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themk

Maybe, just maybe, we should ease off on the factory farming...

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It’s just such a shame all 8 billion earthlings are so addicted to food!

There are other foods that do not carry this risk.

It doesn't need to be produced through the incredible wasteful in-between animal.

People can either eat straight up plant-based food, or alternatively go for lab grown meat. There's no need to go through all the inefficiency and suffering of factory farms.

Are you vegan?

I am not, but I have a lot of respect for people who are. Personally, I'm too selfish and animal products taste too good.

Maybe you should stick to plant-based food and lab grown meat before telling other people to stop eating animals and go to plant-based food and lab grown meat.

Why?

I’ve seen videos about lab grown meat being in development. Is it actually available and available at scale?

I haven’t looked to see if studies have been done to look at the nutritional profile of lab grown vs normal meat. I’d be curious about that as well before I tried it.

Its not really economic to grow it at scale and how to scale it up is as of yet unsolved last I checked.

I find the idea of lab grown meat almost comical…

So we have these animals, which eat plants and generate fuel (poop) & food (meat). Our bodies are adapted to eating them, our bodies need the same nutrients, and we’re programmed to enjoy the food. The input to this process is mostly grass and grain, both generated via solar power.

Now instead… we take grain, highly process it and make someone few people enjoy, with less nutrients, and likely some unforeseen by products. They can then sell it at a higher price.

At the end of the day, we know what works. It doesn’t make sense to try and reinvent the wheel without benefit.

Lab-grown meat is meat, not grain. It's produced in bioreactors and the like. It doesn't really exist in any meaningful sense yet, though.

It also has to have some inputs, which come from things like grain.

The more interesting part, is imo there will be a lot of nutrition we miss

Much meat already uses grain as a substantial part of its input already...

I know, that's my point. We already have a highly efficient and nutritious way to obtain meat.

Well, it’s not highly efficient, at all, except maybe chicken. The feed ratio (how much food it takes to get one unit of meat) on animals ranges pretty widely. Cows are an order of magnitude more than chicken, with pigs in the middle.

A lot of time, energy, and land goes to just keeping the animal alive and metabolizing. And you’re left with the problem of a lot of the parts of the animal are of low value.

Lab grown meat could, in theory, be much more efficient. Just quickly grow the muscles people actually want to eat.

There are also a lot of potential ethical issues with the way meat is raised at scale.

However the comment implying it’s an option currently is ridiculous. It’s nowhere near ready for scale. Might as well cite that Star Trek meal thingy (replicator?).

I’d find your take on the matter almost comical if it weren’t so misinformed.

We waste like 1/3rd of the food and half of the planet is overweight/obese, I think we could slow down a bit tbh

> half of the planet is overweight/obese, I think we could slow down a bit tbh

I don't think half of the planet is overweight or obese due to meat consumption.

If anything, take away the meat (or make it more expensive) and it'd probably lead to even more obesity.

The meat is consumed deep friend and slathered with sugar (barbecue sauce is usually pretty much all sugar).

But also, dairy products can be thrown in this discussion too.

Middle Ages peasants ate meat rarely. They were not obese.

They also didn't eat a lot of fries, sugared beverages, ultra-processed food, etc... which is easily available nowadays and likely to be consumed when one doesn't feel satiated (e.g. due to meat consumption).

That's not to say that there aren't alternatives to meat that also satiate and are nutritious, but most people don't consider them to be equally delicious and therefore they are not as likely to be consumed if meat isn't available.

That means the obesity isn't due to meat or a lack of meat, per se. It's the diet outside of the meat.

> fries, sugared beverages...which is likely to be consumed when one doesn't feel satiated (e.g. due to meat consumption).

You know what goes really well with a juicy hamburger or a steak? Crisp fries, and a cool, refreshing, tall glass of Coke (maybe not the Coke so much with a steak), or a frosty milkshake.

