Number of serious scientists claim quite the opposite, that cattle grazing is the only solution to stop the erosion and turning land into deserts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
371–380 of 577 posts
Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
> soups without meat are nearly a no-go for me This way you are missing maybe 90% of the soups of the world. Maybe try some exotic spices - I used to hate tomato soup from our school canteen with passion, but once I tried a properly spiced variant in Nepali Himalayas, things were never the same again (for the better) and I love it these days (I mean the Nepali version)
In context, I meant the lazy soups we make always contain meat and still taste good. I can put like 4-5 ingredients in an instant pot and be done. Are there similar low effort meatless soups, without hunting down exotic spices? I love good Thai and Indian curries and such, always open to new flavors at restaurants, but at home I'm just not willing to go through that kind of effort, as I kind of despise cooking but am…
Soup stocks are always going to be easier because of the umami. You can even just get boullion cubes and your are pretty much good to go. For Japanese cooking, ichiban dashi is ridiculously easy -- though the katsuobushi is very, very difficult to make: really you need a professional to do it for you :-)
I have found that with vegan soups, you have to change the way you approach making soup. You don't start with a heavy, umami stock and add a few things to it. Instead, you have to layer flavours. So, it's not necessarily harder, but you have to know how to do it.
One surprisingly ovo-vegetarian soup is garlic soup. There is a good description in Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Child, et al, but from memory: Boil a peeled head of garlic. Remove the garlic. Whisk in a home made aoli (sp? -- virgin olive oil mayonaise). Add salt. It's truly a surprisingly good soup. You could probably devise a vegan version, but you need to find a way to emulsify the oil.
A vegan soup that I often have with somen noodles (thin wheat noodles) is soy milk (yes, really) mixed half and half with a light vegetable broth, chili oil, and fried garlic (a trend?). Whisk in a light, sweet miso to taste (or you can use a naturally fermented soy sauce, but I like the miso better). You can also add a dash of sesame oil, or mix in defatted sesame hulls.
I'd write some more, but it's been quite a while since I did any vegetarian cooking and my memory is not that great! But, definitely there are lots of amazing vegetarian soups that are relatively easy to make if you know how.
Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
#373At least in the USA, this could in principle be fixed by ending the corporate welfare state. Old news, but All major industries like the beef industry get huge tax breaks, free water and other giveaways at the general taxpayer’s expense. Fixing the corruption (both democratic and republican parties) in our our political would end up helping the environment a lot. That said, we have zero chance of fixing our corrupt p…
> That said, we have zero chance of fixing our corrupt political system
We do have a chance. It's not going to be long until a critical mass of individuals understand that democracy is a system that legitimizes coercion, and that taxation is theft and generates poverty. We just need one more generation until that happens.
When people reach that conclusion, they will move their money away from fiat currencies and they will move their information into distributed systems (eg. blockchains).
By consequence they will make states and coercion not viable. Without the ability to control currencies, states go bankrupt and can't even pay for people to steal your money.
Welcome to anarcho-capitalism, while I wait for the downvotes.
Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
> soups without meat are nearly a no-go for me This way you are missing maybe 90% of the soups of the world. Maybe try some exotic spices - I used to hate tomato soup from our school canteen with passion, but once I tried a properly spiced variant in Nepali Himalayas, things were never the same again (for the better) and I love it these days (I mean the Nepali version)
In context, I meant the lazy soups we make always contain meat and still taste good. I can put like 4-5 ingredients in an instant pot and be done. Are there similar low effort meatless soups, without hunting down exotic spices? I love good Thai and Indian curries and such, always open to new flavors at restaurants, but at home I'm just not willing to go through that kind of effort, as I kind of despise cooking but am…
If you buy the curry paste, Thai-style curries are ridiculously easy to make: you can basically just dump the paste, coconut milk, a bit of water/broth, fish sauce (or soy sauce, or even just salt), a tiny bit of sugar, and whatever vegetables and other ingredients into a pot and cook for 10 minutes. Daal can be similarly easy to make, though you usually at least have to sauté some onions, ginger, etc first before throwing everything into the pot.
