Comment by haisch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by haisch | Hacker News Reader

There are various moral dilemmas that are brought up when discussing diet involving animal foods:

1) Environmental impact 2) Animal suffering 3) Nutrition

Often times people focus on number 1 in spite of number 2 or 3. What if moving away from animal foods in our diets causes an increase in heart disease, cancer and overall mortality?

https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press-releases...

With 3% of emissions coming from cattle, the average person could do more by driving their car less, avoiding transatlantic flights and having less children. Just having one less child is equivalent to 60 people on the vegan diet.

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hire...

I am skeptical of any imitation meat until they can guarantee to provide the identical nutritional profile of real meat. In the meantime the best we can do is buy locally sourced, grass fed foods that are net zero emissions.

> What if moving away from animal foods in our diets causes an increase in heart disease, cancer and overall mortality?

This seems like a very strange thing to say, given that the scientific consensus seems to suggest we'll see the opposite effect:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26853923 - This comprehensive meta-analysis reports a significant protective effect of a vegetarian diet versus the incidence and/or mortality from ischemic heart disease (-25%) and incidence from total cancer (-8%). Vegan diet conferred a significant reduced risk (-15%) of incidence from total cancer.

Wrt driving less, people go for the easier option, and it's far easier to eat less meat than to drive less.

In the meantime the best we can do is buy locally sourced, grass fed foods that are net zero emissions.

That is effectively calling for a drastic reduction in meat consumption. If people ate only grass fed animals there would be a lot fewer animals to eat overall. Add "locally sourced" and the consumption limit is lower yet for most people.

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