101–110 of 129 posts
Ideas:
* 'Worse' cuts of meat (near bone, nerves, etc)
* Grinding/processing system introduces contamination.
* Processing mixes meats from many animals which spreads infections more.
* Smaller pieces of meat degrade with bacteria faster.
* Processed meat tends to be served with less healthy meals otherwise (more salt, fat).
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It's nutritional science, so the error bars are big, the effect sizes are small and the confounding variables numerous. At least a plant-based diet reduces your GHG footprint, so there's that. If you want to switch to a more carnivorous diet, I'd suggest chicken instead of beef. The evidence for mammalian meat being slightly carcinogenic seems to be pretty solid, and the climate impact of beef is about ten times that…
You also cause way less suffering in the world, which is something I believe is very much worth striving for.
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Humans are not carnivores, and lions don't have grocery stores. If ducks stopped raping other ducks, they'd go extinct too. Not really sure if that's an argument in favor of human rapists, though.
> Humans are not carnivores Yes, we're omnivores. Or it's complicated [1]. > and lions don't have grocery stores. Sucks to be them. But we have been eating meat for millennia, naturally, before we ever concerned ourselves about reading/writing and math, so there's that. > If ducks stopped raping other ducks, they'd go extinct too. Not really sure if that's an argument in favor of human rapists, though. That would hav…
Exactly the point I'm making. Humans don't face extinction if we stop eating animal products, so comparing us to lions is not a valid argument for why we should eat meat.
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>At least a plant-based diet reduces your GHG footprint That isn't actually true. It is a very misleading claim spread to promote veganism. It comes from comparing the raw caloric value of field corn, to the caloric value of beef. In reality, We do not actually eat field corn, we turn it into HFCS and corn oil, this reduces the energy efficiency of corn dramatically. A plant based diet also should not be based on HFC…
That's interesting. I based my opinion on reports such as [1]. Do you have any (semi-)scientific references that support your opinion? I agree that we don't eat much corn directly, but if it weren't used to feed livestock, we could use the land for something else, like potatoes or lentils or whatever grows in similar climate to corn, which are actually eaten. I'm somewhat doubtful of your claim that corn fed chicken…
[1] https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2017/07/02/low-carbohydrate-...
I think the longevity of dietary advice is pretty low. Remember when eggs were the enemy, when fat was the enemy, when carbs were the enemy? Meat had to have it's turn sometime.
Perhaps we can judge the statements on the evidence behind them? The reason that processed meat (that is meats which are smoked, salted, etc.) is recommended to not be eaten is because it has been shown to be carcinogenic. The egg thing is based on the idea (I actually don't know enough to know if this is correct or not) that dietary cholesterol intake affects blood cholesterol levels, and eggs have a bit of dietary…
As for eggs and cholesterol, about 80% + of cholesterol is produced in the liver, and increasing dietary cholesterol by HUGE amounts at best changes blood cholesterol by 2-4%
Sorry I can't dig up the study right now, but perhaps searching pubmed may find it.
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Lions have no concept of morality either. We should care about unnecessary suffering because we can.
> We should care about unnecessary suffering because we can. "We should because we can"? There are many things that we "can" do that we better not do. There's no automatic logical deduction from "we can" to "so we should".
I think the longevity of dietary advice is pretty low. Remember when eggs were the enemy, when fat was the enemy, when carbs were the enemy? Meat had to have it's turn sometime.
Huge sums are being spent to confuse consumers. Reliable research has actually been pretty consistent for decades and repeatedly implicates dietary cholesterol and saturated fat in a variety of diseases.
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> We should care about unnecessary suffering because we can. "We should because we can"? There are many things that we "can" do that we better not do. There's no automatic logical deduction from "we can" to "so we should".
Avoiding unnecessary suffering is sometimes used as the basis for whole ethics systems. It's inherently good and doesn't need to be deduced from anything.
Killing animals for their meat is not like torturing animals for no reason (which indeed would be unnecessary).
And how steep would the slope be? E.g. what about killing rodents and house pests?
This is not a human diet, and humans are not herbivores. Herbivores have complex stomachs or eat their own poop (eg, gorrillas and rabbits).
After the health flush of the first few months, veganism is a downward spiral to pasty skin, mood-swings, depression, dark circles, fatigue, skinny-but-fat, Joint paint, constant hunger/lack-of-satisfaction, excessive volume of eating. Vegans eat like you wouldn't believe. And a great deal of wildlife dies due to agricultural farming.
And despite what people say, anthropologically we are not omnivores but carnivores. Radio-isotope analysis has us eating a diet close to a wolf by preference over the last million years. Unlike a pig, a genuine omnivore, we do not have a proper cecum.
But sure, a few humans are better adapted to a plant-based diet than others, and our distant genetics was herbivore which means these genes can re-express, but for most people veganism becomes a nightmare and explains why the level has historically been at 0.3%.