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Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

> People have meat for almost every meal

I'm gonna call BS on this unless you provide a citation.

Many people (in the west) eat a breakfast (cereal, pancakes, waffles, bagel, toast) or lunch (PB&J sandwich, salad) that contains no meat every day or every workday. Then you have to account for all the meals where there is no meat (pizza, mac and cheese). You'd need to have a substantial fraction of the population eating meat (almost) literally every meal in order to make up for the people who habitually don't eat meat at particular meals.

Edit: I'm talking about meat for the purpose of environmental impact and sustainability here. I'm not talking about meat from the perspective of strict veganism or the milk in your coffee or the eggs in your baked goods, those have negligible impact compared to raising animals to slaughter for food.

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For the record, veganism also excludes dairy products, and we still have a pretty significant impact from things like dairy producing cows (not to mention they are treated just as poorly in factory conditions). And especially in restaurants, meat is very often consumed as a part of the things you mentioned. At least half (sometimes more) of pizza options have meat, mac and cheese when eaten as an entree and not a side almost always has bacon, chicken, etc. People take turkey or ham sandwiches for lunch just as often as PB&J. Burgers, breakfast sandwiches, etc. And look at fast food, how many places do you know where you (or other non-vegans) would actually regularly get meatless options?

The only fast food place we ever eat at is Taco Bell because you can customize everything to have beans instead of beef. We can't really eat at Chick-Fil-A, Wendy's, etc anymore.

Yeah it's not every meal but even many of your examples are often eaten with meat. Pancakes often come with bacon, salad often with chicken, and pizza with pepperoni or sausage. "Almost every meal" might be hyperbole but the prevalence of meat in our food and the sheer volume we traditionally consume is staggering. The USDA estimates about 222 pounds of consumption per capita in 2018 but I couldn't get a good figure on how to translate that in to how much people actually eat (I think that is difficult to do accurately)

I find it amusing that you call out OP for not providing a citation but then list a bunch of examples of things many people eat also without citation!

bacon with your waffles? hot dog for lunch? meat lovers pizza for dinner?

Many many many foods have eggs or dairy products in them that simply don’t need them. The bread for that pbj could very well have milk, eggs in it. Butter on toast is a dairy product. Eggs are a common ingredient in veggie burgers!

Dairy and small amounts of egg (usually added for it's chemical/material properties) in baked goods don't count as meat for discussions about food sustainability because they don't require raising animals for slaughter. A dairy cow can produce many gallons of milk and a chicken can lay many eggs over its lifetime. They're a drop in the bucket compared to the environmental impact of meat raised for direct consumption.

That's like complaining about oil products used to patch roads in a discussion about the environmental impact of oil.

Dairy production absolutely requires raising animals for slaughter. There is no beef industry without the dairy industry. Like mammals, cows produce milk as food source for their offspring - the dairy industry ensures that cows are always producing offspring. Those offspring don't get milk - it's sold to us. Those male offspring become veal and are slaughtered early. Those female offspring become more dairy cows. Those dairy cows that can no longer produce milk are slaughtered for meat and myriad other uses.

That's a huge reason why veganism is growing far faster than vegetarianism. People are realizing the systemic connection between the industries and understanding that all animal products must be eschewed.

Most people don't eat a breakfast with multiple things most days, just a quick meal before work (or they shove a bagel in their face while driving). Most people eat food that requires basically no prep work for lunch most days. Eating out (with the exception of coffee and donuts in certain industries) is not a regular occurrence for most people because it's not justifiable at their income level.

I'm not denying that one can have meat at every meal if they so desire. I'm saying that as a matter of convenience many do not.

The McDonalds drive through doesn't require any prep work and is super cheap. I see tons of people load up on Egg McMuffins with sausage at 6-7am on their way to work.

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