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.
Compost them first then you can eat the rich while also being vegan = Billions and billions of carbons.
Hooker spit. Lol. Imagine Jeff Bezos paying you hundreds of thousands to spit on him while trying to hide the fact that, you would gladly do it for free.
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
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.
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.
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.
But that first person could have an even bigger environmental impact by becoming Vegan instead of only eating chicken.
yes but if you actually convince someone who eats just chicken to go vegan it will have less of an effect if you actually convince a big red meat eater to limit to chicken.
You'd have a bigger impact by convincing 30% of the population to only have chicken, vs convincing 15% to go vegan.
Sure, and if we could only do one, we should choose accordingly. We can do both, simultanously. Exactly like how we don't have to choose between eating less meat and driving less cars.
This and the article seem like a great breakdown, thank you very much. I would have guessed chocolate would be somewhere in the middle, and I've never really thought about cheese in this context at all. I was surprised to see both of them so high up there.
This would suggest my sweet tooth is my biggest problem, at least, since beef is too expensive to be a common occurrence anyway
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)
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 :)
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.
To me the role of the "fake" stuff isn't to replace it as staples in my diet but to let me have some old comforts once in a while, or at least something to fill the gap. When you've been veg for a few years a fake chicken finger can do a decent job of scratching the itch for something like that, even if you know it's not the same
At least for me. Mileage varies depending on what you like about the original
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.
I hear you. I started buying lots of beyond burger patties from whole foods and I actually find them pretty delicious so I've typically buy them instead of ground beef. Unfortunately my wife keeps buying ground beef so I end up eating that occasionally but it's nothing to get worked up over.
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.
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.
It's insane how hard the cognitive dissonance hits. Everyone is trying to find excuses to justify their choices
I used to be a smoker several decades ago and didn't defend smoking as hard as people defend meat.
Some people have made eating meat and making fun of vegans their entire personality. They buy things and spend time posting on social media about it. It is basically their hobby. Really sad, honestly.
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.
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).
Meat production causes 25% of all GHGs in our atmosphere. Personal consumption, on this matter, is 100% the cause. No one is forcing anyone to eat meat on the staggering level North Americans do. If we as North Americans didn't demand so much cheap plastic shit to buy as part of our lifestyle, there would be less of it made, less of it shipped, fewer cargo ships, less GHG. Your beef isn't with people telling you that we consume too much, your beef is with the insurmountable prospect of convincing billions of people to cool it.
We're long past the point where focusing on just one or two sources of carbon is enough. Everything needs to be examined. We can choose a more sustainable diet AND curb mindless consumerism.
Also, I find the impossible/beyond burgers to be pretty good. I dunno what you're on about with "bug protein". At worst, they're made from yeast but plant material otherwise?
I don't think we can call the 18.5% of CO2 emissions that the meat industry creates "meager".
You're correct that the most effective way to tackle this is for governments to restrict the source, but you need to change people's habits too. Simply making meats more expensive isn't the entire problem.
This is an absolutely massive chunk of our emissions and it can not be left out of response to the crisis.
No, but you should feel guilty for the atrocity that you inflict in intelligent creatures. I don't understand why that does not even enter the equation for people. Even if you must insist that an animal's life is not worth the same as a human beings, that doesn't mean it is worthless. That does not mean you are morally entitled to make decisions that require vast cruelty. Your preference for the same three fucking animals over the tens of thousands of culinary plants available to you isn't more important than not raping animals, not mutilating animals, not traumatizing animals, not forcing the dependence of animals, not torturing and murdering intelligent creatures.
You realize this is included in a large chunk of the CO2 that companies produce, right? Do you think they simply spew CO2 into the air for funsies? They produce shit that people are buying. That production spits out CO2. A good chunk of the CO2 produced is from the meat industry. Most of our meat is produced in large scale farms. To get that meat, you need feed. That takes land and harvesting. Those combines don't run on hopes and dreams. Those run on fossil fuels. Then the feed has to get to where the meat is. That happens on trucks and barges which run on fossil fuels. Then once the meat is actually slaughtered, it is shipped out on trucks and barges which, again, run on fossil fuels.
