Ever get the feeling that people that like well done steaks just have never had a good cut of beef before?SuperScrub said:Say you like your steaks well-done and you'll have the answer to your question.
Ever get the feeling that people that like well done steaks just have never had a good cut of beef before?SuperScrub said:Say you like your steaks well-done and you'll have the answer to your question.
No and since what other people choose to do with their steak isn't any of my business I don't care.prowll said:Ever get the feeling that people that like well done steaks just have never had a good cut of beef before?SuperScrub said:Say you like your steaks well-done and you'll have the answer to your question.
The problem with the 'meat for ecology' argument is they don't chart the damages that livestock do (seriously, look at what happens to a single creek bed after you introduce only a few heads of cattle). In order to meet that 2000 calorie diet, you will find it easier do so with a vegetarian diet by land dedicated to agriculture otherwise given to livestock. Also, because you're using less land means more land given over to active carbon sinking CO2 emissions.Lightknight said:-cut-
I didn't argue that all vegetarians eat is veggies. It is established that they eat significantly more veggies than omnivores in addition to other things which would also qualify as high emission products. As such, the overage vegetarian diet has a higher carbon footprint per calorie than an omnivore diet does. That is certainly contra-conventional wisdom but the original belief was only held because of the original mistake of using emission by weight rather than by calorie. Had we been using emission by calorie all along we would have recognized that non-meat is extremely inefficient in calorie by weight and as such it takes far more pounds of non-meat to replace the calories lost when substituting it for a pound of meat. With this in mind, you can look at nearly every study produced in the past along the lines of emissions per pounds and when you do the conversion to calories you can see the same information established there being produced today now that the right metrics are in place.NPC009 said:Just had to respond to this...No, my argument is that emissions per calories between many popular veggies and fruits are similar or higher than several types of meat and also not that far from the emissions per calorie of beef albeit still lower.
"Emissions per kilo" is something I've been systematically disputing because we eat by calories, not weight. If we take away a kg of meat we have to replace the calorie loss with significantly more kgs of whatever else due to the calorie efficiency of meat. So it has been dishonest of researchers to use weight in the past.
Within any diet, fruit and vegetables are not an important source of calories. The nutritional value of that food group is in things like certain vitamins and fibers. Vegetarians are also not going around by replacing meat with heaps veggies, because meat serves a different purpose within diets. It's not just a source of calories, but also of, for instance, vitamin B6, B12 and iron. So if you decide to stop eating meat, you're going to have a big sickly problem if you don't replace it properly. Generally this means eating a bit more of other food groups. Nuts are a good source of protein and iron, so adding a handful of those to your daily food intake helps. Beans are pretty great too.
Whether these replacements come with a worrysome carbon footprint depends on the choices you make. My neighbours have a walnut tree and I buy a few kilo from them every year. You'd have a hard time measuring the carbon footprint of those walnuts. Imported almonds, however, are a whole different story. It's the same with veggies and fruit. Pay attention to what can be grown locally and to when it's in season, and you'll leave much smaller carbon food prints.
But carbon emissions alone isn't the issue. Soil erosion, soil compaction, overgrazing, excessive land use, etc. For starters, the USDA model diet still contains cheeses, which contains cattle. Also, water consumption? Yeah ... cattle still use way more water by volume. An adult cow will consume 24 gallons a day in a 94F high. They're a mammal and they themselves require feed to supplement their grazing, also. Requiring more total water supply. Also their hooves create the effect known as 'poaching' which reduces a soil's means to store water, creating denitration and desertification far sooner than crops.Lightknight said:I didn't argue that all vegetarians eat is veggies. It is established that they eat significantly more veggies than omnivores in addition to other things which would also qualify as high emission products. As such, the overage vegetarian diet has a higher carbon footprint per calorie than an omnivore diet does. That is certainly contra-conventional wisdom but the original belief was only held because of the original mistake of using emission by weight rather than by calorie. Had we been using emission by calorie all along we would have recognized that non-meat is extremely inefficient in calorie by weight and as such it takes far more pounds of non-meat to replace the calories lost when substituting it for a pound of meat. With this in mind, you can look at nearly every study produced in the past along the lines of emissions per pounds and when you do the conversion to calories you can see the same information established there being produced today now that the right metrics are in place.
