Eating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than being vegan, landmark study finds
Meat-free eating found to have much lower environmental impact on land use, water pollution risk, water use and biodiversity loss
Eating the rich is by far the most eco-friendly approach as it can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Jeff bezos probably tastes like drywall and hooker spit.
I vehemently disagree with this statement.
We need to compost the rich and use that as a soil amendment to grow heirloom vegetables.
One Elon musk can feed a family for a year.
One farm fertilized with musk mulch can feed a city block!
Ok, are actively working on this? Is your work on it so horrendously demanding of all your attention of every single day, that you couldn't ALSO go vegan, or vegetarian, or just eat less meat? Eat the rich is just a fun day dream and a lazy excuse to not do what you can (like going vegan).
Eating the rich would also vastly reduce racism, sexism, classism, and worker exploitation. Can I therefore ignore my negligible personal impact, and keep being racist, sexist, classist, and buy only the cheapest clothes crafted by the most exploited third world toddlers?
You sound like you are fun at parties. This was obviously a joke. Also, Why can't we do both?
This crucially important caveat they snuck in there:
"Prof Scarborough said: “Cherry-picking data on high-impact, plant-based food or low-impact meat can obscure the clear relationship between animal-based foods and the environment."
...which is an interesting way of saying that lines get blurry depending on the type of meat diet people had and/or the quantity vs the type of plant-based diet people had.
Takeaway from the article shouldn't be meat=bad and vegan=good - the takeaway should be that meat can be an environmentally responsible part of a reasonable diet if done right and that it's also possible for vegan diets to be more environmentally irresponsible.
That’s both absolutely true and a massive distraction from the point. An environmentally friendly diet that includes meat is going to involve sustainable hunting not factory farming. In comparison an environmentally friendly vegan diet is staples of meat replacements and not trying to get fancy with it. It’s shit like beans instead of meat, tofu and tempeh when you feel fancy. It means rejecting substitutes that are too environmentally costly such as agave nectar as a sweetener (you should probably use beet or cane based sweetener instead).
So in short eat vegan like a poor vegan not like a rich person who thinks veganism is trendy
"So in short eat vegan like a poor vegan not like a rich person who thinks veganism is trendy"
But in the context of this conversation, wouldn't eating like a poor vegan rely heavily on buying products that also have a heavy impact on the environment?
You would have to buy cheaper products which come from mass produced farms that use TONS and TONS of water! And generate TONS and TONS of carbon emissions during production of those products.
To be vegan AND advocate for conservation(you can advocate for something no matter your own behavior. That's the wrong word to use) to claim that your lifestyle is better for the environment than your non-vegan counterparts, you have to have money.
Yes, I think it’s vital to avoid thinking in absolutes over carbon footprints if we are to make real progress. We can argue endlessly over the “necessity” of consuming meat, but that becomes a distraction. Many things are not “necessary”, but most people are not realistically going to live in caves wearing carbon neutral hair shirts.
We need to continue increasing transparency on the impact of different animal products, so consumers can make informed choices. While also accepting they may not always be perfect.
The only way to stop people from eating meat is to make a vegan food that tastes better than a bacon cheeseburger.
If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
[…]
Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy.
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
yes. when you look at charts and such. Someone who exclusively ate meat for some reason who moved to chicken would have a greater impact than someone who exclusively ate chicken and went vegan. Sheep did not show up so well either so im guessing ruminants in general are not going to be so hot. Anyway I would encourage folk to keep it in mind and do what they can. I realize go vegan results in many. Well eff it all then but man just avoiding beef is big impact.
The real takeaway should be that the Independent is complete garbage
So nice to read a sensible comment in a sea of crazy talk.
Yeah I barely eat beef anymore, mostly chicken. I don't want to give up on eating animals, especially since I'm trying to get into shape right now and it would be hard to eat healthy and get enough protein to build up muscle mass.
I keep half a dozen of my own chickens in my backyard...which means about half my daily protein intake comes from eggs (which is a great source, btw). And my chickens free-range in my backyard and largely take care of and feed themselves (supplemented with chicken feed but they get most of their daily intake from the bugs/plants in the yard). I still do eat meat almost daily, but the quantities are a lot less than what I was doing a decade ago, and beef is less than a once-a-week thing for me. Like you, I'm trying to get back in shape and watching macronutrients (like protein) very carefully and trying to hit certain daily minimum numbers.
A couple of people have spoken to me before about wanting to cut back on, or completely cut meat from their diets, but didn't know where to start. If anyone reading this feels the same way, here's some fairly basic recipies that I usually recommend (Bosh's tofu curry is straight up one of the best currys i've ever had - even my non-vegan family members love it)
Written:
Videos:
Tofu is also super versatile and is pretty climate-friendly. there's a bazillion different ways to do tofu, but simply seasoning and pan frying some extra/super firm tofu (like you do with chicken) with some peppers and onions, for fajitas, is an easy way to introduce yourself. Here's a little guide for tofu newbies: A Guide to Cooking Tofu for Beginners - The Kitchn. If you wanna level up your tofu game with some marinades here's six.
