mmmm that does sound good. Man I haven’t bothered my ass to cook something properly in so long.
Really amusing thread with a misleading use of statistics.
First, usmccds423 proved that more water in the US goes to agriculture than to livestock. But that doesn’t prove that a vegan diet relies on more water than an omnivore diet. The fact is that much of that water going to agriculture then goes to the maintenance of livestock (the livestock numbers don’t account for that fact). Moreover, there are macroeconomic issues at play that skew the statistics. Americans eat a lot of McDonalds burgers, and McDonalds beef overwhelmingly comes from Australian cows. Also, the fact that livestock uses far less water in total than agriculture in the US is based on the fact that the average American diet includes more plant based sources than livestock. So there’s a proportionality argument at play that if livestock were all but eliminated, the increase of water going to agriculture would be (a) less than the amount that currently goes to livestock, and (b) would satisfy an equal or greater amount of caloric value than livestock.
Second, cloned meat and lab meat are functionally the same. Where do people think cloned meat is replicated?
Third, this link might provide some useful comparisons about water expenditures for different foods. This Is How Much Water It Takes To Make Your Favorite Foods | HuffPost Impact [yeah, it’s the huffpo, but the NGO it cites to is credible and transparent]
It’s worth noting that a vegan could eat in such a way that they use more water than an omnivore. A pound of nuts creates roughly the same water expenditure as a pound of beef. Then again, does anyone eat a pound of nuts a day?
DoubleDuce’s arguments are also somewhat misguided. Yes, agriculture is fueled by fossil fuels, but without going into the research, there’s a compelling argument that livestock proportionally use more fossil fuels as a result of 2nd law of thermodynamics. And while water is a renewable resource, that doesn’t mean that water is an easily useable resource. It’s economically more feasible (and ecologically wiser) to keep water usage efficient and low. California is learning about that right now.
And yes, lots of bugs/pests are killed for agricultural purposes. But if a lot of that agriculture is built on the need to feed livestock. Reduce livestock and you reduce the agriculture. Sure, you’ve got to increase the agricultural output somewhat to replace the livestock, but it wouldn’t be as much as it takes to feed livestock (this isn’t a 1:1 ratio situation). Remember, calories are a measure of energy, and its more energy efficient to put plants straight into humans than to put them into animals and then humans.
Full disclosure: I like my meats. I don’t like statistical misreadings.
I don’t think anyone said that. I certainly did not. Posting water usage in the U.S. was in direct response to:
Clearly the above statement is not accurate.
Again, I don’t believe this was disputed by anyone. Obviously, water used to irrigate crops for livestock feed can (or should) be considered water usage by livestock. The point that has been made, like 5 times now, is that replacing meat in 7+ billion people’s diets would simply shift water needs from irrigation for livestock feed to irrigation for human feed needs. Perhaps water demands will decrease for agricultural needs if this occurred, I’ve no idea how demand would change.
As far as the rest of that paragraph goes, sounds fine, but is certainly debatable (regarding proportionality).
Not really sure what your point is here? Cloned meat, lab-grown meat, and regular ol meat are all functionally the same. Cloned cows go mooooooo, lab-grown beef does not. Either way, Vegan’s aren’t eating it.
How do you know it’s not a 1:1 ratio or worse? I mean, a 6oz and a 6oz head of lettuce aren’t doing the same thing for me…
The problem here is lumping everything together. I’ve noted that factory farming is bad plant or animal. I’ve noted I avoid both where plausible. However the notion that the most ethical and sustainable diet is necessarily a vegan one is bunk. There is a lot of grass land where animals can be grazed but plant farming isn’t feasible so the 2 things aren’t entirely mutually exclusive. Animals can also be used to help rebuild the soil from too much plant harvesting. Animals are part of the best path available.
I buy happily raised humanly treated grass fed cows from a neighbor. I keep chickens for eggs and they run around all day and eat bugs (I wonder what the bug to egg ratio is, hah). While I don’t do everything I possibly could to minimize suffering and maximize sustainability, I certainly do put some money and time into it. I also have a heavy health focus which is the other reason I choose to eat like I do.
