In cold climate there are no vegetarians for a reason. Less meat consumption during cold weather means less work and more eating sessions. All that ends up in less quality of life and desire to move to warmer places.
> to avoid animal suffering.
Any researches about animal suffering? How does it measure? Maybe there are some ways to decrease animal suffering without decreasing meat consumption?
The need for extra energy in cold climate is satisfied by eating more fat, not by extra lean meat.
Traditionally that was animal fat, but while there are some bad vegetable fat sources there are also vegetable fat sources that are better than the animal fat sources, e.g. olive oil or high oleic sunflower oil or avocado or various kinds of nuts that are high in oleic acid, for example cashews, almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, peanuts.
Adding a generous amount of olive oil to food can provide enough energy for the coldest climate at a lower cost than using animal fat, while also being healthier.
I'm not sure how this tracks. We're not chopping wood or hunting and foraging every day anymore. Why is high caloric density important if you work in an office (or even from home) in Anchorage, AK?
Because I do not work in an office :-) And sometimes I use to chop woods for heating myself.
Please tell me it’s a sarcastic response.
Sometimes i find hard to understand people. Even if studies are off, plant based diets have no negative side effects, can be cheaper, have positive environmental impact, reduce animal cruelty, people still want to find a “yeah but about...” honestly it is mind boggling.
That's an extremely wild claim you'd better be ready to extensively support.
Frankly at this point it seems that those who defend dietary meat are more in need of compelling evidence. Meanwhile the study people rally behind does something like replace beef with eggs, notice no worsening of cholesterol, to conclude that beef had no impact on blood lipids, for example.
>How come it’s always meat diets that look the worst in nutritional studies?
Do yourself a favor and look up the actual comparisons. These are not health conscious meat diets vs health conscious vegan diets.
Still, “no side effects” applies.
> Please tell me it’s a sarcastic response.
I asked to give some measures of animal suffering, if you are talking about reducing animal cruelty so why so-called cruelty is bad?
> Sometimes i find hard to understand people.
I experience the same feelings when I use to propose people to get rid of their cars as I did. Positive environmental impact, better for your health, no negative side effects if your bicycle has enough big bicycle trunk, of course bicycle is way cheaper which allows you to work less and spend more time to cycling... What's wrong with all those people?
Seriously, do we need a long and boring thread about existentialism to understand something, (and i’m gonna have throw a figurative number I clarify it before you ask me to cite the source) 90% of the civilized world agrees is bad? I guess not, so I’m gonna explain it like you’re 5: “Don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you.” As simple as that.
As for the car, what would you say anybody can do tomorrow no matter what they do for a living or how much they earn, give up their car or change to a plant-based lifestyle?
90% of people with higher education do not understand logarithms, consider astrology and/or religion as a working thing, etc. Science remembers some cases when 99.999% of civilized world used to be wrong about something.
> Don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you.
Cattle is not "others", they are way closer to things then to people. They do not understand conception of self and death, they will not grieve seeing death of their friends or relatives, they will never write a "Romeo and Juliet". Don't you consider a potato as that kind "others"? But if you throw a potato not in a boiling water but in a wet ground it will be possible to see that potato is a living thing.
I agree when somebody is talking about climate impact or health of a diet. But when, after hours of manual labor in an unheated workshop, I go on my lunch break, I read about the suffering of animals with such loud laughter that I can't believe that anyone is talking about it seriously.
> As for the car, what would you say anybody can do tomorrow no matter what they do for a living or how much they earn, give up their car or change to a plant-based lifestyle?
The Lindy effect?
Then torturing, killing, and eating babies and mentally disabled people is OK in your book?
If you would take 5 minutes to read about animal behavior you'll understand how far off are your concepts.
>But when, after hours of manual labor in an unheated workshop, I go on my lunch break, I read about the suffering of animals with such loud laughter that I can't believe that anyone is talking about it seriously.
Is somebody else forcing you into that position?
No because it might write another "Romeo and Juliett" or prove Riemann hypothesis you know what I mean. One mentally disabled man even won a Noble for invention of the Game Theory part of Mathematics.
> Is somebody else forcing you into that position?
