If you know much about agriculture, this question has an almost certain answer. The contrast of energy and resource expense between plants and animals is staggering, even if you’re comparing a less demanding animal like chicken. You can refrigerate, process, and ship many plants by sea, truck, and plane and they won’t catch up to animal foods.
We’re also not seeing a clear economic picture in Canada and the USA because subsidies/tax breaks/etc can significantly transform the final costs of something like milk or beef in a grocery store.
My kids like the fake meats, but I’m pretty content with whole grains and legumes covering most of my protein requirements. Once you get over meat, you almost never think about it and the substitutes seem unnecessarily unhealthy (they’re kind of like savoury junk food with a ton of salt and saturated fat).
I think it’s also important to acknowledge how filthy, torturous, destructive, and unethical the vast majority of animal agriculture activities are.
* Order vegetarian when eating out. Non-western cuisines do incredible food that doesn't have any meat in it.
* Only buy meat + eggs from a local farm that effectively does things "small batch". Their farm is open for visitors and you can see pigs and chickens that actually look happy. The pigs even run over to you when they smell you and you can see their cute little tails wigglin'.
* Try to eat less in general.
I don't know if I'll ever personally break from eating meat. But I do think that paying prices that are actually related to the cost of raising the animals, and doing so from a place that actually lets them live a pleasant life before slaughter feels better.
> Their farm is open for visitors and you can see pigs and chickens that actually look happy. The pigs even run over to you when they smell you and you can see their cute little tails wigglin'.
That reminded me of a childhood memory. We didn't have a farm, but we had few animals (sheeps, chickens, rabbits). One year my father decided to buy a piglet from a spring fair. Me and my brothers were thrilled, it was playfull and curious (not like sheep, who were rather booring), kinda like a dog. My father also really liked to take care of it. I remember that he even applied some soothing cream on it after a rather bad sunburn. But in the end it was still bought and raised for meat. My father had always been a guy that slaughtered animals for other people in the neighborhoud, pigs also. But this one really got under his skin. He did still slaughter it, but sweared to never raise and kill a pig himself. It reportedly was kinda like killing a puppy.
Yes, my family raised pigs and it became unbearable. They were smarter than any dog I had met at the time. They were kind and curious animals. They loved to play and had favourite foods.
After a few years we had a bad slaughter day in which one pig survived a bullet to the head and started making some of the most horrifying movements and screams I’ve ever heard.
We were all aware that we’d killed a sentient creature that we cared for. Not much unlike killing our dogs. We talked about it several times over days and weeks, here and there over months, then not much from then on. We never got pigs again.
Somehow it took me another 15 years to stop eating animals. It blows my mind that I was able to keep it up after that day – it was so gory and brutal, and simultaneously entirely unnecessary. We ate those pigs because we liked it, not because we needed it.
The other upside to this(at least here in UK) is that it's easy to find a restaurant that serves local meat and produce, but it's extremely hard to find local meat in stores - even "butchers"(I put that in quotes, since I firmly believe that 90% of British "butchers" are basically cosplaying as such and are nothing more than stores that sell factory-prepared meat in a store meant to look like a traditional butcher store) are not that keen to tell you where the meat is actually from - when pushed you might find out that your local "butcher" is actually selling meat raised and slaughtered in Denmark or Poland.
There is a vegan activist from the UK named Ed Winters who has some damning content about abattoirs and animal agriculture in general in the country. He’s very eloquent and diligent about sourcing good data, and it seems as though your suspicions about butchers selling questionable meat is astute.
Where I live it’s not better. The average piece of meat comes from a slice of hell in some feedlot or crowded enclosure, labelling laws make it look okay, and people carry on and eat it. Butchers selling nicer meat have variable suppliers and, when I was eating meat, I’d notice over time that supplier quality was gradually decreasing and never increasing. Like they started with these great ideals and eventually had to give in and be able to reliably get a product and a decent margin off of it. Meat is a major casualty of the race to the bottom.
One advantage to US "exurban? not-quite-rural? not sure what to call it but 30-50 miles from a big city" living is you can actually find smallish farms that do everything on-site and buy from them.
If you're willing to use freezers you can even stock up for quite a long time (some places will even let you pick the cow and process it for you and give you all the meat).
I'm curious about this but the article doesn't really go into any depth summarizing things.
For example:
> Grass-fed beef seems like the environmentally-friendly option. Hormone-free chickens do too. Yet intensive livestock farming in feedlots often has a lower environmental cost, despite a higher price when it comes to animal welfare.
I'm not an expert in this space, but I do know that terms like "organic", "grass fed", "free range", and others can have wildly different meanings depending on the farm and how they're regulated. For example, "free range" doesn't necessarily mean that chickens are able to walk around a farm; it just means that there is "access" to an outdoor space. The links I clicked on in that article didn't seem to really account for any of this and set up a comparison. The one about feed seems to compare the environmental impact of mass feeding with "organic" feed compared to industrial feed. But that's not applicable to my situation.
