31–40 of 119 posts
>Undoing this damage, while also managing to feed the nearly 10 billion people expected to populate the earth by 2050, is going to require lots of ideas integrated together. Back of the envelope calculation: The global cattle population is around 1.5 billion. A cow eats between 8 and 16 Mcals per day, which is roughly 4-8 times what is recommended for an average adult (2 Mcals). If we diverted all those calories to h…
>Undoing this damage, while also managing to feed the nearly 10 billion people expected to populate the earth by 2050, is going to require lots of ideas integrated together. Back of the envelope calculation: The global cattle population is around 1.5 billion. A cow eats between 8 and 16 Mcals per day, which is roughly 4-8 times what is recommended for an average adult (2 Mcals). If we diverted all those calories to h…
Let's assume that normally 2/3 of the grain calories are fed to livestock. Then we get a massive crop failure and global yields are 1/3 of expected. Price of grain goes up, farmers can't afford to feed their cattle so slaughter their breeding stock and the price of meat goes down. In the short term meat consumption goes up to counter-act the loss of grain calories due to the failure. In the medium term the smaller amount of livestock eating grain means humans eat a higher percentage of the grain grown. In the long term it's a new harvest and cycles repeat...
I'm going to say something very unpopular: If your plan to save the world includes requiring all 9 billion people to fundamentally change their lives (especially if its perceived as a degradation of their current quality of life), it's never going to work. Now I'll speak for myself. I will not go vegan, given the current offering of vegan foodstuffs. It just doesn't taste as good. I know it may be better for me than…
Here is why...
I have never owned a car and bike everywhere and I also basically just eat peanut butter+jelly/ cereal/ 'rabbit food' as my old HS XC used to call it - and try to stay alive by also drinking kefir. This is all because I am cheap and lazy and increasingly set in my ways.
So I do not really have a decrease in my already low quality of life by sacrificing meat or not driving, and in fact I think biking increases my quality of life.
I really don't get the need to eat all this meat though. It's alright, but there are just as many delicious things that aren't meat. And if you are eating meat all the time that's not all-that-natural and frankly kind of gross.
Lastly, that chicken or burger or bacon (ok, bacon is delicious) came from an animal that suffered a lot for your increased quality of life. Is the trade-off really worth it? I think that if you think it is because you are a human, then you are either not thinking about what you are doing or you are and are very cruel.
I'm going to say something very unpopular: If your plan to save the world includes requiring all 9 billion people to fundamentally change their lives (especially if its perceived as a degradation of their current quality of life), it's never going to work. Now I'll speak for myself. I will not go vegan, given the current offering of vegan foodstuffs. It just doesn't taste as good. I know it may be better for me than…
Current generation here (I'm 20). There's a lot of steps you can take without decreasing your quality of life - is that cut of steak _really_ that important to your quality of life? If, aware of the problem of climate change AND of the solutions, you choose to do nothing then you won't just be an asshole in the eyes of the next 20 generations, you're an asshole in the eyes of my generation too.
> you're an asshole in the eyes of my generation too.
I'm willing to accept that. The hate of a group of anonymous people is something I have no problems with.
Electricity, transportation, and manufacturing add up to about 80% of all GHG emissions. If you want your diet choice to have the biggest impact purchase locally produced and unprocessed foods.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Soy crops are a good example, the majority of them are to feed livestock but they are a great crop to feed humans instead, and without all the waste involved in having to feed a cow first and then eat parts of it. You can make plant milk with soy too, its a very versatile crop. With it, you can feed the same amount of people with a fraction of the land, water, and pollution.
Barley crops are a good counter-example. There are three main purposes: malting, milling & animal feed. A good chunk of the feed barley on the market is barley grown for malting or milling but wasn't good enough for those purposes and is fed to chickens. The alternative to feeding it to chickens is to throw it away. That's hardly environmentally friendly. Some barley is purposefully grown for feed rather than aiming…
It's a bit insane if we think about it. I doubt that conversion from barley to chicken is so efficient. There is more nutrition in barley than the protein, there are carbs as well and fiber and micro nutrients that would be good for humans, besides only the protein.
A better comparison would be in calories, considering the waste of slaughtering the chicken and all the parts with don't eat, plus all the waste produced by the chicken and the water used.
> farms growing crops have been just as destructive as those raising animals This comparison does not make sense. What this reporter and the public, in general, fail to realize still in 2019, is that most of the farms producing crops are doing so to produce cattle feed. The majority of agricultural fields are planted to feed livestock, not humans. Only a relatively small amount of crops goes directly to humans. This…
The food system is not easily grouped into "climate-conscious" and "bad"; a vegan diet is better than a western one in every study I've seen, but we could do much, much better.
I highly recommend this study as a starting point, though you need to convert the unit they use, kg CO2e / kg, to the unit we eat in, kcal: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261...
And, shameless self-promotion: I maintain a food blog that attempts to build an evidence-based low carbon collection of recipes at https://www.carboncook.com
I'm going to say something very unpopular: If your plan to save the world includes requiring all 9 billion people to fundamentally change their lives (especially if its perceived as a degradation of their current quality of life), it's never going to work. Now I'll speak for myself. I will not go vegan, given the current offering of vegan foodstuffs. It just doesn't taste as good. I know it may be better for me than…
Interesting, I've never felt any quality of life loss when going vegan. Just the opposite. I feel much better and food is delicious now that I have discovered a whole new range of food that I never considered before.
> now that I have discovered a whole new range of food that I never considered before.
Here's the awesome thing from my point of view: I can eat vegan foods and hamburgers. :) Nothing about eating meat prevents me from also eating vegan dishes.
I'm going to say something very unpopular: If your plan to save the world includes requiring all 9 billion people to fundamentally change their lives (especially if its perceived as a degradation of their current quality of life), it's never going to work. Now I'll speak for myself. I will not go vegan, given the current offering of vegan foodstuffs. It just doesn't taste as good. I know it may be better for me than…
This may be, especially regarding texture. But think about it the other way: steak etc. is a poor substitute for the whole universe of flavours of plant-based dishes. As long as you are not clinging to meat substitutes, you are not missing out, quite the contrary.
If you are looking for a seamless segue from meat to plant, try vegan sausages. I found them to be indistinguishable from meat sausages. As long as texture is ground away, your taste buds won’t care about the type of protein involved, more about the spices used.
Doesn’t speak for the quality of industrial meat I suppose...