But various ecological crisis are becoming more and more obvious to everyone.
Anyone who cares about the environment including ecosystem breakdown and climate change will go meatless one way or another.
Anyone who cares about the environment including ecosystem breakdown and climate change will go meatless one way or another.
I "care about the environment" and I will not "go meatless". I have stopped eating beef entirely and have switched to chicken and fish, with the occasional pork steak. 1 pound of beef has the carbon footprint of ~8 pounds of chicken. Especially in the States, the best thing to do is switch your meats.
Every form from animal protein is going to be less efficient than plant protein and result in more emissions [1]. There are some amazing Kurzgesagt videos exposing how and why that is true [2].
So since we know that eating animals is not required to be healthy at any stage of life [3] (assuming basic access to required nutrients and what not which is very easy in developed countries) how did you arrive to conclusion that eating chicken is better than eating lentils, beans, etc?
I don’t think what you’re saying is based in fact. I’d love if you tried to prove me wrong though.
1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore
I haven't made such a claim (here "better" would be solely in terms of emissions). What was implied was that the delta of the emissions from switching from beef to chicken/fish is (far) larger than the delta from switching from them to veganism (it's important to note that per grams of protein, dairy is comparable in emmissions to non-beef meats - so really veganism (or veganism + eggs) is required).
Also, this claim "we know that eating animals is not required to be healthy at any stage of life" is most likely false at the margin.
Also you refute the general scientific consensus among all major nutrition and dietetic institutions worldwide that animal products are not required to be healthy at any stage of life by saying “that’s probably not true”. You’ve got to admit how silly that is, right? Unless the “at the margin” part of what you said means something I don’t understand?
I would advise you to read up on the history of the advice ADA has been giving throughout the years (spoiler alert: they were wrong about fats and complex carbohydrates) before putting your money in that basket that this is the "general scientific consensus". But this is a topic I don't want (or need) to argue about.
If you believe that diabetics cannot be vegan, then that’s a separate and equally untrue argument.
Where did I say that? I didn’t. I was referring specifically to the ADA incorrect suggestion for decades that high carbohydrate foods are ok and encouraged for type 2 diabetics. I did not make a meat vs non-meat absolutist statement. It was more a high carb vs low carb absolutist statement. If you are a vegan T2 diabetic who only eats avocados, cabbage, broccoli, and olives…good for you.
My comments were actually specific the commenter who expressed concern about relying on “general consensus” as an argument for reliability of dietary advice and used the ADA example. I backed them up and it’s completely appropriate to this little thread in the discussion.
Switching meats was my first step
I care about climate change and I will continue eating meat. My carbon footprint is probably still lower than yours.
It's obvious what you are trying to do: Make other people seem worse than you are such that you still have your excuse for meat consumption.
And for what? As if it would impact your life significantly to remove meat from the ingredients of meals
I don't know where you live, but here you don't need to starve without meat even if you don't cook for yourself at all.
Too bad we all have to pay for peoples irrational life style choices whose quality of life seems to be determined by meat consumption.
Here, we have a butcher that went vegan years ago - and now creates vegan alternatives to offer in his shop
Secondly the whole of consumerist culture is "irrational lifestyle choices". This stupid line in the sand drawn arbitrarily around meat consumption is just self serving bullshit. It is very convenient how others are the ones who have to do the sacrifice and others are always at fault, isn't it?
As I said already I bet my carbon footprint is still lower than yours.
I am in general fed up of close minded people like you. You cannot understand why other people live their life another way, so you decide they are stupid to do so, and you know better how they should instead live their life? Can you be any more arrogant than that?
If you were intellectually honest and really cared about environmental effects there could be many ways forward. For example as another poster has mentioned, not all meat has the same carbon footprint. And there are ways of farming/ranching that might even be carbon positive. Say goats/sheep in the highlands are more adding to the ecosystem than taking away. No veggies are going to be grown up there anyway. And in general I do agree with lowering meat consumption intake in cases were it is excessive.
But instead you went with the dogmatic bullshit approach typical of people who think they are doing something by being annoying pricks in the faces of other people.
The whole enviromentalist movement will always remain sidelined because you seek to force people to adopt your lifestyle, rather than trying to find common ground and make progress.
People post lots of BS when they have time
> That is none of your business.
It is since meat consumption largely affects the life of other people, some by death.
Sheesh. Why is it that every damned belief system that demands some level of moral absolutism always ends the same way—advocating some form of totalitarianism to manage their intolerance.
Ignorance is a bliss
Still, the authors of the report make clear, humans are not powerless. Repairing damaged ecosystems and reducing greenhouse gas emissions dramatically and immediately would spare billions of people from illness, poverty, displacement and death.
If everyone suddenly became vegan overnight, solved every climate issue, eliminated (fill in whatever other blank you think is important enough to foist your morality on the rest of us)…there would still be billions of people suffering from illness, poverty, displacement, and death. Those four things are not because of meat eating, fossil fuels, or (fill in the blank), its because it is human nature and dumb luck for some to have success and others to not have success. There is no such thing as equity when 7B people are competing for limited resources.
We are not masters of our domain, we are semi-successful species that over the lifespan of this earth are going to last about as long as the stink from a gnat fart in a hurricane.
And during that tiny amount of time that I occupy that gnat fart, I’m going to eat meat and enjoy every bite.
But it doesn't happen because of people like you
> And for what? As if it would impact your life significantly to remove meat from the ingredients of meals
I am 90% carnivore for a specifically health reason, it allows me to manage diabetes without extraneous insulin. So yes, eliminating meat would dramatically impact my life. Most non-meat foodstuffs whether processed or whole cannot provide to me the lack of impact to my blood glucose that meat does.
Also, I slept with the AC on last night.