Lentils and beans are also super planet friendly, super cheap, and super versatile! You'll be able to find recipies all over that are based around lentils and beans so feel free to do a quick internet search.
Sorry for the huge, intimidating wall of text! I do hope someone interested in cutting back on meat found this useful though :)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/uF0PvnlIK48
https://piped.video/JRk2YnopKCA
https://piped.video/SKT54t3ULg4
https://piped.video/SbJiZfKqqQ8
https://piped.video/cfGuyBqk6io
https://piped.video/NnLAzLal17w
https://piped.video/gmLQB_nL1aE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
One of the things that annoys me about vegans… is they always try to convince me [this recipe] always tastes like the real thing.
And I think any one who eats meat on a regular basis is going to know an impossible burger is not beef- it might be the closest, sure.
Probably the best way to “convert” people- or encourage reductions- is to be less apologetic. Tofu is wonderful and delicious as it’s own thing- but as tofu-chicken or tofurky or anything of that sort, it sets expectations that can never be met.
Forgetting to mention a dish that stands in its own happens to be meatless… well, my parents were halfway through the second bowl of a tofu stir fry before they realized it.
When I went vegetarian years ago I hated it for the first few weeks.. Because I was trying veggie/vegan versions of all the dishes I knew how to make. When I started exploring actual just veggie/vegan recipes that weren't trying to be a fake meat version did it feel incredibly easy.
It's exactly as you said, the fake version is never as good and you'll most of the time be comparing it to the real thing.. But meals that just happen to be vegetarian/vegan? They can be amazing on their own! I've never looked back since I started exploring new recipes instead of alternative versions of old.
I love meat.
Tried these Yves Mild Italian veggie sausages and I am hooked.
They have a nice dense texture but it's not like the fake sausages you get with other brands that try to mimic the ground meat texture. More like a very firm a larger Hotdog wiener.
I like them on the BBQ with all the sides. They are fantastic sliced and put into a pasta dish. You could even throw them on a Hotdog bun.
I feel there needs to be some fake meat types to bring favorites over to and that brand nailed it with those sausages.
And I think any one who eats meat on a regular basis is going to know an impossible burger is not beef
Tbh. I don't get using burgers as an example. Burgers as I know them contain so much other stuff (salad, tomato, cucumber, cheese, sauce etc.) that I barely notice what kind of patty is in there. I do notice a difference on stuff that is unprocessed meat without much to hide the differences (best example would probably be that steak) but for anything that uses ground meat and/or adds other stuff (like in a stew) that just diminishes/hides any differences.
I'm with you on the other stuff though, trying to imitate something perfectly often lands you in the uncanny valley where its close enough to be identifiable what it is supposed to be, but just slightly off to be distracting. Like that one recipe you remember from your parents or grand parents that you always loved as a kid but no one can get exactly like you remember it.
It really depends on the food, and just how much "into" food you are. We're probably never going to have a perfect replacement for a medium rare steak. But how many meat eaters eat medium rare? 90% of the women I know, and 70% of men will happily eat a shoe sole steak smothered in cheap ketchup, or pink sludge pressed into chicken nugget form. Those things can definitely be made vegan, and those people (generally, more often than not) wouldn't taste the difference.
But yes, meat alternatives (Tofu, Tempeh, BEANS), instead of replacements (Beyond Meat) are the better long term option.
Thanks for taking the time. This is wonderful.
I'm no veg(etari)an by any measure, but I have this to say to people who are exclusively meat-eaters: you're missing out on a world of interesting flavours and textures.
Next time you make chicken curry, replace half the chicken with tofu. Bolognese - do half lentils & kidney beans. Beans and legumes are cheap as, great for the current economic climate (and the real climate, I guess..)
PS: mushrooms are the food of gods. There's just so many varieties, you can use them for nearly anything.
simply seasoning and pan frying some extra/super firm tofu (like you do with chicken) with some peppers and onions, for fajitas, is an easy way to introduce yourself
More like an easy way to convince yourself tofu is terrible. It has its uses, but a direct replacement for meat is not one of them. It has almost no flavor, and if you don't cook it just right, it has all the texture of undercooked scrambled eggs.
That's why professionals marinate tofu.
There's a lot of food that is not meat-based that people can eat. For instance, Thai food is generally vegetarian.
The problem is that Americans tried to substitute meat dishes with meat-like vegetarian dishes, which generally don't taste all that great. In fact, one could argue that many traditional American dishes don't taste all that great to begin with which is why the lots of meat.
A simple dish of spaghetti or pasta with a tomato, pesto or aglio e olio are great options.
Also, one needing necessarily 100% remove the meat. Is 75 or 80% reduction in meat intake allows one to continue to eat meat, while still vastly reducing the amount of meat you're eating. Since one's impact on the global economy and meet consumption as a totality is infinitesimal, the reduction itself is significant even if you don't completely eliminate the meat from your diet.
I think most people would find this a hell of a lot more palatable than going cold turkey vegan and even banning honey from your diet, which many of my vegan friends have done. As well as not eating any sugar because they claim that sugar is made from animals somehow...
There is a lot of misinformation in grandstanding when it comes to diet politics which just borderlines on the silly.
