Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 71 posts

Re: 'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

#31

Post by 7steps2much »

myshpa wrote: post #30
c22 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last three points can be applied to any products.

Yes - but you're supposed to start at point 1 :) Meat eating is a complex matter - no time & space to cover it extensively here. As I'm convinced, without forests the water cycle gets disrupted and the climate won't be able to support life as we know it [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKL40aBg-7E - The Biotic Pump: How Forests Create Rain]. With cows, there is not enough land to even have forests. And if we can agr…

Can you make any recommendations for replacement of dairy products? Personally i found that dairy stuff (cheese especially) is the one thing that seems to not have any acceptable plant based replacement (IMHO)

Most other vegan alternatives aren't good, but they are toleratable. The vegan cheeses i tried so far however were absolutely atrocious.

Re: 'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

#32

Post by vegan_wgat »

ricardobayes wrote: post #14
vegan_wgat wrote: post #7

Throwaway for obvious reasons. What's the current academic consensus on nutritional deficiencies of vegan / lacto-vegeterian diet? I grew up on a lacto-vegeterian diet in India. I can't shake off the feeling that I would've had a better physique and growth if I had access to non-vegetarian food during my youth.

There are even vegan body builders so I would probably say that's not necessarily true.

Yes but I think they are heavy on the lacto part, which I don't think a common person can follow.

Re: 'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

#33

Post by myshpa »

binibus wrote: post #29
myshpa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please see SEASPIRACY if you have a chance. Eating fish is not sustainable. Overfishing and by-catch is a real problem (already more than 90% of sharks are exterminated), and in near future the seas could be totally devoid of life (except for jellyfish). [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy ] > The argument for full veganism has to be that animals are people I don't agree. (1) We shouldn’t be cruel to animals,…

How do you fit pesticides in that framework of thought? - They are unnecessary. Humanity lived thousands of years without them. - They harm billions of animals. - But not using them would condemn us to a subsistence economy. Edit: though for thought lmao

> They are unnecessary. Humanity lived thousands of years without them.

Totally agree.

Cca 75% of pesticides/herbicides are used for meat & dairy production (we need 75% of agriculture land for it).

> They harm billions of animals.

And they harm people, too. Pesticide bioaccumulation in milk has been linked to Parkinson's disease, for example.

> But not using them would condemn us to a subsistence economy.

I'm not sure that's true.

There is a lot of regenerative agriculture styles not needing pesticides/herbicides. Current agriculture practices are oriented on mass scale and low prices - when you modify that need, you can have much greater yields, but have to change your way of thinking about it.

One example (sorry, have to return to work process). We've all seen the large fields of wheat, so large, you can see the earth curvature. And not a single tree in sight.

If you remove all the nature, tile it, seed large swaths of land with a monoculture, you remove a place for wildlife to live in.

Without predators (foxes, owls) your crop gets all eaten by mice, which overpopulate easily. So you have to use pesticides (which we then eat in our food & drink in our water).

If you have a monoculture, then bugs easily propagate and there is nothing to stop them and you'll have a large loses. But if you stop planting monoculture (maybe alternating rows of crops with rows of trees, and some bushes & flowers between them), bugs will have harder time to infect whole harvest and there is enough natural predators from the bug world to take care of them.

Biodiversity is the key.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8969332/ - The Biggest Little Farm, sustainable farm on 200 acres outside of Los Angeles talks in some lengths about this] [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/07/secret-w...] [https://www.agricology.co.uk/field/farmer-profiles/iain-tolh... - a single person from previous article]

Re: 'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

#34

Post by vegan_wgat »

0x20cowboy wrote: post #8
vegan_wgat wrote: post #7

Throwaway for obvious reasons. What's the current academic consensus on nutritional deficiencies of vegan / lacto-vegeterian diet? I grew up on a lacto-vegeterian diet in India. I can't shake off the feeling that I would've had a better physique and growth if I had access to non-vegetarian food during my youth.

> It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood,…

How much difference in cost between 'well planned vegeterian diet' and normal healthy diet with animal products?

Re: 'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

#35

Post by vintermann »

myshpa wrote: post #16
vintermann wrote: post #9

If sustainability is more important, eating at least fish too is bound to be better. There's no way leaving 71% of the surface of the planet off-limits for nutrients isn't going to increase pressure on the other 29%. And yes, much fishing and aquaculture is presently unsustainable, but that can be said about agriculture too. It's not nearly an adequate argument for abandoning it entirely. The argument for full vegani…

Please see SEASPIRACY if you have a chance. Eating fish is not sustainable. Overfishing and by-catch is a real problem (already more than 90% of sharks are exterminated), and in near future the seas could be totally devoid of life (except for jellyfish). [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy ] > The argument for full veganism has to be that animals are people I don't agree. (1) We shouldn’t be cruel to animals,…

I even addressed that argument in advance, you made it anyway...

