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Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

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Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

#41
post #23

The idea of the vegan diet being "good for humanity" isn't solely about land use which this article focuses on. It's mostly about use of energy. Vegan diet: food from land -> truck -> grocery store -> my mouth. Meat/dairy/what have you: food from land -> truck -> animal's mouth -> truck -> grocery store -> my mouth. And when it comes to meat it means years feeding and water etc. until the product can actually be sent…

Tell that to someone forced to paleo diet due to health/performance reasons. We obviously don't have as complicated ingestion system as cows nor as simple as cats so we aren't "designed" to eat vegetables/meat only but most likely both.

I find it hard top believe that we need both. People have populated (almost) every part of the world for centuries, and have vastly different diets wherever you go. Indians are vegetarian in general, while I imagine that Inuits traditionally ate pretty much anything but plants.

Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

#42

The main point of the article appears to be that the vegan diet doesn't use the perennial cropland. Would be nice if they bothered to mention why. Are the perennial crops 100% feed crops and not something that humans can use, even in crazy reprocessed vegan food substitutes?

Land is not a problem if vegetables come to reign, hydroponics and aeroponics will easily substitute the inefficient land-use. Tom et al. (2015) [1] also show that in the US the switch to a vegan diet would be less efficient. But it's natural, from an economic perspective, that existing processes are optimized for efficiency and low costs and given the high demand for vegetables and fruits there would obviously be a…

> Overall, it's quite obvious that the medical costs of today are extremely large mostly due to overconsumption of animal products.

Whoa there, you have no evidence for that claim. The medical impacts of sugar and corn syrup for example have been a disaster. Probably more so than excessive meat. You can't single-out meat, Americans overconsume everything.

Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

#43

Don't know why land use would be the determining factor for food access. If the goal is to maximize access to food, that seems like a food distribution problem, and not a production problem. Hungry people need cheap markets, not farms.

Indeed, we already produce enough food, that it would be toxic if it were all consumed. Meat production is a symptom of a food surplus.

Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

#44
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to someone forced to paleo diet due to health/performance reasons. We obviously don't have as complicated ingestion system as cows nor as simple as cats so we aren't "designed" to eat vegetables/meat only but most likely both.

What kind of "performance" reasons are we talking about, because I'm having trouble thinking of "force"ful ones.

Athletic and mental performance. Paleo alongside intermittent fasting is super popular amongst endurance athletes reporting significant energy increase comparing to popular liquid vegan diet; a low-carb, high fiber, medium fat/protein diet also has significant positive effects on some mental disorders (like the currently "popular" BPD or ADHD). And you often see vegans with significant health problems later in life as well (cancer), though this might be side effects of past extremes such as eating junk fats like margarine and plenty of sugar because of mistaken belief those were healthier alternatives, making them as ill as frequent red meat consumers. Will see how this would fare for Soylent users in a few decades.

We probably shouldn't be on either side of extreme - vegan vs meat-only but rather figure out what works for our DNA/RNA-based protein factory best (maybe using personalized ML?) and exercise self-restraint.

Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the larger problems I've found with the vegan diet is, where do you source your Omega 3 from? ALA (found in flax and chia seeds) has low bioavailability as opposed to EPA and DHA found in fish and eggs. Not only that, flax and chia seeds are very high in Omega 6, thus promote dangerous levels of inflammation. So, can a vegan please explain to me how your community has managed to solve this?

Fish get their Omega 3 from algae, and so that's probably the best and most direct way to get it. That's what Soylent does for Omega 3's using bio reactors. Also, vegans are healthier than the average population with lower rates of death in major categories like heart disease[1]. In other words, from the standard american diet to veganism, it's generally much healthier which I think is the better comparison to make.…

I would argue that the reason vegans are much healthier isn't their specific diet but that they're paying so much attention to their diet.

Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

#46
Interesting article. I have long been of the opinion that a little meat is no big deal. However, the argument that we can feed more people with a mostly vegetarian diet vs a full vegan one doesn't mean going vegan is less efficient. If we want the average diet to have less animal products, then if some people completely give up meat it will be better than if they just cut down - they are in a sense making up for everyone else still eating their daily KFC bucket. Until most people are mostly vegetarian, we can still thank the vegans for taking one for the team.

Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

#47

There is an implicit assumption that maximizing the number of people who can be squeezed on to the planet is "good" for humanity. I have never heard a reasonable justification for this. Anyone who's taken a long car trip in an automobile packed to maximum passenger capacity will intuitively understand the counterargument. I'm more sympathetic to the idea of maintaining a population level within which people can live…

I sometimes wonder if curing cancer and other diseases is such a noble cause. More people consuming more of the finite resources that we have. Its a difficult question, and I am thinking of lots of outliers as I type this. Extending a 70 year olds life by a few years is different from curing a child leukemia sufferer.

Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

#48

A pretty weak article and omits any new developments in the future of food production. The main argument of the article appears to be that some farm land won't be used (perennial cropland) when people are on a vegan diet. Well, then use that space to build some aeroponic or hydroponic farms [1]. You'll get produce all year around. Other studies have shown that it's not sustainable if we'd have to rely on meat to feed…

One of the larger problems I've found with the vegan diet is, where do you source your Omega 3 from? ALA (found in flax and chia seeds) has low bioavailability as opposed to EPA and DHA found in fish and eggs. Not only that, flax and chia seeds are very high in Omega 6, thus promote dangerous levels of inflammation. So, can a vegan please explain to me how your community has managed to solve this?

I feel like it's important to point out that the modern approach to diet of picking one nutrient as a magic one, is, well, kinda magical thinking. Omega-3 fatty acids, beyond the minimum amount your body needs, haven't been shown to be a cure for anything and supplementation hasn't been shown to improve outcomes or performance. You need it, yes; but you probably don't need to build your diet around it. e.g. from WikiPedia:

"Dietary supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids does not appear to affect the risk of death, cancer or heart disease. Furthermore, fish oil supplement studies have failed to support claims of preventing heart attacks or strokes."

OK, so even if we assume we need more Omega-3 than a normal vegan diet contains, most meat also does not contain a good balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6. Eggs are only a good source if they have been supplemented with flax or other good sources of Omega-3. Fish is often a mixed bag, when it comes to health; it may be better to get our nutrients from the same place they get it. Seaweed and other edible ocean plants are a pretty good source of Omega-3 and are healthy on other fronts, too.

Finally, there are many normal foods that have a good Omega-3 to Omega-6 balance. Walnuts and other nuts, most seeds, several kinds of fruit and vegetables (while it's a smallish amount, the balance is good and you really don't need mega-doses).

In short, if you're eating a diverse vegan or vegetarian diet, you almost certainly don't need to think about any specific nutrient (except B12 for vegans, which does need to be supplemented, or obtained via nutritional yeast that has B12). You're just as likely to have specific nutritional deficiencies on a meat-based diet; folic acid deficiency is a common problem of a meat-heavy diet that would not trouble a vegan or vegetarian, for example.

A balanced and diverse diet is the right answer to questions about food and nutrition. Laser-focus on any one particular nutrient is probably counter-productive, unless there's a specific reason to focus on it (some people have difficulty processing some nutrients, for example, but Omega-3 isn't one of them, to my knowledge).

In short: Omega-3 is the new fad nutrient. There will be another in a year or two, and the entire health nutrition industry will figure out ways to sell you books, and pills, and diet plans, and the food industry will figure out how to cram more of it into foods, and we'll find that, like most of the other supplements over the years, it doesn't really do anything. You need some to be healthy; you don't need gallons of it to be healthy.

Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

#49
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all obvious that the "medical costs of today are extremely large mostly due to overconsumption of animal products". Some people blame sugar, which is made from plants. Some people blame fat, which in the modern American diet is largely vegetable oil. But human nutrition is notoriously difficult to study, so making strong claims about any specific thing being to blame is probably dishonest in some way.

USA eats excessive amounts of sugar, fat and calories. 3500kcal per person per day 150kg of meat per person per year (compared to chinese of 60kg, or world average of 40kg). overconsumption is the word. there was not a hint of criticism of meat being "unhealthy" -- it was mentioned in the frame of overconsumption.

150kg of meat/year is 411g/day. Making the conservative assumption that it's all 20% fat ground beef (in practice it's likely leaner), that's only 1041kcal/day. This is well below the minimum calorie requirement for a healthy adult, so for it to be "overconsumption" there must be something unhealthy about meat specifically.

Re: Being vegan isn’t as good for humanity as you think

#50

The idea of the vegan diet being "good for humanity" isn't solely about land use which this article focuses on. It's mostly about use of energy. Vegan diet: food from land -> truck -> grocery store -> my mouth. Meat/dairy/what have you: food from land -> truck -> animal's mouth -> truck -> grocery store -> my mouth. And when it comes to meat it means years feeding and water etc. until the product can actually be sent…

I don't really see the energy problem here, I mean it's not like cows are powered by electricity.

Lol, surely you're not serious?

In case you are, the energy problem comes from having to ship the cows, lighting, heating, water pumping and fodder shipping to house and feed them. Then further energy requirements for processing the meat, freezing or refrigerating it during shipping, packaging etc. Some of these costs (refrigeration, mostly) are shared with plant-based foods, but most others are extra.

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