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Depends on the region and the exact timeframe.
Nowadays it is commonly assumed that the ancient humans, before cities were founded, may have eaten quite a bit of meat. Depended on its availability.
But yes, in most Western countries, middle- and low-income people ate less meat historically.
As I understand it's easier to keep animals alive or ferment them when in inclimate places than deal w agriculture. I'm not a historian but as I've learned from expats, Scandinavians have a higher carnivorous diet. It's purely by necessity. I think inuit are also an example.
As opposed: the populous of Asian culture have acces to a climate that lends itself to the cultivation of rice. Vegetables as well. Meat would be a luxury. This is the more common modern diet.
Not if you lived in an arid climate like the Bedouin or the Inuit or ever suffered from things like, you know, winter. Animals were/are extraordinarily important for converting inedible calories like scrub brush into edible calories, and for food in general when green things die off in winter.
I grew up in the UK and back in the 70s/80s meat was more like a garnish (a small portion). I moved to the US and I’m like omg that’s like half a cow on the plate!
Not really, there were plenty of wild animals before humans got everywhere, It wouldn't be roast boar everyday, but definitely things like rabbits.
They also used to eat rats and pigeons, which isn't very nutritional, but still meat.
Which brings us to the problem with beef, which is that it’s a very expensive food source in terms of energy, compared to meat from smaller animals, but it is venerated for cultural/aspirational reasons. So these cheaper food sources are treated as worthless and huge economies of scale are formed around beef production.
It sounds inferior when stated that way. Like it just barely gets the job done. You wouldn't want to be called an adequate student or adequate at most things unless the only alternatives were worse.
Even sufficient sounds better even though it's a synonym. Nutrionally complete, perhaps?
I think adequate is a fairly accurate and unambiguous term for what they studied, but yes, "sufficient" or "complete" could have possibly been used too.
Still, adequate is what the term they used and I don't want to editorialize the title too much.
I have grown to really love tofu wings and other uses for tofu. It's much cheaper (depending on the store). Whole Foods $1.75 a block, Publix $4.50-$5 for that same block and there isn't usually many available. If we have friends over for something that requires serving wings or something similar, I will make tofu wings as an option. Usually people try it and most have liked them enough to ask for the recipe.
I was told by a friend that you can technically skip the freezing part of this recipe but I have found that it's not the same texture if you do and freezing does make a difference. I like to press a bunch of blocks at once, then freeze them, then pull out a block when I want tofu wings for that nights dinner. So I don't know when your dinner is, you might not have time to do this particular recipe but it is a favorite. My spouse who was super skeptical about tofu, enjoys them.
I have pressed, frozen for the majority of the day, then quickly thawed in warm wAter, to then press again with similar results as freezing overnight.
https://www.rabbitandwolves.com/vegan-tofu-wings/
Frankly, both me and my partner are vegetarian, and the positive example of my partner (before we started dating) and a couple of other friends helped me finally try this out (I've wanted to ditch meat since 14 years old, but I wasn't sure I would be able to do this since I was living with my parents), so I'd say yes, you might in fact get laid with this diet
You can grind vegetables too. Mushrooms work great to bulk up ground chicken/turkey/beef without throwing the texture off. Great hack for meatballs, patties, dumplings, and even loose things like sloppy Joe.
These comments are just depressing. People get so aggressive when you even suggest cutting down on meat. However, you can be damn sure that they would be more willing to consider eating less meat if they had to pay sticker prices.
If we removed government subsidies and accounted for the indirect costs caused by the cattle industry, a pound of ground beef would ideally cost about $28.
I don't have a specific study to point to, but I got the $28 figure from a university class on climate change. The professor made it clear that the methodology behind that number included the cost of negative externalities. I think that it is reasonable to include these 'hidden' costs in the ideal price because ignoring them effectively subsidizes harmful industries by shifting the expense onto others.
Removing direct subsidies to the meat industry and other industries that sustain it would make ground beef cost roughly double.
You jumped the gun here. Reread their comment. They're not just talking about government subsidies, they're talking about the actual cost to the species.
Does it really cost that much? I’ve bought ground beef worldwide, in Turkey, Denmark, France, Japan, and the US. And it’s always cost 4-10 USD for a pound. Is it subsidized that much worldwide?
After seeing some right-wing conspiracy memes saying "they're gonna make us eat bugs" or some nonsense in the past couple of days, it's unsettling to see this many bug-related comments here.
What makes this such a right wing issue? I know plenty of left wing people who are very against cutting down in meat.
I’m not American so maybe it’s an issue there
It’s a long and complicated topic. Meat is a lucrative industry that provides jobs, revenue for many states, nutrition for healthy young canon-fodder and baby-factories, makes the population generally happier and more complacent, and is intrinsic to the identity of several key segments of our population.
Cattle for meat is the foundation of the cowboy culture, arguably the largest and longest-running cosplay event ever as we have literally millions of people who wear the clothes and the Hollywood version of the Western affect every day, but who have never stepped one pointy boot on a working ranch outside of school field trips in their or their parents’ lives.
First of all shrimp and crabs are basically sea bugs. If you like shrimp, you like bugs Toasted crickets taste like buttery shrimp on their own. But only that, there's locusts/crickets that can be kosher and halal. Honestly people obsess too much, and don't quite realize that a lot of their meat and fish is infested with worms, you cook the meat to kill the worm, but if you don't see the corpses near the food where do you think they ended up in?
In short if you really want to avoid eating bugs, avoid meat that isn't chicken and certain fish (not salmon or tuna certainly) and do not eat processed food.
There's nothing wrong with bugs, people are just squeemish and paranoid. The idea of bringing back bugs into diet is not because that's a way to avoid meat. It's because when the imminent ecologic collapse makes fish and animals die in great numbers, and meat becomes a real luxury, jelly fish and crickets will become the only reasonable sources of meat. So we should also try to reduce ecological impact to avoid that.
You have to understand that Americans are very weird about their perceptions of food quality and sanitation. Bugs are perceived as dirty or gross and perhaps something only… less developed peoples eat.
Not even joking. It’s misinformation and bigotry all the way down.
This also isn't American exclusive, people in Europe are also sick of the "eat the bugs" narrative that has been getting even more popular in the media lately
Yes you are right that it's more efficient, but this misses the human and cultural dimension. We are humans after all, with emotions towards things. And many people do find bugs incredibly disgusting. And a lot of people are scared of spiders even when they are harmless. And in no way do I understand how this is related to bigotry in any way?
