This would likely best be achieved through slowly dropping tax incentives, and transferring them over to alternatives so that people have something equally economical to today's meat.
People do not traditionally eat that much meat because meat used to be expensive and its supply limited.
This is still the case in poor countries.
In developed countries, people started to eat more and more meat as they got richer because we naturally like meat and because of clever marketing.
We now eat too much meat, and also consume too much dairy (adults don't need to drink any milk and many don't digest it well, by the way). If people just stopped eating meat at every meal or every day, consumption would drastically drop without too much of a change in daily life.
One solution would be measures to increase prices but that is a political minefield.
Never understood the obsession with drinking milk on its own (though I never liked the taste of it myself either). There's plenty of calcium to be found in other sources: kale, leafy greens, almonds, fortrified grains, beans/pulses etc.
And your argument can always be reshuffled. Swap milk with any one of the items you listed and one by one you can disqualify all of them from consumption. Variety is a good thing, meaning something should be eliminated because it's no good, not because there are alternatives.
There's no requirement or recommendation to cover your daily needs with the least varied diet.
In the early days soy milk was about the only alternative. Now there are so many dairy-free milk alternatives to try. The proliferation of grocery shelves is a testament to their growing popularity.
For people that are trying to consume more calories and protein, I don't know of an alternative that combines comparable calorie & protein density, low cost, ease of consumption, and zero preparation time.
More generally, I think that one of the big challenges with plant based diets is a lack of easily available calorie and protein dense foods. (I'm not saying its impossible to get enough calories and protein as a vegan, even as a bodybuilder. Just that it is not nearly as easy.)
Dairy in particular can be source of inflammation. One of the benefits of the vegan diets for athletes cited is a fast recovery time after workouts.
That's not exactly true, he's just some buff guy that is strong. He doesn't even look big compared to bodybuilders, regular protein eaters at the gym are his same size.
His 'record' deadlift was 360kg, worlds strongest men all pulled 420kg+ this year. Arnold was in that class back in the 70's.
EDIT: After some research people are saying his european world records were all accomplished before he became vegan in 2011.
> That's not exactly true, he's just some buff guy that is strong. He doesn't even look big compared to bodybuilders, regular protein eaters at the gym are his same size.
So, because he's a strong buff guy, while "not looking big compared to bodybuilders" (category in which he has not been competing since 1999), and as "regular protein eaters at the gym are his same size", it's not "exactly true" that he's one of the top weight lifters ?
> His 'record' deadlift was 360kg
GP never said "top deadlifter". None of his records are about deadlift. Not sure why you mentioned it.
> EDIT: After some research people are saying his european world records were all accomplished before he became vegan in 2011.
2012 Doesn't count?
(Cow) milk just seems to have an unpleasant aftertaste to me. I get on well with oat milk, though.
It's something that's been consumed for millennia. There are societies based on pastoralism where milk is a huge part of the diet. I'd hardly classify it as being an obsession.
Obsession is probably the wrong word, but I'd still be curious as to the history behind it (and how long it continued into adulthood). Especially given its association with and place in a juvenile diet.
Trying to go to an extreme is counter-productive because people won't follow.
Convincing people not to eat meat at every meal or every day has a much higher chance of delivering significant results quickly.
What's another solution?
People will keep slaves if it's legal.
Stopping the use of tax payer dollars to help people eat meat seems not that much of a minefield compared too?
I will never go vegan or vegetarian but I mostly limit meat to only dinner and in smaller portions. My grocery bill is much smaller, it's healthier, and better for the environment overall.
Pushing a full-blown switch to veganism as the only solution is not pragmatic.
In cities meat was more available as workers typically earned more. Option to eat meat each day was considered a luxury.
Where's the logical argument?
The premise seems valid: just because you can "survive" off of a low-to-no protein diet doesn't mean it should be espoused.
So if you want to maximize for protein consumption without putting on fat mass, you tend to look for meat, dairy, and things derived from them (whey protein isolate).
The controversy is about whether humans need gargantuan amounts of protein.
Your post is assuming protein is very important, and thus it’s important to maximize protein per calorie.
