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Comment by raiflip | Hacker News Reader

What about in the case where animals can extract more nutrients from plant food than we can? Cows in particular have specially built stomachs that can extract nutrients from plants than we can. I don't think this would be enough to make eating meat more efficient, but it may be necessary to eat some meat to get nutrients you wouldn't otherwise get from plants.

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> but it may be necessary to eat some meat to get nutrients you wouldn't otherwise get from plants.

It is not necessary to eat meat.

Necessary is not the right word. More efficient might be better. It's entirely possible to get protein from plants and omega-3 from vitamins, but from a human health point of view, is it more efficient?

Letting grazing animals eat grass that's just growing on its own is incredibly energy-efficient, but that's not what we do. We manually grow food for them then ship it to the animals.

Who's "we", Kemosabe?

Humans, basically — the majority of agriculture.

Well, no.

Nobody grew food to feed to farm animals one hundred years ago, and I'd bet the vast majority of farm animals today are still not fed agricultural products.

Your complaint is against American factory farming, which is a whole separate issue of economic incentives and wealth distribution.

That’s an interesting point, given modern animal farming practices. 97% of cows are going to come from a feedlot, where they’ll be fed grain (corn). The special part of their stomach that allows them to extract more nutrients from certain plant foods compared to humans, the rumen, is “made” for grass. When switching over to grain, acid builds up in the rumen which can lead to acidosis, so we then have to pump the cows full of antacids to keep them placated while we continue to fatten them up for slaughter.

That's interesting. I certainly do not claim to be an expert in raising cattle. Perhaps there are smarter ways we can raise cattle. Is that why the grass-fed label is so important?

It kind of depends on your priorities, whether taste, animal-welfare, cost, etc. I think grass-fed tastes better, but I do find it has less marbling. Check out The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore's_Dilemma

It’s true that some animals can digest plants that we can’t digest. But there is plenty of evidence that humans can live perfectly well on a plant based diet if they eat the right plants . It’s not necessary to eat meat for getting nutrients.

> But there is plenty of evidence that humans can live perfectly well on a plant based diet if they eat the right plants .

Vitamin B-12

From https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-vitamin-b12/art...

“However, if you follow a vegetarian or vegan diet, you might be prone to deficiency because plant foods don't contain vitamin B-12. ”

If you are deficient there you can take supplements.

Animals can't extract that much more. And we certainly can't get 100% of that back out during consumption, ignoring all the inefficiencies of the process.

1 pound of food in might produce 0.01 pound of cow (probably much less).

Cows primarily eat grass and other ruminants that humans can't digest until the cows reach the finishing stage. At that point, expensive beef is finished on grass and cheap beef is finished on corn (to fatten it).

So 1 pound of corn might only product 0.01 pound of cow, but that's because 99% of the cow was built up by its non-food diet.

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