But don't feel too guilty when eating a steak. But also don't bitch when steak becomes $40/lb when subsidies for the cattle industry are removed and the government also properly taxes CO2 emissions. In fact, given your comment, you should be actively advocating that to your representatives.
And lastly, Impossible meat is fucking pea protein. Where the fuck are you getting that it is made from insects? You sound like one of those conspiracy freaks who is constantly worried about being forced to eat bugs. Are bugs to icky for you? Are you not man enough to eat them because they are scary?
What do you think big companies produce to make CO2? What do you think the big barges are transporting? At the end of the day, companies make what consumers want. And the meat industry is a horrible contributor to climate change, not to talk about land and water usage. So say all you want to make you feel better, which is fine, but the facts are that we as a society need to eat less meat to be more sustainable. Eating meat twice a day is not necessary, and nor is it even common, both on a global and historical scale. It is a luxury that we have to think hard about whether we should reduce the use of.
Well that's no surprise. Raising animals for meat is horribly inefficient compared to plants.
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.
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?
Haven't we known this for a long time? With good peer reviewed studies?
The study this recent article is based on was published in 2014.
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?
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.
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 ;)
I dont understand how people who eat meat every single day don't feel disgusting. I feel horrible eating meat every day. I have more energy and feel lighter when I limit my meat eating to maybe once or twice a week. Plus my farts don't smell as awful when I'm eating mostly plant based things. It's cheaper too! Especially when I end up growing my own garden.
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.
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.
Never mind the fact cows release methane which is 25 times more warming than CO².
I'm not really sure the point your trying to make here.
Ok, but you can not eat beef and still not be a vegetarian
Eh, cows are the biggest contributor but all ruminants are applicable as another poster highlighted.
Also the study does include fish eaters too, as a separate dietary category.
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
This sounds like a balance. Is that balance still intact? Doesn't the combined effect of unprecedented scale of animal consumption and existing global warming necessitate a compensatory and proportional reduction of GHG?
I like eating meat, but I feel like this is not the complete picture.
One great option instead of going cold turkey is just to drastically reduce your meat intake. Eating red meat from cows and white meat for pigs also has a disproportionately large environmental footprint compared to say chickens or turkey. Chickens and turkeys are also fairly stupid and undeveloped from me consciousness perspective if that is your reasoning for going vegan, so one could argue that it is objectively less bad to eat a stupid bird/decendant from a dinosaur (they had their day) Rather than our mammalian cousins who may actually deserve to roam the earth unfettered aside from the occasional lion or hyena attack.
I digress.
That being said, humans have evolved over this millennia to occasionally or more often feed on the flesh of air vegetarian cousins. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, as many species that have existed and exist today are in fact carnivorous. It is of course the rapacious nature of mankind and its insatiable appetite for consuming as many resources possible that is the biggest problem, aside from our over abundant numbers that are largely responsible for wholesale destruction of the natural environment on our planet.
I have opted to reduce my meat intake by about 75% or so and to limit my red meat intake and mostly eat chicken and eggs which are interestingly don't directly cause the death of the chicken. You could opt to follow this strategy to help mitigate your environmental impact, or you can take it a step further and support your local small family farm by doing a direct purchase of meat from your local farmer of choice. That way you can have your meat pie and eat it too by subsidizing local Farmers over the giant agribusinesses that are really responsible for fucking over our planet.
If you have read this far thank you very much, I appreciate your interest in the subject. I grew up on a small family farm where we raised approximately 60 sheep every year and even though it was very sad to have them slaughtered, they were all grass-fed locally raised animals that never saw anything close to a feedlot. Well killing animals is never pretty, killing has been a core part of humanity since its inception including our ancestors like the chimpanzee.
One other thing, vegan meat substitute like impossible Burger is actually a really good option for burgers. Almost nobody in my family and friends who I've had tried them can even tell that they aren't really meat.
That being said, humans have evolved over this millennia to occasionally or more often feed on the flesh of air vegetarian cousins. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, as many species that have existed and exist today are in fact carnivorous.
Well killing animals is never pretty, killing has been a core part of humanity since its inception including our ancestors like the chimpanzee.