>* Only buy meat + eggs from a local farm that effectively does things "small batch". Their farm is open for visitors and you can see pigs and chickens that actually look happy. The pigs even run over to you when they smell you and you can see their cute little tails wigglin'.
I understand this as an ethical argument, but are you assuming any "small batch" operation is more sustainable?
I can't imagine it not being sustainable, no. Farms that grow all kinds of crops and raise many different kinds animals are sophisticated systems, and humans have learned over centuries how to best utilize them in ways that don't pollute rivers or emit incredible amounts of methane. The reason why they don't work in much of the modern world is because they don't optimize their output for maximum pounds of beef that gets ultimately sold to McDonald's, for example.
I was doing something like this last year when it hit me how bizarre it was that I wanted to see happy animals at farms when the intent was to kill them for the sole purpose of eating them. Like, what do I care if they’re happy if I’m content to take that all away from them? Why is it logical to prefer they’re happy up until the moment they’re killed – do I think their experience matters? If so, why would I kill them? If not, why does it matter if they’re happy?
If I care about their experience it seems really bizarre to kill them unless I absolutely need to. So far I’ve found no evidence that I do need to, and I’ve actually come to enjoy not eating them. I’ve become far better at cooking and it’s way easier to afford high quality ingredients.
I genuinely believe it’s great that you prefer to source food from places that at least make an effort to provide better experiences to the animals. That alone is a huge step forward for animals as well as people. I hope more and more people make the same effort.
Everybody does die, but the animals we farm die on a schedule predetermined from the moment they're bred to be killed. That's not equivalent to the way humans tend to die, in accordance with our intent to have agency and opportunity and so on before fate befalls us. So, humans do die and that's inevitable, but we generally live without a knife on our throats many years before we'd naturally die. Animals on the other hand are farmed to their prime and killed, or used for milk or eggs until their production slows. Then they are killed, again, without any agency or opportunity to live in accordance with their own nature. They live by our desires, die by our desires, and generally suffer immensely along the way. That doesn't sit well with me.
As for our happiness, why does eating meat bring anyone happiness? If it's simple, fleeting pleasure at the cost of a sentient creature's life, it doesn't seem worth it. Pleasure is nice too, but there are better things and better ways to find pleasure than through consumption. Really, the world is filled with countless ways to enjoy myself that don't require the suffering or killing of sentient creatures.
Eating all kinds of foods brings me happiness. They also nourish me better than meat, so meat isn't even necessary. Meat is one small group of foods, and everything else is this massive world of other foods to enjoy. They almost all come at a smaller cost than meat does, financially, environmentally, and psychologically speaking.
That's the gist of it. I get a lot of pleasure from caring for animals. I take time out on my morning walk to pet cats, watch the birds, so on. I dive in the ocean to see what the marine life is doing, record footage to share with people. These things bring me far more joy than a pork chop or a steak. So why choose the steak? If I'm to do that, I have to pretend that it doesn't carry the environmental and external costs of suffering and death. I have to tell myself that I wouldn't rather care for that cow. That's not true of any animal. I'd rather it had a chance to live and thrive, just like I want to.
Some people believe animals don't have the capacity to suffer and that they're lower beings than humans. I see no evidence to support that, other than the very weak "we can't possibly know" or "they aren't as intelligent". These are irrelevant to me. They are more like us than they are different in the vast majority of ways. Hell, we can live with pig lungs in our bodies. An octopus can solve puzzles, as can a raven. Cows mourn when their calfs are taken away. Dogs develop rich relationship with their families, human or otherwise.
You can say no, none of this is evidence that animals are like humans, or that they're sentient. But again, I don't see much evidence suggesting they aren't.
So, the logic is that animals suffering and dying to get on my plate doesn't make me happy. It brings me a lot of sadness. I enjoy other foods just as much, so that then is the logical path forward for me.
I don't criticize others for eating animals. I did for a long time. I raised animals, I hunted them, I fished for them, all of that. It took me almost 40 years to arrive here. If you eat meat and you don't care if animals live or die, suffer or otherwise, that's your call and I'm not for a moment condemning anyone's choices or beliefs.
Frustrating, no. Half the people in the US couldn't afford food if the costs weren't low. Paying subsidies is a way to keep labor costs low while keeping people fed.
Most people have long since forgotten about all the ways the American food system has been engineered over the years. In a way that's a success because things like famine are unthinkable to the average American. It's something that happens in "some other country."
It's part of the disconnect that industrialization and urbanization has brought. People don't really understand agriculture or agriculture policy anymore.