The problem is that some of the other sources, like Quinoa (which provides a variety of benefits to vegetarians like 24g of protein, 8% daily value of calcium and 43% daily value of protein per cup), can be worse than nearly anything else. Quinoa was the most popular vegetarian recipe of the last couple of years and yet it has a significant human and emission cost. From the distant transportation (usually one of the biggest source of emissions of a lot of other things) and non-mature production methods (see inefficiency and waste) to our demands skyrocketing the local prices to the point where the natives of quinoa producing countries can no longer afford what used to be a cheap staple in their nation. That's just one item but one that is increasing significantly in popularity due to those benefits and versatility in food preparation.
The average vegetarian diet does include more vegetables (more than 25% more than omnivores), it includes more than double wine consumption (significant carbon footprint), with the most significant (proportionate) difference being legume consumption. That's fine but overall it's still a small segment of the average diet:
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/626S/T4.expansion.html
Keep in mind though, that study is from 2003, we have had some significant changes in diet from things like quinoa which weren't even a line item in that study (Grains included: Bread, Cereal, Rice and pasta). So at the time grains were only 15% more common in a vegetarian diet with legumes doing most of the footwork in the protein department. That ratio has likely changed and 2013 was the US year of the quinoa after all.
As stated in the overall post you responded to, if Americans converted to even just the USDA recommended diet which is significantly closer to a vegetarian diet compared to our average diets now, then we would see significant increases in energy consumption, water footprint, and overall emissions. That's also if we all only went down to the 2,000 recommended calories which also wouldn't happen. A full move to an average vegetarian diet should increase that significantly.
Remember, we aren't talking about the vegetarians who get it and organize their diets to specifically accommodate emissions. We're talking about the average vegetarian.
And the avarage vegetarian is as dumb as the average person, sadly...Lightknight said:[...]
Remember, we aren't talking about the vegetarians who get it and organize their diets to specifically accommodate emissions. We're talking about the average vegetarian.
Actually, since meat farms are required to mitigate the manure impact on their local environment we do have measurements of this. Manure used to fertilize veggies can also have a significant impact on the environment but their pesticides can be FAR worse.PaulH said:The problem with the 'meat for ecology' argument is they don't chart the damages that livestock do (seriously, look at what happens to a single creek bed after you introduce only a few heads of cattle). In order to meet that 2000 calorie diet, you will find it easier do so with a vegetarian diet by land dedicated to agriculture otherwise given to livestock. Also, because you're using less land means more land given over to active carbon sinking CO2 emissions.Lightknight said:-cut-
Yes, vegetarians eat cheese. That's why they're included in the vegetarian models I presented. As of 2003 (let me know if you find a newer article comparing what vegetarians eat with what omnivores eat on average in the US), vegetarians ate 24% more cheese than omnivores did.Secondly, most of those vegetarian models ypou linked still had cheeses .... which means cattle. Fish makes sense, but any form of cattle is going to be worse at meeting calorie intake targets than growing of fruits and vegetables.
No, that's simply not true.If anything, the growing and greater consumption of mangoes would deliver more nutrition, more energy, than anything else by yard of land given to agriculture and may ultimately be the way to go. Mangoes are the miracle fruit. Fantastic carbon sinking potential of orcharding them, fantastically nutritious, it goes great with ANYTHING, and it's dead easy to grow if you're in the right climate. Wonderfully efficient in terms of nutrition production compared to amount of materials spent in soil improving.
"Far worse" no. "Worse"? Generally.Which is perhaps why US standards of CO2 emission shouldn't be what you look at, given the limited means by which to grow a whole variety of fruits and vegetables which would better suit the nutritional intake of humanity in terms of a global market. When you take into account total land, total water usage, total nutrition by value... cattle are wasteful and far worse than even a badly managed orchard.
That's not true, a focus on a vegetarian diet would increase overall emissions. Just by reducing servings of meat to come into line with the USDA recommendations which is far more veggie and fruit focused than the current average diet would increase emissions by 9%. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but beef isn't that much higher than veggies and just things like broccoli and tomatoes together make up more than beef's carbon footprint per calorie. You say that it's no argument, but just because beef is popular does not mean that is automatically beyond the threshold of acceptable emissions per calorie. What is the acceptable emission level per calorie and who gets to define it?There is no argument. If you want a greener planet, a focus of vegetable and fruit production is far better than running cattle. No argument. I've seen how much produce a small orchard can maintain... cattle require 30 times the amount of pasture. Fruit orchards also act as carbon offsets... which is a two for one benefit of better nutrition, greater volumes, and greater environmental usage of land. There is a reason why mangoes are eaten everywhere in the tropics and subtropics. Look up what a green mango tree looks like when it is reaching optimal fruit harvesting maturity. There is no argument as to the far superior benefits of greater fruit and vegetable consumption. Running cattle also quicker destroys top soil. The force pressure of their hooves reduce the rate by which foraged grasses can replenish themselves.
