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How sustainable are fake meats?

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Re: How sustainable are fake meats?

#81

Post by ascar »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #6
bantunes wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why this is surprising. Option A: grow plants, eat plants. Option B: grow plants, breed animals, feed plants to animals, give animal antibiotics to survive breeding pens, give animal hormones to grow faster, slaughter animal, eat animal.

The grow plants, feed to animals step takes up nearly 80% of the world’s agriculture: https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

It's 77% (why round up to artificially boost your narrative?) and this source is intentionally misleading as "This includes grazing land for animals" (I couldn't find an exact source but probably around 30mil km2 of the 40mil km2, e.g. derived from [1]) . Most of this land isn't suitable for producing crops, especially without fertilizers (which bring their own host of problems) and thus the livestock provides additional food that we otherwise wouldn't have. Also worth mentioning that grazing livestock is a natural source of fertilizer.

I'm not arguing against us eating too much meat. We do! Using land usable for human crop production to feed livestock is incredibly inefficient. But your linked graph is just pushing a narrative that's just not true to that extent.

[1] https://www.fao.org/3/x5304e/x5304e03.htm

Re: How sustainable are fake meats?

#82

Post by hombre_fatal »

reaperducer wrote: post #59
hombre_fatal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a meat eater, this has been my philosophy. If you’re gonna go vegetarian, just go for it. I never understood this meme. What exactly is the philosophy? A philosophy of how others should partake in a lifestyle that you don’t? It's odd enough to tell others what to prefer, but it's not clear what the impact of "As a meat eater" is supposed to have. "As a straight man, my philosophy is if you're gonna be gay, just…

A philosophy of how others should partake in a lifestyle that you don’t? Sounds like how the vegan people at work would comment on other people's lunches.

Well, I understand an unsolicited ethical prescription more than an unsolicited one of taste.

In other words, if you're telling people which foods to prefer, and you don't even have an ethical angle on it, what exactly are you doing?

Re: How sustainable are fake meats?

#83

Post by phillipcarter »

arjun_krishna1 wrote: post #62
phillipcarter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative we do is: * Order vegetarian when eating out. Non-western cuisines do incredible food that doesn't have any meat in it. * Only buy meat + eggs from a local farm that effectively does things "small batch". Their farm is open for visitors and you can see pigs and chickens that actually look happy . The pigs even run over to you when they smell you and you can see their cute little tails wigglin'. * Try…

Buying local and small batch generates more carbon dioxide and is less sustainable. https://worksinprogress.substack.com/p/notes-on-progress-an-...

I'm curious about this but the article doesn't really go into any depth summarizing things.

For example:

> Grass-fed beef seems like the environmentally-friendly option. Hormone-free chickens do too. Yet intensive livestock farming in feedlots often has a lower environmental cost, despite a higher price when it comes to animal welfare.

I'm not an expert in this space, but I do know that terms like "organic", "grass fed", "free range", and others can have wildly different meanings depending on the farm and how they're regulated. For example, "free range" doesn't necessarily mean that chickens are able to walk around a farm; it just means that there is "access" to an outdoor space. The links I clicked on in that article didn't seem to really account for any of this and set up a comparison. The one about feed seems to compare the environmental impact of mass feeding with "organic" feed compared to industrial feed. But that's not applicable to my situation.

Re: How sustainable are fake meats?

#84

Post by photochemsyn »

Just a reminder: the underlying issue is really 'how sustainable is the current global human population under business-as-usual practices'?

It's clear a plant-based diet will reduce the land area, water, and fertilizer needed for food production - but if human population grows in response, then you simply end up back where you started - but with the plant production going to feed humans instead of livestock.

There's also the problem of food distribution - many countries rely heavily on imports to meet basic food needs, and the producing countries are typically running high-impact agriculture - double-cropping high-efficiency strains soy, corn, wheat, potato, etc. crops using vast amounts of fertilizers and water (essentially the 'Green Revolution' approach). Abandoning high-intensity agriculture (going back to pre-industrial methods like crop rotation) would cut food production in half at least, leading to global famines. Hence, pushing towards regional independence on basic food production is pretty important, given the uncertain future of climate impacts on agricultural production.

A final thing to keep in mind: methane from animals and wetlands is quite different from methane from fossil fuel production, as the latter represents a net transfer of carbon from stable geological deposits to the atmosphere, while the former represents the cycling of atmospheric carbon (CO2) into plant matter, and while those carbon atoms may be burped out by cattle as methane (CH4), they end up oxidized back to CO2 within 10-20 years in the atmosphere. Regardless, cutting the global cattle population by 80-90% makes a lot of sense (this is about what pre-industrial popuations were like). Meat would then be quite expensive, a luxury item, which also makes sense.