These are appeal to nature fallacies. Whether something is good or bad has nothing to do with what other species do, what happens in nature and what we've done in the past. The choice has to be made today in 2023 within your context (income, society, social circles, location, education level, etc.).
There is a huge difference between a Maasai tribe member in northern Kenia killing a cow for his family and a German dentist going to the supermarket and choosing to buy a killed cow instead of one of the other gazillion healthy, affordable, plant based options he has available to him at the store.
Good that you've reduced your intake by 75%, but how do you justify that 25% in your context?
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.
Better title "Eating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than not eating meat".
No, the title is correct as far as I can tell from quickly skimming the actual Nature article.
Unrelated rant - I hate the fact independent.co.uk hyperlinks the word 'study' which just searches it's own site for the fucking word 'study' rather than linking to the actual source data. Fucking shitstain practices.
I found the original article by plugging the independent article into ground.news. Fucking love that website.
Edit: what's more is that it's eating more than 100g of meat per day is 4 times more GHG than eating vegan. Eating <50g per day is about 2 times more than veganism.
The problem is the misuse of the word "vegan". Veganism is a moral philosophy. It is more like feminism than like vegetarianism. Veganism has to do with animal rights and liberation. That has consequences on the diet a person eats but also all other things a person does and doesn't do. None of these studies are concerned with or discuss the rights or experiences of animals, so they aren't about veganism. It's a relatively small thing except that veganism is so poorly understood, so extra diligence is always appreciated.
Jesus, thank you. It's hard to get to the actual studies about the environmental impact of dietary choices without being bombarded by vegan propaganda. And even this study doesn't take poultry and other small livestock into account and treats all meat as corn fed beef.
I've never said that the title is wrong, or the content is wrong. I just wanted to highlight that the focus should be on the "act" (eating) and not on the "being" (vegan vs not-vegan).
The graph you've pasted would look friendlier if instead of saying "meat-eaters" ... "vegans", would say something like "high meat consumption" ... "100% plant based". Grouping the actions and not the people.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
You don't need to cut meat out of your diet to make an impact!
Cut your meat intake down to just ONE meal a day. That's it! If everyone did that, it would make an absolutely tremendous impact.
Start noticing how often you eat meat. Many people eat meat for literally every single meal and don't even realize it, it's so ubiquitous in most societies.
One meal a week is better. Eating meat daily is pretty bad.
Yes, but people love their meat and cutting consumption down to 30% or 35% of what it is now would be HUGE.
Pretty much where I'm at now. Meat is really just a dinner thing and not every night. Got there mostly out of laziness and being broke
Very true, but vegans are still gonna shit on you for cutting out less that 100% of animal products from your life. Idk how they can be so desperate to be superior to others that they would actively discourage improving your lifestyle just because it could be even better
Vegans don't eat animals for the sake of the animals, because they believe killing them unnecessarily is morally wrong.
Saying you're only going to eat animals once a day is like saying you're going to halve the amount of violent crimes you commit and expecting praise for it.
It depends on wether you're actually concerned about the animals, or about yourself.
If you're concerned about the animals, 100 people reducing by 10% is exactly as good as 10 people reducing by 100%. The difference is, 10 people don't have to feel guilty. But no animal benefits from that.
As usual, the title is clickbait. It's not "eating meat" that produces 4 times more greenhouse gases, it's a high-meat diet. Big difference that is conveniently left out of the title to get more clicks.
For anyone interested, high-meat diet was defined as >100g meat per day.
To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
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.
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.
Speaking as someone who is plant based, it's a false dichotomy anyway. It's not "go vegan or eat lots of meat". People who don't share the vegan philosophy could just eat very little meat and make a huge difference to the planet, just like how I bike or walk to work but once in a while I drive.
I don't understand why everything has to be some lifestyle piece now. It's so all or nothing instead of taking the battles you can win when you can win them.
It's mostly an internet thing, especially a Reddit thing. I don't think it's as much a widespread culture as all that if you talk to folks who aren't terminally online.
I think you're talking about veganism exclusively and I'm more talking everything.
