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

theguardian.com

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

#61

Post by nikolay »

myshpa wrote: post #20
nikolay wrote: post #17

It's important to differentiate between "surviving" and "thriving"!

You can easily thrive on vegan diet. You can't just leave meat and eat the rest and call it vegan diet. Most anti-vegans never had a real vegan meal. We all have an idea of vegan meals - but your mum's vegetable dish, which left you hungry after eating it, is not a real representative of vegan diet. You'll just need to learn to cook differently - or better, what to substitute with what. No need to invent new recipes.…

Vegan fake meat is frankenfood. Yes, you can try to mimick a carnivore diet, but you eventually will have to eat frankenfoods. Lots of plant foods are loaded with natural antinutrients and toxins.

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

#62

Post by myshpa »

7steps2much wrote: post #31
myshpa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't like vegan cheeses from supermarket much. And there are no artisanal vegan cheese producers in my area - maybe you'll be more lucky.

So I've been making my own. Better quality, better price, better taste compared to the supermarket stuff.

Cheese [https://thehiddenveggies.com/how-to-make-vegan-cheese-provol... - from coconut milk], yoghurt [https://www.spoonfulofkindness.com/how-to-make-vegan-yogurt/ - soya, cashew, almonds, coconut, oats, chickpea], and butter [https://veganheaven.org/recipe/vegan-butter/, https://lovingitvegan.com/homemade-vegan-butter/ - with olive oil, not canola].

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

#63

Post by throwaway22032 »

yakak wrote: post #47
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…

That's really arguing against your own strawman. How will living well bellow your means cause extreme population growth? Living above your means while depleting resources is not constraining future resource problems.

The basic argument that I am living above my means by eating meat relies on the idea that I should consume 1 / 8 billion of the Earth's resources.

I reject that. I've spent my life outcompeting others in order to ensure that this is not the case - if you want to eat bugs, crack on. Meat could cost 10x what it does and I'd still smash it on the daily.

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

#64

Post by spacemanmatt »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #53
spacemanmatt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> false dichotomies That's why they create throwaways. They know they're wrong.

The idea that you think there is a "right" and "wrong" here is bizarre. You have a different value system to me, that's all. Collectivism results in a world I and many people I know don't want to live in, so we reject it. And yeah, we have to resist it quite harshly, because there are a lot of you guys who'll try and impose it on us via force. Good luck.

I don't have to be right for you to be wrong. That is your core logical error, here.

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

#65

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #63
yakak wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really arguing against your own strawman. How will living well bellow your means cause extreme population growth? Living above your means while depleting resources is not constraining future resource problems.

The basic argument that I am living above my means by eating meat relies on the idea that I should consume 1 / 8 billion of the Earth's resources. I reject that. I've spent my life outcompeting others in order to ensure that this is not the case - if you want to eat bugs, crack on. Meat could cost 10x what it does and I'd still smash it on the daily.

[deleted]

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

#66

Post by no_time »

myshpa wrote: post #54
no_time wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

As a young boy I too was taught how to kill rabbits and poultry by my grandparents. As a city boy I was chasing my screaming village nephews with a rabbit eye all over the grounds. I've spent few summers around cowhouse and young calfs, "helping" my aunt take care of them. I've killed and cleaned few fish for christmas. The animals I watched killed were living good life and there was no suffering at the end. So I alw…

>The animals I watched killed were living good life and there was no suffering at the end.

>So I always had an image in my mind of animals living in green fields, and then miraculously and humanly killed in an instant.

Now this is something I haven't heard before from a vegan. Does this mean that in principle, you'd have no problems eating an animal you are 100% sure died in a dignified, painless way because you killed it that way?

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

#67

Post by myshpa »

no_time wrote: post #66
myshpa wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a young boy I too was taught how to kill rabbits and poultry by my grandparents. As a city boy I was chasing my screaming village nephews with a rabbit eye all over the grounds. I've spent few summers around cowhouse and young calfs, "helping" my aunt take care of them. I've killed and cleaned few fish for christmas. The animals I watched killed were living good life and there was no suffering at the end. So I alw…

>The animals I watched killed were living good life and there was no suffering at the end. >So I always had an image in my mind of animals living in green fields, and then miraculously and humanly killed in an instant. Now this is something I haven't heard before from a vegan. Does this mean that in principle, you'd have no problems eating an animal you are 100% sure died in a dignified, painless way because you kill…

No, I've been taught that to survive/be healthy we need to eat meat. So I didn't question it (for several decades).

The idea of animals happily living on the farm somewhere and their painless/swift death is a part of the lie. The reality ... is of course much, much worse.

I've become vegan because of other people (not enough space for everybody to eat same amount of meat as westerners do), because of the loss of biodiversity (such shame to erase so many "cumulative billions of years of dna code generation") and because of meat production's adverse effects on the environment.

Health and moral aspects came later, for me.

Now that I know (and verified it myself) that we the people in fact don't need animal products to be healthy, that quite the opposite is true, that we don't need to cause unnecessary suffering for our own livehood, I'm not interested in eating animal products anymore.

It may change if our civilization collapses. For now ... with the plants available ... no, thank you.

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

#68

Post by myshpa »

nikolay wrote: post #61
myshpa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily thrive on vegan diet. You can't just leave meat and eat the rest and call it vegan diet. Most anti-vegans never had a real vegan meal. We all have an idea of vegan meals - but your mum's vegetable dish, which left you hungry after eating it, is not a real representative of vegan diet. You'll just need to learn to cook differently - or better, what to substitute with what. No need to invent new recipes.…

Vegan fake meat is frankenfood. Yes, you can try to mimick a carnivore diet, but you eventually will have to eat frankenfoods. Lots of plant foods are loaded with natural antinutrients and toxins.

