Eating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than being vegan, landmark study finds

BlackRose@slrpnk.net to World News@lemmy.world – 681 points –
Eating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than being vegan, study finds
independent.co.uk
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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.

Vegetarianism is totally awesome and you shouldn't listen to purists who nag you about it.

Love how you’re getting downvoted for promoting a vegetarian diet in a thread about…eating less meat lol, I guess there are more ex-Redditors here than I realized.

Nothin like taking an all or nothing stance on someone elses diet.

People who eat meat are taking a pretty all or nothing stance on animal lives, a diet isn't just a diet when victims are involved.

Its a meat eat meat world my friend. Being my dinner is better than the carnivor that eats you alive and toys with your innards as it enjoys your screams of pain.

The circle of life ends in death and the laws of nature demands consumption.

That doesn't work when we're breeding them by the billions specifically to kill them, you aren't saving anyone from anything.

But there would have been dozens of other species using the resources and slaughtering each other as I said above.

It would be the same scale of slaughter, just spread out and brutal as described above.

The meat industry has problems that should be discussed, but taking a moral stance of eating meat is evil is a most privileged delusional take.

No it would not, wild predators cannot set up factory farms.

Killing others when you can easily avoid it is clearly evil.

We can just eat plants.

What do you think wild predators eat?

Again, the delusional privilege is dripping out of your comment. Everybody can just eat plants...

We have a choice, they do not, we can choose not to breed and kill animals just because we like how they taste.

Why choose to be cruel when we can easily avoid it?

Yes we can just eat plants.

Yea, I've entertained the delusion as far as I care to.

Enjoy making 0 progress socially in the name of veganism.

You haven't responded to any of the points I've made.

Just calling someone delusional without saying why you think that doesn't work.

It could be meat eaters or strict vegans, who knows?

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:

  • 0: eggs from caged hens, not sold anywhere legally.
  • 1: eggs from uncaged hens but raised indoors, very difficult to find.
  • 2: eggs from uncaged hens and raised outdoors, easy to find.
  • 3: eggs from uncaged hens, raised outdoors and feed with natural food, without pesticides and shit, easy to find.

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.

They still kill all their male chicks right after birth, the hen after ~18 months (lifespan up to 10 Years)

2: eggs from uncaged hens and raised outdoors, easy to find.

We have similar categories, however our laws leave a lot to be desired. Apparently a huge indoor shed with a tiny door to a small outdoor area qualifies for this category because in theory, the hens could take a look outside.

I hope, your regulations are better worded than ours.

The cruel practices are standard all over the world, not just the US.

Exploiting animals for profit is never gonna be humane.

Yes, animal cruelty is a real problem. But I'd say the message then is "choose responsibly the source of your milk and eggs", not necesarilly jump-full-vegan

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.

If you look closer at the ways animals in those industrial settings are treated, it can be hard to stomach.

Including in Europe?

Yes. Even the legally allowed methods aren't exactly great and lack of supervision regularly leads to much worse conditions than even that.

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