> That means the obesity isn't due to meat or a lack of meat, per se. It's the diet outside of the meat.

So... if you take the meat out what does that leave you with?

Who orders just fries and a Coke?

People eat junk food because it tastes good. Period. Not because they didn't get enough meat or some BS like that. Meat-eaters eat fries. Vegetarians eat fries. Everyone eats fries. They're delicious.

If you take the meat out there's a whole world of nutritious and delicious foods out there. You just have to broaden your culinary horizons. I'm not even a vegetarian or vegan, have no plans to be one, and I still recognize this.

> If you take the meat out there's a whole world of nutritious and delicious foods out there.

But most people will not find, enjoy or choose food with both of those qualities, not to mention that they are a minority over what's commonly available -- and even if they are available, they'd probably become too expensive if consumption increased significantly.

Most of the time they'd have to choose between "delicious foods" or "nutritious foods", but not both, and you know they'd choose the former.

If you take out meat, you'll simply reduce the pool of available (good) choices. You'll have a strictly worse outcome than what you had before (except for the animals, admittedly).

> If you take out meat, you'll simply reduce the pool of available (good) choices

Only if we forced everyone to give up meat at gunpoint. Most people who choose to go meat-free, and stick with it, end up finding tasty and nutritious food that works for them.

> even when they are available, they are usually too expensive to become a common staple.

People automatically assume that giving up meat means salads and tofu all day, bought in 2oz packages from Whole Foods while wearing Lululemon yoga pants. And you gotta throw in the $10 artisan kombucha while you're at it.

Beans, lentils, and green peas are far cheaper and healthier than any meat or Impossible burger. You can get them at your local Indian or Mexican grocer for less than $1/lb. Or tofu and seitan from Costco or 99 Ranch Market. A little soybean paste or mushroom broth adds a blast of umami. That's what I mean by "broadening your culinary horizons".

And no beans can never become more expensive than meat, even if more people start eating them. It's simple thermodynamics. Look at the poorest countries on Earth - I guarantee you they eat more beans and lentils than meat. That's what a "common staple" is. If they can afford it, anyone can.

I'll happily concede the expensiveness point, and also say that if we are not entertaining the idea of forcing anyone to give up meat (which is what I thought we were discussing), then we are not in disagreement.

I'll only add that when promoting vegetarianism or veganism, I find most such sources to be akin to propaganda, i.e. they always talk about the benefits but rarely talk about the disadvantages. I suspect this might be because veganism is often tied to political preferences (and certain cultures).

As an example, here's something Wikipedia mentions that you will not usually see entirely discussed in articles promoting such diets:

> [Vegan diets tend to be lower in] omega-3 fatty acid, vitamin D, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12. As a result of the elimination of all animal products, a poorly planned vegan diet can lead to nutritional deficiencies that counteract its beneficial effects and cause serious health issues, some of which can only be prevented with fortified foods or dietary supplements

This might partly explain why it's about as common to find a vegan bodybuilder as a flying cow... it might not be impossible to find one, but it's about as unnatural. And there are probably good reasons for this, including availability and easy absorption/digestibility of all the essential amino acids, which is important for muscle growth and maintenance, which in turn is very important for health especially in middle and old age.

It could also explain why when I see a random vegan person, they tend to "look" unhealthy more often than a random non-vegan person, although I concede that I may be biased, of course -- I've also seen sources claiming vegan people live longer, although I suspect that if it's true, it may be because vegans tend to be more health-conscious and choose their diet and sources of nutrition more carefully, not necessarily because of the lack of meat itself.

But of course, as long as all such information is reported in an unbiased and accurate fashion, I see nothing wrong with it.

All good points. Cheers.

> Who orders just fries and a Coke?

Me as a kid. Best parts of the meal.

> You know what goes really well with a juicy hamburger or a steak? Crisp fries, and a cool, refreshing, tall glass of Coke (maybe not the Coke so much with a steak), or a frosty milkshake.

