Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth

by lnguyen • 8 years ago

35 69 8 years ago

theguardian.com

z_open• 8 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm vegan

I really don't know how to help attitudes move towards a plant based life-style. I don't bother bringing it up because the second the topic is introduced, people feel attacked and that I'm just doing it to feel superior. Amusingly enough, it's usually omnivores that bring up that topic but still are obviously uneasy about the whole thing.

istorical• 8 years ago

I think the key to vegan food growth is making vegan food so delicious and cheap that people start deciding to go get dinner at By Chloe instead of Five Guys (https://www.eater.com/2018/4/19/17243780/by-chloe-vegan-chai...).

I wonder how much vegan restaurants can undercut omni restaurants due to the lower costs of vegetables compared to meats.

Source: anecdata from an omnivore that recently decided to try vegan food and found that there are actually some pretty delicious deals to be found.

If I could get a really great vegan meal for $6-8 rather than the $9-13 I normally pay in NYC I would probably start replacing a lot of my eating out with it.

blacksmith_tb2• 8 years ago

I would think the key would be removing the subsidies to the livestock industry. If a burger at Five Guys cost $20, there'd be a lot more vegans...

pm906• 8 years ago

It should very much be possible. Anecdotally, India has huge number of people who don't eat meat and the vegetarian food is pretty delicious. But perhaps its just because I grew up eating that food.

The problem is probably that innovation in non-meat based food hasn't happened very much in the US. But I do see that changing with Amy's kitchen and all the vegan/veggie restaurants that are springing up.

My personal feeling is that lab grown meat and meat substitutes are probably the best way to get around this rather than moralizing about it, which never works.

Disclaimer: I'm definitely a meat lover, but do try to eat less meat whenever I can.

archagon• 8 years ago

I recently tried the Beyond Burger at Veggie Grill and was downright shocked by how good it tasted. More of that and people might be a lot happier to go vegan!

_bfhp2• 8 years ago

Thinking about how to affect cultural change on an person-to-person basis is good but there are much better ways. Journalists like Glenn Greenwald and activists willing to risk arrest to take undercover videos (a profoundly American pair of sorts of people) should continue exposing cruelty and torture of animals inside slaughterhouses...

ta5544667722• 8 years ago

Recently in Australia we had a bit of an eye-opener [1] (animal cruelty in it) as to the conditions the sheep etc are treated in for our 1B+ industry we're apparently the leaders in [2]. The first link is 60 Minutes so it'll be all drama and deep bells ringing, but the images and treatment are shocking.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXZkfdLU8O8 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArgrLXE1ZG8

trevyn4• 8 years ago

Root-cause it: Why do you believe a plant-based lifestyle is desirable? Is it possible the assumptions behind this belief are incorrect?

passiveincomelg13• 8 years ago

Are the numbers in the article assumptions?

hunter235• 8 years ago

Why don't you try me?

I am an omnivore who is engaged to a vegetarian. My meat consumption has dropped since we have started dating, but I don't feel a strong desire to turn vegetarian. I love meat, fish, eggs, and milk, and while I have tried all the vegan based alternatives, they are not good enough for me. I try to limit my intake in these areas, but I don't see why I should eliminate them completely. I suppose that when lab made meat or vegan meat like impossible burger become better tasting to me I would make the switch, but until then I don't see a strong drive to completely eliminate my consumption of meat.

I think there are nutritional benefits of meat, milk, and fish and I like the taste so my viewpoint is to moderate intake and be thoughtful in what I consume.

But I'm always open to change my viewpoint so happy to hear your philosophy.

yesenadam6• 8 years ago

Well, some people have a "philosophy" that humans aren't the only life-form in the universe whose lives mean something, have value.

Reading your post is for me a little like someone talking about slavery, how they like it, it has benefits, they don't feel a strong desire to stop, they've tried to cut down but don't see why they should stop completely, etc. It's kind of obscene. Or at best, like there's a huge elephant in the room. It's not all about you. I was brought up on a farm with cows we ate, later I ate hamburgers.. Then in my 20s it dawned on me that treating animals as they they're nothing but things for humans to eat only seemed ethically OK because it was the norm in my culture, (encouraged by a lot of now-super-gruesome-seeming TV ads on e.g. how delicious lambs are) and..because I'm human. A lot like how racism seemed OK if you're white, slavery if you're not a slave etc. It's a matter of widening your field of ethical concern from the arbitrary "Animals of my species, uh plus cats and dogs" line. Otherwise you will sound like, say, a white-supremacist racist talking as if only white people matter, all others have no value, mean nothing except as they can serve whites. (I have to use these analogies to try to get you to hear what meat-eater arguments sound like to me)

yesenadam6• 8 years ago

I know, right? Just the other day on here I read, mid-discussion of an unrelated subject, someone saying "like vegans" as a random example of an unreasonable, aggressive, troublesome, proselytizing group. I wanted to comment but couldn't think of anything....suitable to say. (vegan here) I don't know if they didn't think vegans would read it, or not care, or it didn't occur to them.

liftdd3• 8 years ago

I am extremely interested in veganism but currently I purchase free-range eggs and grass-fed beef from a neighbor. I have Celiac disease and I'm lactose intolerant so the only dairy I consume is butter.