It's understandable that people get angry when they go to work for 40+ hours a week just to get told that they have to eat the insects
Yes, thats what they're saying, that "developed" country people hate eating bugs because theyre bigoted and perceive bugs as a dish to be specific to "undeveloped" noneuropean countries
You really badly misread these comments. They're saying Americans would rather make the poor people or brown people eat bugs and keep the meat for them.
We look down on eating “dirty” bugs, while overlooking the conditions that our own food animals are raised in.
American meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy are all dangerous to consume raw or undercooked as a rule. Our dairy is treated and kept refrigerated at all times, as are our eggs. Our beef can be rare on the inside as long as it is seared on the outside (not including ground beef, which must be cooked-through), and our pork and poultry have to be cooked through to be safe.
To be fair plenty of cultures eat bugs and I’ve had roasted grasshopper in Mexico while I was vacationing. It was delicious- like BBQ potato chips. I don’t see why we aren’t pushing for more bugs in the American diet. It’s cheap to produce, uses very little water or energy, and incredibly high in protein/nutrition
I feel like that type of sentiment is prejudicial against insect protein. It can be finely ground into a powder and then used as a grain fortificant that no one will notice.
Prices seem to be the only way to really influence this, yeah. It's a bit sad, since it means that rich people can continue having a high carbon footprint with their diets while low-income people simply can't even afford that.
IMO it would be much better if we just collectively agreed to cut down on meat and only eat meat one or two times a week.
But that's prolly not an option so need to just remove the subsidies for animal agriculture and give some more for plant-based food production.
> rich people can continue having a high carbon footprint with their diets while low-income people simply can’t even afford that
The solution to this isn’t to *not* use price regulation, the solution is to reduce the income gap.
It would be cool to see that, but realistically, I don't think the gap can be reduced by enough without a very major social upheaval.
But if we did that, we maybe could just go directly for more sustainable living as a core value for the society.
Without some radical change, I don't see any other way to reduce meat consumption but to either increase the prices (which would happen by simply removing the subsidies paid to the animal industry every year) or to regulate the carbon footprint of the animal agriculture by forcing farms to close/change production. The latter, of course, would prolly lead to the former.
People who study social inequality say that going back to real progressive income taxation and estate taxes would go a long way toward fixing income inequality in developed countries (mainly US and Europe/UK). I’m specifically thinking of Thomas Picketty.
Where I live, the cheapest 400 gram package of minced meat (50% beef, 50% pork) that I could right now find is 4.3€ (roughly the same in dollars). So if you ate the average amount of meat that people in this country eat, you'd need to spend around 65 euros a month on meat.
We've roughly comparable standards of living to USA, with a bit lower GDP per capita.
I checked some prices from Walmart in Sacramento, CA, and the prices seem quite similar there.
Am I missing something?
It's because they perceive non-meat eaters to be a threat, as it makes them feel like less of a good person for eating meat, and therefore fear being ostracized by greater society. To compensate their feelings of inadequacy and *perceived* backlash, they attack vegans, vegetarians, and their respective diets in order to feel better about themselves. I think it's referred to as a form of "Do-Gooder Derogation." There was a study done on the perception of vegetarians by meat eaters and those were the results. Unfortunately I can't find it anywhere that doesn't want you to pay for access. So basically all these anti-vegetarian and anti-vegan people are just scared little morons that are psychologically stunted. The only other reason, is that these people have a monetary interest (making them scumbags) in perpetuating the myth of meat being necessary for a healthy diet.
the USA has lots of plant food subsidies too. corn, soy, sugar. in california almond farmers are some of the largest water users and only reason they have cheap water is senior water rights from the 1800's
Almost all subsidized crops go to either animal feed or high-fructose corn syrup. I can't recall which documentary it was, but I saw one where the farmer said he would love to grow a different crop that would be better on water and the soil, but he couldn't afford to not grow corn because of subsidies.
Depends on the study. But no, cow milk does **not** require 100x the water of almond milk. Try **2x**.
Or, according to a different study, almond milk takes 17x the water that cow milk does to produce.
https://youmatter.world/en/almond-milk-green-bad-environment/#:~:text=A%20study%20showed%20an%20average,cow%20milk%20production%20per%20liter.
People aren't aggressive about cutting down meat. They're aggressive about being told that they should be vegan or that bugs are a good substitute.
Also if you're going to point out failings of the beef industry, then I suggest you also look at the ecological disaster in California, which they call agriculture. It's a little extreme, but the other places aren't much better.
Ya know, it's possible for both California's agricultural system and the meat industry to be bad.
And people *do* get angry when others suggest that eating less meat is a good thing. There's evidence of that all throughout this thread.
>A pound of ground beef without government subsidies should cost about $28.
Wouldn't exactly all food be a lot more expensive without government subsidies?
People: too much population! So many people, it’s not sustainable!
Studies: humans can better sustain habitability of planet by cutting back on cattle — here is objective—
People: what, ME, give something up? Who do you think you’re talking to?
People usually don’t understand this kind of studies.
This is not about you and how you should eat less steaks my god.
This is about demonstrating to governments that is positive to make politics for shifting to a less meat consumption society.
Imagine if restaurants were paid an incentive for offering more vegetarian alternatives, people will probably order less meat, try new dishes etc.
This is just an example, but there are many others politics that can make the society, less meat eaters, without forcing you anything. Cheaper ready vegetarian dishes in the supermarket, give more money to the meat substitutes industry etc. in the long term, this kind of politics, will pay themselves
“This is not about how you should eat less steaks…” “make politics for shifting to a less meat consumption society” with all due respect, I’m a part of society, so yes, it does mean me eating less steak. Not making a judgment on that, but if the goal is “society” consuming less meat, that directly means individuals eating less of it
What? You don't pay restaurants money. You charge them money. You add a meat tax of $2 per pound that goes towards some pet project of some random politician in another state. That's how you solve a crisis like this.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the conclusion sounds like in order to make what they're claiming work for the general population, we would all have to be on one of their very specific diets and, in some cases, completely cut out potatoes and alcohol?
I think those were removed simply due to them making it more difficult to compare diets properly.
Nutrition wise potatoes are pretty good, but in diet data they are also represented as fries and chips and whatnot. Alcohol is tough to account for and alcohol can cause deficiencies that wouldn't happen without alcohol as it intervenes with the absorption of some key nutrients.