That's a disgusting fast-food derived dietary preference. Healthy meat-centric diet does not look anything like that.

That's precisely my point. There are healthy and unhealthy meat-centric diets. There are healthy and unhealthy meatless diets. The absence of meat isn't the cause of a bad diet, as GP was alleging. People have bad diets because they like the taste of unhealthy food and either don't care or don't know about the consequences.

(And I'll quibble about it being entirely fast-food derived. Steak-frites is classic French and Belgian food.)

The Coke or milkshake with food in all likelihood is lol.

They also starved to death frequently, and died of a lot of diseases that we now survive easily, so by your logic, I should eat more meat.

> They also starved to death frequently

But they weren't obese. The person I was responded to claimed obesity is because of less meat.

> and died of a lot of diseases that we now survive easily, so by your logic, I should eat more meat

I didn't know you got your measles vaccine from a plate of pork chops. I got mine via a hypodermic needle, from a nurse who studied anatomy, biology, and germ theory for several years, and washed her hands.

All I'm saying is that if we're all eating so much to the point of killing ourselves surely we can eat a bit less of meat if it reduces pollution/water use/viral infections.

It's not like eating meat multiple time a day or even every day was a pre requisite for human life. I don't remember last time I ate meat and I'm fitter than 90% of people I meet in my day to day life

Could: sure. Will: no.

But even if we did, it would still be factory farming (though of course with fewer outbreaks and antibiotic resistance) with other things that people would find problematic for plenty of equally valid reasons.

Also if anything, obesity would skyrocket. Meat isn’t the big cause of that, carbs are, and if you cut out meat you get more carbs. Most people gain weight when they go vegetarian.

This is a ridiculous claim. Vegans and vegetarians on average have lower BMI. Most diet intervention studies demonstrate a drop in BMI on vegetarian or vegan diets.

Sure, avoid the highly refined carbs, like white flour and sugar, but substituting dairy and meat for nuts and legumes is going to only be an improvement for your health and the health of the planet.

That’s not contradictory with what I said. I said that when people switch they gain weight.

Vegans and vegetarians are more health conscious than non-vegans and vegetarians so you can’t compare them like that. It’s like when they said that Diet Coke makes you fat because the average Diet Coke drinker is fatter than the average Coke drinker. But it’s really just because skinny people don’t worry about drinking calories.

Most people don’t switch from meat to nuts and legumes, they switch to baked goods.

There is also no scientific evidence whatsoever that switching to plant-based diets is good for your health. You should read outlive by Dr. Peter Atilla. As he points out, the only thing we know for sure is too many calories is bad. For almost anything else, it’s impossible to tease out correlation from causation.

Are you saying we require this late-stage capitalism style factory farming in order to feed 8 billion people? I'm going to say that there is gamut between having a cheap T-bone on your plate every evening and global starvation.

not my field, but isn't meat pretty lossy compression food-wise? IIRC, feeding an animal to later eat instead of just eating what the animal would eat wastes like 90% (not sure of the exact figure) of the calories. So if we just ate the plants directly and easily cover our caloric needs without going through the cow-middleman.

Kind of like, instead of feeding the cows a bunch of soy and then eating the cow, just eat the soy as tofu or edamame instead.

Of course a lot of people prefer eating meat, but that's besides the point.

So you chow down on a nice plate of grass? Humans can't derive nutrition that way.

This is a valid argument and not at all reductive. Obviously grass is the only plant available to humans to eat. /s

"...eating what the animal would eat..."

There's reason that life on Earth exists in a food chain. In this case many of the animals humans eat consume and digest things we cannot. This particular discussion was about cattle and humans deriving nutrition from the milk they produce and the meat they yield. From that perspective, cows and steers as intermediaries provide such a distinct advantage that genetic mutation that allows some humans to digest cow milk drove the flourishing of those civilizations.

