Cheese from the same proteins as milk, but from genetically modified yeast
wired.com
wired.com
To answer your correlation question, probably yes -- but vegans' attitudes toward "tampering with nature" vary widely from the view that it's the worst possible thing humanity can do, on through to the view that it's the best possible thing humanity can do (e.g., David Pearce), with a broad spectrum in between. (I don't have an ideal example of the former group in mind, but I could mention Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson, who advocates deep ecology and opposes GMOs.)
I think we will see sharper divisions between environmentalist vegans (especially advocates of deep ecology) and animal rights/animal welfare vegans over time. I don't know how the population breaks down in the west today, or how many people have even had to think about it that much.
That said, looking at it now (and especially once synthetic meats come online, out of cost efficiency if nothing else), I think our children might look back on the practice of animal slaughter as being pretty horrifically barbaric.
Where are there humans going thirsty? Honest question.
So the consideration that "people are going thirsty" should have zero effect on how Californians deal with their problem. It serves nothing more than as an emotional device to make people feel bad.
I don't know enough about the water system and the patterns of shortages to understand the prevalence of direct competition between sets of users. Of course a weird thing is that municipalities may have locked in particular sources, so there may not be anyone in competition with us at all (for example, we in San Francisco have near-exclusive access to Hetch Hetchy, so water demand from farmers elsewhere in the state isn't likely to threaten our municipal water supply, at least not very directly).
I guess I need to learn more about the extent to which different users actually compete with one another. Clearly livestock farmers in the Central Valley are in competition with crop farmers there for the same water resources, but their competition with city dwellers for sources of what might have been human drinking water is a thornier question.
California could go the desalination route, but so far that progress is painfully slow and the methods being selected may result in significant harm to local marine ecosystems: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/15/us-usa-desalinatio....
Something like this would be much better: http://waterfx.co/. Unfortunately, last update in their blog is a year ago...
I also did a Google web search for the same terms and found, among other things, several articles by pro-GMO vegans complaining that it was common for other vegans to be anti-GMO (based on their personal experience, not studies). The former felt that widespread vegan opposition to GMOs was unfortunate because it would make it less appealing for people to go vegan (for example because the range of available foods would appear more restricted), or because it could make vegans appear indifferent or hostile to scientific progress, among other concerns.
Some discussion and links on that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/31zo1r/a_future...
If you don't want to go vegan, but reduce your animal welfare "footprint", avoid meat from small animals like pigs and poultry.
The environment supports many more animals that we do not eat, so resource use is more important than headcount in my opinion. You could count the number of flies that died because of industry, but what would that accomplish?
If the goal is to minimize suffering without going vegan, I think that wild-caught fish provide the least offending animal-based food. But wild-caught fish are generally bad from an ecological perspective.
[1] See for example http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/real-talk-milk/ , http://www.farmsanctuary.org/learn/factory-farming/dairy/ , and the documentary films Earthlings and Food Inc. A quick google search will reveal many more sources.
I do completely agree that the vast majority of milk production is done in an unethical way and I find mass-produced milk to taste terrible, but I've done my research and I am satisfied that milk can be produced in a responsible way.
Why am I anti-diary? The pasteurization process produces denatured proteins (linked to cancer), contains hormones that are not biologically inert for humans (we are not baby cows), and contain huge amounts of lactose (a sugar that some people are allergic to, and is not a particularly good thing to have in our diets).
The production of most hard cheeses and some soft cheeses tends to remove a lot of the hormone and lactose content, as well as some of the denatured proteins. Cheese does not require pasteurized milk, nor does it benefit from it in any way, as cheese was the first viable method for long term storage of milk.
(I'm not sure that is what you mean or not though, and some people do indeed have milk allergies.)
As a personal anecdote along these lines and since discovering my own sensitivities to canola (and rapeseed oils in general), I've learned that simply calling it a "sensitivity" doesn't always convey the need to avoid certain ingredients. So, sometimes I tell people instead to "think of it as a food allergy," which they usually understand.
I think that at least part of the problem is that, to a layperson, sensitivity doesn't sound as urgent or at least is suggestive of "optional avoidance." For some people, chemical sensitivities are anything but optional avoidance...
Did you mean to reply to your comment's sibling?
maxerickson said: Lactose intolerance is not an allergy.
You replied: I can't speak for the OP, but I can say that I've found it's sometimes easier to explain sensitivities as allergies to people who don't understand the differences.
