161–170 of 947 posts
Rather than trying to encourage people to substitute the ingredients in their meals, I wish we'd encourage more healthy habits and work life balance. So many people are either pressed for time or incapable of preparing a decent meal. If they aren't ordering takeout, they're falling back on boxed or prepared options. Simply substituting fake meat for real meat isn't improving anyone's lives.
This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans. Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the docu…
The popular crusade against meat is one of the more misguided. Meat provides far more nutritional value than any plant and the environmental impacts have been greatly exaggerated. See below: Regarding carbon: "removal of livestock in the US would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6% in national emissions. Similarly, removing all dairy would lead to a reduction of just 0.7%. At the same time, both transitions woul…
Methane (molecule for molecule) contributes far more to the greenhouse effect than CO2 so without knowing how much of those gases are from transportation versus digestion, it's hard to tell how much actual impact it has. Focusing on the GHG statistic also ignores the many other ecological effects of animal agriculture like runoff and forest clearing that has significant effects on our carbon stores and oxygen producers like plankton and trees.
At the same time, both transitions would create domestic deficiencies in critically limiting nutrients [White & Hall 2017; Liebe et al. 2020], which is not unexpected given that Animal Sourced Foods are valuable sources of essential nutrition [see elsewhere].
Cows need more essential amino acids from their diets than humans do and the overlap between the two needs is almost 100%. They can't synthesize atomic minerals so they're just a delivery device for nutrients we'd get from other sources anyway. Obviously I'm not suggesting we all switch to a diet of alfa alfa but the whole point of the climate crisis is that our way of life is unsustainable; something has to change and I think most people rather it be diet, even if we lean more on synthetic alternatives, than the total population. This argument made sense a hundred years ago when overwintering was a real concern and transportation wasn't fast enough to deliver unspoiled fresh food so people had to convert inedible plants to edible food.
(I'm ignoring the difficulty of getting a large group of people to switch away from culturally important or locally available staples, which is what that nutrition argument hinges on, because that seems to be the weakest link in the face of an existential threat)
This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans. Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the docu…
An interesting side story about this issue is that it has been shown a long time ago that ruminants actually enrich the environment (assuming non-industrial practices) through both processing the plant material and both converting it into compost and also seeding it with bacteria, while also trampling the plant material into the ground and thereby facilitating the breakdown. That lesson came out of the discovery of Allan Savory a Rhodesian/Zimbabwean ecologist that desertification only accelerated once huge herds were culled in an assumption that the grazing was causing the desertification, rather than that they were part of the system.
I encourage you to reassess what you surely are convinced about.
Is beyond meat actually healthier than meat? If you search my question you’ll see the results are hardly conclusive. What’s everyone’s take?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are you comparing nutritional value between meat and plant products? There are literally hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people that have been eating vegetarian diets for their entire lives, and these types of diets have been popular for millennia.
I'm not sure how the comparison is made, however Vitamin B12 can only be found in meat and eggs. If you do not have supplements or eat this type of vitamin containing protein, you risk paralysis and death with a 2+ year absence of the vitamin. I wouldn't be surprised if there are other missing nutrients as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are you comparing nutritional value between meat and plant products? There are literally hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people that have been eating vegetarian diets for their entire lives, and these types of diets have been popular for millennia.
Look, this isn't the whole picture and it super misleading. Just because humans survived with a particular diet doesn't mean that they wouldn't have been healthier had they eaten meat. You can't just point to historical populations who didn't have widespread access to animal products and be like "see they lived." I'm not saying your not correct that vegetarian diets are fine from a health perspective but this isn't e…
Is beyond meat actually healthier than meat? If you search my question you’ll see the results are hardly conclusive. What’s everyone’s take?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are you comparing nutritional value between meat and plant products? There are literally hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people that have been eating vegetarian diets for their entire lives, and these types of diets have been popular for millennia.
I'm not sure how the comparison is made, however Vitamin B12 can only be found in meat and eggs. If you do not have supplements or eat this type of vitamin containing protein, you risk paralysis and death with a 2+ year absence of the vitamin. I wouldn't be surprised if there are other missing nutrients as well.
It's the same supplements but with extra steps.
This is the best news I've heard all week. The more widely vegan "meat" is available, the more likely it is to be adopted by average people and not just dedicated vegans. Reducing the demand for real beef is probably one of the best things we can do in the short term for the environment, due to the amount of land required for cattle farming, and due to the surprising amount of methane emitted by cattle. (see the docu…
I agree that this is important, and less meat consumption is good, but I am kind of upset that the entire American culinary experience is being reduced to "burgers, pizza, and fried chicken." I say that because most of the articles on meat alternatives are written from the perspective of "if only Americans can stop eating hamburgers!" First off, in terms of global solutions, that isn't going to fly. Try going to Ital…
You're also likely in a privileged class of Americans. Unfortunately the US government indirectly subsidizes meat. Hamburgers and fried meat of sorts are staples of the low-income class. The meat consumption in that class is off the charts, and at extremely unhealthy levels for both the body and the planet.
Ideally, the government should be subsidizing a variety of healthy vegetables for human consumption, not corn (which indirectly subsidizes both meat and HFCS). That policy change alone would fix a lot of nutritional deficiencies, heart disease, obesity, and numerous other problems.