Grazing animals, properly fed (this is what we need to fix), eat mostly grass. We need that middle step. Just like we need the intermediate steps of plants extracting nutrients from the soil and turning sunlight into usable calories for us. We can't eat dirt and drink sunshine, either. Of course those aren't the only things to eat. But that's the argument I was responding to.

The "cut out the middle man" argument really doesn't work. The argument should be "here are better alternatives."

Alright, fair. But this last comment was far more insightful and thoughtful than your initial flippant dismissal.

Didn't look flippant to me, it was a very direct response to the other person saying we should eat what cows eat instead.

I guess it could be seen that way to someone who doesn't know cows mostly eat grass?

The original comment specifically mentioned soy and edamame. The reply only mentioned grass.

HN guidelines say: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

In that case, right back at you on "strongest possible interpretation" - The focus of that first comment wasn't "soy", it was "what the animal eats". That response was both responding to the important portion while correcting them on cow diets.

Cows don’t only eat grass.

I know.

> > > > cows mostly eat grass

You do realize factory farmed animals don't graze the natural farmland right? They are mostly fed either stuff that humans could eat, or food that is grown on farmland that could be used to grow human edible food.

In my country, most of the food that goes into feeding animals is imported, and I can assure you they are not importing soccer fields.

You're obviously taking my argument in bad faith.

Animal agriculture uses up 80% of the land and provides humanity 20% of its protein.

All those addicted people will be able to satisfy their food addiction at significantly lower costs and consumption of resources by switching to a plant based diet.

Drastically reduced spread of diseases, reduced overuse of antibiotics, environmental benefits are just bonuses.

Not to mention the fact that your grandkids won’t think you’re moral monsters for torturing and murdering sentient beings.

Meh, I’ve been hearing that for like 30 years (and much of it is empirically correct) but meat consumption has just steadily, slowly increased. I’d bet literally everything that two generations from down from me (which would be basically kids being born starting around now) most people will still be eating meat.

Desire - yes. Feasibility - not sure, we need to substitute the caloric intake with something of a relatively similar density, profile, and nutrition. "Vegetarian" might do the trick (beans, rice, fresh vegetables) and I suspect there are a number of ways to improve protein and fat uptake that milk, cheese, and butter provide.

This is just for beef, of course. It is hard to overstate how reliant most developed countries are on chicken and, especially, basically every part of a pig.

and replace it with what?

Plants.

Non factory farming. Prices will go up and this would be a good thing in addition to treating the animals in a more moral way.

Well that make poor folks harder to fulfill nutrition requirements. Especially for kids that'd be devastating.

A plant-based diet is cheaper than a regular diet: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-chea...

Looking at Tesco online in UK: there's a soy protein 'mince' a £3.72/kg. Beef or chicken mince at £5. Quorn mycoprotein at £8.33. Beyond Meat at £13.

Out of the 5 vegan and 8 vegetarian options, only the soy protein is cheaper than meat.

I might replace one meal a week with the soy protein, but I'd be concerned about long term effects of phytoestrogen, especially on growing children? Mind you many foods have some hidden soy 'bulk' nowadays.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ relates to understanding of health benefits/detriments of soy.

The imitation meat stuff is always expensive. Going straight to that for protein betrays a lack of imagination or culinary knowledge.

How about beans, lentils, and frozen peas?

You wouldn’t use “meat replacements” though you’d just eat a vegetarian diet. If hundreds of millions of Indians can do it, so can westerners.

Change is hard for [some] people. Fail to acknowledge that and you'll fail to foment radical change.

That said, I merely posted this data because I looked it up and found it interesting as a comparison.

Why do you need a "minced meat" substitute anyway? Compare your minced meat to a can of beans which one is cheaper.

Moreover, it is well established research that most modern western diets contain too much animal products. If you think that living vegetarian causes so much problems, you need to explain how many cultures who live almost exclusively vegetarian (e.g. In some areas of India) without significant health problems.