Again: No matter how bad harvesting of sea resources is, it can't be enough to abandon the oceans entirely, any more than the vast land-use impact of agriculture can be used as argument for abandoning agriculture.

Re: 'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

#36

Post by jka »

myshpa wrote: post #28
throwaway22032 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there will be some way of eating that requires 5% of the land of whatever you suggest, ad infinitum, until we have tens of billions of humans and we end up back at square one. A line in the sand will be drawn somewhere, here's mine. I don't believe in infinite growth, it will result in us all drinking Soylent in cages. The objective for me is to have a high quality of life for a reasonable number of people, not a…

> until we have tens of billions of humans We don't even have enough room to supplement the current population on western version of meat-eating diet. We already use more land for beef production, than we have forests. > until we have tens of billions of humans Agree, we have to abandon our current notions of growth, if we want to preserve life for future generations. On our current path we're going to hell (too many…

Just chiming in to add my support for your arguments. I enjoy fast food and drinking beer, and all the moreso when I know that the former is plant-based and that the latter is brewed in an environmentally-friendly manner. I believe that both of those are possible in ways that make better use of existing agricultural land and that are therefore more scalable in terms of provision-of-nutrition -- although transition can be tricky and involves battling vested interests and long-held opinions and preferences.

I believe your debating partner is presenting false dichotomies regarding resource consumption and distribution.

Re: 'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

#37

Post by no_time »

myshpa wrote: post #28
throwaway22032 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there will be some way of eating that requires 5% of the land of whatever you suggest, ad infinitum, until we have tens of billions of humans and we end up back at square one. A line in the sand will be drawn somewhere, here's mine. I don't believe in infinite growth, it will result in us all drinking Soylent in cages. The objective for me is to have a high quality of life for a reasonable number of people, not a…

> until we have tens of billions of humans We don't even have enough room to supplement the current population on western version of meat-eating diet. We already use more land for beef production, than we have forests. > until we have tens of billions of humans Agree, we have to abandon our current notions of growth, if we want to preserve life for future generations. On our current path we're going to hell (too many…

>If you can watch it till the end and still have the same opinion about putting meat above your taste buds, please, let me know. You'd be the first.

I watched it and it didn't change a thing. I used to behead chickens to help grandma back in the days. Thinking that a video will suddenly make me a soylent chugging vegan is nothing short of religious zealotry.

Re: 'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

#38

Post by lm28469 »

myshpa wrote: post #16
vintermann wrote: post #9

If sustainability is more important, eating at least fish too is bound to be better. There's no way leaving 71% of the surface of the planet off-limits for nutrients isn't going to increase pressure on the other 29%. And yes, much fishing and aquaculture is presently unsustainable, but that can be said about agriculture too. It's not nearly an adequate argument for abandoning it entirely. The argument for full vegani…

Please see SEASPIRACY if you have a chance. Eating fish is not sustainable. Overfishing and by-catch is a real problem (already more than 90% of sharks are exterminated), and in near future the seas could be totally devoid of life (except for jellyfish). [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy ] > The argument for full veganism has to be that animals are people I don't agree. (1) We shouldn’t be cruel to animals,…

> SEASPIRACY

Every time I see that title I ask myself why they didn't go for "conspirasea"

Re: 'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

#39

Post by BlargMcLarg »

vegan_wgat wrote: post #32
ricardobayes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are even vegan body builders so I would probably say that's not necessarily true.

Yes but I think they are heavy on the lacto part, which I don't think a common person can follow.

They are full vegan, but the majority heavily supplement or juice. Both which aren't things the average person will do and which a significant portion won't have access to.

Re: 'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

#40

Post by spacemanmatt »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #10

If I spent 1/8 of what I earn, eight of me could live on my salary. It's functionally achievable, people live in my country on that amount. But I don't like that, so I spend a bit more. There is no sense in reducing the entire human experience to the lowest common denominator one in order to fit more people on the planet. If that's in your plans, you have a literal fight on your hands.

> reducing the entire human experience to the lowest common denominator

Care to clarify what this means, if not a hyperbolic statement about how much you enjoy eating meat?

Post reply on HN