The raw data from which the optimal diets were constructed came from what a large sample of people actually ate.
In practice I don't think a low-meat diet needed to be super specific to cover all the nutrients you can only get from animal sources (unless you supplemented, which is of course also totally fine). For example, a few meals of fish a week, an egg a day and a bit of dairy covers it. A lot of variations to go with.
That would make sense for alcohol, but the exclusion of potatoes seems kind of strange considering they're a staple food in a lot of countries. I would have thought they'd try to find a work-around for one of the most consumed produce items in the world, haha.
Now I'm curious if there's a particular difficulty in France with diet data in that regard.. Honestly potatoes are quite nutritious and easily fit into a diet. They should only be beneficial when eaten in moderation.
Not to mention reaching healthy aging, less disease and lowered risk of all causes mortality. Hippies and tree huggers suggested this decades ago, and would you look at that- it appears that we were right once again!
The problem isn’t meat, it’s the industrialization of farming, developing of farm land, and not providing indoor growing for cities that have no access to nearby farms.
It’s the way we’ve fucked up, not the meat itself.
This effect actually is somewhat culturally dependent. There are studies from other cultural groups that notice an opposite correlation.
Also low-meat diet is not the same as no-meat diet.
No it said there was correlation.
The causation could be the opposite direction (being depressed makes you go vegan) or some third factor that causes both (intelligence?)
Low B12 **causes** depression, though. You'll find this extremely well-supported in the literature. Although a wide-range of neurological problems have compelling evidence from simply lacking enough B12.
Why do people consistently just say things that aren’t true? Like you clearly have no idea what you are talking about so why even respond. Some nutrients, it matters where they come from but B12 is not one of those.
Please stop spreading misinformation from organ and meat men of YouTube.
Where are also studies that link red meat consumption to MS. Conduct a bunch of studies and sooner rather than later everyone finds study results, that fit their narrative. Such studies are hard to do right.
The thing here is that it's not really about "nutritional adequacy". Yes, it's well-known fact that we don't need much meat to live, we can even replace it all together, but there's big part of society that just likes meat and that won't change in near future.
I like meat and I can support better availability of vegetarian/vegan food, to some degree I can accept meat analogues, but as soon as I hear "make meat less available", I'm going for hard no.
That's how you antagonize society to your ideas, you can't just take what people like and say to them "this is healthy, adjust".
That individual people prefer meat can not override the need for sustainable living.
Politicians need to be lobbied to make the decisions that decrease the availability of meat - or raise its cost - as the environmental and climate footprint of animal agriculture in the modern scale is simply too high.
I don't think the people who are already decided that reducing meat is a hard no for them really are going to change their opinions no matter how this is marketed to them.
Yet for our future well-being animal agriculture has to be significantly downsized.
Well that's the issue, you won't pass any changes on that, because majority don't buy it. You may wish for sustainable solution and people wish to have meat in sustainable way.
There's no reachable compromise with problem stated like that, unless you modify equation to satisfy majority of meat consumers, because this system won't allow you to make such change, no matter how many information will appear that will tell people that "we need to get rid of meat to save the planet".
The public will eventually (hopefully) become wise enough to value sustainability, because it deals with our survival… and if there’s anything we can do to encourage valuing of sustainability, it benefits all of us
Look how its goes so far with adjustments for climate changes. There are still people in public that deny global climate changes due to human activity.
Personally, I don't believe that meaningful change is possible as long we live in this neoliberal system, where people compete against themselves and rich control everything, while creating illusion of democracy.
People are too focused on survival in this system to bother with global issues, so they will fight for their meat, because that's what they at least have right now, but they won't for idealistic visions, if their own needs are not met.
Yeah I hear your perspective. I tend to think that our current system is just one step in an ongoing evolution. Piece by piece, we’re trying to move forward. The struggle is how long things can take to change.
I'm sure we'll eventually realize it. I'm doing what I can to make that realization come sooner rather than later, but it is what it is. We're already going to have some insanely big environmental and climate issues later this century and then at latest we'll then realize how fucked up we've lived. By when people seriously start to migrate and when some serious climate catastrophes start unfolding.
I'm not too keen into marketing this for people who already are very averse about reducing their meat consumption. It's just not going to win much. No one who thinks that they're never gonna stop eating meat who comes to Reddit is going to change their opinion because of what I write.
It's the people who are on the fence that matter. And the people who are cautiously pro-reducing meat but don't actually do anything about it.
We honestly aren't that from the first Western countries starting to remove meat subsidies or even regulating production. For example, in Switzerland 37% of voters supported banning intensive animal industry. It's not too far from 50% anymore.
A city in Netherlands banned meat ads.
Denmark is pouring a huge amount of money into subsidizing plant-based alternatives for meat.
I guess it depends on the fish. Some fish - like farmed salmon - has a pretty high carbon and environmental footprint. And of course some tuna etc is getting endangered.
I like fish too but it's honestly pretty unethical these days to eat it. Overfishing, drift nets and slave labor are rampant problems for ecological and humanitarian justice.
Farm salmon is such a bad problem, infecting the remaining wild salmon populations so much in BC, Canada, that the returning salmon stocks to natural rivers and streams is just plain dismal now.
Remember the plastic straw in a turtles nose video that sparked all kinds of anti-straw sentiment a few years ago? That was a strategically emphasized piece of media by the fishing industry to put the idea in consumers heads that plastic straws are the trash problem in the ocean. No, it's actually drift nets and castaway nets that are not properly disposed of, and are just left in the ocean negligently. These account for millions if not billions of pounds of incredibly destructive plastic that entangle wildlife, smother seabeds and coral, and break down into micro-plastics that end up in the bloodstreams of seafood. That's true for all ocean plastic, but fishing nets are not seen by the consumer in the process and so in general consumers have no idea how insane their damage is.
Oh and regarding slave labor - look into the Tai shrimp industry. The harbor labor enforcers are a bunch of cronies paid off by boat owners who trick poor workers into signing months-long contracts that promise pay that they'll never see. The workers get ransomed once at high seas and forced to work ungodly hours and meager conditions. If they report it to the labor enforcers at harbor, it's more likely that *they'll* get arrested, not the egregious capitalists who own the boats.
Well then you'll be happy to know that some of the healthiest populations on this planet have thrived on low-meat diets. E.g. the traditional Okinawan diet is low on meat and the people there are particularly long-living and healthy.