Things like adding iodine to salt; iron, thiamin, and niacin to bread; extra vitamin D to milk. Federal stockpiles of various types of food from grain to cheese. All done to improve the general health and wellbeing, and as a measure of insurance in the event of war or disaster.
The only thing most people on the internet seem to know about today is the old politician's cry of "We're paying farmers not to grow food!" Yeah, well, there's a reason for that. When the farmers go out of business, you have no food.
It's not ideal. It's not perfect. But it's worked, and has kept America fat and happy for almost a century. Try to understand more than what's right in front of you.
Ok, but maybe we should be shifting subsidies away from animal-based food and towards plant-based food (for humans).
"Frustrating" is by itself vague, so I agree with your point. I meant: frustrating for having an informed conversation about how a changing world and a changing climate suggest a changing diet. Past subsidies to animal agriculture make it easier for people to now dismiss new plant-based foods as fringe and not for them, because of their cost.
There are so many ways that having a plant-based good system is far superior to what we have. I don’t really understand why we’re so intent on devoting so much wealth to eating animals.
Plants high in protein are easier to preserve, cheaper to grow, cheaper to transport, can be stored with less energy, the list goes on.
It seems like we do this entirely because most of us think it tastes good. There’s no reason we couldn’t sustain ourselves on a fraction of the meat, dairy, and eggs that we have now.
I do wonder what I’m missing. There must be more to it.
A good parallel is the rising costa of electricity in the UK - should small businesses fail and citizens go cold because of geopolitical issues & wars outside their control causing price spikes? Or should the government help smooth things out. The latter seems ideal while the longer term problems are worked out.
Same thing can be said about VC funded tech companies too. Does anyone really know the cost of an Uber? What about the true cost of that Door Dash delivery?
> contrast of energy and resource expense between plants and animals is staggering, even if you’re comparing a less demanding animal like chicken.
I would like to see this study[0][1] repeated for various types of beans and legumes:
> Pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy were all pretty similar, but beef was a different story. Compared to the average of the other four, beef required 28 times the area of land per calorie, 11 times the water for irrigation, six times the nitrogen fertilizer, and it resulted in five times the greenhouse gas emissions For reference, they calculated similar impacts for potatoes, wheat, and rice. Compared to the average of those, beef’s footprint ballooned to 160 times the land, eight times the water, 19 times the nitrogen fertilizer, and 11 times the greenhouse gas emissions. Per gram of protein, the story is largely the same except that potatoes, wheat, and rice have less of an advantage due to their lower protein content.
The math listed in the article doesn't completely check out, e.g. they imply that [pork, chicken, eggs, dairy] require 160x (beef:plants) / 28x (beef:chicken) = 5.3x times (chicken:plants) as much land as [potatoes, wheat, rice], which makes sense, but also imply that [pork, chicken, eggs, dairy] 8x (beef:plants) / 11x (beef:chicken) = 0.72x times (chicken:plants) as much water as [potatoes, wheat, rice]. It's not thermodynamically possible for chickens to use less water per calorie than their feedstock. I never opened the actual study[1] though, I'm assuming they have reasonable results inside the study.
I also think that analysis vs. protein is more relevant than vs. calories -- which is why I think they should be compared against high-protein plants like beans and legumes.
> We’re also not seeing a clear economic picture in Canada and the USA because subsidies/tax breaks/etc can significantly transform the final costs of something like milk or beef in a grocery store.
Thanks, this was the question I came to ask about the why is my fake meat more expensive than ground beef at the grocery store.
A big part of the price is just that fake meat is currently a duopoloy of luxury brands. When Tyson has a full rollout of their fake meat products you'll see the prices go down.
As a meat eater, this has been my philosophy. If you’re gonna go vegetarian, just go for it. Vegeterian food is delicious and there’s so much choice! Entire cultures of amazing natively vegetarian foods with no need for weird meat substitutes.
Personally, legumes don’t have the right macros. Neither do fake meats. Cottage cheese and greek yogurt make better meat substitutes imo.
Do you mean they have the wrong macros for you personally or you personally believe the macros are bad in general?
Macros are an interesting thing. I’m far more interested in micros though, and various plants have them more than any animal foods. The balance of macros I get is reliably sufficient to stay healthy, I almost never need to think about it.
I suppose if you’re a body builder it might be appealing to eat animal products, but you can still swing it with plants.
It's important to acknowledge that, and also that the question of sustainability arises only because of population growth. Growing demand encroaches on land (for a variety of reasons) at either a higher or lower rate, but still encroaches. A stagnant global growth rate would render the problem moot, which is going to happen in 100 or so years. In the meantime we're dealing with environmental problems that require immediate rectifying, and varying consumer habits would be wholly insufficient to do that, though still welcome. Waste in particular could be disrupted with better policy, and frankly, so could agriculture. Meat is subsidized. It's practically a matter of policy to encourage consumption as it stands. To say nothing of regulation, the potential for less land-intensive feed, etc.
