Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic' • Hacker News Board

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#201

Post by naasking » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #190

naasking wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one's disputing the footprint, they're disputing how feasible it is for all or even most people. Vegetarianism requires much more understanding and planning to ensure you ingest sufficient proper macro and micronutrients. Edit: and you need look no further than Harvard's explanation of how to become a vegetarian and choose your foods to ensure a healthy diet: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/becoming…

Eating a healthy diet takes work no matter what diet plan you follow. You're assuming a meat-based diet is automatically healthy when in fact the typical meat based, western diet is strongly linked to all of our most deadly diseases. You're going to be a lot better off on an even non-ideal plant based diet than you are going to be eating hamburgers and pizza. I'll admit it's currently not that easy to follow a strict…

> You're assuming a meat-based diet is automatically healthy

I'm asserting that it's harder to be nutrient deficient given a meat/fish-based diet. The only "work" in this diet is not eating too much.

> western diet is strongly linked to all of our most deadly diseases

Mostly due to overconsumption, not due to the composition of the diet. Controlling for caloric intake eliminates most differences in health outcomes between the various diets, assuming no nutrient deficiencies are present.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#202

Post by protonfish » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:13 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #151

The attitude to recycling needs to change. Right now it is something you have to do or something that makes you feel good about yourself. But it is fundamentally still an optional thing and an afterthought. It's nice that that iphone is packaged nicely but that wasn't the reason you bought it. It needs to stop being optional and it needs to be something that is part of the product design process. Companies are not cu…

Recycling is the problem. It takes additional fossil fuels for transportation and processing to ship to across the ocean and be dumped in a river.

Disposing of plastic waste in landfills is by far the best environmental option.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#203

Post by usrusr » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #191

usrusr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> limited consumption of animal products It would be more impactful get three people to reduce meat by 50% than to get one to reduce by 100%. Unfortunately, "meals that don't have a chunk of meat as their centerpiece but that are still far from vegetarian" does not have the same ideological zeal as veganism (speaking in the context of a western industrial background). When eating out (again: western cuisine), the mea…

> It would be more impactful get three people to reduce meat by 50% than to get one to reduce by 100%. Unfortunately, "meals that don't have a chunk of meat as their centerpiece but that are still far from vegetarian" does not have the same ideological zeal as veganism So, work to get people to try a different appreciate meatless options; as you note, they are getting better. You can reduce meat consumption by eating…

The thing is, I really don't like those dishes that bend over sideways to eradicate even the last bit of meat. I'd be fine making that steak-sized chunk an extremely rare occasion, but don't take away my little flavor bits. Polarized "we cater for vegans and for big-steak aficionados" and then controlling your dosage via some foodie variety of pulse width modulation might be fine for some, but it's not for me. When low meat options disappear from the menu to make room for vegan options while the high meat dishes stay, then people like me are likely to end up eating more meat, not less, without really wanting to.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#204

Post by bleigh0 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

verasio wrote: post #99

China. Indonesia. Philippines. Vietnam. Sri Lanka. This chart says it all: https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting... They are everyone's oceans and these countries are disproportionately choking them with plastic. Blame must be focused on them for meaningful change to happen. I'm a foreigner living in one of these countries and it is shocking how absolutely careless and ignorant the majority of…

So called "developed" countries were once similarly careless with their waste. And their developed status was a result of such carelessness and the free expansion of their industries. It seems slightly unfair to expect developing countries to achieve a similar level of development via a sustainable methodology immediately, when that has not been the path for the richest countries in the world. (Given that developing countries are likely more concerned about the health of their population, and as such, focused on raising GDP, then the health of the ocean). Skipping to sustainable-led development is not impossible and obviously would be hugely advantageous for all, but it is still equally unfair to assign blame to such countries and label them as careless.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#205

Post by onlydeadheroes » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:27 PM UTC

Yajirobe wrote: post #109

cageface wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. The American Dietetics Association states as its official position that a vegan diet is healthful and adequate for all stages of life: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864 There's currently quite a bit of debate over whether or not plant-based diets are better than other diets, but not over whether or not they are healthy.