In my mother language there is an idiom "hunger is not an aunt".
> If you would take 5 minutes to read about animal behavior you'll understand how far off are your concepts.
Give me some proves, please.
Last but not least, I am not going to persuade you for obvious reasons.
Eating a plant based diet while avoiding the negative effects requires either much more diet planning than most people are used to do or spending more money on expensive dietary supplements than on the actual food.
I have seen people becoming vegan in a careless way, which resulted in health problems.
On the other hand, eating mostly vegetable food combined with a moderate amount of animal food, that is much easier to do without problems.
What are those “expensive dietary supplements”?
Nevertheless, I make 2 exceptions from 100% vegan food. I typically eat daily around 50 grams of chicken liver and one spoon of cod liver oil, which provide all the organic substances that are not available or available in too small quantities in vegetables, e.g. vitamin B12, vitamin D, EPA, DHA, choline, taurine.
There are vegan supplements for all those substances, but they would indeed cost more per day than all the food that I eat normally. Even if I could afford that, I would consider that as an irrational choice.
For example, non-animal sources of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids cost about 8 times more than fish oil (per fatty acid content). The cod liver oil costs me about $0.60 per day, so a vegan supplement would be about $4.80 per day. Where I live, in Europe, all the food that I eat in a day costs me normally no more than $5 per day, so already only one of the vegan supplements would cost as much as the current complete daily meals.
Moreover, previously I was making an extra exception and I was taking most of my protein intake from turkey breast or chicken breast.
With the proteins provided by food that was almost pure animal protein, there was a considerable freedom in choosing all the other food sources.
However, removing meat from the diet makes it extremely difficult to eat enough proteins without exceeding the daily energy intake for a sedentary life, unless you are willing to waste money by buying plant protein extracts that are much more expensive than meat.
While I have found a combination that provides enough proteins without providing too much calories, it does not have any degree of freedom, so removing meat from the diet has forced the introduction of a fixed part of the diet that cannot be easily changed from day to day, for more variety.
The first time when I have seen vegan omega 3 supplements, I have also been fooled into thinking that they are not much more expensive than fish oil, and I have bought some.
After reading the fine print, I have discovered that their content in essential fatty acids was significantly lower than that of products based on fish oil and also significantly lower than for an adequate daily intake.
This is a marketing trick to make their high price more palatable.
That is why in my previous post I have mentioned that the vegan supplements are 8 times more expensive per content of essential fatty acids, because their price per capsule is made to appear low.
The $4.80 per day is computed based on the recommended daily intakes for essential fatty acids, and not on the micro doses recommended by the manufacturers of omega-3 vegan supplements, in order to not scare their customers with the real high prices.
However, you may be right, because I have checked the current prices for vegan omega-3 supplements and the prices have fallen more than 3 times since the Q1 of 2021, when I have last checked them. So the price here would be only around $1.50 now, instead of $4.80 in Q1 2021.
It is indeed possible that where you live they are as cheap as you say.
Regarding liver, e.g. chicken liver, as containing concentrated toxins, that is a myth.
The liver is not a storage place for toxins. The liver is an organ that takes toxins from the blood that passes through it and then destroys them, typically by oxidation.
Immediately after a meal that happens to contain very high quantities of undesirable substances, there will be a time interval when the liver will indeed contain higher concentrations of those. For example after a heavy drinking, for some hours the liver will contain more alcohol, until it is oxidized.
However, after a long enough time since the last meal, the liver will contain less quantities of toxins than most other parts of the body, because they are destroyed soon after taking them from the blood, which other organs cannot do.
The domestic animals that are killed for meat are typically slaughtered after some fasting time, so a higher level of toxins in the liver than in other parts is unlikely.
I eat meat. It's either fish I catch and kill myself, or 4H cattle. I'm pretty sure it involves less animal suffering than someone eating factory farmed chickens, no? If you care about animal suffering, shouldn't you encourage people to take steps in the right direction?
Why do you think killing an animal always means suffering? Aren't there no ways to kill an animal without causing them any suffering?
How many bees have to die for your beloved almond milk ?
Living creature aren’t only cow beef sheep and chicken…