Don't know why land use would be the determining factor for food access. If the goal is to maximize access to food, that seems like a food distribution problem, and not a production problem. Hungry people need cheap markets, not farms.
Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think
11–20 of 80 posts
Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think
#12The main point of the article appears to be that the vegan diet doesn't use the perennial cropland. Would be nice if they bothered to mention why. Are the perennial crops 100% feed crops and not something that humans can use, even in crazy reprocessed vegan food substitutes?
Land is not a problem if vegetables come to reign, hydroponics and aeroponics will easily substitute the inefficient land-use. Tom et al. (2015) [1] also show that in the US the switch to a vegan diet would be less efficient. But it's natural, from an economic perspective, that existing processes are optimized for efficiency and low costs and given the high demand for vegetables and fruits there would obviously be a…
why the downvotes? such a welcoming community. I seem to have replied to the wrong parent.
well, I'll leave then :(
Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Land is not a problem if vegetables come to reign, hydroponics and aeroponics will easily substitute the inefficient land-use. Tom et al. (2015) [1] also show that in the US the switch to a vegan diet would be less efficient. But it's natural, from an economic perspective, that existing processes are optimized for efficiency and low costs and given the high demand for vegetables and fruits there would obviously be a…
why the downvotes? such a welcoming community. I seem to have replied to the wrong parent. well, I'll leave then :(
This issue puts most people in direct conflict with their own cognitive dissonance: objectivity goes out the window.
Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think
#14The idea of the vegan diet being "good for humanity" isn't solely about land use which this article focuses on. It's mostly about use of energy.
Vegan diet: food from land -> truck -> grocery store -> my mouth.
Meat/dairy/what have you: food from land -> truck -> animal's mouth -> truck -> grocery store -> my mouth.
And when it comes to meat it means years feeding and water etc. until the product can actually be sent to the store. That's the idea behind it being "good for humanity". A lot of energy/pollution/water use is going into something we simply do not need in such large portions. If we ate less meat (like humans have been doing for most of our history) things would be a lot better for the environment and therefore humanity.
Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think
#15A pretty weak article and omits any new developments in the future of food production.
The main argument of the article appears to be that some farm land won't be used (perennial cropland) when people are on a vegan diet. Well, then use that space to build some aeroponic or hydroponic farms [1]. You'll get produce all year around.
Other studies have shown that it's not sustainable if we'd have to rely on meat to feed the world. The only reason why we keep eating meat is because it's cultural, traditional and pleasurable. Our society doesn't need meat anymore to survive, plenty of other protein sources available that doesn't involve killing other sentient beings en masse. Even some high performance athletes are relying on a plant-based diet only - making the argument 'you need animal protein to be strong' moot [2]
The future of food is going to be plant based [3].
[1] http://aerofarms.com/ [2] http://thediscerningbrute.com/more-vegan-athletes-rise-to-th... [3] http://beyondmeat.com/
Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think
#16The main point of the article appears to be that the vegan diet doesn't use the perennial cropland. Would be nice if they bothered to mention why. Are the perennial crops 100% feed crops and not something that humans can use, even in crazy reprocessed vegan food substitutes?
If I am reading the original paper correctly, there is a bottleneck with the vegan diet that essentially requires you to only use cultivated cropland to get enough of a balanced diet. The vegan curve never flattens out, because it is entirely dependent on cultivated cropland, unlike the other diets: https://images.elementascience.org/611000.elementa.f005.PNG_...
Except you can use perennial sunflower which is an oilseed crop for crop rotation.
Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think
#17[deleted]
Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think
#18The article seems to focus more on instances where food production is a limiting factor. Land use is less of a problem in places where we have (collectively) enough food and people tend to focus more on the very serious environmental impact of large-scale agriculture. In the latter case, I would except a diet lower in meat to fare much better than the alternatives simply because it requires fewer acres to be farmed (or the same acres less often as the article points out) and thus has lower pollution output.
Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Land is not a problem if vegetables come to reign, hydroponics and aeroponics will easily substitute the inefficient land-use. Tom et al. (2015) [1] also show that in the US the switch to a vegan diet would be less efficient. But it's natural, from an economic perspective, that existing processes are optimized for efficiency and low costs and given the high demand for vegetables and fruits there would obviously be a…
why the downvotes? such a welcoming community. I seem to have replied to the wrong parent. well, I'll leave then :(
It's not at all obvious that the "medical costs of today are extremely large mostly due to overconsumption of animal products". Some people blame sugar, which is made from plants. Some people blame fat, which in the modern American diet is largely vegetable oil. But human nutrition is notoriously difficult to study, so making strong claims about any specific thing being to blame is probably dishonest in some way.
Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think
#20A pretty weak article and omits any new developments in the future of food production. The main argument of the article appears to be that some farm land won't be used (perennial cropland) when people are on a vegan diet. Well, then use that space to build some aeroponic or hydroponic farms [1]. You'll get produce all year around. Other studies have shown that it's not sustainable if we'd have to rely on meat to feed…
One of the larger problems I've found with the vegan diet is, where do you source your Omega 3 from? ALA (found in flax and chia seeds) has low bioavailability as opposed to EPA and DHA found in fish and eggs.
Not only that, flax and chia seeds are very high in Omega 6, thus promote dangerous levels of inflammation.
So, can a vegan please explain to me how your community has managed to solve this?