People should do what they can from a realistic perspective, well not killing themselves or making themselves miserable from their political driven lifestyle choices. I know quite a few vegans and vegetarians who have decided to quit being a vegan or vegetarian simply because over the long haul it made them unhappy and eventually they wanted to eat meat again. Now they eat more meat than I do who I would consider myself a light meat eater.
In this thread: Shit loads of people who will say they care about the climate crisis on one day, then say they don't care about the 18.5% of global carbon emissions that the meat industry causes the next day because they can't get over the decade worth of anti-veganism jokes and memes that they've constantly repeated uncritically.
Individual habits MUST be changed to solve this part of the problem, there is literally no way around that. Getting triggered and writing screeds because you've spent decades getting caught up in hate over food choices won't stop the planet burning.
Tax meat, subsidize healthy meat alternatives.
Could start by removing subsidies.
Thanks for reminding me meat is subsidized for some reason 😮💨
Removing subsidies alone would make beef $35/lb.
OK, but what if instead of going vegan, I just don't have kids. Because adding more people to the world also creates more greenhouse gasses.
The problem is not the amount of people but how much each individual consumes. Getting meat out of your diet is a simple and a small sacrifice. Besides the health benefits there is also the fact that you don't contribute to the culling of 70 billion animals per year (of which 40% is probably not eaten and thrown in the trash). Not only that but you don't contribute to the greatest cause of deforestation, antibiotics resistance, decline of biodiversity, water waste, ...
Besides the global population is steadily stagnating (Africa is still booming) as a lot of countries see population decline (less than 2 children per woman).
You don't even need to cut it out entirely. Just not eat such a ridiculous amount of meat.
Stuff like this isn't helping. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH9VLihKm2g
Couldn't we just stop food waste? Most food is discarded before even making it to the store. Seems to me being more efficient with how we distribute food is more realistic that trying to convince everyone to go vegan.
Because I'm not going to stop eating meat and the amount of ppl like me is larger than you think
Right there with ya
How bout both? :)
What if you don't have kids and just make an effort to reduce intake of animal products knowing it contributes to global collapse and also represents a modern holocaust.
Animal products don't have to be as all or nothing as having kids.
That moment when your veganism goes so hard you commit a hate crime on the internet implicitly comparing Jews to cattle
Edit: I'm from Poland, the country where most of the Holocaust happened - this is where the Jewish population was the highest and where Germans build their death camps. We read about it extensively at school, including eyewitness accounts describing the atrocities involved in this horrific campaign of human extermination, from the home of the Jew, to the ghetto, to the transport train, to the camp, to the gas chamber and to the furnace. Many of us heard those stories from our grandparents, of their neighbors being humiliated and taken away, ghettos liquidated, and public executions. I don't know what kind of deplorable scumbag one has to be to equate factory farming with the Holocaust.
Were you totally going to have children before you found out how bad they are for the climate? If not, you're resting on literally fictional laurels. For example, maybe you planned a genocide of all black people, but then chose not to do it when you heard racism is bad. Therefore, by your logic, you prevented millions of deaths. You're basically an anti-racist hero!
But finally, as a childfree, carfree vegan myself, I don't understand why you can't just do your best
Here's a list of things I didn't do, just to save the planet:
While that reduces greenhouse gasses, it's not sustainable.
God forbit we actually end up in something.
Instead of going vegan or not having kids, I died when I was 5. Because living also creates more greenhouse gasses.
In fact, having a small footprint is just a matter of choosing how miserable you're willing to make your life.
Unfortunately the Earth cannot sustainably support so many people living COMFORTABLY, and eating WHATEVER WE LIKE. The more people, the more miserable is the globally sustainable way of life.
Curbing population growth - not Thanos-like, but through education and availability of contraceptive methods - is the only way we can all have the cake (and the meat) and eat it.
Many wealthy countries have their population declining. Maybe if we get to the same level of wealthiness everywhere, less people would engage in procreation.
In any case, if we just do nothing and the doomsday evangelists are even nearly right, extreme weather, plage and famine caused by climate change will indeed curb the population. Eventually it reaches equilibrium.
In this case, the faster we get to the edge of the abyss, the quicker the situation will solve itself.
Be careful, you're wandering awfully close to eco-facist talking points
having a small footprint is just a matter of choosing how miserable you’re willing to make your life.
In many areas yes, but not when it comes to food. A plant based diet is in no way miserable. There are still too many places with bad kitchens making it seem that way, but that's just a lack of skill on their part.
I'd say my food experience rather became less miserable when I stopped eating meat, and my footprint decreased by a lot.
Eventually it reaches equilibrium.
In this case, the faster we get to the edge of the abyss, the quicker the situation will solve itself.
If you open the window to ventilate for 20 minutes that's different from replacing the air in your room in 2 nanoseconds. The violent shockwave of the latter will probably damage your stuff and harm your health.
Similarly, the speed of climate change matters a lot. It is required for plants and animals to migrate and adapt, for people to migrate and adapt, for infrastructure to be built. It makes all the difference between a devastating blow and adaptation, while the reached equilibrium is the same in both cases.
