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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

#131

Post by est31 »

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…

> You need a completely different set of dishes to change that meat eating tradition and IMO tofu sausages, cheap soy steaks and other meat analogues will not convert meat-eaters to vegetarians (fingers crossed for Impossible meat projects to change that).

This is exactly what I was reffering to. The current alternatives are not motivating enough for people to switch, but with good meat alternatives like impossible/beyond meat we should see trend changes.

It feels to me that the approach "just change your culture" has been tried out and has mostly failed because most people in the west have not switched. It requires a lot of political/moral conviction for people to switch. Good meat replacements will I think change this and make it easier for people to eat less meat while keeping their culture.

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

#132

Post by sanxiyn »

pikma wrote: post #4

I'm doubtful that much change can come from personal choices made by consumers. It seems to me that it would require tremendous energy and commitment from a very large number of people to significantly reduce the global demand. It seems to me that it's much more effective to raise the price or to reduce the supply (something like quotas or cap-and-trade). Can anyone point me to examples where my thinking is wrong, wh…

This is exactly what is proposed. "It would be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect". "Appropriate incentives" is a policy, "less meat consumption" is simply the result.

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

#134

Post by dkersten »

glastra wrote: post #127
dkersten wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, why not? From the same wikipedia page, a bit above what you linked, there's also this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Meat_Atlas_2014_subsidies... showing how many billions are spent on animal product subsidies. Unfortunately I had no luck finding the actual OECD reports, though (aside from the " Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2019" report, but that seems to just compare each country to…

"[...] animal products and feed", straight from the image. Sadly, no distinction. I would assume that it's mostly subsidies to feed. I am unable to find any sources on subsidies to meat directly. I'm all for removing subsidies to monoculture agriculture.

> I am unable to find any sources on subsidies to meat directly.

Yeah, I searched around a bit (even outside of the US) and I'm having difficulty finding any proper data to back up or refute it. That's a pity, would have been nice to know either way. The best I found was data on subsidies given to individual farmers in my country (I'm not in the US), but unless I scrape the site and aggregate and categorise the data, its not really useful (and doing that is too much work for me).

> I'm all for removing subsidies to monoculture agriculture.

Absolutely. I don't even mind animal products receiving subsidies, I'm not vegetarian and certainly not vegan, but I do hope that non-animal products get a large chunk of the subsidy pie, personally.

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

#135

Post by prawn »

K0nserv wrote: post #23

I read somewhere that the one meat free day a week initative is laughable and we should really be aiming for one meat day a week. Personally I've switched to a mostly vegetarian diet in the past few years and when I do eat meat it's good high quality meat. Meat consumption seems like one of the easiest things governments could change to tackle climate change. Unlike cars and travel it's hard to make the argument that…

Government won’t touch it directly - they’d get smashed by meat lobbyists. In Australia, the lamb industry is an aggressive advertiser. Zero chance beef lets it happen in the US. Has to come from other cost pressures. Let steak become even more of a special occasion thing because people can’t afford it all the time.

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

#136

Post by dkersten »

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?

If it damages the world or society, then why not? Would you say that I have the right to eat pets? Humans? Animals (or plants) that are on the brink of extinction?

There are plenty of valid reasons to restrict what people are allowed to eat.

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

#137

Post by Gatsky »

thelittleone wrote: post #111

We're creatures of habit. The pattern of breakfast, lunch and dinner means I'm usually "hungry" before breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was feeling hungry about dinner time a while back, but I couldn't decide what to eat so I skipped. I woke the next morning and didn't feel hungry at all. That seemed odd to me. So I skipped breakfast and ate lunch only (same portion size as normal) and continued to do so for six weeks.…

Great comment. I too have experienced great benefits from fasting. Humans evolved under conditions of food scarcity. I think we are actually ‘designed’ to be fasting most of the time.

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

#138

Post by dkersten »

elktea wrote: post #98
jdc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane tax IMO

"Combining isotopic evidence from ground surface measurements with the newly calculated fire emissions, the team showed that about 17 teragrams per year of the increase is due to fossil fuels, another 12 is from wetlands or rice farming, while fires are decreasing by about 4 teragrams per year. The three numbers combine to 25 teragrams a year -- the same as the observed increase"[1] The 'cows farting' story is not a…

I don't have a source at hand, so grain of salt and all that... I read somewhere that grass-fed cows also produce a lot less methane than corn-fed cows.

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

#140

Post by chrisco255 »

dkersten wrote: post #134
glastra wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"[...] animal products and feed", straight from the image. Sadly, no distinction. I would assume that it's mostly subsidies to feed. I am unable to find any sources on subsidies to meat directly. I'm all for removing subsidies to monoculture agriculture.

> I am unable to find any sources on subsidies to meat directly. Yeah, I searched around a bit (even outside of the US) and I'm having difficulty finding any proper data to back up or refute it. That's a pity, would have been nice to know either way. The best I found was data on subsidies given to individual farmers in my country (I'm not in the US), but unless I scrape the site and aggregate and categorise the data,…

Corn, wheat and soy are the monoculture agriculture.
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