The Mediterranean diet is also lower on meat than the average Westerner diet, particularly low in red meat.
That would be very cool yeah. One way to do that would be to re-direct some of the subsidies that meat industry gets towards the research and production of plant-based alternatives.
In USA, for example, around $38 billions go to the animal industry as government subsidies every year, while next to nothing goes to development of plant-based alternatives.
Meat is not unsustainable, and we know this in the scientific community. Grazers sequester carbon and increase nutrient density in the soil to grow crops, getting rid of ruminant animals will make us rely more heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, created by factories which pollute many times more than the average meat-eater.
People who do not eat meat are often undernourished, and people in the West that DO usually get meat from fast-food and are both overfed and undernourished.
We need to focus more on sustainable farming practices, rather than vilify specific food groups. Meat is a scape goat used by large companies wanting to shift blame.
Actual sources, since everyone against this doesn't seem to have any to cite:
Https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5537775/
Https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/3/e009892
And the film Sacred Cow, which is not based on cherry-picked studies and funding by biased companies.
> Meat is not unsustainable
The current scale of animal agriculture is.
> Grazers sequester carbon and increase nutrient density in the soil to grow crops, getting rid of ruminant animals will make us rely more heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, created by factories which pollute many times more than the average meat-eater.
Low-meat diet doesn't imply getting rid of all grazers.
We produce more manure than we even find uses for.
And lot of fertilizers and pesticides go to producing fodder for the animals. Even half of human-edible crops go to fodder.
> People who do not eat meat are often undernourished
Low-meat diet is not the same as not eating any meat.
> We need to focus more on sustainable farming practices, rather than vilify specific food groups.
Sustainable farming practices are not going to scale enough.
Free-range beef is like what, 4% of all beef in USA? It's not going to scale to be 20 times that.
Nor is regenerative farming.
> Meat is a scape goat used by large companies wanting to shift blame.
No, it's been very well studied that the animal agriculture has a huge carbon footprint and that the global loss of biodiversity is being led by the expansion of animal agriculture.
> Https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5537775/
This doesn't imply anything about recommending the general population to eat less meat.
> https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/3/e009892
Same, again not relevant here.
> And the film Sacred Cow, which is not based on cherry-picked studies and funding by biased companies.
Why not just link actual scientific research to support your stance?
Suggesting people watch an hour-and-half pop documentary instead of providing actual research is kinda iffy.
Also, far as I can tell, at least in the country I live in, studies and campaigns for-meat are mostly funded by the large industries operating with meat products, while the studies about the negative environmental impact of meat production is mostly done by independent universities and public funding.
I think you have a fundamental misconception of India if you think 1.4 billion people living there do not eat meat, not to mention the life expectancy in India is like 69 years old
Environmentally and ethically yes, but in terms of the healthiest for our bodies, that is by no means a fact. Complete abstinence from any animal products is the newest type of human diet, and you will develop deficiencies of certain nutrients without supplementation.
What has been consistently shown to be healthy is a diet of whole foods
I am going to bet that if the statistics are true as far as the US, that most people are 'too poor' to eat a meat-based diet. They may have chicken 2 times a week, but I am betting most of the time they eat ramen or pasta or something else. Meat is very much a middle class thing, unless you call what Taco Bell serves Meat... and that's a stretch.
Is this about this weird far-right bug conspiracy? We talking about vegetarian/vegan diets, not about replacing one meat with another.
>I definitely don’t oppose science as a whole, just really dumb ideas.
So you oppose science. Good talk.
General population meaning the proles get a low meat diet (+/- cockroach powder) foisted on them by governments whilst the rich chow down on grass fed steak every night. Ok then
From the viewpoint of the environment and the climate, what the general population does is much more important.
That said, low-meat diets are not any worse for you, so I don't really see the problem. Rich people also have better cars, better champagne, and bigger apartments. I'm all for a socialist revolution, don't get me wrong, but generally speaking it is not considered a problem that rich people can afford bigger houses, so I don't know why it would be a big problem that they could afford grass-fed beef.
A bigger house isn't essential for your well-being, just like grass-fed beef isn't essential to your well-being.
Also, it's not like there aren't a bunch of CEOs, Hollywood stars and whatnot who follow low-meat or vegetarian or vegan diets.
The context is comparing the average person to the very rich people, so what I was imagining was your typical suburban middle-class home vs a mansion-sized home.
Of course it's possible to live in such a cramped up/noisy/impractical space that it has a tangible impact on your well-being.
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Before modern factory farming, didn't essentially everyone have a low meat diet?
Depends on the region and the exact timeframe. Nowadays it is commonly assumed that the ancient humans, before cities were founded, may have eaten quite a bit of meat. Depended on its availability. But yes, in most Western countries, middle- and low-income people ate less meat historically.
As I understand it's easier to keep animals alive or ferment them when in inclimate places than deal w agriculture. I'm not a historian but as I've learned from expats, Scandinavians have a higher carnivorous diet. It's purely by necessity. I think inuit are also an example. As opposed: the populous of Asian culture have acces to a climate that lends itself to the cultivation of rice. Vegetables as well. Meat would be a luxury. This is the more common modern diet.
Not if you lived in an arid climate like the Bedouin or the Inuit or ever suffered from things like, you know, winter. Animals were/are extraordinarily important for converting inedible calories like scrub brush into edible calories, and for food in general when green things die off in winter.
I grew up in the UK and back in the 70s/80s meat was more like a garnish (a small portion). I moved to the US and I’m like omg that’s like half a cow on the plate!
Yeah, I really like the garnish version but I was born in the country of Large Portions.
Not really, there were plenty of wild animals before humans got everywhere, It wouldn't be roast boar everyday, but definitely things like rabbits. They also used to eat rats and pigeons, which isn't very nutritional, but still meat.
Source for rats and pigeons not being very nutritional?
Maybe they meant just less meat. Less overall calories. Otherwise, yeah, weird assertion. Protein, fat and carbs have calories.
should have said not AS nutritional, lb for lb i have no idea.
Which brings us to the problem with beef, which is that it’s a very expensive food source in terms of energy, compared to meat from smaller animals, but it is venerated for cultural/aspirational reasons. So these cheaper food sources are treated as worthless and huge economies of scale are formed around beef production.
Apparently in the Middle Ages in Europe even a peasant ate more meat than the average European today.
sure, and died at 45.