I cook with butter/tallow/bacon fat but eat 6+lbs of grass-fed beef a week. I hunt deer/elk and fish salmon/bass, as well.

I use the whole animal (organs) and hunting/free-range/grass-fed is the most ethical way I can think of consuming animals while respecting the earth.

I absolutely hate modern agriculture and want to buy land where I don't touch a thing and allow ruminants to live as freely as they want, then hunt what I need.

What do you see wrong with my lifestyle?

I've looked into a plant-based diet but I still have a lot to learn though! I'm definitely open to it.

pier252• 8 years ago

Having fewer kids, or no kids at all, is actually the single biggest way to reduce impact on Earth.

Also, as can be seen on the graph of the article, the major problem is actually beef, and not meat in general.

Something the article doesn't mention, and maybe the paper doesn't take into account, is distribution. Fruits and vegetables can have a bigger footprint than certain meats because these can be transported off season from very long distances.

http://the-ecotarian.com/stories/2016/2/26/environmental-imp...

mnem2• 8 years ago

The paper did include transportation in the evaluation:

"Studies included provided ~1050 estimates of postfarm processes. To fill gaps in processing, packaging, or retail, we used additional meta-analyses of 153 studies providing 550 observations. Transport and losses were included from global data sets"

pier252• 8 years ago

Thanks for pointing that out.

mkempe4• 8 years ago

Even more radically than having "no kids at all", one could also commit suicide in order to immediately and more completely "reduce impact" -- as the end-goal seems to be.

Can you explain how that is not the logical conclusion? Along those lines, some radical environmentalists have been advocating mass slaughter of the human species.

86767858587• 8 years ago

By analogy, say your goal is to eliminate income equality. In order to maximize your chances of your actions favoring that outcome, is the logical conclusion that you should find a job paying in median wage, that you spend your income in median consumption, and that you invest the remaining in median savings?

As much as we're raised to believe that being an example of the ideal you want to see will somehow manifest the necessary changes to get everyone else there, it doesn't really work that way.

Since the whole point of society is a system of reinforcing incentives to stabilize the power structures of the status quo and not engender revolution, by choosing non-participation in the destabilization of the existing order by being the most mediocre rather than playing the part at the extremes of the spectrum as parasite or exploiter, you end up perpetuating the inequality you sought to fix by more thoroughly lubricating the cogs of checks and balances.

An environmentalist's duty is to harm the Earth to their fullest lifelong potential to more thoroughly and completely kill off the humans of future generations before the Earth actually suffers beyond its capacity to repair.

Now that you got this far in reading: Poe's Law :)

pm906• 8 years ago

Killing oneself is not nearly the same as deciding to not have children. The latter is a choice which will not harm you or your health.

parliament32• 8 years ago

Suicide is, absolutely, the single biggest way to reduce your impact on Earth, period.

That doesn't make it a good idea. Likewise, it's not a good idea to pretend you're not an omnivore.

mnem2• 8 years ago

One could argue that there's somewhat of a difference between a vegan diet and suicide.

_bfhp2• 8 years ago

What is the word "omnivore" defined as in the last sentence?

yesenadam6• 8 years ago

so...this is some kind of vague, bluffy justification for eating 'meat'? Uh, because otherwise you're "pretending"? Hmm there's an advertising slogan in there somewhere. Connect some dots for us, please.

passiveincomelg13• 8 years ago

You mean eating only plants is not in our nature and it might be harmful for us? That should be relatively easy to validate by observing a lot of long time vegans.

Eating soy beans is not in the nature of cows or fish but we smart cookies make them eat it in our animal factories anyway because it is convenient and cheap. To make that work, we have to give them lots of nasty stuff that we know is harmful to both them and us. But us pretending to not be herbivores on behalf of cows is fine somehow I guess.

teachrdan• 8 years ago

In addition to having fewer children (or none at all), I wonder how much of a difference it makes to have children later in life?