> My kids like the fake meats, but I’m pretty content with whole grains and legumes covering most of my protein requirements. Once you get over meat, you almost never think about it and the substitutes seem unnecessarily unhealthy (they’re kind of like savoury junk food with a ton of salt and saturated fat).
Personally I often have vegetarian dishes in eateries or when ordering take-out, when available - it is probably just me, but none of those really feel "worse" than meat, nor do I find myself feeling like I'm missing out on it. Even when having fast food, a pea/bean based burger patty feels good enough to me and is a similarly enjoyable experience to a meat based one.
That said, I still sometimes have meat (and other animal products) as well, given that I'm not educated enough or don't feel competent enough to nail down what exactly my dietary requirements might be, though talking with a GP and getting blood work done every now and then can be at least a bit helpful in that regard. Still, there is a certain comfort in having fried eggs or something like that once a week, although some suggest that many of the oils used in cooking might also be worse than olive oil.
For the majority of people, the quote by Michael Pollan is probably decent advice:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Of course, some people's strong enjoyment of meat aside, it's hard to even know exactly what you're eating on a daily basis, given the many additives used for a variety of reasons in food products nowadays. And recognizing that sometimes going to sleep a bit hungry is okay might also take work, as would training yourself to recognize the difference between hunger, thirst and stress/boredom as well.
(note: adjacently to this topic, carnivorous pets also still enjoy a diet with lots of meat in it, currently no good "compromise" there, their dietary requirements have to be taken into account as well and messing about with those feels unwise)
> I think it’s also important to acknowledge how filthy, torturous, destructive, and unethical the vast majority of animal agriculture activities are.
Personally, I've also gone hunting with my father and have helped dispose of the guts, carry game back home, skin the carcass, cut/snap the bones and so on. I'm not saying that everyone needs to do that, but partaking in the process of preparing meat (even in a farm setting) is a humbling experience. Maybe not enough to "scare" one away from eating meat, but definitely enough to make one reconsider how much meat they consume.
> whole grains and legumes covering most of my protein requirements.
What are your protein/calorie goals, and how are you meeting them with grains and legumes? I have to take pea protein and on top of that eat a lot of eggs because otherwise I can't imagine getting enough protein just from beans and oats. If you avoid oxalates, it becomes even more difficult.
I wouldn't say the `vast majority` are `filthy, torturous, destructive, and unethical`. While that is undoubtedly out there, is sizeable, and should be addressed; it's far from the vast majority. You have to remember that these are still people raising these animals and that most people aren't monsters. They feel compassion and often aren't given a fair shake. Even the calloused, hard-ass, old-timers get teary eyed in certain situations. Hell, a lot of them don't like going to the zoo for ethical reasons.
Source; grew up in a hog-raising family in big-ag country.
My wife is pescatarian, which has really lowered my consumption of meat. There is such a weird contrast between meat marketing and the actual use. With my reduced consumption, I am still sometimes pulled in by marketing: the masterfully grilled steak; the shawarma roasting on a spit; the artisanal burger with a delicate balance of ground beef, fat, sausage, and maybe one or two secret ingredients...
...but this expectation rarely meets the reality when I order a meat item. Modern consumers have high demands for consistency and convenience, and that usually means adjuncts, breading, blending, and other techniques to account for the uncertainties of agriculture. I think we are still generations away from indistinguishable lab meat, but there are so many advances that are ready for market.
I don't understand why the industry is so determined to R&D that "replaces" all animal consumption when more specific, modest goals (replacing the chicken nugget, replacing the pepperoni) would have a notable environmental improvement.
> modest goals (replacing the chicken nugget, replacing the pepperoni)
Quorn have made 'Crispy Nuggets'[1] from funghi for decades. They're a great replacement for chicken nuggets and I feel like if someone ate them without realising they wouldn't question what they're eating.
My old boss gave me one of hers at lunch one day. I noticed instantly.
But I'm still of a mind that if you want to promote vegetarianism, make vegetable recipes taste better; don't make the vegetables imitate something they're not.
I feel similarly, but when the thing being imitated is just breaded and fried "stuff" like a nugget, it seems like an inexpensive, tasty vegan filling should be simpler. Maybe the distinction is making a bite that is delicious, not necessarily something meat-like. If the nugget is good, you won't care if the filling is chicken, mozzarella, bean, or something else.
If folks enjoy them, what's the harm? There's a brand of TVP-based taco "meat" (Fantastic World Foods) that I actually like better than beef. Perhaps your boss has fond memories related to chicken nuggets and wants to enjoy the nostalgia.
I don't even think it's necessarily the taste of meat, but rather having something that is as widely compatible with recipes as what it is intended to replace.