You can't just be someone who likes something or thinks something, it now has to be your lifestyle or part of you. You're not just a person who like riding bikes, your a cyclist and you have to strive to wear spandex and all that. I think it's pretty common when talking about phones where people will make the computer they keep in their pocket a statement about themselves.
Nah, I'm talking about everything. Tons of people still ride bikes for transport and don't identify as cyclists, or don't really care whether their phone is an android or iPhone. A large majority of people don't identify with little details of their lives like that, but when you go online into a specific topic there's a much higher chance of running into people who feel really strongly about it, because they're drawn to the topic and are participating in a subset of people who already tend to be really passionate about nerdy shit.
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.
You can do both
The first line in the article says a "new study." So are you sure it's not this paper? Also, have to say the paper title is kind of a duh moment.
Kind of like saying the best birth control is abstinence. Technically true, but most people are going to have kids anyway. As long as we stay around replacement rate, which most western countries are at or below, having kids is a good thing so that society can keep going as people (ideally) retire.
So while we're all still here, how can humans lessen our emissions. That's the question.
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.
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.
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
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
The worst part is neither are even remotely economically viable without massive subsidy. Just redirecting those subsidies to alternatives would solve 75% of emissions overnight.
In both of these cases, and in fact regarding a lot of things, climate activists are going at this TOTALLY FUCKING BACKWARDS.
OF COURSE we're boned, we asked people to actively make their own lives worse. We should have known that was never going to happen.
Whats the actual, practical solution? Science, same as it always has been. Lab grown meat. Electric vehicles & better urban transit. Renewable energy.
The solution is not to make people's lives worse but to design ways that will reduce emissions without requiring any actual sacrifice from everyday people (except higher prices). Because everyday people will not sacrifice. It will never happen.
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 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.
If you could tell the average American, with 100% certainty and undeniable proof that going vegan for a month would save the lives of 1,000 children, they would go out, buy as much meat as possible and eat it smugly in front of you and ask you repeatedly if it's triggering you.
…”than being vegan”? Look, I don’t care if you’re vegan and not and I’ll respect you if you are, but the title already makes this article sound biased and untrustworthy.
So triggered, so fast.
Study of greenhouse gas emission of different alimentation choices finds an expected result
this is biased and untrustworthy!
This is not how biases work, every result you don't like doesn't make the study biased
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.
There's an order-of-magnitude difference here. The worse case production of crops for human consumption comes out ahead even compared to best case production of animal products
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].
I'm a part time vegan and plant protein is quite a bit cheaper. Tofu costs nothing from the Asian shop and it's super versatile. It takes some time to learn how to cook.
Soy milk, beans, chickpeas and lentils are also very cheap.
It's just the beyond burgers and stuff that are horrendously expensive.
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.
Compost them first then you can eat the rich while also being vegan = Billions and billions of carbons.
Hooker spit. Lol. Imagine Jeff Bezos paying you hundreds of thousands to spit on him while trying to hide the fact that, you would gladly do it for free.
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
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.
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm
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.
But that first person could have an even bigger environmental impact by becoming Vegan instead of only eating chicken.
yes but if you actually convince someone who eats just chicken to go vegan it will have less of an effect if you actually convince a big red meat eater to limit to chicken.
You'd have a bigger impact by convincing 30% of the population to only have chicken, vs convincing 15% to go vegan.
Sure, and if we could only do one, we should choose accordingly. We can do both, simultanously. Exactly like how we don't have to choose between eating less meat and driving less cars.
Do you remember a source for that info? Or at least suggestions? I'm interested to read into it, but I'm not really sure what to even google for that
Our World in Data has a decent article about it: https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
Pic: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-768x690.png
This and the article seem like a great breakdown, thank you very much. I would have guessed chocolate would be somewhere in the middle, and I've never really thought about cheese in this context at all. I was surprised to see both of them so high up there.
This would suggest my sweet tooth is my biggest problem, at least, since beef is too expensive to be a common occurrence anyway
So nice to read a sensible comment in a sea of crazy talk.