The distribution of resources of the world is grossly unfair. Two things need to happen: fewer people and a cap on how much one person has.

How does that happen? Any recommendations?

Societal norms changing, government policies, free access to birth control, universal sex education, taxing the wealth of people who have too much, etc. It’s easy to implement once enough support is gained.

This likely wont happen in my lifetime. It will only change when the change is forced. When we’ve made too much of the planet a toxic waste dump then people will be forced to change.

When my mom was growing up she had organ meats pretty regularly, as it was cheaper and they didn’t have a lot of money.

Over in Scotland their national dish is haggis, which is a bunch of organ meats minced up, and then they add in some oats to bulk it up and make it go further.

There are solutions to use more of the animal and stretch it. I almost never hear about people eating organ meats in the US anymore. People just find factory farmed cuts at rock bottom prices.

FWIW, I was told that those parts are not wasted, but instead used for animal (e.g. for dogs, cats) food instead.

One of the most consistent technological innovations throughout humanity's existence has been in improving how we eat, because eating is by far one of the biggest pleasures a person can have in life.

The invention of fire revolutionized eating, the invention of agriculture revolutionized access to food at a fundamental level, the invention of refrigeration and freezing vastly expanded the reach and safety of food from point of harvest to dinner table, and the past century or so has dramatically democratized the kinds of food a person can choose to eat.

This notion of sacrificing Quality of Eating(tm) is therefore a non-starter, humanity demands and strives for better eating. Any proposal to change how we produce food must accept it must co-exist with continued improvements to eating.

> eating is by far one of the biggest pleasures a person can have in life.

With 70% of the west being obese or overweight I think the pendulum swung way too far.

> This notion of sacrificing Quality of Eating(tm) is therefore a non-starter

When did factory farms meat become quality ?? I think you're mistaking quantity and low price for quality.

You'd have to be blind to not see how the quality of food decreased in the past decades, my grandparents ate much less meat but almost everything was local

Let me put it in terms of tech so the audience here can relate better:

The computers we have at home and in our pockets are inferior in quality to enterprise servers and mainframes, but everyone has computers and nobody is willing to go back to simple Casio calculators and slide rules.

The meats we have at home are inferior in quality to artisan meats, but everyone has meats and nobody is willing to go back to eating other people's refuse (I'm aware organ meats are perfectly fine food, but let's be real for a moment) and porridge every day.

Our access to food today is nothing short of utterly insane to people just a century ago, and rightfully noone is willing to let it go.

As a description of human behavior and how humans are local optimization machines I think you are spot on. This is where I disagree with you:

…rightfully noone is willing…

I don’t believe this is right in the moral sense or in a global optimization sense. The world’s people are getting richer and as the world’s population begins to live more and more like Americans the world becomes exponentially more polluted. This will eventually affect us all. The world is becoming a toxic shithole. The right thing to do is to make changes now. But for the reasons you stated this isn’t going to happen. As a species we are local optimization machines and we don’t seek to find the global optimum.

>the world becomes exponentially more polluted. ... The world is becoming a toxic shithole.

I would strongly advise easing off on your intake of mainstream news media, the real world is quite pleasant out here.

I use Foxnews.com. Who should I use?

Isn’t it a mathematical fact that if Americans consume exponentially more resources than others then as more people gain wealth commensurate with Americans then exponentially more resources will be consumed? Or do you think Americans are especially greedy in this respect? I had not considered that possibility.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/forever-chemicals-found-us-dr...

https://www.foxnews.com/world/india-new-delhi-air-pollution-...

https://www.foxnews.com/health/contaminated-beach-water-coul...

https://www.foxnews.com/world/global-air-pollution-persists-...

>Who should I use?

None. Go out there and enjoy life, life is way too short to be spending it listening to so-called journalists peddling anger and fear.