The post you’re responding to is discussing the fact that any time vegetarian or vegan diets come up, people launch into criticisms that are based on the assumption that humans needs lots more protein than occurs in vegetables.
That said, Americans are predominantly overweight and obese. A diet high in protein but low enough in total overall energetic content is an excellent recipe, when paired with weightlifting and a few days of cardiovascular activity, for improving musculature and eliminating fat.
A scientific example demonstrating this point, entitled "Higher compared with lower dietary protein during an energy deficit combined with intense exercise promotes greater lean mass gain and fat mass loss: a randomized trial": https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/103/3/738/4564609
Tone is something you read into things, as much as is written into them. If someone is responding because of a perceived tone, it would be wise of them to consider if they're being as aggressive as they accuse the other side of being.
Also, I dont mind being downvoted, I just wish someone would provide a logical argument in response.
However, slaughtering a pig or two once a year in the autumn also doesn't imply eating pork once a year, for a single family a single pig provides a quite large amount of various cured/smoked/dried meat products that are consumed over the winter, so you still have some meat products (not in large quantities though) on most days.
Its odd to call back to 1930s eastern europe for an example of how to live. There are many arguments to make against meat etc but 1930s belarus is not one that logically follows.
Maybe a solution would be to tax food based on how long it was shipped but to exempt fruits and vegetables from the tax.
Also, most of the US population is around the coasts. Shipping a bit of food inland to the people there isn't that big of an impact.
Overconsumption is generally less than 10% of their caloric needs, so they can't just drop a large source of nutrition.
Reducing waste would dramatically help the environment.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/18/american...
Shipping things that spoil quickly or need refrigeration, obviously, will be less efficient. But on average, plant-based food sources will be significantly more efficient, even if shipped further, than meat ones.
Global warming due to greenhouse gas is a reason to go to the "other" extreme?
It's only a political minefield because of corporate influence (dictation?) in politics.
How much is "too much"?
We don't need to drink tea or coffee either; do you propose getting rid of those too?
For those of us who have no problems digesting it, what exactly is the problem with eating yogurt or drinking milk? Sure, consuming too much of those probably isn't good, but you can say that about literally any food.
For people who don't digest it well, then of course I'd suggest not drinking it. The same goes for any other food: if you're allergic to peanuts, don't eat them. If you're allergic to shellfish, don't eat them. If you're allergic to bananas, don't eat them. If you're lactose-intolerant, don't drink milk unless you really like the taste and want to add lactase enzyme.
I do agree that Americans in particular eat way too much red meat, but I think some people give dairy a hard time when I don't think it's that much of a problem compared to many other things. Most adults don't drink a lot of milk anyway; usually "dairy" for adults means eggs, cheese, yogurt, etc. I don't see the health problems with dairy the way I see with red meat either. For improving public health, we should instead be reducing how much red meat people eat, plus also reducing or eliminating stuff like HFCS, refined sugars, refined flour, alcohol, etc.
>One solution would be measures to increase prices but that is a political minefield.
What they should do is just eliminate the tax breaks that unhealthy industries enjoy.
Sounds like a win win to me.
Buy only locally farmed organic meat. Don't go to fast food places or restaurants that don't specifically declare that their meat is organic and local.
Interesting. Do you have a source? I don't see a good reason for this off the top of my head.
No. Don't buy meat. Buy beans. Buy tofu. Hell, buy Beyond Burgers. We don't need meat. It's bad for the planet, bad for your health and it goes without saying, bad for the animals.
This seems like the best strategy: If you force people to become vegan by law without giving good alternatives, you just make them angry at people who want to stop climate change. If you nicely ask them, some will switch but most won't. So I believe the best way forward is to invest into meat alternative startups and help them make their product as widely used and as cheap as possible.
The question is rhetorical and is meant to show that 1) this proposal is not a “global solution”, as punishing a single country would hardly make any difference; and 2) you’re personifying a country’s exports, associating them to an administration you disagree ideologically with, to make it sound evil, and that is not rational nor productive.
I hear where are you coming from, though IMHO it's a problem with lack of knowledge/tradition/culture of producing vegetarian/vegan meals.
