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

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

#241

Post by lustysocietyorg » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #158

isolli wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was vegetarian for 20 years, vegan for 7, yet I started eating meat and fish about a year ago. Here are my thoughts: - I started eating animal products again for health reason; I believe many people can thrive on a vegetarian or vegan diet, but I couldn't. It makes me unhappy, but there I am. - Similarly vegetarian and vegan for a long time, my wife started craving animal products the minute she got pregnant. And a…

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.

With a vegan diet, you need vitamin B12 supplements.

Take a multi-vitamin supplement, some linseed oil for the essential fatty acids and maybe some mineral supplement if appropriate according to the blood test.

You should do that anyway no matter your diet.

Dr Garth Davis: Americans have become obsessed with Protein

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCt3IhaUtU&feature=youtu.be...

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

#242

Post by dashundchen » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

ovi256 wrote: post #104

fiblye wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fish farming generally uses ocean fish as feed. In terms of CO2, chicken is about as environmentally friendly as animal proteins get. Chickens also don’t really require any special diet and grow quickly. Dealing with chicken waste is a problem, but if you live in the US, chicken “litter” is fed to cows.

Among "Effective Altruism" rationalist circles, some of them prefer eating beef because a single cow produces a lot more meat than a single chicken, hence less suffering-year units per kilo of meat.

To be honest that makes little sense to me. If you care enough about animal suffering to limit the numbers of animals who suffer, why eat the cow at all when you can avoid it?

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

#243

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 2:48 PM UTC

makerofspoons wrote: post #223

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually that may be a socially untenable practice, what with meat consumption being linked to so many ethical and environmental issues.

Between the cancer risk posed by red and processed meat as well as the environmental damage, I expect meat consumption to go the way of smoking within a generation.

Given the sad state of nutritional "science" and the extremely low odds of it getting better anytime soon, I think it's just as likely we'll shortly find out that red meat reduces your cancer risk.

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

#244

Post by pvaldes » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

jmngomes wrote: post #214

cesis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmed fish is already more than 50% of market share https://qz.com/730794/the-future-is-here-people-are-now-eati...

Farmed fish spend their lives in overcrowded and filthy enclosures (too much fish defecating and feeding in the same cubic meters of water). Their feed is ridden with chemicals and antibiotics. It's the same issue as "normal" poultry vs "aviary" poultry. I personally prefer to eat less fish and meat than eating animals that are bred and raised in awful conditions that optimize for revenue; the quality of the output s…

> too much fish defecating and feeding in the same cubic meters of water

Please don't spread fake ideas created for propaganda purposes without a minimum of critical thinking. This is false.

Maybe you aren't aware of this, but the water in marine aquaculture tanks is replaced constantly by fresh, clean water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If the pumps stop the fishes would die in hours. Not to mention that many, many species of fishes love to school and feel much better when are crowded. Specially when they are young.

Some fishes just do not care about being kept in water of lower quality. Carps for example work tirelessly to mudd its tank stirring sediments from the bottom. Are brain-wired to do this. Aquaculture of marine fishes is a totally different world than Pangasius or Tilapia aquaculture.

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

#245

Post by jillesvangurp » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

protonfish wrote: post #202

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.

Not producing the plastic is a better solution. Making disposing of that plastic the producers problem is the way to get there. It will cause them to rethink whether they need that plastic and what type of plastic to use. When dumping in a landfill, bio-degradable becomes a nice feature.

Landfills are already overflowing. Nobody likes living on a toxic waste dump. That's why the current madness of shipping waste halfway across the planet persists.

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

#246

Post by philg_jr » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #77

ehnto wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that is good advice. Fixing the fishing industry is important, overfishing is rampant as is plastic waste from it. But fish is probably one of the best alternatives we have to other environmentally unfriendly meats we currently raise. As populations grow it is proving to be key to keeping everyone fed. Farmed fish most importantly will soon be the majority of fish consumed. Getting ocean based fishing t…

Farmed fish is mostly fed with industrially caught wild fish (the species and sizes that don't fetch a good market price for direct consumption), they are not a solution to overfishing or the feeding of billions at all. Traditional farming of freshwater fish fish is an exception, but I don't see carp reaching global mass appeal any time soon (and it quite likely either would not scale or it would turn nasty as well f…

Catfish, Tilapia...

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

#247

Post by swebs » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

ASlave2Gravity wrote: post #113

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…

Doesn't China buy up a lot of US / EU plastic waste via recycling programmes? Are these numbers offset because once China buys the waste, they simply dump it? Are we knowingly selling our plastic waste to a state that will miss-manage it? I know China lately has stopped buying plastic waste from states.

You obviously have access to the internet. Feel free to look it up before posting instead of clogging the comments with things that might be true.

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

#248

Post by seanwilson » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #236

seanwilson wrote: post #224

For people saying vegan diets might not be healthy it's trivial to find information online about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_nutrition > The American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly known as the American Dietetic Association), Dietitians of Canada and the British Dietetic Association[6] state that well-planned vegan diets can meet all human nutrient requirements and are appropriate for all…

None of this means a vegan diet might not be healthy for _some subset_ of the population. No one on earth has ANY diet that can be said to be "healthy" for anyone and everyone. Putting allergens, auto-immune disorders, GI disorders, etc. aside, people have been shown to process various energy sources with varying degrees of consequences.

> None of this means a vegan diet might not be healthy for _some subset_ of the population

> No one on earth has ANY diet that can be said to be "healthy" for anyone and everyone.

Why the hair splitting? Obviously nobody is claiming that. If the word "healthy" is supposed to be used in that way it wouldn't be useful for anything.

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

#249

Post by philg_jr » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #35

These stories rarely mention this for some reason but the bulk of the plastic junk in the ocean is discarded fishing nets, not consumer waste. Reducing the plastic waste you personally generate is still a good idea, of course, but if you really want to have an impact then stop eating fish. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/ocean-plastic-made-disca... https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-ga...

The US generally has sustainable fishing and farmed-fishing laws and monitor catches and stocks. I don't know if there is a law that tracks nets per boat, but maybe there should be. Regardless, if you keep track of where your fish comes from (US wild caught and US farm-raised [farmed excluding salmon because they eat more protein than they produce]), then you (as far as I know) are not contributing to these problems. Buying fish exported from countries lacking oversight is the real problem.

https://www.seafoodwatch.org/

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

#250

Post by bsenftner » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #227

overthemoon wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still framed as a consumer problem rather than a regulatory problem--eat fish or don't, market participation isn't going to get you nearly as far as regulation.

Regulation is slow and difficult, particularly when there are industries with a lot of lobbying money ready to fight it. I'm all for regulation but it will be too late if we don't do anything in the meantime.

Ya know, it should not matter how much lobby money is thrown at a politician or political party when the desire of the lobby money harms the nation. That right there is a litmus test for a captured, useless to the citizens, politician.