It’s interesting to hear someone use the phrase don’t listen to main stream media think that Foxnews, Newsmax, Alex Jones, etc are all cranks who can’t be trusted. Given your implied self professed ignorance you must occasionally wonder if your very limited experience exploring the world is indicative of its true state. Ignorance is bliss so continue to stop watching Foxnews, Newsmax, and other like minded sources.

EDIT: Looking at your past comments it’s clear you do consume news! What a surprise given your comment.

You're countering arguments I never made. If you think the only choices we have are modern industrial farming or starving on porridge you seriously lack imagination. Also you're completely ignoring the externalities and the long term consequences both on the environment and on human health, if the question was just about having meat or not having meat we wouldn't have this discussion.

> and rightfully noone is willing to let it go.

A cancer also won't let go even if it means the death of its host.

Your analogy is plain wrong because there is 0 trade off in your example, the right analogy would be to trade your $1500 iphone for five $100 backdoored chinese phones of much lower quality and pretend you're happier because you have more

>If you think the only choices we have are modern industrial farming or starving on porridge you seriously lack imagination.

It's not easy to feed so many people so many different kinds of food at a price most people can afford. When I said the past century dramatically democratized our diets, that was achieved by improving the efficiency of production and transport of food to such an extent that was only possible with modern industrial innovations.

>Also you're completely ignoring the externalities and the long term consequences both on the environment and on human health,

And likewise I would argue you guys are ignoring the benefits to and desires of humanity.

>if the question was just about having meat or not having meat we wouldn't have this discussion.

Except that usually is ultimately the question, because inevitably the discussion degenerates into "we can eat <X> instead of <Y>". I'm saying that such conversations will convince noone because it ignores the reality of humans desiring to eat something and whatever else specifically.

>Your analogy is plain wrong because there is 0 trade off in your example,

The trade off is having a limited diet, possibly enforced from the top down. As I said previously, humanity has striven to widen its diet for as long as humanity has existed. This is a trade off that simply will not receive consensus.

> the invention of agriculture revolutionized access to food at a fundamental level

And human health didn't recover for thousands of years

General rule, when someone brings up that fact that some regulation makes things harder for "poor folks" it is almost never about poor people, but just figleafs for arguing against regulations.

In reality it is the poor who are most affected by climate change, diseases, lack of food safety... If the people really cared about poor folks they would be arguing for more regulations, higher taxes, against credit card programs and lots of other things which effectively end up transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.

There's more alt-milks than I can count. While cow's milk obviously is used to produce other things, we can drastically reduce the need for it by moving to other kinds of milk for the liquid-consumption part.

Which of those alt milks are produced using biodiversity supporting practices? Oat? Soy? Almond?

Almond... Milk?

Are you implying cow's milk supports biodiversity? Because it absolutely doesn't. In fact, animal agriculture is the leading cause of biodiversity loss.

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...

Animal agriculture is the leading cause of biodiversity loss. So, yes, all the above.

Pea is pretty good, at least here in Europe. Really depends on your ecosystem.

You mean juice, right? As far as I know Oat, Soy and Almond contain no milk.

God I hate people using this gotcha... we all know what they mean by alternative milks.

Do you also complain about peanut butter ? There is no butter in peanuts

I just don't get why people have to pretend things are what they really aren't.

You should look up the meaning of the word misnomer and understand how widespread such occurrences are. When that happens you’ll likely reason better and not get sidetracked by pedantic shenanigans.

I suppose you're right. Sometimes I just can't help myself.

Alt milks are usually ultra processed and quite unhealthy compared to regular milk. Not sure this is a viable alternative.

You're going to have to provide some sources if you'll be making such bold claims ...

I'll bite. I'm currently carrying a bottle of whole milk home from the shop to have a glass.

It has 15g of protein per 500ml, a ton of calcium and 350ish calories.

Super nutritious.

500ml of soy milk has almost twice as many protein and tons of nutrients too. It requires like 5% as much water to produce, 0 antibiotic, and no animals

And when factoring in the negative externalities extremely expensive. When factoring in the moral aspect considering the way the cows are treated it’s an immoral product.