If you would say that you're vegetarian to my grandparents, they'd imagine that you eat vegetable salad all the time, with occasional baked potatoes for hot meal, they cannot imagine a meatless meal.
From my experience people tend to think that there must be a 1 to 1 replacement for meat foods: steaks, sausages, cutlets, burgers, meatballs, etc.
IMHO usually great vegetarian dishes (tasty, easy to make, not expensive, etc.) are mostly different set from meat dishes. It requires a cultural shift, which is insanely hard to change in general western population, where it's common and expected to have ham/bacon sandwich for breakfast, meatballs and spaghetti for lunch, steak for dinner, and beef burger or ribs on a bbq on a weekend.
You need a completely different set of dishes to change that meat eating tradition and IMO tofu sausages, cheap soy steaks and other meat analogues will not convert meat-eaters to vegetarians (fingers crossed for Impossible meat projects to change that).
Anecdotal example from the same thread on Indian vegetarian cuisine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20652404
P.S. I very much agree with you on this:
> The theoretical advantage that artificial meat has is the lower amount of resources needed. Over time, because of this it can get much cheaper than real meat, at least if you don't factor in skewing of the market due to government subsidies.
Subsidies are really skewing prices of animal vs plant based products.
Where I am from pork is around 5-6€/kg, chicken 3.5-5€/kg, beef 10-30€/kg, milk 0.5-1€/l.
Whereas soy-almond milk 1.5-3€/l, soy meat analogues 5-15€/kg, mushrooms 3-15€/kg, etc.
There is no substantial price difference (mostly), which is spectacular to me. How it's possible to sell 1 kilo of chicken breast for 3.5€ is spectacular to me, when freaking beans cost around 3-4€/kg. How do they grow that chicken, when it's clear as a day that it requires probably an order of magnitude more resources compared to growing beans. I wouldn't even go how government is bending backwards for milk producers with tax incentives to keep prices "competitive", and I have no idea how pork is not 20-50€/kg, when every other year there's some disease, which requires to kill and destroy all pigs in farms in 500km radius.
This is exactly what I was reffering to. The current alternatives are not motivating enough for people to switch, but with good meat alternatives like impossible/beyond meat we should see trend changes.
It feels to me that the approach "just change your culture" has been tried out and has mostly failed because most people in the west have not switched. It requires a lot of political/moral conviction for people to switch. Good meat replacements will I think change this and make it easier for people to eat less meat while keeping their culture.
I agree with GP that most people don't care what a meatless meal could look like, culturally they just want meat each meal and will only consider an "impossible" substitute.
If we must change our impact on the environment, maybe it doesn't matter that people have a cultural desire to wait on impossible standards for substitutes and to continue harming the environment in the process. I don't know how important it is to change now, but if it critical then I'd be fine with something like rationing meat or some creative ideas towards forcing drastic change.
Also, maybe your grandparents can't imagine meat only once a week, but my grandparents certainly can, not because of current habits but from the great depression. They grew up on farms and had animals but they had more plants and usually ate the plants, only rarely they would slaughter animals for meat. Most meals were plants and that was the most normal thing in the world.
I assume meat at every meal is an extremely recent phenomenon and I think culturally we can easily move on from it, if we take the necessary measures.
That acquired taste can be reset if for 2-4 weeks one avoids any product with added salt or sugar. Then tofu and many other products including plain meat without any additives will taste much better.
You won't convince people by lying to them about the flavor of things you want them to buy. They'll label you a liar and move on.
Tofu dogs never taste like meat, ever. If you wait 2-4 weeks you're just creating a new habit, not approximating meat in any way.
Your comment, while potentially a healthy choice, certainly isn't an accurate description of meat taste. And meat eaters everywhere can recognize this because we have all tried the other products and it doesn't taste close, even after 2-4 weeks.
Illuminating the moral quandary of meat consumption helps. It worked for me. Nobody had to ask me nicely, they just needed to help me to think about it and be self-reflective.