Because if we don't have children then who are we saving the planet for? There are very clear and achievable ways to massively reduce our individual and collective emissions which we can pass onto our descendents for a sustainable future.
Exactly. Not having kids covers my any excess from meat and driving easily.
We’ve been eating meat for millennia, while climate change has only been an issue for a century, yet somehow meat eating is the problem, not the billions of people we have added.
Meat production has also skyrocketed in the last 100 years: https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production#global-meat-production
Well that's no surprise. Raising animals for meat is horribly inefficient compared to plants.
This has been known for eons, hasn't it?
For as long as the energy pyramid has been a thing, I suppose.
A lot of good science is testing out things we already know or are pretty sure about.
But yeah it doesn't take a PhD to realize feeding a thing until it's grown takes more resources then just eating the resources you're feeding it.
Ehh, kinda. Like, it's been fairly obvious that eating plants is generally more efficient than eating something else that eats the plants. It's deceptively difficult to study scientifically, though. There can be massive differences depending on what exact plant-based foods and livestock you compare. If I'm understanding correctly (I'm no expert) this is one of the first academic studies that demonstrates this and has produced real numbers instead of rough estimates.
Oh look, another article pointing the finger at the meager consumption habits of citizens and completely ignoring the massive ocean of CO2 production by large companies.
Don't people get tired of seeing this same argument being made? The amount of carbon produced by barges carrying cargo over the Atlantic so far greatly exceeds the consumption of many millions of people every single day but I'm supposed to feel guilty for eating a piece of steak today instead of some semi-edible "impossible meat" bug protein?
ETA: Nice, my first blowup since leaving reddit. Very refreshing to see some people arguing passionately. I appreciate the vigor and the quality of argumentation, everybody. The quality of discourse here is so much better than on reddit.
I'm willing to admit the "semi edible impossible meat bug protein" gamut was a bit tongue in cheek, but I recognize how it can sound genuine. I do think Impossible Meat is disgusting, but that's neither here nor there.
I eat plenty of plant matter and I regularly forage in the local forests to learn about edible plants. But I'm not going to stop enjoying steak just because it might put a bit more CO2 (why do people keep writing it as C02 online?) into the atmosphere. If removing subsidies and putting more pressure on the meat industry to be less wasteful, less environmentally impactful and more ethical towards animals causes steak to rise to $40/lb as some here have stated I'll gladly pay.
FWIW, I get my steak from local farms that are free range and grass fed. Grass feeding is healthier for the cow than the typical grain, it produces less CO2 and the steak is better quality. Plus the cows are better taken care of. Again, thanks for the great messages (generally).
I upvoted because this message still didn't reach everyone, but I guess it's just that people are in denial.. like, isn't this obvious? And weren't there already dozens of studies proving it?
I’ll go completely meat free when the super rich go private jet free.
Well, if everyone thinks like that nobody does anything ever.. even the richest of the rich can say "it's not because of me", because it really isn't. This is a man made disaster, but not by any single man. Some contribute more, others less, but the idea that only the rich polute is complete bonkers.
people ate meat for MILLIONS OF YEARS with negligible global warming effect from the animals
vegans going start blaming the Assyrianz for inventing husbandry before blaming Exxon Mobile BP
like dude pick your battles
You have no idea of the scale we are dealing with.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
Vegans still care about the ban of oil and many other topics like zero waste, it is not exclusive.
Due to the current infrastructure not everyone can just stop using fossile fuel based transport, but we all can go vegan. So yes, we pick battles, those we can win now and we still fight against what we cant change as individuals.
And the type of meat changes the math significantly. Beef is notoriously inefficient and produces an insane amount of GHG emissions compared to more efficient meats like chicken, pork, and farmed fish.
And soy is still better than all of them.
Not significantly enough to make the general statement untrue for 99% of meat eaters. Just for reference, "high meat diet" starts at 100g of meat a day. And farmed fish is fed wild caught fish and a fuckton of antibiotica.
That can't be true if the GHG multiple between meat and vegan is 4x and the multiple between beef and chicken is already more than 4x...
It's not really suprising, is it? Just take two people and give them the same basics, but swap everything non vegan with the stuff those animals got to eat for one of them. Not only did he save the middle man to save on emissions, he also ended up with way more food. So you could save a lot more emissions by cutting down the vegan pile to the same amount of calories.
Replacement products bring down the comparison, but making stuff out of soy will always be more efficient than feeding soy to animals and then eating those. So with otherwise equal lifestyles a vegan will always produce less emissions.
As you've presented it, the vegan has poorer nutrition than the other person. We also need to consider the vitamin supplements to get amino acids we only get otherwise from meat.
Soy is a complete protein, meaning it has all essential amino acids. Seitan has 8 out of 9 essential amino acids, is made from wheat and has about the protein density of beef or chicken (~25% according to a quick search).
You get a ton of soy and wheat which would otherwise be feed to animals. Just make tofu and seitan.
However, you're right, you need to supplement some things - at the very least B12. Which a non vegan diet mostly gets from fortified products, meaning its supplemented anyways.
How well do you digest grass?