Too bad animal protein increases calcium (and other mineral) excretion so your body can't use all that calcium [1].

That's also 1/3 of your saturated fat in a single glass.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6566930/

Looking at the carton of soymilk from my fridge.

It has 18g of protein per 480ml, 60mg of calcium, and 200 calories. (Also 2.4mg of iron and 860mg of potassium)

The only ingredients are water and soybeans.

https://www.ewg.org/foodscores/ might help you target specific brands. Many soy milks count as ultra processed because the additives are (calcium, vitamin b etc.). Less healthy than the unadulterated brands? I think the research is still out on that.

(and cow milk often has similar additives, so this isn't supporting the original claim)

Soy milk is cooked, blended and strained. Hardly ultra processed.

Cows milk is also cooked, and homogenised.

You can make your own oat milk with organic oats in like 1 minute with a blender and strainer. Not sure that qualifies as ultra processed, but there’s no risk of H5N1 so I think I’ll stick with it.

The op is likely quoting one of the recent 'hit piece' style articles talking about ultra processed foods and trying to argue nut milk is less healthy because it may not always have calcium. It's pretty absurd, and the basis for the claim is fairly well explained here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8634539/

It is ultra processed in name, not nutrition.

By the way, humans are the only species drinking the milk of another animal, or after childhood.

Nut milks in stores almost always have additives, mainly preservatives, which are questionable in terms of healthiness. Now store sold oat milks in particular are very unhealthy, if I remember right it was oatly that has 30% by calorie percentage of canola oil. Cannot get worse that this but so many vegan products do this exact same thing where they stuff whatever processed meat substitute product they sell with canola oil and other ridiculously unhealthy and gross ingredients.

Canola oil isn't the devil everyone makes it out to be. Study after study demonstrate that replacing dairy fats with canola oil has positive health outcomes.

That said, plenty of oil free alt milks out there.

I love how on HN we regularly talk about terraforming Mars, computer/brain interface, the AI "singularity", or even immortality brought by technology, but "sustainable farming" is an unsolvable problem and is so out of our imagination spectrum that we almost shouldn't discuss the possibility...

Folks going to Mars don't ask me to change the status quo and the status quo must be preserved no matter the consequences!

But I don't see any alternatives being discussed, like say, sky scraping towers of factory farmed cows that take up a square block and can feed hundreds of thousands. Like apparently the only solution is abstention or restriction. Where are the crazy visions of feeding tens of billions of people through some high tech magic whatevers.

Eating more veg and less meat has got to be a lot cheaper for everyone, and more realistic, than building 100-story towers filled with cows, eh?

What you call "abstention or restriction" in 2024 would be the dream diet of anyone before the 1930s. We're supposedly smart monkey, we should be able to eat 25% less bacon if it means avoiding all these long term issues.

Even pigs know when to stop eating

There is a reason people in the 1930s grew up stunted and were shorter than people today. Why in the world would I want to follow their example?

That's the secret, you don't have to replace it. It doesn't produce food, it takes in food and turns it into less but different food.

So yeah, plants. It's painful, but we've gone beyond what we can do on this planet.

We’re not even close.

45% of habitable land on our planet is used for agriculture. 80% of that is used for livestock. [1]

Any increase in size is coming from deforestation, which is devastating to our planet. [2]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

[2] https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/deforestat...

Do you believe all 8 billion people could live like Americans in a sustainable way? Do you believe we could produce enough meat and animal derived products in a morally sustainable way? Looking at film of the conditions of the animals in factory farms it’s clear the meat portion of our food supply is grossly immoral.

We saw this movie before in the 70s. “The population bomb” etc. All that Malthusian drivel assumed a static state when humanity is anything but.

You are discounting civilizations ability to adapt and invent by an absolutely incredible margin that is not supported by our own history of human events.