The real takeaway should be that the Independent is complete garbage
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:
5 Minute Vegan Pasta Sauces (YT / Invidious)
Ultimate Vegan Chilli (YT / Invidious)
Enchiladas Verdes (YT / Invidious)
Ultimate Plant-Based Fried Chicken (YT / Invidious)
Mac & Cheez (YT / Invidious)
Wicked Lasagna (YT / Invidious)
Smash Tacos (YT / Invidious)
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.
To me the role of the "fake" stuff isn't to replace it as staples in my diet but to let me have some old comforts once in a while, or at least something to fill the gap. When you've been veg for a few years a fake chicken finger can do a decent job of scratching the itch for something like that, even if you know it's not the same
At least for me. Mileage varies depending on what you like about the original
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.
I hear you. I started buying lots of beyond burger patties from whole foods and I actually find them pretty delicious so I've typically buy them instead of ground beef. Unfortunately my wife keeps buying ground beef so I end up eating that occasionally but it's nothing to get worked up over.
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.
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.
It's insane how hard the cognitive dissonance hits. Everyone is trying to find excuses to justify their choices
I used to be a smoker several decades ago and didn't defend smoking as hard as people defend meat.
Some people have made eating meat and making fun of vegans their entire personality. They buy things and spend time posting on social media about it. It is basically their hobby. Really sad, honestly.
Nope, gotta blame "the cooperations" because God forbid you admit cooperations only pollute because of your own demand.
Animal agriculture is a particularly good example here because literally nothing will ever make meat sustainable (except growing it in a lab).
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
Right there with ya
How bout both? :)
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.
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).
Meat production causes 25% of all GHGs in our atmosphere. Personal consumption, on this matter, is 100% the cause. No one is forcing anyone to eat meat on the staggering level North Americans do. If we as North Americans didn't demand so much cheap plastic shit to buy as part of our lifestyle, there would be less of it made, less of it shipped, fewer cargo ships, less GHG. Your beef isn't with people telling you that we consume too much, your beef is with the insurmountable prospect of convincing billions of people to cool it.
We're long past the point where focusing on just one or two sources of carbon is enough. Everything needs to be examined. We can choose a more sustainable diet AND curb mindless consumerism.
Also, I find the impossible/beyond burgers to be pretty good. I dunno what you're on about with "bug protein". At worst, they're made from yeast but plant material otherwise?
I don't think we can call the 18.5% of CO2 emissions that the meat industry creates "meager".
You're correct that the most effective way to tackle this is for governments to restrict the source, but you need to change people's habits too. Simply making meats more expensive isn't the entire problem.
This is an absolutely massive chunk of our emissions and it can not be left out of response to the crisis.
No, but you should feel guilty for the atrocity that you inflict in intelligent creatures. I don't understand why that does not even enter the equation for people. Even if you must insist that an animal's life is not worth the same as a human beings, that doesn't mean it is worthless. That does not mean you are morally entitled to make decisions that require vast cruelty. Your preference for the same three fucking animals over the tens of thousands of culinary plants available to you isn't more important than not raping animals, not mutilating animals, not traumatizing animals, not forcing the dependence of animals, not torturing and murdering intelligent creatures.
You realize this is included in a large chunk of the CO2 that companies produce, right? Do you think they simply spew CO2 into the air for funsies? They produce shit that people are buying. That production spits out CO2. A good chunk of the CO2 produced is from the meat industry. Most of our meat is produced in large scale farms. To get that meat, you need feed. That takes land and harvesting. Those combines don't run on hopes and dreams. Those run on fossil fuels. Then the feed has to get to where the meat is. That happens on trucks and barges which run on fossil fuels. Then once the meat is actually slaughtered, it is shipped out on trucks and barges which, again, run on fossil fuels.
But don't feel too guilty when eating a steak. But also don't bitch when steak becomes $40/lb when subsidies for the cattle industry are removed and the government also properly taxes CO2 emissions. In fact, given your comment, you should be actively advocating that to your representatives.
And lastly, Impossible meat is fucking pea protein. Where the fuck are you getting that it is made from insects? You sound like one of those conspiracy freaks who is constantly worried about being forced to eat bugs. Are bugs to icky for you? Are you not man enough to eat them because they are scary?