Very poorly which is why ruminant animals like sheep and cows have three or four stomachs - they need the extra digestive cavities filled with very interesting bacteria cultures to process all that tough cellulosic material.
However, people do eat grass, at least a seed, in the form of various cereal grains like wheat and barley and rice. Those are all grasses!
Fun fact of the day...
Only fancy meat gets fed grass anymore
It amazes me how people can wail about the record breaking heat on one hand and the effects of climate change, and sit in these comments and rationalize that eating meat isn't contributing. Of course it is.
Going vegan was the best decision I ever made for myself.
It's almost as bad as blaming the "individual" for climate change.
Politics will NEVER implement something that most people are against - so yeah it's 100% on individual responsibility to change first and show them that it's no problem if meat or flying or even fuel gets much more expensive since it's not sustainable at this level since they already reduced their consumption.
If people don't do that first then politicians won't take those measures.
Just see what the (small) rise in gas prices for the end-user from Russia attacking Ukraine did in terms of protests and people blaming politicians on being responsible for the high prices.
Also if you vote with your wallet then there is incentive for the big corporations to change, too (even if that alone won't solve anything it's still helping). For example the biggest producer or meat replacements in Germany is a really old company that only sold meat until a couple of years ago.
They started some test balloons and because people kept buying it they kept increasing the production amounts and now they sell more replacement than meat.
Animal products are incredibly harmful to the climate and are inherently wasteful.
Those corporations get their money from people like you.
Yes regulation would be the best to stop them but you know that's not gonna happen any time soon, especially when everyone refuses to change their own habits, politicians aren't gonna force through regulations that get people angry because they want their steaks.
Why do you want to continue to participate in something bad until it's legally not allowed anymore?
Why not do what you can (stop consuming animal products) while also advocating for regulation and political change?
What does holding evil corporations accountable look like if not refusing to give them your money?
I am sure @BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world would grant you the right to complain about the need for systemic change once you've taken personal responsibility.
It's because everything about my existence in a modern first world society contributes to it. Humans obviously can't maintain stasis, so maybe we as a whole are the problem. I am very proudly and staunchly childfree for that reason but I'm not going to go live in the forest in a tent to save the planet for a species that obviously doesn't deserve it.
NOT A SINGLE PERSON asked you to live in the forest in a tent. Taking the bus, being vegan, buying second hand, and eating the rich are all things we can do, AND STILL LIVE A MODERN, COMFORTABLE LIVE.
I'm childfree, carfree, and vegan. Still manage to love live inside my non-tent in my non-forest city.
Have you ridden in a vehicle? If so, I guess you can't complain about man made climate change resulting from corporate greed by this brilliant logic.
Every time I read about meat and greenhouse gases I feel the need to explain the natural carbon circle. A cow does not produce carbon. It takes carbon from plants and releases it to the atmosphere. Then plants retake that carbon.
Humans are adding carbon to the atmosphere by digging out stored carbon from the ground and bring it to the atmosphere.
So we have to fix the part where we bring additional carbon to the atmosphere. But yes, there are other environmental issues with cattle if you read the op's article.
The Biogenic Carbon Cycle and Cattle: https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/biogenic-carbon-cycle-and-cattle
A cow also produces a lot of methane, a much worse greenhouse gas.
Besides, the problem isn't the grass from cows grazing, it's the rainforests that go down all around the world to convert to farmland to produce animal feed.
It's much more efficient to use that farmland to feed humans than to feed cows and then feed humans (1kg of meat needs 25kg of feed)
Disclaimer - I'm not vegan but I try to reduce my meat consumption overall, especially red meats.
I feel the need to explain the natural carbon circle.
You know that the problem with ruminants is that they produce methane and not CO2 which is 25 times worse? A cow takes carbon from the ground and the bacteria creates a 25 times more potent GHG. But you are right that creating new fields and tiling the soil is a huge factor.
Yeah, the main focus of greenhouse gasses in the literature is from land use. The amount of land used for rumanents and their feedstock could plant forests the world over. And don't get me started, noone is farming on the sides of mountains
IMO people should've dialed down their meat consume for years, everybody knows what it's doing. I'm not a vegetarian by any means (I love many veggy recipes though & I adore good (!) tofu), we (my family) are getting meat from organic farms or from hunters for years, that's more expensive but 2 times a week is absolutely sufficient. Same price as before, roughly. Even my meat devouring daughter thinks like that, but she gets real cranky after 5 days of lentils, bulgur wheat and paprika ;)
Eating meat is bad, but this won’t be solved by individual action. Putting a cost on every ton of beef, plastic, and carbon created would create market conditions that would reduce the production of these things and hence the consumption
It's both.
Enough people need to reduce meat consumption and realize there are alternatives (and make it interesting to innovate alternatives for meat – just look at the explosion of alternatives over the last five years). They also contribute to creating awareness around this subject, influencing others to change or at least consider changing their behaviour.
Because in the end you need enough support to enact changes such as a meat tax. This has been tried in the Netherlands, but there still isn't sufficient support to introduce this.