For instance, some of these replacement items can't be boiled as one might in making a soup. It makes it difficult to complete a meal without refactoring the whole thing in some cases.
Plain meat is pretty... From what I recall typically doesn't have much taste without several additives like salt, butter, herbs typically marinated... You can do all that with the replacements, typically.
Not a judgment on your wife, but sharing for general awareness: I would eat land animals before eating fish again. You can read Outlaw Ocean for a quick look at how awful the seafood industry is. The seafood industry has everything from slavery, abuse, animal population decimation, and more, which is directly supported by anyone who eats seafood:
> Do you know if the fish on your plate is legal? A new study estimates that 20 to 32 percent of wild-caught seafood imported into the U.S. comes from illegal or "pirate" fishing
Yeah, I'm a firm believer in moderation and not allowing perfection to get in the way of progress. So many decisions can be seen as immoral once examined under heavy scrutiny and choosing to be "vegetarian" instead of just "eating meat on special occasions" has a profoundly different impact on relationships and daily life.
My entire argument above was basically that an invisible hand removing meat from everyday products will be a greater win for the environment than expecting a segment of consumers to go completely vegan.
There's a shit-ton of money riding on that being an answer as companies like Nestle are looking to create vertically integrated markets for nutrition. These huge conglomerates created the sickness of feedlots, etc to kill the labor unions, and are now peddling the cure for the problems they created to you - eat shittier fake products with most of the downsides of the original process.
It would make more sense for heath, economic development, national resiliency and other reasons to invest in small scale agriculture. You'd also see the market address the health issues, as higher prices would reduce consumption.
Even small scale production far outstrips the carbon footprint of a plant-based diet. There's no reason to fully substitute "meat" with Impossible products. Those products are designed for meat-eaters to help them transition to plant-based diets.
Once you get used to a plant-based diet the idea of "simulated meat" is absurd and not desire-able.
It's not for everyone; there are people whose cultures or physical needs prevent them from adopting such a diet and far be it from me or anyone else to dictate their diets for them.
However there remains the fact that beef production is unsustainable. Nearly 80% of our plant-based production goes to livestock feed. That's land that could be used to feed humans. And we'd use less land to do so. Instead the US and Canada have been increasing investments in the beef industry which is going to places like Brazil where they continue to slash and burn Amazon rain-forest in order to keep up the increasing demand for livestock feed.
The problem is a demand-side issue. Subsidized access to beef products has led to consumer perception that beef products are an affordable and accessible luxury. If we could even figure out what "sustainable beef" looks like it would be incredibly expensive and hardly available to anyone. The beef industry doesn't want that: it needs grocery and restaurant chains and ever-increasing consumer markets for its products to continue to grow its profits.
Which means continued deforestation, CO2 emissions, and lower sequestration rates.
I think subsidies should be removed and investment in plant-based alternatives continue in order to lower demand without price-shocks and panic. Once people realize how freaking expensive their dietary choices really are we might see the scales tip back. But we won't see that happen if governments and banks continue to artificially prop up low prices.
It’s not actually that simple. Livestock don’t necessarily eat the same plants people eat. Cattle can eat indigestible-to-humans cellulose in grasses and turn it into meat and milk. Grass can grow on marginal land without fertilizer or irrigation, unlike food crops for humans.
Pigs and chickens can eat garbage and turn them into meat and eggs.
> Cattle can eat indigestible-to-humans cellulose in grasses and turn it into meat and milk. Grass can grow on marginal land without fertilizer or irrigation, unlike food crops for humans.
In central California I've seen cattle gaining weight on high desert scrub. When I look at the land there it looked like inedible, but to a hungry steer, it was quite passable.
The wild pigs there become immensely huge, in large groups - they are a great example of how much edible food there is actually is for animals.
Yeah. If we just reduced our meat consumption by somewhere between 50 and 75% we could feed the remainder off those sources and probably decrease the environmental impact of food production on net, except for cow's methane production.
Cows only make milk after pregnancy. That has to happen somehow. Guess what is done with her baby. Guess where the literal pus from the overworked udders ends up. Yum! All those vegetarians sure are enjoying that.
Interesting that you chose cows which are, by far, the worst animal for the environment from the clear-cutting of old growth forests, to the shocking contribution to climate change their gases produce, to the sheer amounts of water and food it takes to grow a full cow.
There's nothing on this planet (w.r.t. our diet) worse for the environment than beef. It's King Bad.
Interesting that you chose cows which are, by far, the worst animal for the environment from the clear-cutting of old growth forests, to the shocking contribution to climate change their gases produce, to the sheer amounts of water and food it takes to grow a full cow.
One of those things is a problem with governments. The other is a problem with the cows.
Don't blame the cows if your corrupt government can't keep people from clear-cutting forests.