Re: How sustainable are fake meats?

#85

Post by bombcar »

nightski wrote: post #55
TheRealPomax wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, it started out as: a) grow plants that humans can eat on soil that will grow them, eat plants. b) grow plants that humans can't eat, but livestock can, on shit soil that won't support plants that human can eaa, eat the animal. and in countries that look at the US and go "wow that's fucking barbaric" at their treatment of livestock is generally still the case.

I work with clients in a multi-billion dollar industry (they themselves are in the hundreds of millions in revenue) who sell by-products of food production for cattle feed. In this situation, the food is being grown for humans anyways and only the waste product is used. It doesn't really fit your black & white view of the situation.

Animals also work as food storage - you can convert food that will rot into animal that will roughly maintain itself until slaughter.

Re: How sustainable are fake meats?

#86

Post by Zigurd »

Fake meat is already a clearly superior replacement for more dubious meat dishes like "breakfast sausage. Though there is an irony for the companies making the best fake meat: It's an off-ramp from meat. I find I eat less meat, real or fake. Maybe that's because fake meat does a good job satisfying a craving. I'm much more selective: Bison instead of beef burgers, salmon instead of chicken. You don't have to eliminate meat to get lots of environmental and health upside if you change the way people think of meat as part of their diet.

Cheap meat was a quality-of-life goal for many governments, pushed by the meat industry. That went way out of balance and negatively affects health and the environment. If tasty and nutritious fake meat gets down to the price of good quality burger meat, it will be a tipping point with many benefits.

Re: How sustainable are fake meats?

#87

Post by [deleted] »

feet wrote: post #17
Swizec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the substitutes seem unnecessarily unhealthy As a meat eater, this has been my philosophy. If you’re gonna go vegetarian, just go for it. Vegeterian food is delicious and there’s so much choice! Entire cultures of amazing natively vegetarian foods with no need for weird meat substitutes. Personally, legumes don’t have the right macros. Neither do fake meats. Cottage cheese and greek yogurt make better meat substitu…

Usually you need to combine multiple different beans and legumes with rice to get the right macros

[deleted]

Re: How sustainable are fake meats?

#88

Post by ben_w »

intrasight wrote: post #30

"fake meat" is processed food. That, IMHO, is the main difference over just eating fresh vegetables. It's more expensive because of that, and introduces externalities and risks. I see "fake meat" as a temporary crutch for people transitioning to vegetarianism.

> "fake meat" is processed food.

It's not like animals have no risks or externalities. What's the critical difference between industrial processing vegetable matter into a fried patty, and a cow organically processing vegetable matter into flesh which is then turned into a fried patty? Cows getting BSE is what made my mother decide I would be "vegetarian at school" back in the late 80s. Overuse of antibiotics in the production of meat gets a significant share of the blame for the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

> I see "fake meat" as a temporary crutch for people transitioning to vegetarianism.

Most people demonstrably don't care enough about even the combination of the ethical, environmental, and the health the reasons for a better diet. Meat substitutes are aimed at most people.

Re: How sustainable are fake meats?

#89

Post by intrasight »

ben_w wrote: post #88
intrasight wrote: post #30

"fake meat" is processed food. That, IMHO, is the main difference over just eating fresh vegetables. It's more expensive because of that, and introduces externalities and risks. I see "fake meat" as a temporary crutch for people transitioning to vegetarianism.

> "fake meat" is processed food. It's not like animals have no risks or externalities. What's the critical difference between industrial processing vegetable matter into a fried patty, and a cow organically processing vegetable matter into flesh which is then turned into a fried patty? Cows getting BSE is what made my mother decide I would be "vegetarian at school" back in the late 80s. Overuse of antibiotics in the…

My comment was only about "fake meat"

Re: How sustainable are fake meats?

#90

Post by ben_w »

intrasight wrote: post #89
ben_w wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "fake meat" is processed food. It's not like animals have no risks or externalities. What's the critical difference between industrial processing vegetable matter into a fried patty, and a cow organically processing vegetable matter into flesh which is then turned into a fried patty? Cows getting BSE is what made my mother decide I would be "vegetarian at school" back in the late 80s. Overuse of antibiotics in the…

My comment was only about "fake meat"

Which I'm saying is no worse than the status quo by your own standard, and which is an improvement by the standards of those promoting them.
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