Then I suggested the idea that lactose intolerance was not even a chemical sensitivity. I definitely meant to reply to you.
But it looks like the term "sensitivity" has been defined that way, no matter if it's misleading. A sensitivity defined by total lack of interaction, ugh. I guess I'm sensitive to breathing a bunch of argon, too.
So calling the simple inability to digest a sugar that causes some digestive discomfort an allergy is pretty much entirely off the table.
The situation with chemical sensitivities is harder, but I guess I still don't want people in general deciding for themselves what chemical sensitivities they have that are equivalent to allergies, they should talk to an allergist about it.
Don't get me wrong: I agree, but it's sometimes counter-productive to resort to such pedantry if all you're doing is ordering a meal and wish to avoid a specific substance that causes discomfort (or worse). Further, allergies can present with such a broad spectrum of symptoms that it's almost pointless to suggest it shouldn't be used as an analogy for someone who doesn't understand why sensitivities may be problematic is somehow adulterating the definition. Though, sensitivities/intolerances are, AFAIK, never fatal. (Strictly speaking, allergies are a response to foreign proteins; it's important to note that the word itself doesn't convey the nature or severity of the reaction.)
That said, if you're speaking with a layperson who might be providing some service in a capacity that it's important they understand you need/want/wish to avoid a particular ingredient because of the effects it has, using a term that's fairly readily understood (such as allergy) can be useful to avoid misinterpretation.
And, speaking from personal experience, certain sensitivities don't necessarily require speaking with an allergist to determine whether or not they're somehow "equivalent," and I think a GP is better equipped to make the decision first regarding what type of specialist (if any) you should see if you do suffer from sensitivities. Of course, if you have a sensitivity and it's blindingly obvious both in terms of the cause and the symptoms it presents, it's easy enough to determine on your own how bad it is and to what extent you should avoid the substance that causes it. :)
In my world, people that are lactose intolerant should just carry some lactase pills and not bother the server about it. They shouldn't conflate their inability to digest a particular sugar with a life threatening condition.
So no, I do not agree that people should express their food preferences to restaurants in terms of self diagnosed "allergies".
Allergies are a serious issue for people. Confusing other things with allergies makes it harder for people that do have serious allergies.
Why? The overwhelming scientific consensus is that it's perfectly safe.
>The pasteurization process produces denatured proteins (linked to cancer)
I think someone may have been playing a joke on you when they told you this. Denaturing proteins is a critical part of the digestion process. Our body can't really do anything with proteins that maintain their secondary/tertiary/quaternary structure through digestion.
> [lactose] is not a particularly good thing to have in our diets
What makes you say this? Sure, some people don't produce lactase and can't digest it, but it's fine for the rest of us.
Denaturation of proteins is, as you have said, removing the secondary/tertiary/quaternary structures. However, that doesn't mean that the pasteurization process produces the same resulting denatured proteins our body does.
Lactose is a sugar, and we simply do not benefit from diets high in sugars and carbs.
Do you hold "natural" foods to the same standard? On average they tend to have far more genetic variation away from "known good" genomes, yet I don't know anyone who thinks that clinical trials are warranted when Farmer Bob's corn cross-pollinates with Farmer Joe's corn.
> that doesn't mean that the pasteurization process produces the same resulting denatured proteins our body does.
It's possible that there's a significant difference, but assuming we process denatured proteins similarly a reasonable null hypothesis that one probably shouldn't reject merely on the basis of a single p=.049 study. Just how strong is the evidence that convinced you it causes cancer?
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/everything-we-eat-cause...
> Lactose is a sugar, and we simply do not benefit from diets high in sugars and carbs.
Yeah but you didn't mention sugar and carbs in general, you mentioned lactose specifically. Why? Was it just an example (it didn't come across that way)?
> contains hormones that are not biologically inert for humans (we are not baby cows)
I remember looking up the concentration of the hormone in human milk for comparison and finding that it was 50x higher than what people were whining about in cow milk. Do you think human milk is dangerous too?
Some real world examples of foods being dangerous is Solanine in potatoes. All potatoes contain a small amount of it, and they can sometimes mutate or be accidentally bred to contain harmful amounts. Tomatoes also have small amounts of solanine and tomatine, especially in their leaves.
For adults? I'm not positive that it is, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it were. Adults aren't babies.
Sounds like a stupendously safe example to me.