Yes, but those issues are due to modern farming practices. They're not inherent to beef as a food source. Cattle have been used for millennia to convert inedible plants growing on marginal land into human food.
It's 77% (why round up to artificially boost your narrative?) and this source is intentionally misleading as "This includes grazing land for animals" (I couldn't find an exact source but probably around 30mil km2 of the 40mil km2, e.g. derived from [1]) . Most of this land isn't suitable for producing crops, especially without fertilizers (which bring their own host of problems) and thus the livestock provides additional food that we otherwise wouldn't have. Also worth mentioning that grazing livestock is a natural source of fertilizer.
I'm not arguing against us eating too much meat. We do! Using land usable for human crop production to feed livestock is incredibly inefficient. But your linked graph is just pushing a narrative that's just not true to that extent.
You really opened my eyes to some new and important information about how agriculture works.
You’re right, that statistic is misleading. We wouldn’t be using grazing land for anything agricultural if not feeding animals. I definitely won’t use this statistic anymore.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t meant to skew things with that 3% in a disingenuous way. Since I had the number 77 I should have used it though, you’re right.
This has sent me down quite a rabbit hole of understanding agricultural practices, their impacts on the environment, and many other parts of this complex system of how humans sustain themselves.
The information is hard to find, surprisingly. It’s good to get a little closer to the truth, though. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
I work with clients in a multi-billion dollar industry (they themselves are in the hundreds of millions in revenue) who sell by-products of food production for cattle feed. In this situation, the food is being grown for humans anyways and only the waste product is used. It doesn't really fit your black & white view of the situation.
While I completely agree that growing plants has at least 10x less impact to environment, it is not just "grow plants".
You also have to use fertilizer, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, spend energy (from fossil fuels) to drive tractors, plows, sprinklers. I'm not even going to start with GMO (the technology and the result is fine, but control companies get when you use them is not).
Not necessarily. "Environmental" problems are always scope to whatever issue the stakeholder is worried about.
Soy and wheat production in the United States is concentrated on the Great Plains, and made possible by irrigation sourced from groundwater and artificial fertilizer. Problem: that groundwater is being depleted faster than replenishment, and part of the plains will be desert-like within the lifetime of many HN users. So you're looking at destroying some of the more productive farmlands on earth, and have been destroying the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi delta for decades with massive levels of nitrate pollution.
Most of the problems with meat production are about scale. You can actually utilize the waste products of a 200 head herd of cattle, but 20,000 is an industrial waste site. Likewise, you can't pasture large scales of cattle, and feedlots intensify things like methane emissions, etc.
1)Most land used for animals is not suitable for development.
2)most water used is captured rain water
3)lots of feed is byproduct
4)These animals provide fertilizer and natural tilling of the ground
5) the carbon footprint of raising cattle or other animals is infinitesimally small.
Practices that make it more environmentally friendly (ie no giant feces and urine ponds) could be either mandated or encouraged.
Animals are used more for just meat. Hide is used for products. Poop is used for fertilizer. Pig urine is used to reduce carbon emissions in 18 wheelers. Etc etc
Trying to remove a major food staple is idiotic. There could be ramifications that are not known to us for doing this. Just like people trying to get rid of mosquitoes. We don’t have the entire ecosystem mapped out where we can make these changes without consequence.
I agree it's not surprising but this not a convincing point. I'd expect "plants" to mean very different things in A and B. Not the same plants, not the same quality requirements... I'd expect almost everything to be different between plants-for-humans and plants-for-animals agriculture.
Plants grow from seeds, take water and sunlight to grow, etc, regardless of the type of plant or the eventual use thereof.
Use weird pesticides on plants you're growing to feed to animals, and not only do said weird pesticides end up in the water supply that's used for other plants being grown to feed to humans, but also they end up in the animals to which you feed the plants, and therefore in the resultant meat. So when pesticides are banned, they tend to be banned for all uses, not just "plants grown for humans" uses.
99% of plant species are not suitable for human consumption, whereas 99% of animal species can be safely consumed by humans. And as for the remaining 1% of plant species that humans do eat, you will find that if you cut them out of your diet you will see remarkable health improvements.
Its not surprising at all once you think about it, but most people have not thought deeply about it.
I posted the quote because I feel like the article's title is click-bait, and has the implied conclusion that plant based "fake meats" are not sustainable, when the opposite is true... real meat is not sustainable.
This is patently false. There is a organization, hired by the company that makes these fake burgers, to measure their environmental impact. A holistic cattle farm then hired the exact same company to measure their environmental impact. The results show that the fake meat farms had a carbon footprint (I don’t remember how bad/large it was), but the holistic ranch was carbon negative. I am on my phone now, if I remember I will come back here and link to the studies. I also recommend watching Allen Savory’s Ted talk on this subject.
Just a reminder: the underlying issue is really 'how sustainable is the current global human population under business-as-usual practices'?