If you're okay with seafood, my wife and I really like this[0] Lohikeitto recipe (Finnish salmon soup). If that seems a bit too heavy, I've made a variation where I reduce the butter, skip the heavy cream, and add harissa (or sub whatever combination of warm spices) for a lighter, spicier soup that tastes just as good.
[0]: http://cookingtheglobe.com/finnish-salmon-soup-lohikeitto/
Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meat is disproportionately consumed in western countries, so, even a change only in those countries would have a big impact. Eg, China consumes half the meat per person of the US, and India just 5%.
As far as China goes that’s purely because it’s not all at first world levels of consumption yet. In any coastal city where people are roughly as prosperous as Poles or Romanians people eat first world amounts of meat. And telling people they can’t eat meat will not garner support for the government, whether in India, China, Indonesia or any other developing nation. Not eating meat is either an ethical or a religious…
The Chinese could become more environmentally conscious when climate change will become an even more serious problem for them. In the meantime, starting to cut consumption on our end is still useful, and would give us a much better stance if at some point we'll have to negotiate reductions on their part.
Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
#376I am excited about the work Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are doing in this space. Creating alternatives with same nutrient content and similar taste but 1/10th the land usage and consuming less of other resources.
If they had the same nutrient content I would be excited as well. They merely look like a bit like meat. The similarities end there.
Considering the links between meat consumption and heart disease, one would think that you should be more excited that the nutrient content isn't the same.
Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
But most people don't see a general ethical issue with eating meat. We are omnivores after all. Hell, our hunter gatherer ancestors ate more meat than we do. Though, higher quality. It's the same with seeing a wolf eat a deer. Think they care? Same with a chimp finally catching a monkey and eating it (now those are horrifying videos to see, especially since chimps love eating monkeys). Snake to a mouse. Fox to a hare…
> But most people don't see a general ethical issue with eating meat. Again, this is in the scenario where we accept meat consumption is indisputably ethical. The way we get our meat is arguably a much bigger problem. > But if broccoli could scream would you stop eating it? Yes?
How would you survive if everything eadible could scream? Also, not sure why the screaming part is important. Plants are alive, too and they do feel pain. They just can't express this, similar to autists.
Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
#378This will probably get swallowed by the other 190 comments but are there good sources for how to make meat substitutes? I love to cook, and I frequently grind my own meat for burgers and sausages. I make my own jerkies too. I try to buy grass fed and pasture raised but I’m definitely not perfect since the nearest decent butcher is about twenty minutes by train. I guess the alternative would be an ask for great vegeta…
Personally, I've found that the tastiest way to go vegetarian is by completely restructuring how I plan my meals.
American food tends to revolve around meat, whereas food in other cultures treats meat as more of a side dish (if it is eaten at all). Indian/Bengali food, Middle Eastern food, (authentic) chinese food...pretty much anything besides American food is very easy to "veganize", since vegetables and legumes are centered more in the meal.
I like this blog for ideas - https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/south-indian-breakfast-rec...
Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
#379At least in the USA, this could in principle be fixed by ending the corporate welfare state. Old news, but All major industries like the beef industry get huge tax breaks, free water and other giveaways at the general taxpayer’s expense. Fixing the corruption (both democratic and republican parties) in our our political would end up helping the environment a lot. That said, we have zero chance of fixing our corrupt p…
> At least in the USA, this could in principle be fixed by ending the corporate welfare state. Old news, but All major industries like the beef industry get huge tax breaks, free water and other giveaways at the general taxpayer’s expense.
Unfortunately, in my experience when I bring this up the typical response us that I must be a socialist.
Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
You would need to get a large part of the global population to do it though, say 50%. And the prices for meat would go down, so you would need to convince the other half of the population not to increase their consumption.
Meat is disproportionately consumed in western countries, so, even a change only in those countries would have a big impact. Eg, China consumes half the meat per person of the US, and India just 5%.
It's not quite that simple though. China has 4x the people as the US, so even consuming half as much meat per person, they'd still consume twice as much meat.