What do you think big companies produce to make CO2? What do you think the big barges are transporting? At the end of the day, companies make what consumers want. And the meat industry is a horrible contributor to climate change, not to talk about land and water usage. So say all you want to make you feel better, which is fine, but the facts are that we as a society need to eat less meat to be more sustainable. Eating meat twice a day is not necessary, and nor is it even common, both on a global and historical scale. It is a luxury that we have to think hard about whether we should reduce the use of.
This has been known for eons, hasn't it?
For as long as the energy pyramid has been a thing, I suppose.
Well that's no surprise. Raising animals for meat is horribly inefficient compared to plants.
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.
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?
Haven't we known this for a long time? With good peer reviewed studies?
The study this recent article is based on was published in 2014.
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?
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.
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 ;)
I dont understand how people who eat meat every single day don't feel disgusting. I feel horrible eating meat every day. I have more energy and feel lighter when I limit my meat eating to maybe once or twice a week. Plus my farts don't smell as awful when I'm eating mostly plant based things. It's cheaper too! Especially when I end up growing my own garden.
Sounds like a medical issue.
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.
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.
IPCC on methan
Never mind the fact cows release methane which is 25 times more warming than CO².
I'm not really sure the point your trying to make here.
Ok, but you can not eat beef and still not be a vegetarian
Eh, cows are the biggest contributor but all ruminants are applicable as another poster highlighted.
Also the study does include fish eaters too, as a separate dietary category.
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
This sounds like a balance. Is that balance still intact? Doesn't the combined effect of unprecedented scale of animal consumption and existing global warming necessitate a compensatory and proportional reduction of GHG?
I like eating meat, but I feel like this is not the complete picture.
1000 year graph for methane
One great option instead of going cold turkey is just to drastically reduce your meat intake. Eating red meat from cows and white meat for pigs also has a disproportionately large environmental footprint compared to say chickens or turkey. Chickens and turkeys are also fairly stupid and undeveloped from me consciousness perspective if that is your reasoning for going vegan, so one could argue that it is objectively less bad to eat a stupid bird/decendant from a dinosaur (they had their day) Rather than our mammalian cousins who may actually deserve to roam the earth unfettered aside from the occasional lion or hyena attack.
I digress.
That being said, humans have evolved over this millennia to occasionally or more often feed on the flesh of air vegetarian cousins. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, as many species that have existed and exist today are in fact carnivorous. It is of course the rapacious nature of mankind and its insatiable appetite for consuming as many resources possible that is the biggest problem, aside from our over abundant numbers that are largely responsible for wholesale destruction of the natural environment on our planet.
I have opted to reduce my meat intake by about 75% or so and to limit my red meat intake and mostly eat chicken and eggs which are interestingly don't directly cause the death of the chicken. You could opt to follow this strategy to help mitigate your environmental impact, or you can take it a step further and support your local small family farm by doing a direct purchase of meat from your local farmer of choice. That way you can have your meat pie and eat it too by subsidizing local Farmers over the giant agribusinesses that are really responsible for fucking over our planet.
If you have read this far thank you very much, I appreciate your interest in the subject. I grew up on a small family farm where we raised approximately 60 sheep every year and even though it was very sad to have them slaughtered, they were all grass-fed locally raised animals that never saw anything close to a feedlot. Well killing animals is never pretty, killing has been a core part of humanity since its inception including our ancestors like the chimpanzee.
One other thing, vegan meat substitute like impossible Burger is actually a really good option for burgers. Almost nobody in my family and friends who I've had tried them can even tell that they aren't really meat.
These are appeal to nature fallacies. Whether something is good or bad has nothing to do with what other species do, what happens in nature and what we've done in the past. The choice has to be made today in 2023 within your context (income, society, social circles, location, education level, etc.).
There is a huge difference between a Maasai tribe member in northern Kenia killing a cow for his family and a German dentist going to the supermarket and choosing to buy a killed cow instead of one of the other gazillion healthy, affordable, plant based options he has available to him at the store.
Good that you've reduced your intake by 75%, but how do you justify that 25% in your context?