The US has the lion's share of available research data. If you want me to run the numbers by another country or region then that region will have to start producing more research to make comparisons simpler. Europe is the closest to the US in availability of research but that's more segregated by country rather than landmass. Since America also has a ton of farmland and a significant agricultural footprint it makes it a rather convenient place to compare items.NPC009 said:And the avarage vegetarian is as dumb as the average person, sadly...Lightknight said:[...]
Remember, we aren't talking about the vegetarians who get it and organize their diets to specifically accommodate emissions. We're talking about the average vegetarian.
Still, you're making it look as if you can't be ecologically responsible as a vegetarian, while that is simply not true. And what I find quite strange about your sources, is that they speak of 'the average American'. The United States takes up a good chunk of a continent and as a result there is big variety in climate, terrain and more. When looking at ecological impact, there is not no single diet that's ideal for every American.
I'm from a (non-American) region with a lot of farmland and there are near monthly debates about what the increasing number of lifestock is doing to our environment. People consuming less meat and dairy would have a big impact on our area. I have no beef with people who enjoy a steak once in a while, but overconsumption is bad for everyone.
Is your assumption that the land used for grazing then needs to be available to be converted into farm land? If so, what is the problem with a unit of land being converted into land specifically for one designated purpose? Beef feed isn't usually grazed, it's typically imported. That's one of the main reasons that emissions are higher for beef because it includes an entire product of produce within its emissions. You want to tell me about the impact of cattle on a plot of land? It's nothing compared to the impact of pouring concrete and building a shopping mall or industrial complex on one. But that's OK, because that is what the land is being designed to use. It's not like there isn't other land that is itself set aside for farming.PaulH said:But carbon emissions alone isn't the issue. Soil erosion, soil compaction, overgrazing, excessive land use, etc. For starters, the USDA model diet still contains cheeses, which contains cattle. Also, water consumption? Yeah ... cattle still use way more water by volume. An adult cow will consume 24 gallons a day in a 94F high. They're a mammal and they themselves require feed to supplement their grazing, also. Requiring more total water supply. Also their hooves create the effect known as 'poaching' which reduces a soil's means to store water, creating denitration and desertification far sooner than crops.Lightknight said:I didn't argue that all vegetarians eat is veggies. It is established that they eat significantly more veggies than omnivores in addition to other things which would also qualify as high emission products. As such, the overage vegetarian diet has a higher carbon footprint per calorie than an omnivore diet does. That is certainly contra-conventional wisdom but the original belief was only held because of the original mistake of using emission by weight rather than by calorie. Had we been using emission by calorie all along we would have recognized that non-meat is extremely inefficient in calorie by weight and as such it takes far more pounds of non-meat to replace the calories lost when substituting it for a pound of meat. With this in mind, you can look at nearly every study produced in the past along the lines of emissions per pounds and when you do the conversion to calories you can see the same information established there being produced today now that the right metrics are in place.
The problem is that some of the other sources, like Quinoa (which provides a variety of benefits to vegetarians like 24g of protein, 8% daily value of calcium and 43% daily value of protein per cup), can be worse than nearly anything else. Quinoa was the most popular vegetarian recipe of the last couple of years and yet it has a significant human and emission cost. From the distant transportation (usually one of the biggest source of emissions of a lot of other things) and non-mature production methods (see inefficiency and waste) to our demands skyrocketing the local prices to the point where the natives of quinoa producing countries can no longer afford what used to be a cheap staple in their nation. That's just one item but one that is increasing significantly in popularity due to those benefits and versatility in food preparation.
The average vegetarian diet does include more vegetables (more than 25% more than omnivores), it includes more than double wine consumption (significant carbon footprint), with the most significant (proportionate) difference being legume consumption. That's fine but overall it's still a small segment of the average diet:
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/626S/T4.expansion.html
Keep in mind though, that study is from 2003, we have had some significant changes in diet from things like quinoa which weren't even a line item in that study (Grains included: Bread, Cereal, Rice and pasta). So at the time grains were only 15% more common in a vegetarian diet with legumes doing most of the footwork in the protein department. That ratio has likely changed and 2013 was the US year of the quinoa after all.
