Or, you know, eat less meat.
I’m not expecting anyone to go vegan or even vegetarian (I’m neither). But if we all eat a small portion of meat once or twice a week instead of large portions every day, demand for soy will go way down.
I’m not expecting anyone to go vegan or even vegetarian (I’m neither). But if we all eat a small portion of meat once or twice a week instead of large portions every day, demand for soy will go way down.
I'm not vegetarian, but after seeing the results of deforestation first hand I've reduced my meat intake substantially. Side benefits included improved cooking abilities and lost weight without trying.
I highly recommend chickpeas and fava beans in particular. Much better for stomach than kidney beans, and perfect for many kinds of rice and pasta dishes. Fava beans are also very easy to grow outside in most climates if you're into gardening and have the space.
This is really not true with the possible exception of iron, which you can mitigate by eating a lot of citrus (this helps with absorption; plants have lots of iron, but heme iron has much greater bio-availability).
I am not vegan since I eat dairy and eggs still, however this is purely because I enjoy them and not for any particular dietary reason. I allow myself these luxuries while understanding that's what they are: luxuries, not requirements. We are all human, after all, and we can't all be monks who optimize every behavior. I think it's important to be honest about that and truthful about our motivations when we decide to eat animal products, because it is really not by necessity (at least, not in the western world, where plant-based alternatives are affordable and readily purchased).
If everybody ate mostly soy and legumes it would solve a lot of problems, even if they still have a steak or cheese every now and then. But they don't need to have that steak or cheese to be healthy :)
yeah that's because you are indirectly consuming those vitamins that have been given to the animals...
Look at honey - obviously good for you, obviously sustainable, not allowed in the vegan diet.
https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan/honey-ind...
Humans can live without honey, bees need to survive.
I hope my comment does not start a carnivore vs vegan war (as just like you, I'm neither).
You're comparing two cases of "mass production" without any quantifier.
Beef has an over 15 times larger carbon footprint compared to tofu.
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
So sure, if everyone switches we would substitute one mass production for another, but we could feed 15 times as many people (all else equal).
I haven't ran the numbers, but parent hinted at a cow needing to eat, say, 10 Kg of soy per Kg of meat produced, while you could have just eaten the soy directly.
Meat production uses a lot of land to produce food for your food, that's why it's so inneficient. Instead you could just use a tiny fraction of that land, and grow enough food for everyone.
This discussion is about how producing meat requires tons and tons of land in the form of soy bean fields that feed the animals, which indirectly and directly contributes to deforestation. Now you come along and say, just eat meat produced using this other method which takes a lot MORE land for the same amount of meat production?
Thanks for telling me what the fields around me are!
It's just a very very simple math based on the amount of crops it takes to grow animals for meat -- and soy is much more efficient than grass in that sense, so your suggestion would make things decidedly worse for environment.
If the grass pasture is already there in cycle, it's not being used for anything else. Might as well put cattle on it.
Europe is varied, not sure where you live but the forests in Northern/North-Central Europe that I'm familiar with absolutely do support wildlife. I think it shouldn't be controversial that returning agricultural land to nature, whatever "nature" means in different areas, is good for environment.
Anyway, this is wildly beside the point, which is that pasture feeding cattle can't satisfy the current demand for meat, not even close. Converting soy fields to grazing fields would be an ecological disaster without a serious decrease in worldwide meat consumption, as the yields would be far lower.
But why would you do that? Don't cut down forests for soy, and don't cut it down for pasture either. Use existing green grass fields to feed cattle. This can be done in between crop rotations.
> without a serious decrease in worldwide meat consumption
Maybe that's the point?
Eat less (if you want to eat at all) and eat grass-fed. Do cattle even choose to eat soy when they have green grass available?
Eating less meat was the point from the start as the main/only way to decrease soy footprint, so if you're not suggesting to replace soy feed with grass then this whole discussion was in the end more or less pointless.
Monocrops are terrible for the planet & wildlife, and are only even viable due to heavy use of pesticides & NPK fertliser.
Organic farming requires large amounts of animal manure to work, guess where it comes from?
Please go read about regenerative agriculture - that's the way forward.
This is true, technically speaking. Practically, you couldn't produce even a fraction of the amount of meat that the market wants using this way. If all meat was grass fed meat, it would be a luxury good. I don't think that would be too bad to be honest, it would lead to much less meat consumption overall.
Basically, "just eat grass fed meat" = "everyone must eat a lot less meat, unless they're rich I guess"
That overlap is not 100%. Some good pasture is bad farmland, but the claim that good pasture is good farmland is a good rule of thumb
I don’t need or crave sugar, chocolate, alcohol, coffee, tea... but cheese, yogurt, milk, and their derivations are irresistible.