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.
Everyone can stop support what is bad.
Better title "Eating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than not eating meat".
No, the title is correct as far as I can tell from quickly skimming the actual Nature article.
Unrelated rant - I hate the fact independent.co.uk hyperlinks the word 'study' which just searches it's own site for the fucking word 'study' rather than linking to the actual source data. Fucking shitstain practices.
I found the original article by plugging the independent article into ground.news. Fucking love that website.
Edit: what's more is that it's eating more than 100g of meat per day is 4 times more GHG than eating vegan. Eating <50g per day is about 2 times more than veganism.
The problem is the misuse of the word "vegan". Veganism is a moral philosophy. It is more like feminism than like vegetarianism. Veganism has to do with animal rights and liberation. That has consequences on the diet a person eats but also all other things a person does and doesn't do. None of these studies are concerned with or discuss the rights or experiences of animals, so they aren't about veganism. It's a relatively small thing except that veganism is so poorly understood, so extra diligence is always appreciated.
Jesus, thank you. It's hard to get to the actual studies about the environmental impact of dietary choices without being bombarded by vegan propaganda. And even this study doesn't take poultry and other small livestock into account and treats all meat as corn fed beef.
I've never said that the title is wrong, or the content is wrong. I just wanted to highlight that the focus should be on the "act" (eating) and not on the "being" (vegan vs not-vegan). The graph you've pasted would look friendlier if instead of saying "meat-eaters" ... "vegans", would say something like "high meat consumption" ... "100% plant based". Grouping the actions and not the people.
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.
Dairy industry
Egg industry
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.
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.
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.
Nah Corporations and industries creates 1000x more greenhouse gases than meat and agriculture.
There sure is a lot of effort being made to obscure the fact that most greenhouse gasses come from industrial sources.
Like factory slaughterhouses.
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.
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
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)
You don't need to cut meat out of your diet to make an impact!
Cut your meat intake down to just ONE meal a day. That's it! If everyone did that, it would make an absolutely tremendous impact.
Start noticing how often you eat meat. Many people eat meat for literally every single meal and don't even realize it, it's so ubiquitous in most societies.
One meal a week is better. Eating meat daily is pretty bad.
Yes, but people love their meat and cutting consumption down to 30% or 35% of what it is now would be HUGE.
Pretty much where I'm at now. Meat is really just a dinner thing and not every night. Got there mostly out of laziness and being broke
Very true, but vegans are still gonna shit on you for cutting out less that 100% of animal products from your life. Idk how they can be so desperate to be superior to others that they would actively discourage improving your lifestyle just because it could be even better
Vegans don't eat animals for the sake of the animals, because they believe killing them unnecessarily is morally wrong.
Saying you're only going to eat animals once a day is like saying you're going to halve the amount of violent crimes you commit and expecting praise for it.
It depends on wether you're actually concerned about the animals, or about yourself.
If you're concerned about the animals, 100 people reducing by 10% is exactly as good as 10 people reducing by 100%. The difference is, 10 people don't have to feel guilty. But no animal benefits from that.
On the flip side, meat tastes 20x better than vegetables.
What shitty vegetables are you eating, Mr/Mrs Coronary?
Meat tastes like nothing special if it's not salted, marinated or eaten with gravy.
As usual, the title is clickbait. It's not "eating meat" that produces 4 times more greenhouse gases, it's a high-meat diet. Big difference that is conveniently left out of the title to get more clicks.
For anyone interested, high-meat diet was defined as >100g meat per day.
Here is the IPCC take on it:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
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
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation#:~:text=Aviation%20accounts%20for%20around%202.5,to%20climate%20change%20is%20higher.
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.
Speaking as someone who is plant based, it's a false dichotomy anyway. It's not "go vegan or eat lots of meat". People who don't share the vegan philosophy could just eat very little meat and make a huge difference to the planet, just like how I bike or walk to work but once in a while I drive.
I don't understand why everything has to be some lifestyle piece now. It's so all or nothing instead of taking the battles you can win when you can win them.
It's mostly an internet thing, especially a Reddit thing. I don't think it's as much a widespread culture as all that if you talk to folks who aren't terminally online.