There's nothing wrong with individuals trying to be more conscientious about their eco footprint but unfortunately that has been turned by corporations who pollute vastly more into some kind of "only you can prevent climate change" messaging. We shouldn't discourage anyone from doing better, but we also really need to turn up the pressure on the corporations.
What does holding corporations accountable look like if not refusing to give them our money while we advocate for regulation and bigger change?
Everyone can stop support what is bad.
Can you explain what the collective in "collective action" is made up of, if not individuals? How does your solution not require individual action? "My individual vote won't change anything" is the exact argument you're making.
But let's pretend a world filled with meat eaters would vote for the anti-meat party. Suddenly, meat costs 3 times as much (at the very least). Do you genuinely believe people would simply accept this change? There wouldn't be protests the very next day? People wouldn't vote for the yes-meat party immediately?
Any political action needs to be supported by the populace. Otherwise known as individual action.
this won’t be solved by individual action
True. However as long as a large potion of the population goes totally berserk if any politician even thinks about doing anything sensible that would however have an impact on the price of that next burger, it will be very hard to do something on a non individual level.
But if you know it's a problem then you can change right now instead of waiting for regulation to force it on you.
We can make change for the better in our own lifestyle while advocating for change.
It's not the eating it really. It's the farming and processing. I think it's important to be clear so consumers aren't stuck with all the blame.we buy what's cheap and available and their pursuit of that has lead us here.
Of course it's the eating, why would they be farming so many animals so intensively if it wasn't for demand? It's a complete abdication of personal responsibility to say that eating meat is ok but farming it isn't. Maybe you can argue that hunting meat is negligible in terms of impact but there's a reason we don't all hunt, there's not enough of a sustainable population of any game animal that would keep the number of meat eaters we have today fed. Factory farming is a requirement for our current level of consumption.
Interesting thought expirament here. What would happen to all the cattle if we entirely stop eating meat? Are we going to kill them all off so they can't repopulate and feast on more greenery thereby releasing more methane and polluting our atmosphere? Will we sterilize them so they can have babies? Will we set them free and allow them to multiply?
That's a silly statement. Then let's say driving our cars doesn't either. It's the combustion engine processing the gasoline, but turning the wheel and pressing the pedal does nothing
A plant based diet is cheaper, maybe not as available if you eat out or fast food a lot but that comes down to demand.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
Can anyone explain to me why being vegan is the new cool, while being vegetarian is equal to eating meat without eating meat? Like, when I'm looking for vegetarian recipes, I only see vegan recipes, no vegetarian ones anywhere.
psst, since you shared those videos I thought I'd share a cool resource. There's a website called kinderworld.org that has collections of videos on the egg industry, dairy industry, and meat industry. I hope you find this useful :)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/u80_IrSILI4
https://piped.video/auJ0sxb-OsI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
In my country, supermarkets aren't allowed to sell eggs from caged hens. Only eggs from hens raised outdoors. There are four categories of eggs marked with numbers:
By the way, US is neither the center of the world nor the only country in the world. Sorry to say that, but I think it's necessary to say it.
As a vegetarian myself, I've thought about this a little bit.
I think it ultimately boils down to the fact that going vegan requires a lot more work from an individual. Avoiding meat might be a pain in the ass to implement at times, but the actual intellectual process is straightforward. You need to watch out for soup stocks, cheeses with rennet, and meat sauces basically. Everything else, at least in my experience, is obvious. Converting a recipe to vegetarian doesn't require too much thinking. A lot of foods are just innately vegetarian and won't be labelled as such: there aren't "vegetarian pancakes" or "vegetarian pies" out there — they're just expected to be vegetarian unless someone made a meat version. Only a small handful of pizzas will be labelled vegetarian even though most are or trivially can be made such. It's easier to find/adapt recipes that are vegetarian compatible.
Going vegan is just a full extra process. Eggs, milk, butter aren't visually obvious. Even bread isn't certain to be vegan-friendly. The ingredients being removed from a recipe cannot be simply removed, especially with baked goods, without risking the entire recipe becoming a disaster. If you take a cookie recipe and remove the eggs and butter, you're going to be disappointed; you need to find a recipe designed from the ground up to not use eggs or butter.
The extra restrictions on vegans mean they need to be much more specific about their foods than vegetarians.
I would describe myself as vegetarian but there is a wide variety of ways to be strict about it so it's almost a useless way to describe oneself. Personally, I avoid cheese because of rennet, wine because of eisenglass, I won't eat anything with gelatin, i avoid eggs unless they come from my friends who have chickens (because I know their chickens are well cared for). I end up being close to vegan but don't really feel like that label fits me because I'm sure I eat butter without realizing it, or other milk products which can end up in places you don't expect (milk is in tootsie rolls, for example).
On the other hand I know vegetarians who just avoid meat and are fine with chicken or beef stock or gelatin.
Eggs, milk, butter aren’t visually obvious.
Especially since so many products contain stuff like milk powder etc., which is insanely cheap due to being almost a waste product of the animal industry.
Vegan is easier for me compared to vegetarian which I was for a few years. Now I don't have to think about it, if it contains animal products I don't support it. I found more new recipes instead of just avoiding things I added more new things. Vegetarian diet is mostly removing stuff while a plant based diet is more about adding new stuff.