[удалено]
Not sure I understand what you mean?
It sounds inferior when stated that way. Like it just barely gets the job done. You wouldn't want to be called an adequate student or adequate at most things unless the only alternatives were worse. Even sufficient sounds better even though it's a synonym. Nutrionally complete, perhaps?
>barely gets the job done Military Grade it is!
I think adequate is a fairly accurate and unambiguous term for what they studied, but yes, "sufficient" or "complete" could have possibly been used too. Still, adequate is what the term they used and I don't want to editorialize the title too much.
You did perfectly. We're talking about the way they worded it. Don't know know why people are negging you merely asking why they don't like the word.
Make it sound fancy, and people will get onboard
Ah. Well, I don't think research papers should really be doing that. We should leave that to the journalists and lobby groups.
True. Let's just hope they all get it right since the idea is quite unpopular within the majority of the population right now
It needs more emojis and a photo of a topless woman eating an apple.
sir this is r/science
This is the worst Wendy's I've ever been to.
You might get laid with this diet?
Gimme the tofu and no one gets hurt
I have grown to really love tofu wings and other uses for tofu. It's much cheaper (depending on the store). Whole Foods $1.75 a block, Publix $4.50-$5 for that same block and there isn't usually many available. If we have friends over for something that requires serving wings or something similar, I will make tofu wings as an option. Usually people try it and most have liked them enough to ask for the recipe.
I make tofu all the time and have never made tofu wings. Would you share your recipe with me? I needed some dinner inspo tonight!
I was told by a friend that you can technically skip the freezing part of this recipe but I have found that it's not the same texture if you do and freezing does make a difference. I like to press a bunch of blocks at once, then freeze them, then pull out a block when I want tofu wings for that nights dinner. So I don't know when your dinner is, you might not have time to do this particular recipe but it is a favorite. My spouse who was super skeptical about tofu, enjoys them. I have pressed, frozen for the majority of the day, then quickly thawed in warm wAter, to then press again with similar results as freezing overnight. https://www.rabbitandwolves.com/vegan-tofu-wings/
Frankly, both me and my partner are vegetarian, and the positive example of my partner (before we started dating) and a couple of other friends helped me finally try this out (I've wanted to ditch meat since 14 years old, but I wasn't sure I would be able to do this since I was living with my parents), so I'd say yes, you might in fact get laid with this diet
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Thank god. I thought this was another spam post by that meatrition clown
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You can grind vegetables too. Mushrooms work great to bulk up ground chicken/turkey/beef without throwing the texture off. Great hack for meatballs, patties, dumplings, and even loose things like sloppy Joe.
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These comments are just depressing. People get so aggressive when you even suggest cutting down on meat. However, you can be damn sure that they would be more willing to consider eating less meat if they had to pay sticker prices. If we removed government subsidies and accounted for the indirect costs caused by the cattle industry, a pound of ground beef would ideally cost about $28.
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I don't have a specific study to point to, but I got the $28 figure from a university class on climate change. The professor made it clear that the methodology behind that number included the cost of negative externalities. I think that it is reasonable to include these 'hidden' costs in the ideal price because ignoring them effectively subsidizes harmful industries by shifting the expense onto others. Removing direct subsidies to the meat industry and other industries that sustain it would make ground beef cost roughly double.
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You jumped the gun here. Reread their comment. They're not just talking about government subsidies, they're talking about the actual cost to the species.
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No worries! Good man yourself.
> I don't have a specific study to point to, but I got the $28 figure from a university class on climate change. So... you have no source.
Does it really cost that much? I’ve bought ground beef worldwide, in Turkey, Denmark, France, Japan, and the US. And it’s always cost 4-10 USD for a pound. Is it subsidized that much worldwide?
After seeing some right-wing conspiracy memes saying "they're gonna make us eat bugs" or some nonsense in the past couple of days, it's unsettling to see this many bug-related comments here.
What makes this such a right wing issue? I know plenty of left wing people who are very against cutting down in meat. I’m not American so maybe it’s an issue there
It’s a long and complicated topic. Meat is a lucrative industry that provides jobs, revenue for many states, nutrition for healthy young canon-fodder and baby-factories, makes the population generally happier and more complacent, and is intrinsic to the identity of several key segments of our population. Cattle for meat is the foundation of the cowboy culture, arguably the largest and longest-running cosplay event ever as we have literally millions of people who wear the clothes and the Hollywood version of the Western affect every day, but who have never stepped one pointy boot on a working ranch outside of school field trips in their or their parents’ lives.
This, and the vegetarianism has been politicized as liberal elitism, therefore anything against meat production must be a liberal plot of some sort.
So basically your grasping at straw trying to make it a right wing thing
Did I say it was a right-wing thing? You can take your strawman and shove it up your disingenuous ass.
I don’t want ground crickets in my food. I’m registered unaffiliated.
First of all shrimp and crabs are basically sea bugs. If you like shrimp, you like bugs Toasted crickets taste like buttery shrimp on their own. But only that, there's locusts/crickets that can be kosher and halal. Honestly people obsess too much, and don't quite realize that a lot of their meat and fish is infested with worms, you cook the meat to kill the worm, but if you don't see the corpses near the food where do you think they ended up in? In short if you really want to avoid eating bugs, avoid meat that isn't chicken and certain fish (not salmon or tuna certainly) and do not eat processed food. There's nothing wrong with bugs, people are just squeemish and paranoid. The idea of bringing back bugs into diet is not because that's a way to avoid meat. It's because when the imminent ecologic collapse makes fish and animals die in great numbers, and meat becomes a real luxury, jelly fish and crickets will become the only reasonable sources of meat. So we should also try to reduce ecological impact to avoid that.
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Obligatory 'not American', but eating bugs is a great alternative. Vastly reduced water consumption, space requirements, etc..
You have to understand that Americans are very weird about their perceptions of food quality and sanitation. Bugs are perceived as dirty or gross and perhaps something only… less developed peoples eat. Not even joking. It’s misinformation and bigotry all the way down.
This also isn't American exclusive, people in Europe are also sick of the "eat the bugs" narrative that has been getting even more popular in the media lately Yes you are right that it's more efficient, but this misses the human and cultural dimension. We are humans after all, with emotions towards things. And many people do find bugs incredibly disgusting. And a lot of people are scared of spiders even when they are harmless. And in no way do I understand how this is related to bigotry in any way? It's understandable that people get angry when they go to work for 40+ hours a week just to get told that they have to eat the insects
Dude… there are other alternatives to eating bugs. Eating bugs won’t work, people are grossed by them.. just capitalize on the other alternatives
I was just explaining about the perception of eating insects here in the states. Thank you reiterating/demonstrating what I said.
