Comment by eykanal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eykanal | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This is being downvoted, but is raising a serious point.

- Nearly 90% of Americans eat red meat [1].

- Environmental activity against meat has led a lot of people (26% of Americans) to believe that there is a push to ban red meat. This issue does not poll well [1].

- Despite the above, Americans are eating less red meat than we used to [2].

- The vast majority of people who choose to reduce their meat intake do so for cost or health reasons, not environmental [3].

Putting all that together... studies like this do not help the environmental cause. Sure, they find something that's vaguely interesting, and can possibly be a bullet point on an environmentalist slide. However, a far better research study would be one focusing on human health impacts of red meat, or demonstrating economic benefits to red meat alternatives.

tl;ld - This study is not useful, and is probably damaging to it's own cause.

[1]: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/nearly-nine-ten-ameri...

[2]: https://www.pcrm.org/news/news-releases/new-survey-reveals-r...

[3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/two-thirds-of-a...

There are absolutely a number of people that would love to ban meat consumption.

I eat mostly meat and eggs, because there isn't much else I can eat that doesn't cause a number of digestive or inflammation issues for me.

> Environmental activity against meat has led a lot of people (26% of Americans) to believe that there is a push to ban red meat

I'd guess that has more to do with something like half a dozen different Fox hosts saying a few years ago that Biden's Inflation Reduction Act would prohibit Americans from eating hamburger more than once a month.

I think it's probably a mistake on any topic to conduct or not conduct research based on what's most useful to a particular side of an argument. Especially in this case, where the party split in the poll results suggest reasonable debate on this issue is yet another casualty of partisan culture war nonsense.

It's not like people aren't aware of the environmental arguments around red meat production. Deliberately ignoring research on that front to avoid triggering people concerned about a red meat ban and to make a better argument for people who want to reduce red meat consumption seems just as likely to backfire, leading people into believing they're being manipulated into supporting what's really an environmental argument with the Trojan horse of health and economic reasons.

Laying out all the facts but focusing the actual argument on the most relevant ones seems like a much better strategy. I personally have been cutting back on red meat for health reasons and because, while I can afford it, paying that much for beef is annoying when pork or chicken fits my cooking needs just fine for much cheaper. But I still find it useful to know that choice also has a positive environmental impact, even though that wouldn't otherwise be a deciding factor for me and certainly wouldn't be justification enough for me to support banning red meat. In fact it seems like a strong argument for caring about environmental things is pointing out to folks how there can be plenty of other reasons to do things that also have environmental benefits.

I think we have a serious problem with people being and acting stupid. One way we can improve that state of affairs is stop treating them as if they are stupid and that's what we expect of them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com