I can stomach a meal or two without meat, but you're going to have to shoot me before I'll eat that disgusting fake cheese.
So don't eat the shitty fake vegan cheese. I agree, they're pretty meh. From a former cheese enthusiast, some of the cultured nut "cheeses" are ok, but they don't really melt or stretch the same. (Not that the mass market potato-starch based ones do much better, anyways.)
The closesest thing I've found so far is homemade almond ricotta, mainly because the taste is quite close to cow ricotta, and ricotta generally isn't used as a melting cheese.
Because veganism is better than vegetarianism. But also, what's so bad about vegan recipes? A vegetarian can eat those too.
There is nothing bad about them, except when they start using other ingredients instead of eggs, milk or honey.
If you look at the moral side of things, vegetarian recipes still often require products from the animal industry. If you look closer at the ways animals in those industrial settings are treated, it can be hard to stomach. We like to believe the images of happy cows on mountain pastures and chickens running around freely on a farm, but the reality looks very differently in the overwhelming majority.
Plus there is still the environmental issue, using food to raise animals to produce food is still a lossy process.
Sigh, well I get downvotes but I just say it - because it's more restrictive and some people really like that, dare I say live for that. I'm pretty sure in 20-30 years there'll be a more restrictive diet than veganism and it'll be the new cool
There sure is a lot of effort being made to obscure the fact that most greenhouse gasses come from industrial sources.
Just wrote a comment with bad math.
Almond milk and cow milk are effectively the same in terms of cal/pollution rate.
Cow milk produces 4x as much pollution, but also produces 4x as many calories.
Which doesn't really matter because people don't put milk in their coffee to add x amounts of calories. So in almost all cases, they will use the same amount in volume/weight.
And a lot of other plant based milk alternatives have an even lower environmental impact, the difference between your average milk and milk alternative will be even bigger.
Its also bad science.
A gallon of Almond milk is 580 calories.
A gallon of cow milk is 2,400 calories.
Meaning in terms of actual nutrition vs pollution, cow milk is over twice as effective.
Calculation= cal in alm milk/cal in alm milk : cal in cow milk / 2 × cal in alm milk. (2 in this equation stands for the rate of pollution multiplicity sourced from the title of this post, twice as much gasses).
You wind up with 1 : 2.07
It's not just the CO2. It's also the water consumption. Wait another 10 years and the water might be the bigger problem.
Only four? I thought it'd be much higher
Depends on exactly what this means.
If it means a meat meal represents 4x the emissions of a vegan meal, then yes that seems low.
If it means a meat eating person’s emissions are 4x a vegan person’s, that’s different. It means meat is 75% of the average person’s emissions. That doesn’t seem low to me.
It's about the total environmental impact of their diet, and the 4x figure is comparing vegans to high-meat diets (>100g/day on average)
How much greenhouse gas does does a private jet make? I'm tired of them putting it on the overburdened collective to do huge industry sweeping change, when we could swat down a few more private jets, regulate some industries better, and impose sanctions and other measures on countries that aren't cooperating and have major drastic impact with much less overall effort.
All flights, total, represent 2.5% of emissions
I'm a bit surprised but honestly didn't know. Seems like something that could maybe be a rider to a more impactful focus. Like if there was to be meaningful legislation on power production emissions regulations they could maybe tack on some regulation about private air travel. But yeah, that wasn't a great option to pick at.
I really just want to see us consider other things besides only things that as an individual, my participation is miniscually helpful. I do what I can, we try to live conscientiously, but I'm tired of being told to give up more when the biggest offenders have done nothing.
Private jets are bad, agreed... How about making the change to veganism and also campaigning about private jets at the same time? Picking a different item on a menu is all it takes for a people in a lot of places and it's t really the type of problem that humanity should be throwing everything at.
All aviation creates 2% of the GHG. Food production is responsible for 25% of the GHG and could be reduced by 75% with plant based diets.
Interestingly though it could also but drastically cut by changing the diet of the animals. I was reading somewhat recently about how the addition of seaweed to the cattle feed culled nearly all methane emissions from the cattle. There is still the need to address the transport and humanity of the process involved, but the cow emissions are iirc a large part of that %.
Or just regulate these big factory farms more. Stop subsidizing these things Make it more expensive and people won't buy as much.
Making nutritious food more expensive is not a good plan. This only harms the poor and vulnerable. Holding the top 100 companies responsible for climate change is a much better starting point
https://peri.umass.edu/greenhouse-100-polluters-index-current
Since it isn't mentioned in the article, here is the reference: paper (2014)
In the study it even shows how driving a 10 years car for 6000 miles is rougly two years of saved emission with a meat->vegan switch.
I don't know, changing dietary is obviously good for the health, but these results seems to make pretty useless changes, use the bike and save twice as much.
EDIT: There is a new paper (2023), it is in a reply.
lower than I would expect
Yeah 4 times 0.0000000000000000000000001% of what the largest companies produce.
A single individual? Sure, but that is a bad comparison. World wide food production is responsible for over a third of all carbon emissions. That isn't inconsequential.
Do any of those companies help to produce beef?