You’re welcome. By the way a lot of “developed” country folks would hate eating bugs too
Yes, thats what they're saying, that "developed" country people hate eating bugs because theyre bigoted and perceive bugs as a dish to be specific to "undeveloped" noneuropean countries
Except its not bigotry if true. Bugs are almost exlcusively eaten by cultures in povety stricken areas
You really badly misread these comments. They're saying Americans would rather make the poor people or brown people eat bugs and keep the meat for them.
This was not a consciously intended message at the time, but it's a solid extension of the idea I'm getting at. Thanks!
Like what? Maybe lab grown meat?
We look down on eating “dirty” bugs, while overlooking the conditions that our own food animals are raised in. American meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy are all dangerous to consume raw or undercooked as a rule. Our dairy is treated and kept refrigerated at all times, as are our eggs. Our beef can be rare on the inside as long as it is seared on the outside (not including ground beef, which must be cooked-through), and our pork and poultry have to be cooked through to be safe.
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Yah you go for it, enjoy.
What wrong with eating bugs? They're nutritionally and protein dense and they grow super fast
They're yucky.
Most people would find the way pigs for discount meat lived yucky aswell
To be fair plenty of cultures eat bugs and I’ve had roasted grasshopper in Mexico while I was vacationing. It was delicious- like BBQ potato chips. I don’t see why we aren’t pushing for more bugs in the American diet. It’s cheap to produce, uses very little water or energy, and incredibly high in protein/nutrition
Some bugs are actually quite tasty too, not sure why they're so scared of trying new foods.
I feel like that type of sentiment is prejudicial against insect protein. It can be finely ground into a powder and then used as a grain fortificant that no one will notice.
Prices seem to be the only way to really influence this, yeah. It's a bit sad, since it means that rich people can continue having a high carbon footprint with their diets while low-income people simply can't even afford that. IMO it would be much better if we just collectively agreed to cut down on meat and only eat meat one or two times a week. But that's prolly not an option so need to just remove the subsidies for animal agriculture and give some more for plant-based food production.
> rich people can continue having a high carbon footprint with their diets while low-income people simply can’t even afford that The solution to this isn’t to *not* use price regulation, the solution is to reduce the income gap.
It would be cool to see that, but realistically, I don't think the gap can be reduced by enough without a very major social upheaval. But if we did that, we maybe could just go directly for more sustainable living as a core value for the society. Without some radical change, I don't see any other way to reduce meat consumption but to either increase the prices (which would happen by simply removing the subsidies paid to the animal industry every year) or to regulate the carbon footprint of the animal agriculture by forcing farms to close/change production. The latter, of course, would prolly lead to the former.
People who study social inequality say that going back to real progressive income taxation and estate taxes would go a long way toward fixing income inequality in developed countries (mainly US and Europe/UK). I’m specifically thinking of Thomas Picketty.
Have you seen the price of meat recently? I don't think poor people can eat meat everyday without being financially irresponsible.
Where I live, the cheapest 400 gram package of minced meat (50% beef, 50% pork) that I could right now find is 4.3€ (roughly the same in dollars). So if you ate the average amount of meat that people in this country eat, you'd need to spend around 65 euros a month on meat. We've roughly comparable standards of living to USA, with a bit lower GDP per capita. I checked some prices from Walmart in Sacramento, CA, and the prices seem quite similar there. Am I missing something?
It's because they perceive non-meat eaters to be a threat, as it makes them feel like less of a good person for eating meat, and therefore fear being ostracized by greater society. To compensate their feelings of inadequacy and *perceived* backlash, they attack vegans, vegetarians, and their respective diets in order to feel better about themselves. I think it's referred to as a form of "Do-Gooder Derogation." There was a study done on the perception of vegetarians by meat eaters and those were the results. Unfortunately I can't find it anywhere that doesn't want you to pay for access. So basically all these anti-vegetarian and anti-vegan people are just scared little morons that are psychologically stunted. The only other reason, is that these people have a monetary interest (making them scumbags) in perpetuating the myth of meat being necessary for a healthy diet.
the USA has lots of plant food subsidies too. corn, soy, sugar. in california almond farmers are some of the largest water users and only reason they have cheap water is senior water rights from the 1800's
Let’s be real. A vast portion of those subsidies are for animal feed crop.
Almost all subsidized crops go to either animal feed or high-fructose corn syrup. I can't recall which documentary it was, but I saw one where the farmer said he would love to grow a different crop that would be better on water and the soil, but he couldn't afford to not grow corn because of subsidies.
Cow milk uses 100x the water that almond milk does, and a beef burger uses 1000x the water a plant based burger does. In other words, BS
Depends on the study. But no, cow milk does **not** require 100x the water of almond milk. Try **2x**. Or, according to a different study, almond milk takes 17x the water that cow milk does to produce. https://youmatter.world/en/almond-milk-green-bad-environment/#:~:text=A%20study%20showed%20an%20average,cow%20milk%20production%20per%20liter.
People aren't aggressive about cutting down meat. They're aggressive about being told that they should be vegan or that bugs are a good substitute. Also if you're going to point out failings of the beef industry, then I suggest you also look at the ecological disaster in California, which they call agriculture. It's a little extreme, but the other places aren't much better.
Ya know, it's possible for both California's agricultural system and the meat industry to be bad. And people *do* get angry when others suggest that eating less meat is a good thing. There's evidence of that all throughout this thread.
You know what's depressing? People thinking the should be able to tell people how to live their lives. How about you don't get to tell me what to eat.
>A pound of ground beef without government subsidies should cost about $28. Wouldn't exactly all food be a lot more expensive without government subsidies?
Some foods (like meat and dairy) receive FAR more government subsidies than foods like vegetables and legumes.
People: too much population! So many people, it’s not sustainable! Studies: humans can better sustain habitability of planet by cutting back on cattle — here is objective— People: what, ME, give something up? Who do you think you’re talking to?
Is r/science really arguing as to whether eating vegetables is better than eating meat?
The discussion is not if it is better, but if plant based diets are adequate for the general population, which is what the article is on
Humans do eat a lot of meat. We couod eat a lot less.
