Link to the scientific article which the news article is based on: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w
Thanks! Wowzers I’ve never heard of Nature Food, didn’t realize this journal had such a high impact factor. A few things of interest to me from the article…
- Vegans are one standard deviation younger than heavy-meat-eaters and eat fewer calories… although they should have adjusted for the difference
- This didn’t show on the fancy Monte Carlo simulation they did, but vegans emit much, MUCH less methane than any other group
- Literally any group is significantly better than heavy meat-eaters, especially low meat-eaters or below
The questionnaire they used to determine categories:
- Do you eat any meat (including bacon, ham, poultry, game, meat pies, sausages)? (Vegans, vegetarians and fish-eaters respond ‘No’.)
- Do you eat any fish? (Vegans and vegetarians respond ‘No’.)
- Do you eat any eggs (including eggs in cakes or other baked goods)? (Vegans respond ‘No’.)
- Do you eat any dairy products (including milk, cheese, butter, yoghurt)? (Vegans respond ‘No’.)
And meat-eaters are divided by grams of meat eaten per day: <50 g/d, 50-100 g/d, >100 g/d. Apparently one patty from McDonald’s (Big Mac has two) is like 45 grams of beef so…
I mean the conclusions aren’t anything surprising, cows are literally one of the major sources of environmental damage… But it does provide some way moving forward I suppose. I suspect banning steakhouses would have a much better impact than forcing everyone to be vegan lol
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I think it’s closer to 90%, but 75%, for sure. Livestock farming is hugely more resource intensive than crop farming. And there are good plant based substitutes for the nutrition you get from livestock products.
The environmental impact is what motivates me to eat plant based food over livestock based. Also the cruelty in industrial livestock farming. There are positive health benefits in removing livestock based food from your diet, but that’s actually a lesser motivator for me. I’m not strict about it by any means, but I take any opportunity to avoid livestock products when I can.
When we include refrigerating and preparation needed for meat, it probably goes well over 90%.
Water usage is also big part of the problem.
I get it that not everyone has to be vegetarian, but at least reducing meat consumption is important.
Doesn’t matter, simply won’t happen because pro-vegan supporters pay less than pro-meat supporters. Unless we’re talking Mosanto level, in which case they’re as dirty as the meat industry.
Scientists: massive, massive reductions from Veganism
Spencer: I’d like to see genetically modified cows
Scientists:
i actually kinda like the impossible burger/beyond meat burger. But… somehow, plain old ground beef is like 1/5 the price. Seriously. The technology is supposed to use less farmland and produce less waste and all that… but it’s literally 5x the price at the supermarket.
In many countries, meat is subsidized.
Lentilles. Don’t use them to substitute ground beef, learn to use them and you’ll gladly reduce your ground beef consumption
I’m not changing my diet just so the rich can keep polluting more than I ever will in my lifetime
Dont sell yourself short, you pollute way more than you think.
When cruise ships stop, then I’ll make changes like this.
Cruise ships make up such a tiny percentage of overall emissions. They’re horrible on a individual level, but there just aren’t that many of them compared to other sources.
Meat production on the other hand makes up something like 17-18% of ALL global GHG emissions.
I heard cruise ships and freighters are the biggest offenders. Nearly 40-50% of emissions.
Throwing freighters in there like that is a bit sneaky lol The amount of freighter traffic must dwarf that of cruise ships. Anyway, people on cruise ships are mostly not particularly rich. They’re pretty much just water-borne holiday camps.
You heard wrong.
Each of us has an individual responsibility to making the world a better place and apathetic inaction like this is what allows the rich to flourish. You have more power than you think.
But you will have a shorter life span and that will make up for it
There sure is a lot of effort currently to distract from the fact that most greenhouse gasses are created from industrial sources & not individual diets.
This is an industrial source, the meat industry.
I still don’t understand this logic. Every single product made is consumed by an individual or a business in a chain that eventually sells products to individuals.
Industry exists to supply consumption, and the only customer is humans.
but when you dont regulate corporations they will exploit and destroy anything and everything to monopolize and capitalize to the fullest extent. its not that the consumption of meat is bad, from a responsible regenerative agroforestry standpoint raising animals can help your regenerative agriculture system. it is monoculture and monopolization of the industry, pushing out responsible small scale community providers etc. that produce in a more ecologically responsible way. not to negate that populations consuming a lot of meat daily do end up becoming a market for irresponsible producers that “need to keep up with demand” to continually profit.
Meat is in fact bad, you have to grow plants to feed animals and the ratio of feed to meat produced is really really low, around 1:10 If you use those plants to instead directly provide nutrition to humans the ratio is 1:1
Responsible meat production uses orders of magnitude more land, which there simply isn’t enough of if we wanted to replace our current meat consumption levels.
Either we can reduce consumption, keep polluting, or look at some of these alternative technologies like lab grown meat.
I agree, but it is important to note that is not the only source and cattle also consumes a lot of horizontal space where forests could be, so that also plays a role. It is never just one thing, but a plethora of intertwined problems.
Realistically, the world’s not going to go vegan. Animal based protein and fats are here to stay. The only way to combat the land usage and emissions associated with cattle and pigs are to develop a viable commercial source for the proteins and fats they provide. Not just plant-based burgers, but lab-grown meat and alternatives to eggs/butter/milk/milk fat/etc.
And until they can compete with the current method of procurement in price, it won’t change.
Also, I do think it’s realistic to get people to eat less meat. Going one or two days without meat, or on days you do have meat just having less, would make a substantial impact. A lot of cultures eat a lot less meat than north american where people seem to expect a whole steak for each meal. Both Asian and Indian food has a lot less meat in each dish, for example.
The mostly meat and potatoes diet is something we can change realistically, I think.
I mean propaganda is a helluva drug. Remember “Got Milk” or “Beef, its whats for dinner” What about the “food pyramid” they teach you in elementary school. all of it is propaganda for industrial producers. so we know it is possible to influence the masses to consume in a certain direction. it just needs to be going in the correct direction. which will take alot of time because how much is already so heavily invested into getting their industry to where it is today.
Which I never said it would. It is nevertheless important to at the bare minimum create some degrowth in that area, and replace as much as possible with alternatives, primarily my point was that you cannot say there is a unique contributor to the climate crisis, and while I agree with the first comment that (paraphrasing them) the most important thing to realise here is that the bourgeoisie class is the main contributor to Co2 emissions, the working class people need to agree to certain changes. Cars need to go, animal based meat needs to be gradually diminished, consumerism must stop, etc. It is not one single issue that causes it.
It’s only partly about the fact that most climate change is caused by the wealthy and corporations, it’s that the wealthy and corporations are trying to control the narrative, to hide their culpability and make sure the changes made won’t affect them. Like coffee shops pushing customers to bring reusable straws instead of giving out free plastic ones (boosting their “green” image while also saving money on straws) instead of putting their to-go beverages in materials that are sustainably produced or recyclable (which probably cost more than the cheap plastic cups and non-recyclable cardboard ones). Individuals can make useful changes, but usually the ones we hear about most often are not the ones that are most productive, they’re the ones that are most convenient for corporations.
In this case, I think it’s more than blame-shifting by corporations, though there’s a hell of a lot of money in designer vegan foods.