You think 8 billion people can live like Americans in a sustainable way? Now by sustainable, I mean that we do so in a way that does not turn the world into a pollution infested shithole. If all 8 billion people lived like Americans where would the pollution be exported too? Who would do the work that people who live like Americans won’t do but depend on people doing?

The distribution of resources in the world is grossly unfair and it is not sustainable that 8 billion people live the way Americans live.

As it stands now the world is already becoming a pollution infested shithole. Imagine what happens when 7 billion more people live like us.

Yes.

Mind answering the non rhetorical questions? As it stands it appears you have no adequate answer.

The only reason agricultural yields haven't collapsed is we have printed fertilizer with fossil fuels and dug it out of the ground. Sustaining contemporary agricultural output is just going to become more and more difficult as energy becomes more costly.

it kind of depends?

For every rich and wasteful person in the world there is a poor person that lives in scarcity and „offsets“ the wasteful lifestyle. So we’re kind of at a limit when you want to make a genuine effort to continue fighting poverty.

Meat is the best food for humans — ruminants, especially, are great at processing out the various anti-nutrients plants produce to ward off being eaten & then processing it into pretty much exactly the food humans need for optimal health. Think of all the land & water that goes into crops that aren't even eaten by humans — run buffalo & cattle over that instead. That would have the secondary benefit of not monocropping (which produces all manner of negative downstream ecological effects). If you don't want healthy, thriving humans, as well as a thriving ecosystem then by all means keep pushing this plant nonsense (take a look at how much water it takes to grow one almond, & then scale that up into what it takes to make almond (or really any other plant) "milk").

Maybe. Meat consumption isn't declining as of yet.

Let's start with treating animals with respect, don't feed them (literal in some cases) trash and take hygiene way more seriously. We have a pretty good idea how disease spreads, and still there is a large fraction of farms, feed and livestock processing facilities that are absolutely disgusting by any standard.

It's not just gross, it greatly facilitates the spread and crossings of disease. We simply can no longer allow these facilities to exist: too dangerous for consumers, and food security as a whole. And the animals themselves of course.

How would that change anything. factory farms are more likely to take biosecurity seriously and thus not allow wild bird contact.

These sophisticated operations look like this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Feedlot-1.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Confined-animal-feed...

I assure you, wild birds are around.

Those are not dairy farms. Those are where cattle are fattened up just before slaughter. Very different situation. Cattle farms also take biosecurity seriously, but so far they have not worried about birds.

Diary cows are kept inside and isolated from everything else since if the cow is sick you have to treat it and dump all milk obtained for a month afterwards.

The article indicates "30% to 40% of those samples test positive". Clearly, spread is occurring, indoors or out.

("The cows never get to see the sun" doesn't really sell me on factory farming, either.)

Side note: The second photo is noted as a dairy on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_farming#Concerns.

Spread is occurring. However you have given no reason to think factory farms are in any way at fault.

I don't think it's at all controversial that concentrated monoculture populations are more at risk of spreading infectious pathogens, and there's no evidence that these tests for H5N1 were performed on a bunch of artisanal raw milk producers.

Maybe it should be controversial. Of course there are lots of different ways to do things, but the old ways are not always better. There is a lot of researching into how to raise cows, and as romantic as the open range sounds, the reality isn't all the great for cows either. (little water at times, temperatures that are not comfortable)

> Maybe it should be controversial.

Why should "huffing aerosolized pathogenic virus/bacteria in an enclosed space can be bad for you" be controversial?

the bictures shown were not an enclosed space. If we grant an enclosed space then we can also apply air filters.

> the bictures shown were not an enclosed space.

Milking parlors tend to be pretty enclosed, and dairy farms being all enclosed was your original claim. Even the ones that let cows out to pasture or use external feed lots may have barns for winter, bad weather, safety at night, etc.

> If we grant an enclosed space then we can also apply air filters.

We could barely be bothered for COVID, let alone here.

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