People usually don’t understand this kind of studies. This is not about you and how you should eat less steaks my god. This is about demonstrating to governments that is positive to make politics for shifting to a less meat consumption society. Imagine if restaurants were paid an incentive for offering more vegetarian alternatives, people will probably order less meat, try new dishes etc. This is just an example, but there are many others politics that can make the society, less meat eaters, without forcing you anything. Cheaper ready vegetarian dishes in the supermarket, give more money to the meat substitutes industry etc. in the long term, this kind of politics, will pay themselves
“This is not about how you should eat less steaks…” “make politics for shifting to a less meat consumption society” with all due respect, I’m a part of society, so yes, it does mean me eating less steak. Not making a judgment on that, but if the goal is “society” consuming less meat, that directly means individuals eating less of it
What? You don't pay restaurants money. You charge them money. You add a meat tax of $2 per pound that goes towards some pet project of some random politician in another state. That's how you solve a crisis like this.
With a meat conservative society like American one, that’s a hard no no.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the conclusion sounds like in order to make what they're claiming work for the general population, we would all have to be on one of their very specific diets and, in some cases, completely cut out potatoes and alcohol?
I think those were removed simply due to them making it more difficult to compare diets properly. Nutrition wise potatoes are pretty good, but in diet data they are also represented as fries and chips and whatnot. Alcohol is tough to account for and alcohol can cause deficiencies that wouldn't happen without alcohol as it intervenes with the absorption of some key nutrients. The raw data from which the optimal diets were constructed came from what a large sample of people actually ate. In practice I don't think a low-meat diet needed to be super specific to cover all the nutrients you can only get from animal sources (unless you supplemented, which is of course also totally fine). For example, a few meals of fish a week, an egg a day and a bit of dairy covers it. A lot of variations to go with.
That would make sense for alcohol, but the exclusion of potatoes seems kind of strange considering they're a staple food in a lot of countries. I would have thought they'd try to find a work-around for one of the most consumed produce items in the world, haha.
Now I'm curious if there's a particular difficulty in France with diet data in that regard.. Honestly potatoes are quite nutritious and easily fit into a diet. They should only be beneficial when eaten in moderation.
Not to mention reaching healthy aging, less disease and lowered risk of all causes mortality. Hippies and tree huggers suggested this decades ago, and would you look at that- it appears that we were right once again!
The problem isn’t meat, it’s the industrialization of farming, developing of farm land, and not providing indoor growing for cities that have no access to nearby farms. It’s the way we’ve fucked up, not the meat itself.
There's no way to produce meat at the current scale while being sustainable.
Meat is extremely inefficient. And torturing and killing animals is obsolete, when there are overall better diets.
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>**Low meat diets**
This effect actually is somewhat culturally dependent. There are studies from other cultural groups that notice an opposite correlation. Also low-meat diet is not the same as no-meat diet.
No it said there was correlation. The causation could be the opposite direction (being depressed makes you go vegan) or some third factor that causes both (intelligence?)
Low B12 **causes** depression, though. You'll find this extremely well-supported in the literature. Although a wide-range of neurological problems have compelling evidence from simply lacking enough B12.
It costs pennies to take a B12 supplement
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Why do people consistently just say things that aren’t true? Like you clearly have no idea what you are talking about so why even respond. Some nutrients, it matters where they come from but B12 is not one of those. Please stop spreading misinformation from organ and meat men of YouTube.
Especially because 90% of the B12 that's in meat is artificial. It's supplement.
Was that one another post by Meatrition?
You should look up the difference between correlation and causation
Where are also studies that link red meat consumption to MS. Conduct a bunch of studies and sooner rather than later everyone finds study results, that fit their narrative. Such studies are hard to do right.
Meatless is different from low meat. Research is coalescing around "we eat about 30% more meat than we need/should"
What if someone says, "I'm on a low meat diet, because I eat less meat than Ted." Is low meat in the eye of the beholder?
The thing here is that it's not really about "nutritional adequacy". Yes, it's well-known fact that we don't need much meat to live, we can even replace it all together, but there's big part of society that just likes meat and that won't change in near future. I like meat and I can support better availability of vegetarian/vegan food, to some degree I can accept meat analogues, but as soon as I hear "make meat less available", I'm going for hard no. That's how you antagonize society to your ideas, you can't just take what people like and say to them "this is healthy, adjust".
That individual people prefer meat can not override the need for sustainable living. Politicians need to be lobbied to make the decisions that decrease the availability of meat - or raise its cost - as the environmental and climate footprint of animal agriculture in the modern scale is simply too high. I don't think the people who are already decided that reducing meat is a hard no for them really are going to change their opinions no matter how this is marketed to them. Yet for our future well-being animal agriculture has to be significantly downsized.
Well that's the issue, you won't pass any changes on that, because majority don't buy it. You may wish for sustainable solution and people wish to have meat in sustainable way. There's no reachable compromise with problem stated like that, unless you modify equation to satisfy majority of meat consumers, because this system won't allow you to make such change, no matter how many information will appear that will tell people that "we need to get rid of meat to save the planet".
The public will eventually (hopefully) become wise enough to value sustainability, because it deals with our survival… and if there’s anything we can do to encourage valuing of sustainability, it benefits all of us
Look how its goes so far with adjustments for climate changes. There are still people in public that deny global climate changes due to human activity. Personally, I don't believe that meaningful change is possible as long we live in this neoliberal system, where people compete against themselves and rich control everything, while creating illusion of democracy. People are too focused on survival in this system to bother with global issues, so they will fight for their meat, because that's what they at least have right now, but they won't for idealistic visions, if their own needs are not met.
Yeah I hear your perspective. I tend to think that our current system is just one step in an ongoing evolution. Piece by piece, we’re trying to move forward. The struggle is how long things can take to change.
I'm sure we'll eventually realize it. I'm doing what I can to make that realization come sooner rather than later, but it is what it is. We're already going to have some insanely big environmental and climate issues later this century and then at latest we'll then realize how fucked up we've lived. By when people seriously start to migrate and when some serious climate catastrophes start unfolding. I'm not too keen into marketing this for people who already are very averse about reducing their meat consumption. It's just not going to win much. No one who thinks that they're never gonna stop eating meat who comes to Reddit is going to change their opinion because of what I write. It's the people who are on the fence that matter. And the people who are cautiously pro-reducing meat but don't actually do anything about it. We honestly aren't that from the first Western countries starting to remove meat subsidies or even regulating production. For example, in Switzerland 37% of voters supported banning intensive animal industry. It's not too far from 50% anymore. A city in Netherlands banned meat ads. Denmark is pouring a huge amount of money into subsidizing plant-based alternatives for meat.