There is no vegan food alternative to say a rare steak or raw tuna which is extremely flavorful, nutritious and light.
reducitarian: reducing proportion of non vegetarian meals without complete elimination
Some strategies for achieving this include meatless Mondays, weekday vegetarian meals or sticking to vegetarian meals at home.
I agree imitation meat usually tastes like crap but I’ve had great vegan fried chicken in Japan where I didn’t even know it was not meat until after the meal. That and just getting used to all the non-meat stuff you can eat (ramen, MSG, bean curd, legumes, kimchi). In American cuisine i think of vegan food as imitation meat and stramed veggies...
I think what most people associate with meat is actually the flavors that go into the meat-centric dish most cuisine is based on.
There's a good reason steak is such a common food for vegetarians to give in and eat.
Don't forget to add some MSG to get a savory umami flavour.
Like someone else said downthread, guilt-tripping people into veganism doesn't work. All it achieves is making you look like an ass.
Also, if you use Google Chrome, you're literally a murderer.
My point was that if you think in terms of meat, or horses, you'll only be able to come up with solutions to your problems in those terms.
If you go one level up and realize that your problem has nothing to do with horses or animals, and deals with transportation then you'll realize you can solve that problem and never have to deal with horses again.
People enjoying horse riding is in fact a completely unrelated problem (entertainment, enjoyment, or whatever you want to call it), as I was making the point by mentioning cannibalism (you're doing it because you enjoy it, not because human flesh is necessary for your sustenance).
If you open your mind to the fact that it may be that what you enjoy about your food isn't the meat but the flavors and effort the chef puts into the dish that just happens to contain meat, you'll see that you're probably associating that deliciousness with the meat when in fact it's just because the deliciousness was imbued onto the meat dish. We started using meat because of its convenience, not because it has some magical properties that make food palatable where other things cannot substitute.
I personally am not vegan because animal welfare is not high enough in my priorities to overcome the hassles of adjusting around the current bias towards meat in most cuisine. But if most cuisine started orienting around non-meat dishes (and a lot of cultures already do this, especially from countries that historically couldn't afford meat), I know I would not complain.
It's uniquely American (maybe European too?) to eat a giant slab of relatively cheap lean steak with just salt and pepper... most other cuisines mix meat with veggies, or in the case of Japan go for slightly higher quality (non-factory farmed) but lower volume meat consumption. Veggies in American cuisine are an afterthought (something you have to eat to "balance" your meal) whereas if you take Chinese dishes (while many feature meat), they can often center around veggies and make them the primary focus.
I find most vegan food distateful to the point of depression-inducing, and of all diets I've tried nothing has felt better for my body than going low-carb and upping my fat intake; which is nigh-impossible in an already limited vegan diet.
I'm happy that it works for some people, and I'm not against economically reasonable measures to reduce the externalities of meat production. But veganism is absolutely nowhere near being a universally viable diet for human beings.
There is no way personal choice affects industry enough to make a difference. Regulation effects it much much more. If you don't want people eating meat, reduce all the subsidies and make meat price sky rocket, problem reduced.
Say it with me, there is no such thing as the free market, there is no such thing as buying your way into fixing environmental problems, some exception though may be found in religion where certain things are banned so it's so socially unacceptable to eat those things that it may well be codified into law. When it comes to fixing these things, it's politics all the way down. Policy, regulation, and enforcement. Also private ownership of the land with terms of ownership saying you can't do anything to this land, through zoning laws. You want to be an environmental billionaire, buy all this land and do nothing with it because you can't and because it's privately owned the government can't decide to let people use it to create jobs, they could however rezone it.
There is a lab behind it investigating how to make a grass-based product that can be used instead of milk even for making cheese. That means getting microorganisms to create the right proteins from ground up grass in a fermentor.
Tips from yeast experts are welcome:
Not necessarily - I don't know about where you're from, but here our cows and sheep eat grass and live in fields that wouldn't be suitable for crops
I tried finding the English page corresponding to https://www.wwf.se/mat-och-jordbruk/kottguiden/ekologiskt-no... but failed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'd actually make the argument that most dairy cattle have a much better life than any but the most "organic" chicken. Speaking for the situation here in Germany, where I studied veterinary medicine.
Mammal vs Fish is a very different question.
But if you consider the way demand increases because of the scale of the world population and economic growth (i.e. people are getting richer and want to finally be able to afford and enjoy meat) the bottom line is that, when it comes to environmental issues, we also need to reduce the global human population sooner than later because this really is the root cause.