Not everybody eating plant-based is trying to mimick a carnivore diet.

But nobody likes to eat baked vegetables and porridge all the time. Just because we have meats, milks and cheeses, it does not mean we're after the taste. We're after variety in taste and structure. We also have favorite foods from our time not being vegans, and recreating them in plant-based version is satisfying. And no, it does not taste 100% like the "real" thing. If it would, some (I) would not eat it.

And plant-based meat does not have to be frankenfood [1] [2]. Take some plant-based protein (wheat, peas, what have you), marinate it in some vegetable broth and soya sauce, maybe color it with beet root, and you've got perfectly healthy meat replacement [3].

[1] https://www.peta.org/living/food/meat-contamination/ - Meat Contamination [2] https://sogoodsoyou.com/6-lessons-eating-plant-based-dr-greg... - The best way to minimize your exposure to industrial toxins may be to eat as low as possible on the food chain, a plant-based diet”. Pollutants that find their way into the soil will eventually work their way up the food chain. When you eat meat from an animal, you must consider the thousands of pounds of (potentially contaminated) plants it consumed before being slaughtered. Avoid these pollutants entirely by eating lower on the food chain [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY2YN6krVtk - Washed Flour Seitan Recipe from Start to Finish

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

#69

Post by nikolay »

myshpa wrote: post #68
nikolay wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegan fake meat is frankenfood. Yes, you can try to mimick a carnivore diet, but you eventually will have to eat frankenfoods. Lots of plant foods are loaded with natural antinutrients and toxins.

Not everybody eating plant-based is trying to mimick a carnivore diet. But nobody likes to eat baked vegetables and porridge all the time. Just because we have meats, milks and cheeses, it does not mean we're after the taste. We're after variety in taste and structure. We also have favorite foods from our time not being vegans, and recreating them in plant-based version is satisfying. And no, it does not taste 100% l…

I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and about a third of the year, we're vegan. Even after giving enough time for enzymatic adaptation and soaking beans the proper way and changing the water at least 3 times (imagine the footprint!), and following all the proper steps, I still cannot digest well beans and lentils, and other plant foods without significant discomfort. If I don't feel well after eating plant foods, I cannot believe it's good for my body! The constant bloating and pain do not occur when I am on the omnivore diet and when those foods are not the main course but are eaten in small quantities. So, maybe for some people, given the specifics of their ancestry and adaptation, the vegan diet is good, but it's not for me. I cannot imagine having no quality dairy in my life (I don't eat surrogates and stress on quantity, not quality), and I don't have issues with gluten like others do, but I don't overeat carbs. I don't feel nutritionally satisfied when eating large amounts of pasta or rice, and I cannot imagine how these carb-heavy foods are better for the environment than traditionally raised cattle. The moral aspect of eating meat is complex: what's better - to raise farm animals humanely and allow them to be alive or not allow them to ever exist? Even in nature, those animals would have been eaten by carnivores - I don't see myself eating a cat, but I do eat prey animals.

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

#70

Post by myshpa »

nikolay wrote: post #69
myshpa wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everybody eating plant-based is trying to mimick a carnivore diet. But nobody likes to eat baked vegetables and porridge all the time. Just because we have meats, milks and cheeses, it does not mean we're after the taste. We're after variety in taste and structure. We also have favorite foods from our time not being vegans, and recreating them in plant-based version is satisfying. And no, it does not taste 100% l…

I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and about a third of the year, we're vegan. Even after giving enough time for enzymatic adaptation and soaking beans the proper way and changing the water at least 3 times (imagine the footprint!), and following all the proper steps, I still cannot digest well beans and lentils, and other plant foods without significant discomfort. If I don't feel well after eating plant foods, I c…

Our diets are the culprit of your digestive problems, imho. It's not something you cannot change. Humans are slowly losing their ability to digest fiber, and the bloating & pain is there, because your digestive track is not accustomed to high-fiber foods.

Solution is not to avoid fiber, but to add it to your diet progressively. There is a plethora of health problems connected to the lack of fiber in one's diet. I've found that's best to start adding it after few days of water fast, when the "bad bacteria" is weakened.

I don't feel satistied after rice too (and don't eat almost no pasta), I think that fiber & some proteins are necessary for satiety when on plant-based diet.

> soaking beans the proper way and changing the water at least 3 times (imagine the footprint!)

"The amount of water used for meat production in just 35 hours could provide drinking water for everyone on earth for a year." [0]

> I cannot imagine how these carb-heavy foods are better for the environment

Plant based food are. There is enough evidence and scientific consensus.

> what's better - to raise farm animals humanely and allow them to be alive or not allow them to ever exist

We've stolen living space from wild animals and decreesed their diversity - 100 years ago humans and cattle were 2% of weight of the total biomass of land mammals. Now it's about 96%. [0] In other words, we've destroyed the natural habitat and countless animal species, with tens of thousands more threatened by extincion, and replaced them with farm animals, just for our food preferences. [1]

> Even in nature, those animals would have been eaten by carnivores - I don't see myself eating a cat, but I do eat prey animals.

Without us there would not be so many farm animals (obviously). The lion has no other option than to eat other animals. We've got plenty options ourselves, just the will and/or knowledge is missing.

[0] https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/consumption/foods-... - Meat production water usage [1] https://xkcd.com/1338/ - Land mammals [2] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets [3] https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production

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