Even if you believe there to be ethical meat consumption (a notion I find dubious in modern life), people can reduce consumption and have a big impact. Modern commercial meat and dairy production is a horrible process and most people are so insulated from it that you get used to thinking meat is just this product that comes from a factory.
My theory is that you have to be ready / have to already, deep down, made that decision and then just needed a little push. Since this is a major topic in many societies with vegetarians and vegans proselytizing, I doubt that the majority of meat eaters aren't aware - they just don't come to the same conclusions or like it too much to quit.
But if broccoli could scream would you stop eating it? Circle of life. Just the way it is.
However I do agree, there are a lot of commercial farming practices that need to be ended. Even if it means higher prices.
Wolves that eat deer don't also breed them to the point where they contribute to climate change. Hunter gatherer folk don't breed them to a point where they are a significant factor in climate change.
As carnivores wolves don't really have a choice to not eat meat. You do, though. With a couple of different choices at the supermarket or simply ordering different choices on the menu, you can help cut down our global emissions.
It's now illegal in USA.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/13/eati...
Though I don't think it should be illegal unless slaughtering other animals is illegal too. I think our disgust with the idea of slaughtering dogs highlights our arbitrary ethical inconsistencies when it comes to eating meat.
Hunter gatherers ended up doing that once they figured it out. Civilization didn't magical come about. Hunter gatherers decided to start animal husbandry as a way to keep a surplus food supply. Then they became "civilized".
I heard that choice arguement before. No. I've done the vegan diet for about 1.5 years. That's when depression, anxiety, bone and muscle problems popped up. My bloodwork was shit and I felt like doom and gloom. I snuck off from my girlfriend, who forced me into it, with a friend and he peer pressured me to drink a glass of milk and eat a steak. I did shit myself silly that night, but it felt like I was actually awake and the brain fog was gone. We broke up a few months later because I made a lovely red thai curry with murdered chicken instead of tofu.
By the way, look up how many ground nesting birds and rabbits die during grain and soybean harvesting. Those combines are just pure murder.
Don't you think the current age of high depression and high anxiety is oddly correlated to the recent rise of "meat bad, tofu good", is a bit interesting? So no, I don't have a choice. From personal experience. Difference is, I never made existential excuses for the depression, anxiety, fatigue and brain fog. I did it for tail...which really wasn't worth it.
Most soybeans grown are consumed by livestock [0]. A lot of wheat is also fed to livestock [1]. We'd need a lot less if we as humans ate it directly instead of eating the animals that eat it.
I don't know what your diet was like, but this is not my experience (7 years in), and it is the position of the American Dietetic Association that vegan diets, when planned well, are healthy [2].
Now, let's say that even with good planning, you are still unhealthy on a vegan diet. That does not mean you couldn't be healthy on a vegetarian diet, or a diet that has drastically reduced meat consumption. The less meat we eat, the better for the environment.
[0] https://www.drovers.com/article/usb-promotes-us-soybean-meal...
[1] https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m...
Again, this is in the scenario where we accept meat consumption is indisputably ethical. The way we get our meat is arguably a much bigger problem.
> But if broccoli could scream would you stop eating it?
Yes?
If you're going to say starve to death, ha! The one thing westerners underestimate is starving and what it does to you. See how long you can go without eating. I've done a 5 day fast, with intents for a 10 day. Yes, I failed on that.
Take a wild guess what you crave the most. And it ain't plant fiber. Its muscle fiber. We live in the land of plenty that allows choices. Part of the exact problem we are running into. It's easy to say meat bad when you get fruits, veg and grain imported to you. Stuff you didn't really work to get. Because, out of personal experience, farming is hard ass work. And I dare anyone to try zero emissions large scale farming. Grab a scythe and harvest grain. Have fun with that.
What I'm getting to, it's always been a fact of life. It takes less effort to raise pigs and live off their flesh than it is to take care of a few acres of grain, veg and fruit.
What I can't stand, people not in the agriculture business or lifestyle pretending to be the ultimate authority. Grow all your own food, then you can have an opinion. Until then, don't pretend like you know what you're talking about. It's easy for anyone to wave their hand and say "everyone should live in this method because I say so".