Most companies create products to sell to consumers.
With the economy so interconnected, they definitely help produce beef. But I would venture a guess that is a miniscule percentage of their overall greenhouse gas emissions, with a large number of them being power companies and the like.
I was just talking about this idea with a friend. We decided it would be political suicide in the US for anyone to suggest eating less meat.
People would literally rather see the world burn than give up their chicken nuggets.
I'm not even hardcore vegetarian. I looked at the situation and agreed it's hard to ethically justify eating meat. So I started eating less. I'm down to pretty much just "sometimes I get a pizza slice with a meat topping if there's nothing good without meat". Maybe I'll cut that out too one day.
Articles like this are dumb... This just puts the burdon on everyday people who are doomed to fail if they try. If the entire world turned vegan would it make a difference? Rather, how about some tough legislation against the top polluting companies responsible for climate change... That would mean some politicians would have to refuse a few bribes, tough I know, but any level of effort here will create more results than a world giving up meat
https://peri.umass.edu/greenhouse-100-polluters-index-current
If the entire world turned vegan would it make a difference?
...yes. Plainly and obviously. Most land use would be gone overnight. Deforestation would stop immediately as would the second largest source of methane, one of the largest sources of NO2, and billions of tonnes of CO2 per year (about a quarter of all emissions). No other single initiative other than maybe ending urban driving would come close.
If you're in the global top 50% there is absolutely nothing stopping you from switching to a primarily plant based diet, and if you're in the bottom 50% you probably don't eat enough meat to be a major impact.
I’m not taking a side, I’m just here saying that I have no idea which one of those two options, kill the car or stop eating meat, most people would be more amenable to doing. On its face I think most would rather give up cars but I’m really not sure. Both have a better shot than guns(at least in the US)
We’re so boned
Animal products are incredibly harmful to the climate and are inherently wasteful.
Those corporations get their money from people like you.
Yes regulation would be the best to stop them but you know that's not gonna happen any time soon, especially when everyone refuses to change their own habits, politicians aren't gonna force through regulations that get people angry because they want their steaks.
Why do you want to continue to participate in something bad until it's legally not allowed anymore?
Why not do what you can (stop consuming animal products) while also advocating for regulation and political change?
What does holding evil corporations accountable look like if not refusing to give them your money?
Nahhhh, per the people in this thread you are personally responsible for climate change!
If the entire world turned vegan would it make a difference?
Yes, yes it would. About 14.5% of CO2e is from the meat industry, by changing our habits, we would make the world a better place. I'm not saying policy is not the most important factor, but if people are not willing to change their habits, this disaster will not be solved.
I was addicted on meat and cheese too. I do jot miss it at al now.
We have godlike power on this planet. If we abuse power without necessity over less capable animals, we do deserve a chaotic reality, dont,
What's the Lemmy equivalent for /r/IHadAStroke?
Did chatgpt write this comment?
Idea is correct, at least?
I thought the number was higher.
I do b fartin when I eat meat /s
"study finds eating meat is bad"
no sh*t
Yes. Power abuse over suposed inferior species. It is "yummie" for doers
No food is "problem free" and, much like normal agriculture where different crops cause different problems, different meats (poultry, pig, cow) cause different problems and have different costs.
Are insects a valid protein source? Apparently yes! Am I willing to eat them? Maybe! I've never had the chance to try any, none of the markets I go to stock anything like that.
Ditching all meats for soy and other vegetal proteins? Doable, but more expensive than eating chicken or pig, in my case. Fully getting rid of eggs and milk is also problematic for me because they are even cheaper than the meat itself.
You know what would be really funny? If cattle ranchers were forced to come up with big diapers for all the cows, harvesting the methane and turning that into somewhat cheap extra gas for cooking.
Ok, now do corporations.
A those corporations that only pollute for the sake of pollution and not because customers only buy the cheapest product and not the one that's actually sustainable? Or those oil drills taking oil out of the ground just to pollute and not because people are desperate to fly into holiday and to drive their car to the supermarket 5 minutes away?
A lot of what those corporations do boils down to personal choice - and you can't really regulate them unless a decent amount of people is already doing those personal choices as "just making pollution really expensive" will result in massive price spikes for those kind of products and people will riot.
Indigo action alone can't fix this but without it an option is impossible since we'll never get laws supporting those actions
We should keep their brain, dick and balls so we can clone the billionaires (adult sized from the clone-0-matic) then before they wake up, we upload their mind, and we fuck them with their own dick! Hey if you collect enough you could open up an only fans Page!
That is a lie.
Thank God for trees. Amirite?
Who cares how much meat I eat when there's a billion cars, 2 billion factories and 1000 greedy billionaires burning the world to the ground?
ok
People can't think critically over why they prefer meat over vegetables. They just think they do it because hurr durr meat tastes better or you need protines.
If they actually think about the fact that they have been eating meat for every meal since they were a child they might understand that it is just a habit they have formed.
I strongly suggest to those people to try to have 1 dinner a week without meat or fish. It has nothing todo about taste and all about habits and what you are used to.
Try to challenge yourself a little bit and you might get a better perspective over these things.