As stated in the overall post you responded to, if Americans converted to even just the USDA recommended diet which is significantly closer to a vegetarian diet compared to our average diets now, then we would see significant increases in energy consumption, water footprint, and overall emissions. That's also if we all only went down to the 2,000 recommended calories which also wouldn't happen. A full move to an average vegetarian diet should increase that significantly.
Remember, we aren't talking about the vegetarians who get it and organize their diets to specifically accommodate emissions. We're talking about the average vegetarian.
Your idea only works if you assume the land replenishes itself each year and there's no consequences whatsoever. A cattle owner will have to move their cattle far sooner than someone with an orchard will have to find a new orchard. If people were to cut cheese and meat consumption, you would have far less land loss, greater carbon sinking via plant growth. There are commercial vineyards that have been constantly operating for centuries in Europe. Constantly operating. Just how long do you think they would last if they instead decided to run a head of cattle per acre/acre and a half?
About the only benefit of livestock is you can run them on land which is pretty low yielding in terms of fruit and vegetable planting. But that's of marginal benefit when you consider that sheep, horses, cattle ... all of them permanently damage the topsoil far sooner, and in low yield environments the effects of soil erosion from the clearing of forests, disturbance of creek beds and the water absorption rate of soils means long term ecological damage.
Oh, and if you want to see just what effect overgraving can have, I invite you to look at the border country between Israel and Egypt as one of the more famous examples of the effect of running cattle and what happens when you push for greater meat supply... Israel, it's green. Egypt, the land is largely dead. Same climate, different agricultural practices. Wildly different results.
People who push the idea that vegetable and orchard development are worse than cattle are on drugs. You only need to see what happens to a paddock of once viable land and what a few thousand pairs of hooves will do to it in a year or two. The idea that cattle generate less emissions is predicated on the idea that there will always be grazing land to run cattle. Which is insane. It's like saying we shouldn't look for a suitable substance to replace crude oil because it would cost us more, and simply pretend that we'll always have crude oil in plentiful supply.
Which is why Western vegetarians shouldn't even be looked at. Most cultures eat some form of animal, but if you actually take total animal products consumed, your average Filipino is more vegetarian than an American vegetarian.Lightknight said:Yes, vegetarians eat cheese. That's why they're included in the vegetarian models I presented. As of 2003 (let me know if you find a newer article comparing what vegetarians eat with what omnivores eat on average in the US), vegetarians ate 24% more cheese than omnivores did.
The difference being that cow pastures are many multitudes larger than actual vegetable farms. With proper rotation farming practices, crop growing is by dint of using less land and will commit a far greater reduction of soil erosion. There is not one scientist worth their salt that will tell you soil erosion happens becauses of orchards or crops and pretend cattle are not far worse.Lightknight said:But that's mostly irrelevant. There is a misconception that all cattle is the same, but that's not true. There are meat cows and there are dairy cows and the two have a different carbon footprint. While cows aren't that efficient at converting feed into calories for meat, they do a perfectly fine job producing dairy. When looking at emissions per 1,000 calories of cheese (3.6), it (along with yogurt (3.6) and eggs (3.4)) is a low emitter that is closer to tofu (2.9) and potatoes (3.8) than to broccoli (5.9) or potatoes (6.1). The only thing that put cheese high on the lists before was when studies erroneously used emissions by weight but to replace one pound of cheese calories you'd have to use several pounds of other stuff. So even if something like lettuce was significantly lower per pound than cheese where emissions are concerned, you would have to use multiple pounds of said lettuce which multiplies the emissions by each pound increased to make it far less efficient per calorie.
Yes, it is actually.Lightknight said:No, that's simply not true.
If you have proper water drainage, total water consumnption isn't an issue. Philippines doesn't have a water problem because 'too many mangoes' ... it has a water problem because there's not enough water catchment. Vietmnam doesn't have a water problem because of too many mangoes, it has a problem because it doesn't have proper water catchment .... starting to see a pattern here? More over, I can guarantee you that running livestock does more to reduce water absorption rates than growing a few trees. Which is why livestock will always be worse. Not only do they require a LOT of water, but they destroy the land's ability to store it.Lightknight said:Mangos have a tremendously high water footprint which is big all by itself.