It's clear a plant-based diet will reduce the land area, water, and fertilizer needed for food production - but if human population grows in response, then you simply end up back where you started - but with the plant production going to feed humans instead of livestock.
There's also the problem of food distribution - many countries rely heavily on imports to meet basic food needs, and the producing countries are typically running high-impact agriculture - double-cropping high-efficiency strains soy, corn, wheat, potato, etc. crops using vast amounts of fertilizers and water (essentially the 'Green Revolution' approach). Abandoning high-intensity agriculture (going back to pre-industrial methods like crop rotation) would cut food production in half at least, leading to global famines. Hence, pushing towards regional independence on basic food production is pretty important, given the uncertain future of climate impacts on agricultural production.
A final thing to keep in mind: methane from animals and wetlands is quite different from methane from fossil fuel production, as the latter represents a net transfer of carbon from stable geological deposits to the atmosphere, while the former represents the cycling of atmospheric carbon (CO2) into plant matter, and while those carbon atoms may be burped out by cattle as methane (CH4), they end up oxidized back to CO2 within 10-20 years in the atmosphere. Regardless, cutting the global cattle population by 80-90% makes a lot of sense (this is about what pre-industrial popuations were like). Meat would then be quite expensive, a luxury item, which also makes sense.
No mention of nuts in the article, nor in the comments here, which is truly sad. It's like people have forgotten that nuts exist, as they are so often left out the discussion around meat vs plants vs fake meats WRT fats and proteins. Nuts are incredibly nutritious, high in fat and protein that is arguably of better quality than animal fats and proteins, and many nut trees can live for hundreds of years while producing thousands of pounds of nuts every year. Some nut species can live for thousands of years if they are managed correctly (there are still living hazelnuts in Italy that were planted by the Romans). Deeply tap-rooted species like walnuts and hickories don't require supplemental watering once established. I can't find it at the moment but last year I read a study of energy flows for North American tree crops, and the ERoEI of Shagbark Hickory was rated at 55,000.
Going forward, anytime there is discussion of energy or efficiency of plant vs animal agriculture vs fake meat, etc, if tree crops aren't factored into the discussion then that provides an opportunity to quote No Country for Old Men: "You don't know what you're talking about, do you?" Leaving out that there is the option of growing a tree that produces a cow's weight worth of fats and proteins every year, with little to no inputs, in perpetuity, is a crime of omission.
Just to compare some approximate numbers, 100g of hazelnut contains 17.0g of carbs, 13.7g protein, and 60.8g fat. Walnuts contain 9.9g, 26.1g, and 65.2g, respectively. Whereas 100g of beef contains 0g carbs, 35g protein, and 10g fat. And 100 grams of black beans contains 25g carbs, 9g protein, 0.5g fat.
Further reading -- Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture, by J. Russell Smith
AFAIK they're far more sustainable since they need nowhere near the amount of land, water, resources and food as the animals in the dairy and meat industries do. This, and further minus all the torture, suffering and force-feeding
I think fake meat will be important in the future because there is no way we can eat the amount of meat and dairy that we do without many negatives. That said, there is a level of sustainable livestock. Cows can graze on natural grass lands, eating a plants that humans can't digest anyway. Pigs can mostly eat agricultural waste product. Chickens can eat cover crops. The fact that land is cleared for grazing and animals are fed crops is due to the amount of meat people eat could never be met through natural means.
> I think fake meat will be important in the future because there is no way we can eat the amount of meat and dairy that we do without many negatives.
Or we could eat like our grandparents used to eat back in the 50s-60s, at least in France meat was still a fairly occasional thing, you bought a good cut of meat every now and then and enjoyed it. Today we chug gallons of processed meat at every meal, most of it being bad on both the nutritional and taste aspect.
"fake meat" is processed food. That, IMHO, is the main difference over just eating fresh vegetables. It's more expensive because of that, and introduces externalities and risks.
I see "fake meat" as a temporary crutch for people transitioning to vegetarianism.
It's not like animals have no risks or externalities. What's the critical difference between industrial processing vegetable matter into a fried patty, and a cow organically processing vegetable matter into flesh which is then turned into a fried patty? Cows getting BSE is what made my mother decide I would be "vegetarian at school" back in the late 80s. Overuse of antibiotics in the production of meat gets a significant share of the blame for the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
> I see "fake meat" as a temporary crutch for people transitioning to vegetarianism.
Most people demonstrably don't care enough about even the combination of the ethical, environmental, and the health the reasons for a better diet. Meat substitutes are aimed at most people.
I very much agree that it's an improvement for all involved. But I'll still suggest to my friends who consume fake meats that they try just eating the fresh vegetable ingredients.