"But if I spend all my time farming, I wont have time to do xyz"
Yea, that's the reason why our farming systems are as they are.
This is a red herring, though. They don't.
> It takes less effort to raise pigs and live off their flesh than it is to take care of a few acres of grain, veg and fruit.
This is dubious, but my point is not that I farm, but that I find commercial farms more ethical than commercial meat production.
That would certainly change the conversation. But given that there is dubious support for plants "feeling" pain in a sentient way, I don't see much reason to entertain it.
That said, my diet is mostly fruit, nuts and seeds anyway.
Just because it is "natural" doesn't make it right. Nature is a cruel bitch, remember.
Why is that dubious ? Ethics is personal. For me, consuming meat is ethical. Unless I'm forced to not eat meat then I won't stop.
You may want to consider the broader implications of using this reasoning.
> While i understand it sucks for you but for many people factory including me, factory farming is awesome and animal suffering is not important at all.
A rapist could make a similar case about how awesome the vagina feels. That the woman doesn't like it is not all that important. If you think about it, it's just some body parts touching, women really blow it out of proportion. And hey, animals do it. Why should the government limit my freedoms?
For some reason, meat consumption (i.e. slaughtering, factory farming, etc.) is one of the only topics where it's more or less socially acceptable to say "well, I like it, and that's all I care about. Ethics are personal btw."
Government consist of people, because to this group of people, its in their best interest, its ethical for them to not allow rape.
Does the government care about this rapist freedom ? No, in their perspective its wrong.
So whichever side that can force other to comply (persuasively or physically) get to decide the ethics.
In the case of rape, the government get to decide whether you can rape.
Millions of people are already voluntarily reducing their consumption and now virtually every restaurant in the UK has vegan options, making it easier for more people to switch.
I live in the outskirts of a relatively small, low-income industrial city and there are signs outside small shops and restaurants everywhere promoting their new vegan menus. A traditional pub near me has no fewer than 14(!) plant-based main courses.
I'd love to see tax incentives that reflect the damage that the meat and dairy industry are doing (ending the massive government subsidies would be a good start), however the changes I've seen in the UK give me hope that the grassroots level can sway public opinion without forcing people to change via legislation.
This can easily get clouded if you live in a place where you feel a new vegan place opens all the time. But this is very unevenly distributed. The UK is a place where vegan eating is strong, likewise Germany, Sweden and certainly a few other places. But even in very similar countries also in middle Europe - e.g. Denmark, France - vegetarianism is still very unusual.
A few back to back meat recalls in the US got me to try vegetarianism 8 years ago. The animal welfare element only developed after I started learning about the new diet I was on.
It also helps to promote stories of very healthy vegetarians (especially pro athletes). My favorites were Carl Lewis, Herschel Walker, and Venus Williams. There are many more out there.
The key is to find decent, not too complex recipes. Dropping a slab of meat on the grill is so easy and results in such a tasty primary component of a meal; but making an interesting vegetarian meal requires more effort (at first). Once you know some good recipes, you get to the point where the only time you miss meat is when you're at a festival and you smell barbeque :).
But even if you think it's not bad for you, it's bad for:
- the environment - bad for people having to work in slaughterhouses killing and gutting animals all day - bad for the animal
Also, good meat is expensive and cheap meat taste like shit so it's a good move for your wallet.
[0] growing amount of people saying "I want to fight climate change but can't do anything myself"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_St...
From the same wikipedia page, a bit above what you linked, there's also this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Meat_Atlas_2014_subsidies... showing how many billions are spent on animal product subsidies.
Unfortunately I had no luck finding the actual OECD reports, though (aside from the " Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2019" report, but that seems to just compare each country to the global average, rather than talking about different types of subsidies)
I'm all for removing subsidies to monoculture agriculture.
Yeah, I searched around a bit (even outside of the US) and I'm having difficulty finding any proper data to back up or refute it. That's a pity, would have been nice to know either way. The best I found was data on subsidies given to individual farmers in my country (I'm not in the US), but unless I scrape the site and aggregate and categorise the data, its not really useful (and doing that is too much work for me).