Mangoes just have a comparable carbon sinking potential with other plants. It's higher than the carrot, for example.
Transportation is a major carbon emitter and mangoes aren't grown locally in most of the developed world.
Who said anything about eating mangoes all day long? As a fruit, it is phenomenal. As a single food item that can be mass grown very easily, and can act as a good carbon offset and that in the right climate it is FAR BETTER than running cattle. I would certainly take my chances eating nothing but various types of mangoes than I would eating nothing but various types of cows. I'm pretty sure most of us would die pretty darn soon ... some of us might handle it pretty darn well, but all of them live in the Arctic circle and I'm pretty sure they won't be giving up seals anytime soon to try to grow mangoes.Lightknight said:Mango is a good food with relatively low emissions. But it isn't the savior of foods and diets. It has a good amount of some vitamins but none of others just like any food types.
Worse generally I'll buy. I've seen some pretty atrocious banana farms, to be honest. But truth be told it's easier to improve orchard and crop farming practices than it is to entirely redesign the physics of a cow.Lightknight said:"Far worse" no. "Worse"? Generally.
Yes, it is true. Less land usage and less denitration and desertification is a good thing. Regardless of whether you're looking at feeding people or maintaining the good of the land, running cattle is worse than orchards or vegetables. Partiocularly with better farming cpractices that can be easily adopted by developed nations. Livestock require far more land. Livestock destroy the land far quicker. Livestock are simply worse for the environment. Under any objective measure, soil poaching and over grazing will do more to affect our means to not merely carbon offset emissions, but in turn affect our ability to maintain natural habitats, guarantee food security, improve agricultural practices, and critically reduce the amount of land for future agricultural development if need be.Lightknight said:That's not true, a focus on a vegetarian diet would increase overall emissions. Just by reducing servings of meat to come into line with the USDA recommendations which is far more veggie and fruit focused than the current average diet would increase emissions by 9%. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but beef isn't that much higher than veggies and just things like broccoli and tomatoes together make up more than beef's carbon footprint per calorie. You say that it's no argument, but just because beef is popular does not mean that is automatically beyond the threshold of acceptable emissions per calorie. What is the acceptable emission level per calorie and who gets to define it?
A pound of beef (453.6 grams) is 1136.6 calories. A pound of lettuce is 63 calories (just googled the nutrition, not sure what type of lettuce they're basing that off of). In order to replace a pound of beef you'd need 18 pounds of lettuce. So whenever you see a number of emissions per kg for lettuce, you should mentally multiply it by 18 to see its emissions per calorie as compared to beef.
No, you judged them for a supposed correlation between personal fragility and what they eat, and ranted rather than insulted.Dizchu said:Bitter ranting? Not once did I insult anyone, not once did I accuse anyone of anything, not once did I judge people for what they eat.Naraka said:So you mean "Easy" as shorthand for three paragraphs of bitter ranting, and you wonder if people other than yourself are thin skinned?
I mnissed this post. Sorry.Lightknight said:Is your assumption that the land used for grazing then needs to be available to be converted into farm land? If so, what is the problem with a unit of land being converted into land specifically for one designated purpose? Beef feed isn't usually grazed, it's typically imported. That's one of the main reasons that emissions are higher for beef because it includes an entire product of produce within its emissions. You want to tell me about the impact of cattle on a plot of land? It's nothing compared to the impact of pouring concrete and building a shopping mall or industrial complex on one. But that's OK, because that is what the land is being designed to use. It's not like there isn't other land that is itself set aside for farming.
Nope.sheppie said:Wow, enough straw in that strawman to feed a cow for a year.OneCatch said:I think that this handily demonstrates that the answer to the OP is unequivocally 'yes, meat easters can be easy to offend'. Certainly not all meat eaters, or even many, but some.
I mean, this individual finds the very existence of vegans offensive, irrespective of if they've even mentioned their diet in any kind of proselytising or preachy or political manner. Can't get much more easily offended than that.
I don't care if you find preachy shit annoying. So do I, whether that comes from the vegan who thinks that my veggie diet isn't hardcore enough, or from the hundredth meat eater who thinks that they'll convert me using the merits of bacon.sheppie said:Notice how I dislike the harassive and annoying preaching that vegans tend to do? Notice how that's something entirely different from what you're talking about? Notice how you're not defending the vegan preaching in any way, so I'm still right?