I'm vegetarian, I like the taste of meat, I hate the taste of these "fake" meats and I'd much rather eat veggies
I really don't see the point of these, they barely taste as good as the cheapest frozen meat patty you can find. It's almost like cardboard patties with a hint of burned meat taste, and it costs as much if not more than meat in most restaurants.
You just don't want to. It's very simple: they let you have a burger that mimics meat burgers, and they taste reasonably close for some of us. I love burgers and love some of the fake meat patties since I don't usually eat meat. Simple as that.
Fake meats seem to get a market on very the environmentally conscious and vegetarians but I don't think it'll hit big. Beyond the marketing appeal to normal consumers of "eww processed fake meat", the reality is that it's all very gross. I have given them a college try and they are not a good replacement for meat and wouldn't willingly eat them again and most people I have talked to feel the same about it.
I am much more bullish on lab grown meat which produces actual meat and merely removes the animal as an incubator. If we can get the process of turning some plant matter into actual meat that will be the golden ticket, and people will actually buy this since its actually meat.
I always think it's interesting to view meat production through the lens of history.
Goats or sheep can be raised on land that's completely unsuitable for farming. Pigs and chickens can recycle food-waste into usable protein.
You can make an argument that modern feedlots aren't great for the environment, the animals, or our overall health. But it's a big jump to go from that to "all meat is bad for the environment".
Even best case emissions of meat production are higher than the worst case emissions of plant protein
> Many argue that this overlooks the large variation in the footprints of foods across the world. Using global averages might give us a misleading picture for some parts of the world or some producers. 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.
Fake meat is already a clearly superior replacement for more dubious meat dishes like "breakfast sausage. Though there is an irony for the companies making the best fake meat: It's an off-ramp from meat. I find I eat less meat, real or fake. Maybe that's because fake meat does a good job satisfying a craving. I'm much more selective: Bison instead of beef burgers, salmon instead of chicken. You don't have to eliminate meat to get lots of environmental and health upside if you change the way people think of meat as part of their diet.
Cheap meat was a quality-of-life goal for many governments, pushed by the meat industry. That went way out of balance and negatively affects health and the environment. If tasty and nutritious fake meat gets down to the price of good quality burger meat, it will be a tipping point with many benefits.
We could use nuclear power to desalinate seawater and turn the Sahara desert into a vast grassland that could support a couple billion cows -- in my view this is the best route forward for humanity, given how much better beef is for human health than any other food. Full disclosure: I only eat beef.
This seems fundamentally wrong to me. You can not compare the efficiency of two methods unless they get the same result. But fake meat is not meat. Compare fake meat to unprocessed vegan food, let's see how that turns out for your marketing materials. And we can all guess which is healthier too.
answer: more sustainable than "real" meat, sometimes a lot more so.
But sustainability doesn't determine popularity, and all the efforts taken to increase popularity (i.e. more engineering and more processing) do increase environmental cost. But plant-based foods are still a big win, probably: the business realities of these products mean that true numbers are not disclosed.
btw I hate the term "fake" here - it's not like modern animal-derived food, as consumed in a typical meat-based diet. is somehow "real" or unadulterated. (and for those who hasten to point out that they only eat grass-fed beef, the article notes that its carbon footprint is even higher).
I strongly agree. A lot of the current "meat" that people eat is highly processed. Its not like chicken nugget or burger is a "natural" product these days. Some burgers are made up of meats from up to 100s of animals[0].
One thing that no one talks about is the methane that humans produce. If you literally eat only beef, then the volume of your poop decreases by 80% and you completely stop farting. If everyone on Earth ate only beef then there would just be 80% less poop for us to deal with and no one on Earth would fart. Also, we could put an end to most chronic diseases -- and the healthcare sector is a also a large contributor to global warming.
The issue there is that pigs and chickens spend their lives in confined pens, and to avoid mass disease outbreaks in those conditions, they're pumped with lots of antibiotics (possibly growth promoters as well). Such facilities also produce vast quantities of fecal matter, leading to water pollution problems (and likely methane as well).
Probably the best way to raise beef is small herds on grasslands, but this results in extremely expensive meat. That's more reasonable anyway: meat should be viewed as a luxury item, not a staple.
Maybe don't bury the answer in the 16th paragraph of the article, Knowable? This is bullshit framing. Almost as bullshit as the Y axis in the Land Use chart.
We’re also not seeing a clear economic picture in Canada and the USA because subsidies/tax breaks/etc can significantly transform the final costs of something like milk or beef in a grocery store.
My kids like the fake meats, but I’m pretty content with whole grains and legumes covering most of my protein requirements. Once you get over meat, you almost never think about it and the substitutes seem unnecessarily unhealthy (they’re kind of like savoury junk food with a ton of salt and saturated fat).
I think it’s also important to acknowledge how filthy, torturous, destructive, and unethical the vast majority of animal agriculture activities are.