As an aside: you should also note that many animals can process calories the human digestive system cannot. Most importantly cellulose. It is more efficient to feed grass to a cow and then eat the cow than to just eat the grass.
This thread has taken a funny turn fueled by republican cognitive dissonnance.
Does anyone here really think the amount of food, water, energy, etc needed to raise a cattle is even comparable to the amount needed to get a similar amount of protein or energy directly from the land?
If you want to see for yourself that meat has a much worse environmental impact than vegetarian diet, go see a life cycle analysis (LCA). LCA is a widespread and well-known science or method with a large community that has been created to take everything into account into the calculation of environnemental impact. It is used globally to be able to sort options in term of environnmental impact.
I don’t care about any blowhard jerkoff here unrelated background, whatever the fuck some one guy wrote or any inept reasonning about how finally eating meat takes less ressource than being vegan by taking into account something that wasn’t considered.
But what do you people from socially backward places would know about that, mostly you don’t even think global warming is for real. Of course people don’t know about this stuff where you all live.
“republican” - yeah, no. Not at all republican.
" eating meat takes less resource than being vegan" - I don’t think anyone here made that claim. But land efficiency and negative environmental impact aren’t the same thing. You can be wildly inefficient with land while being environmentally green, sustainable, and humane.
“mostly you don’t even think global warming is for real” - strike 3. Also one of the strangest, most irrelevant straw-man arguments I’ve ever seen on here, and that’s impressive.
That’s a typical Jasmincar post for you… Half of it is irrelevant nonsense and the other half doesn’t even make sense.
Talk about cognitive dissonance, this is the guy that think Hafthor is just alright.
I thought you were becoming an engineer?
Okay.
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He’s fascinating, isn’t he? So weird and so angry
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I can address your points too.
You can’t be wildly inefficient and be sustainable, human and environmentally green with about 9 billion people on the planet. Sustainability is a concept that exists because we are 9 billion.
In your posts you aren’t even comparing apples to apples. Meat always loses vs the same need fulfilled from vegan food in every category for scenarios that are not exaggeratedly mismatched (for example canned dried tomatoes from china vs an animal that came to die in your backyard and would be wasted anyway). You could as well go with vegan all the time.
The other 3-4 posts above are actually impertinent. Well I guess these responses mean the debate is over and you at least learned something. Just look up an LCA and stop the rambling.
You don’t even know how many people are on the planet…
You’ve just made it painfully obvious you don’t even know what sustainable means. According to you a forrest isn’t sustainable because forest doesn’t produce enough food to feed the planet.
This just in: jasmincar believes the way to be more sustainable is to clear cut all the forests and plant crops.
What if producing vegan food requires animals to exist on the land so, you know, the soil remains capable of producing the crops?
Or what about raising animals on land unsuitable for agriculture?
Meat loses.
Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present. You can go check that along with LCA. Not meeting the needs of the planet doesn’t meet the criteria for being sustainable in the commonly used sense. Sustainability as something that can still go on for generation if we are let’s say 10 millions on the planet is not something that is relevant to any issues.
9 billion is the population projection in 2050, don’t know why I wrote this but it is an error. The point is still the same, so that’s just another irrelevant point from the mob.
Jasmincar: “Well I guess these responses mean the debate is over”
USMC: You don’t even have your facts right…
Jasmincar: “…that’s just another irrelevant point”
It seems to me, giving about zero fucks about this topic, that you’re missing a pretty crucial part of the definition of “sustainable development”.
Again, I literally do not care, but how does a vegan diet fit the full definition of “sustainable development” if soil and rainforest are destroyed in the process of feeding 7.5 billion people 100% vegetation? That sounds like cognitive dissonance to me.
Also, as a side note, we import a lot more plant products than meat products into the United States:
Yet as I pointed out earlier we use a lot more water on agriculture than livestock in the U.S.
Seems sustainable…