What's the math on starting to have kids at 30 years of age instead of 20, especially if that pattern is repeated by your progeny?

tagh3• 8 years ago

All else being equal including the number of children, I think this would increase the age gap between generations and therefore decrease the average number of people alive at any given time. But unless the number of children being born changes, it won't change the trend.

liftdd3• 8 years ago

I may be wrong but I think the longer females wait to have children the more health risks they accumulate for themselves and the child(ren).

trevyn4• 8 years ago

Hm, personally I’d prefer to have an impact on Earth.

Having no impact sounds terrible.

remir• 8 years ago

Are there any studies regarding the body's absorption of animal protein versus plant-based protein?

I feel like this subject is often very emotional for some people, but what about science?

blacksmith_tb2• 8 years ago

Studies to determine what about the absorption? The old line of thought about complete vs. incomplete protein has mostly fallen by the wayside, and there are certainly some fairly compelling general studies on the health overall[1] (disclaimer, I am not a vegan, but I have been vegetarian for 30+ years, and I bike, lift, and climb without any trouble).

1: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

passiveincomelg13• 8 years ago

The problem with healthy eating is that you get five opinions when you ask two experts.

However, you can't find a ton of videos on YouTube with plausible sounding explanations why a plant-based diet is healthiest. Just watch those and decide to believe them. Whatever you do, do not read "The Plant Paradox". That book will ruin eating for you if you even so much as consider to ponder the possibility that it might not be total BS.

passiveincomelg13• 8 years ago

Damn auto complete. That should be "you can find a ton of videos".

passiveincomelg13• 8 years ago

To me it would be ideal if plant based food was the default and animal products an expensive luxury. Not unaffordable, let's say a dish with meat costs about twice as much as a vegan dish in most restaurants.

But I would already be perfectly happy and content if all the wonderful places in the world I want to visit had vegan food at all. Of course I understand that people struggling with hunger and poverty have more important things to worry about.

I don't know what it takes to "save the planet". Everyone going vegan might not be enough. But that ship has probably sailed anyway. The planet will have plenty of time to recover and/or become something new after humans disappeared (themselves). What bugs me is seeing animals suffer, regardless of species (including humans ofc).

pm906• 8 years ago

India is mostly vegetarian, grows enough food to feed all its people and still has millions dying of starvation. In most countries that face starving denizens, it is often (although not exclusively) the result of flawed distribution rather than an inability to grow food. I really think we're not focusing on the right problem, but that is my opinion.

passiveincomelg13• 8 years ago

Is it really? So this article is wrong? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43581122

And when you say vegetarian, do you mean vegan? I don't know what real Indian food is, but the Indian food I have seen (and enjoyed tremendously) always had dairy/butter/ghee in it (maybe with the exception of dal(sp?)). Which is hilarious considering the whole holy cow thing.

liftdd3• 8 years ago

Isn't a large reason for India being vegan due to Hinduism/religious beliefs about cattle/animals being re-incarnated humans?

cwkoss3• 8 years ago

Killing yourself reduces your impact on the Earth by 100% - that doesn't mean it is a productive thing to do. Individual action isn't going to fix this. Each person's contribution is too small. Systemic change is the only way to address this.

Modern industrialized agriculture has a lot of issues. Other methods of agriculture can have net-negative emissions: grow all of your feedstock onsite and use waste products to produce more feedstock. If all the carbon you emit was previously captured onsite, you're only 'borrowing' carbon, not really producing it. Slightly net-negative carbon as soil is built as a byproduct. See Joel Salatin for further reading.

I think writing articles about how "You, individual, can do something to save the Earth" is ineffective moralizing not unlike Facebook posts asking to "Share this if you want to end human trafficking!" - the only tangible effect is self-promotion of the author and inflating the self-esteem of the readers who go along with it.

passiveincomelg13• 8 years ago

I read The Omnivores Dilemma and share your believe that this kind of farming seems fine. I don't know whether this would work for feeding the entire planet. Right now, farms like this are an exception anyway.

In my experience, only consuming animal products from these farms is a bigger hassle than finding vegan food.

cwkoss3• 8 years ago

Highly recommend Joel Salatin's works - he has a really interesting perspective.

Here's a talk of his on Cows and Climate Change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z75A_JMBx4

From my recollected (watched that ~6 mo ago), the amount of land needed to grow food for his herd is less than the amount of land that would be needed to purchase it elsewhere, because the rotation of the animals keeps his fields fertilized and trimmed to the optimum length for fast growth. Plus, by rotating in chickens, he's double dipping a bit.

There are some people doing some interesting research into using herd animals to prep beds for annual vegetables: they let the animal graze as the seeds are starting to germinate, animals eat everything green. The germinating seeds are then able to fill the void left behind faster than anything else, because the farmer timed it properly.

Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

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