I think you're talking about veganism exclusively and I'm more talking everything.
You can't just be someone who likes something or thinks something, it now has to be your lifestyle or part of you. You're not just a person who like riding bikes, your a cyclist and you have to strive to wear spandex and all that. I think it's pretty common when talking about phones where people will make the computer they keep in their pocket a statement about themselves.
Nah, I'm talking about everything. Tons of people still ride bikes for transport and don't identify as cyclists, or don't really care whether their phone is an android or iPhone. A large majority of people don't identify with little details of their lives like that, but when you go online into a specific topic there's a much higher chance of running into people who feel really strongly about it, because they're drawn to the topic and are participating in a subset of people who already tend to be really passionate about nerdy shit.
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.
Or just regulate these big factory farms more. Stop subsidizing these things Make it more expensive and people won't buy as much.
“And yet, eating a vegan diet still produces greenhouse gasses! Curious!”
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.
You can do both
The first line in the article says a "new study." So are you sure it's not this paper? Also, have to say the paper title is kind of a duh moment.
A 2023 news article about a study published in 2014.
no
lower than I would expect
Having fewer children is the number one thing you can do. And it's not even close.
I mean, do the other things anyway if you like. They can't hurt. They may even save you money. But they won't save an overpopulated planet.
It's not "one thing" option, you can do most of those, even all of them.
So what should I do with this extra kid?
Kind of like saying the best birth control is abstinence. Technically true, but most people are going to have kids anyway. As long as we stay around replacement rate, which most western countries are at or below, having kids is a good thing so that society can keep going as people (ideally) retire. So while we're all still here, how can humans lessen our emissions. That's the question.
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.
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
...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
The worst part is neither are even remotely economically viable without massive subsidy. Just redirecting those subsidies to alternatives would solve 75% of emissions overnight.
In both of these cases, and in fact regarding a lot of things, climate activists are going at this TOTALLY FUCKING BACKWARDS.
OF COURSE we're boned, we asked people to actively make their own lives worse. We should have known that was never going to happen.
Whats the actual, practical solution? Science, same as it always has been. Lab grown meat. Electric vehicles & better urban transit. Renewable energy.
The solution is not to make people's lives worse but to design ways that will reduce emissions without requiring any actual sacrifice from everyday people (except higher prices). Because everyday people will not sacrifice. It will never happen.
I wouldn't go as far as say that deforestation would stop since half of it is for products not for animals, like soybeans and palm oil.
"80% of the world's soybean crop is fed to livestock, especially for beef, chicken, egg and dairy production" - WWF
Ok I didn't know that.
Both are used for animal feed, and the vast tracts of no longer needed crop land would displace other demand.
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 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.
If you could tell the average American, with 100% certainty and undeniable proof that going vegan for a month would save the lives of 1,000 children, they would go out, buy as much meat as possible and eat it smugly in front of you and ask you repeatedly if it's triggering you.
Thank you for reducing your meat consumption. I know you can go all the way with it.
…”than being vegan”? Look, I don’t care if you’re vegan and not and I’ll respect you if you are, but the title already makes this article sound biased and untrustworthy.
So triggered, so fast.
Study of greenhouse gas emission of different alimentation choices finds an expected result
This is not how biases work, every result you don't like doesn't make the study biased
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.
There's an order-of-magnitude difference here. The worse case production of crops for human consumption comes out ahead even compared to best case production of animal products
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm
In terms of cost:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
In terms of biogas, here's a video looking at hog farming and talks about the problems with biogas at this point in the video:
https://youtu.be/WsUNylsiDH8?t=825
I'm a part time vegan and plant protein is quite a bit cheaper. Tofu costs nothing from the Asian shop and it's super versatile. It takes some time to learn how to cook.
Soy milk, beans, chickpeas and lentils are also very cheap.
It's just the beyond burgers and stuff that are horrendously expensive.
I thought the number was higher.
I'm enough of a cu*t as it is. If I went vegan, people wouldn't stand me, I just think I'd lose the friends I have left.
I do b fartin when I eat meat /s