> Vegetarianism and veganism is a first world luxury
"Luxury" makes me choke : animal protein has always been seen as a luxury meal in most cultures, one that you don’t have every day, as found in any authors from XIX or early XX and you’ll never seen animal protein as a poor food, let alone meat [0]
For 1kg of plant protein you’ll get 230gr of milk protein, 220gr egg’s prot 150gr chicken prot, 120gr porc prot or 70gr beef prot. There’s some difference in proteins availability but in a way smaller scale. Regarding the quality : most traditional societies have combined plant proteins in their daily diets : corn and beans (Latin American), cheakpeas and bulgur (Middle East) rice and lentils (India), soyfood and rice (China, Japan, Korea), millet and peanuts (Africa), rice and tempeh (Java, a very poor place with one the biggest density of the world). The list can go long. Modern science showed us those associations skyrocket the ratio of limiting amino acids, like Lysin + Cystine/Methionine, for soy and brown rice.
Plants have always been the poor’s staple protein because they are dirt cheap, nutritious and convenient. More importantly for the future: the require many times less land to grow because of the protein consumed/returned by animals ratio (see above). Wild fish is an exception but the relative yields have been decreasing for decades, only compensated by more and bigger boats. Also 1/5 of world wild fishing production exist for feeding livestock and farmed fishes.
It’s true (and sad in my opinion) plant proteins are now luxury in certains cities/places, the reasons for that are habits and taste preferences, world richness imbalance (Europe imports 60kg/person/year of Brazilian soy only for livestock consumption, a quantity that would provide 50% of their protein need if consumed directly as so) and subsidies and price regulations to maintain an unsustainable diary industry.
I’m not advocating for everyone eating soy but let’s face it : feeding livestock with human consumable proteins is not the most efficient diet.
0 L’assomoir from Emile Zola, loosely translated by myself : "On Sundays, when there was work at the mine, we'd have a bit of bacon, and on the rare good days, a chunk of beef the size of your fist. It was a real treat"