> I'm all for removing subsidies to monoculture agriculture.
Absolutely. I don't even mind animal products receiving subsidies, I'm not vegetarian and certainly not vegan, but I do hope that non-animal products get a large chunk of the subsidy pie, personally.
The 'cows farting' story is not a major methane source.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-led-study-solves-a-met...
I.e. there was major uncertainty that scientists were measuring more methane than they expected, and these scientists tried to figure out where it comes from.
The only thing your argument says is that for methane emissions from meat production apparently scientists had a pretty good idea about the numbers.
Wonder why people have such negative views of environmentalists.
In part I, too have the right to control what people eat through voting.
There are plenty of valid reasons to restrict what people are allowed to eat.
Cows are not killing the planet. They are one of the few things you can raise that doesn't require pesticides or chemical fertilizers. They and other ruminants are important parts of grassland ecosystems.
The megafauna that existed on planet Earth just 200, 500, and 12,000 years ago were far more numerous than the number of livestock cows today.
This reductionist mindset about the environment that doesn't even attempt to quantify trade offs or factor for the important role livestock plays in crop production is beyond tiresome.
We also happen to need meat for healthy brain function. We need lots of Omega-3 fatty acids the kind that animal foods only provide and plants are not as healthy as they're made out to be. They have tons of oxalates, phytic acids, and inflammatory agents that harm human health in large doses. Not to mention the absurd amount of carbs we already consume from plant based foods.
I'm not the one who wrote the UN report on climate change that recommends reducing meat consumption. Maybe take it up with the UN instead.
> Not to mention the absurd amount of carbs we already consume from plant based foods.
Speak for yourself. I eat a plant-heavy low-carb diet (I do eat fish, eggs and meat too).
But... you're not replying to what I was saying and that is that there are perfectly valid reasons to restrict what people are allowed to eat. I didn't say anything about not eating cows or whatever, you took my comment out of context, which was simply "There are plenty of valid reasons to restrict what people are allowed to eat." The first paragraph was simply giving examples of reasons that various people might have to do so.
Appeal to authority.
> There are plenty of valid reasons to restrict what people are allowed to eat.
Name one. Sounds very tyrannical to me.
Uhhh.. the person implied that I was saying cows are killing the planet, I simply stated that I never said that, the UN did, so take it up with them instead of me. Why are you are you taking what I said out of context?
> Name one.
Are you just replying without reading the thread? My very first message named a few. I never said they were good reasons, but they are reasons nonetheless.
True in theory. Not in practice. Unfortunately most beef we eat doesn't come from grass fed animals. And if we were to convert the entire industry to grassing only, we wouldn't have enough land to produce the same quantity of meat. Which would imply exactly reduced meat consumption.
Properly-kept housecats stay inside and don't kill any birds. I suspect the vast majority of those bird deaths are caused by feral cats, not pets (though of course, most ferals probably are or descend from pets that were abandoned or escaped). Our society could be doing a better job with dealing with feral animals like this, because they are bad for ecosystems; they're basically invasive predators.
Bird-killing aside, the environmental impact of pets is actually pretty staggering. It's probably worse for dogs too, since they're much larger animals on average.
>The megafauna that existed on planet Earth just 200, 500, and 12,000 years ago were far more numerous than the number of livestock cows today.
Citation needed. Yes, there were millions of buffalo on the American plains 1000+ years ago, but a quick Google search shows there's over 94 million cows in America today. Also, from what I've read, there are more plains now than in the past, because forests were destroyed by humans to make grasslands.
Right is something that you or someone else has to fight for it. If you prefer to eat meat you have to fight for your right, likewise with the non meat eater.
You can't legally eat the meat of other humans in most (all? not sure) countries. You're not allowed to buy the meat of certain animals in certain countries, due to cultural norms (dogs) or due to protection of certain species.
It's an absolutely normal thing that laws regulate or forbid things that have negative effects on society.
Which makes me think. I wonder how much meat would people eat naturally, if they were note exposed to an image of a BigMac on every corner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_vigilante_violence_in_Indi...
The govt's behavior is not motivated by climate.