's very easy and quick to make tasty dishes with no meat, even just salads. Plenty of possible variations on the theme: pasta salads, rice salads, potato salads, for example. Of course there are also plenty of hot dishes to cook with potatoes, tomatoes, etc.

Curries are also an endless source of tasty dishes that do not need to include any meat.

Re: Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation'

#57

Post by luckylion » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

fock wrote: post #49

luckylion wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the cow for the burger you eat in California grown in California? It's a good idea to be aware in general, but local under-supply isn't necessarily a helpful metric, I think. We've had the argument in Northern Germany that we should use less water, and it often went along with reports about droughts in Spain. But we're not Spain, we have plenty of rain (though it's not always equally distributed over the year). Ne…

actually, we are currently in drought conditions some years in a row in Germany. Forests are dying and the groundwater is exhausted. But hey, it's all the media making up a story.

> But hey, it's all the media making up a story.

I'm on a diet, please don't put words into my mouth. There are months that we have too little rain, but we're far from continuous drought conditions. We're still getting 50+ liters/sqm per month.

Re: Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation'

#58

Post by DanBC » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #57

fock wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

actually, we are currently in drought conditions some years in a row in Germany. Forests are dying and the groundwater is exhausted. But hey, it's all the media making up a story.

> But hey, it's all the media making up a story. I'm on a diet, please don't put words into my mouth. There are months that we have too little rain, but we're far from continuous drought conditions. We're still getting 50+ liters/sqm per month.

Germany is in drought conditions.

https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=37937

Re: Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation'

#59

Post by SECProto » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

afandian wrote: post #4

Here's an interesting thought experiment for meat-eaters: Why not stop eating beef? your response might be a knee-jerk "but I really like it!". Everyone knows the huge environmental costs we are responsible for when eating meat. But it's really interesting to pursue the tension in your own personal logic-brain vs lizard want-it-brain. I've stopped eating most refined sugar and massively cut down on meat in the past f…

> an interesting thought experiment for meat-eaters: Why not stop eating beef?

I know that this was likely meant for an internal thought experiment, rather than everyone who reads it responding. But personally: I eat beef as part of ~1.5 meals per week. I could cut this down to one meal every two weeks, with a bit of effort. Eliminating it entirely would mean eliminating certain food products that I enjoy that don't have a comparable vegetarian alternative. Reducing chicken or pork would be more difficult, particularly because there is very poor availability of tofu at my local grocery stores.

The most interesting thing I identified from the thought experiment: my eating habits have changed pretty dramatically from the pandemic. I've gotten in the habit of eating homemade food for about 19 out of 21 meals per week (i.e. i never buy lunch out), which results in far less meat consumption. And far higher egg consumption

Side story: I have relatives that raise their own beef, in very small amounts (one per year) as a side-effect of running a dairy farm. Their farm is small scale, about 40 milking, with surface treatment of manure runoff (constructed wetland). No water supply issues where they are. Poor quality land (very shallow topsoil) wouldn't be any good for commercial crop production. They are pastured most of the summer, all hay/silage is harvested on site, with additional feed/salt provided in the other months (I should ask them where their feed comes from). The reason they are able to stay in business is because there is a stable price for milk in Canada (supply management), which results in mildly higher consumer cost for dairy products, but a ridiculous amount of political controversy from right wing political parties.

Re: Amazon soya and beef exports 'linked to deforestation'

#60

Post by tiew9Vii » Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

MaximumYComb wrote: post #52

UweSchmidt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the availability of vegetarian / vegan meals in western society. Sophisticated food culture revolves around meat. It requires planning and work (in addition to dealing with the lizard brain). In particular, as a gym-goer I want my protein, and if soya is out too, then it's quite a bit more difficult. Excuses, I know.

How many calories are you eating daily and how many grams of protein? Unless you're a bodybuilder at the end of a cut it wouldn't be very hard to get enough protein on even 2000 calories. I know this because I'm a large, military serving man who has been full vegan and now chooses to eat vegan where possible. The big loss is food culture. It revolves around meat and animal products.

I’ve looked in to eating more non meat meals. What I struggled with is getting the macros right.

For example to hit 190g of protein a day, eating vegan my carbs would be way up compared to my current diet. At the moment I’m trying to drop body fat and from dexa scans/metabolic test they recommend I keep my protein high, increase fats and try to reduce carbs. I’ve tried doing the macros on a few vegan recipes but struggled to get the numbers right without increasing calories which I can’t do when trying to drop body fat.

When I have more flexibility in calories i.e bulking some of the vegan recipes look quite good as calorie dense when you add beans, lentils, nuts, oils etc. I reckon I’ll do better on this than when I was eating 5kg of beef a week as the dexa scan then was terrible with high visceral fat.