> for all stages of life Even for babies?

As long as your baby is an ideologue.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#206

Post by malvosenior » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:31 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #180

saagarjha wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as it would be great to get everyone on plant-based diets, it's not going to happen anytime soon. So I guess, for the environment at least, fish is the best we can do until then?

I think it will happen sooner than you think, with companies like Beyond Meat working hard to ultimately make plant protein "meat" both highly palatable and less expensive.

There are a lot of people (myself included) who actually enjoy real meat and would never switch, so no it won't be happening any time soon or at all really.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#207

Post by cableshaft » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

dorfsmay wrote: post #200

scotty79 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind vegetarian. I rarely eat meat and never crave for it. However vegan just sounds horrible. Eggs and cheeses are incredible, milk, fish, prawns. Cutting them out feels like cutting half of the nutrients out of my diet. I wouldn't risk it unless I had very extensive knowledge and dedication to human dietary requirements and what which plants can provide, which I don't have and won't have.

Aren't fish and prawns animals? Would you still considered a vegetarian if you ate them?

Some people consider that vegetarian, but I never understood that myself. When I was vegetarian, I didn't eat fish. I did eat eggs, though. Since they were unfertilized I didn't have a problem with them, and it helped me stick with the diet for as long as I did.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#208

Post by isolli » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

enkid wrote: post #142

mcv wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a number of friends who eat meat only 2 times per week. I used to be vegetarian for about 15 years until I met my wife and we agreed to eat meat, but only organic/otherwise sustainable and only a limited number of times per week. When eating out, I still eat vegetarian unless I know where the restaurant got its meat from. Increasing numbers of restaurants in Amsterdam do care where their meat comes from, fortu…

Organic and sustainable are not the same thing.

As a rule of thumb I would say there is good overlap. In support of my claim, I suggest the report from Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food [0].

[0] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-03-09/un-report-supp...

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#209

Post by koheripbal » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

nhebb wrote: post #36

eecc wrote: post #3

Just like Climate Change, oceanic plastic pollution is a case of Tragedy of the commons. I can separate my waste and recycle as much as I want (and I do!) but it’s all useless if a random idiot proceeds to dump my weekly household recycling output into a river and call it a day. This is nothing that can be solved with personal initiative and responsibility; it requires international regulation and enforcement. There’…

Considering the current state of recycling, it may be better to just throw our plastics away instead of putting them in recycling bins. With China turning away our recycling, some cities have started burning them (according to recent headlines - I don't have a source). I would think that would be worse for our environment that putting them in landfills. According to the study by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental…

The old strategy of burying garbage is looking better and better. We're literally sequestering CO2 by doing so.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#210

Post by usrusr » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

murph-almighty wrote: post #187

usrusr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> limited consumption of animal products It would be more impactful get three people to reduce meat by 50% than to get one to reduce by 100%. Unfortunately, "meals that don't have a chunk of meat as their centerpiece but that are still far from vegetarian" does not have the same ideological zeal as veganism (speaking in the context of a western industrial background). When eating out (again: western cuisine), the mea…

> Low meat dishes seem to have a serious branding problem. I think the way you make this work is using meat for flavor rather than as a centerpiece- a lot of noodle dishes from China do this (e.g. https://thewoksoflife.com/2014/11/dan-dan-noodles/ ).

Exactly, the whole "diaspora Asian" thing has this figured out just fine. But every food tradition has a great variety of low-meat options, with the possible exception of pure hunter/herder communities. But in the west they are traditionally mostly restricted to home cooking and what little still made it to professional kitchens is now increasingly getting squeezed out by fully meatless choices (the choice in status meat somehow never gets less).

(I say "diaspora Asian" because I can only talk about what we get under the Asian brand in Europe, which for all I know might be completely unrelated to what actually happens in the namesake regions. But that's completely unrelated to the point we are making here: meat for flavor instead of for status, kudos to them)