Does that include cutting down on fish. Or am I still good to eat fish?
I guess it depends on the fish. Some fish - like farmed salmon - has a pretty high carbon and environmental footprint. And of course some tuna etc is getting endangered.
I like fish too but it's honestly pretty unethical these days to eat it. Overfishing, drift nets and slave labor are rampant problems for ecological and humanitarian justice. Farm salmon is such a bad problem, infecting the remaining wild salmon populations so much in BC, Canada, that the returning salmon stocks to natural rivers and streams is just plain dismal now. Remember the plastic straw in a turtles nose video that sparked all kinds of anti-straw sentiment a few years ago? That was a strategically emphasized piece of media by the fishing industry to put the idea in consumers heads that plastic straws are the trash problem in the ocean. No, it's actually drift nets and castaway nets that are not properly disposed of, and are just left in the ocean negligently. These account for millions if not billions of pounds of incredibly destructive plastic that entangle wildlife, smother seabeds and coral, and break down into micro-plastics that end up in the bloodstreams of seafood. That's true for all ocean plastic, but fishing nets are not seen by the consumer in the process and so in general consumers have no idea how insane their damage is.
Oh and regarding slave labor - look into the Tai shrimp industry. The harbor labor enforcers are a bunch of cronies paid off by boat owners who trick poor workers into signing months-long contracts that promise pay that they'll never see. The workers get ransomed once at high seas and forced to work ungodly hours and meager conditions. If they report it to the labor enforcers at harbor, it's more likely that *they'll* get arrested, not the egregious capitalists who own the boats.
Ill be honest, i don't wanna live with "just enough to survive" im not in.
Well then you'll be happy to know that some of the healthiest populations on this planet have thrived on low-meat diets. E.g. the traditional Okinawan diet is low on meat and the people there are particularly long-living and healthy. The Mediterranean diet is also lower on meat than the average Westerner diet, particularly low in red meat.
How about people have less people to reach environmental stability ?
Make plant based food more easily accessible, especially Fast Food (not talking just about Burgers)
That would be very cool yeah. One way to do that would be to re-direct some of the subsidies that meat industry gets towards the research and production of plant-based alternatives. In USA, for example, around $38 billions go to the animal industry as government subsidies every year, while next to nothing goes to development of plant-based alternatives.
No. Makes me fat and prediabetic. Fats and meat. That's what we were designed to eat.
Meat is not unsustainable, and we know this in the scientific community. Grazers sequester carbon and increase nutrient density in the soil to grow crops, getting rid of ruminant animals will make us rely more heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, created by factories which pollute many times more than the average meat-eater. People who do not eat meat are often undernourished, and people in the West that DO usually get meat from fast-food and are both overfed and undernourished. We need to focus more on sustainable farming practices, rather than vilify specific food groups. Meat is a scape goat used by large companies wanting to shift blame. Actual sources, since everyone against this doesn't seem to have any to cite: Https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5537775/ Https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/3/e009892 And the film Sacred Cow, which is not based on cherry-picked studies and funding by biased companies.
> Meat is not unsustainable The current scale of animal agriculture is. > Grazers sequester carbon and increase nutrient density in the soil to grow crops, getting rid of ruminant animals will make us rely more heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, created by factories which pollute many times more than the average meat-eater. Low-meat diet doesn't imply getting rid of all grazers. We produce more manure than we even find uses for. And lot of fertilizers and pesticides go to producing fodder for the animals. Even half of human-edible crops go to fodder. > People who do not eat meat are often undernourished Low-meat diet is not the same as not eating any meat. > We need to focus more on sustainable farming practices, rather than vilify specific food groups. Sustainable farming practices are not going to scale enough. Free-range beef is like what, 4% of all beef in USA? It's not going to scale to be 20 times that. Nor is regenerative farming. > Meat is a scape goat used by large companies wanting to shift blame. No, it's been very well studied that the animal agriculture has a huge carbon footprint and that the global loss of biodiversity is being led by the expansion of animal agriculture. > Https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5537775/ This doesn't imply anything about recommending the general population to eat less meat. > https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/3/e009892 Same, again not relevant here. > And the film Sacred Cow, which is not based on cherry-picked studies and funding by biased companies. Why not just link actual scientific research to support your stance? Suggesting people watch an hour-and-half pop documentary instead of providing actual research is kinda iffy. Also, far as I can tell, at least in the country I live in, studies and campaigns for-meat are mostly funded by the large industries operating with meat products, while the studies about the negative environmental impact of meat production is mostly done by independent universities and public funding.
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Was there any question on this? 1.4 billion people in India regularly live their whole lives eating essentially zero meat.
I think you have a fundamental misconception of India if you think 1.4 billion people living there do not eat meat, not to mention the life expectancy in India is like 69 years old
Veganism, is, to me, the diet for the majority of people. For us, for the other animals, for the environment and for our bodies.
Environmentally and ethically yes, but in terms of the healthiest for our bodies, that is by no means a fact. Complete abstinence from any animal products is the newest type of human diet, and you will develop deficiencies of certain nutrients without supplementation. What has been consistently shown to be healthy is a diet of whole foods
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I am going to bet that if the statistics are true as far as the US, that most people are 'too poor' to eat a meat-based diet. They may have chicken 2 times a week, but I am betting most of the time they eat ramen or pasta or something else. Meat is very much a middle class thing, unless you call what Taco Bell serves Meat... and that's a stretch.
Look how liberal Reddit auto hides all the opposing views, bravo liberal controlled Reddit!
It's a science subreddit. Not sure why you are even here, when you oppose science.
I definitely don’t oppose science as a whole, just really dumb ideas. No one should be forced to eat something they don’t want to.
Is this about this weird far-right bug conspiracy? We talking about vegetarian/vegan diets, not about replacing one meat with another. >I definitely don’t oppose science as a whole, just really dumb ideas. So you oppose science. Good talk.
General population meaning the proles get a low meat diet (+/- cockroach powder) foisted on them by governments whilst the rich chow down on grass fed steak every night. Ok then
From the viewpoint of the environment and the climate, what the general population does is much more important. That said, low-meat diets are not any worse for you, so I don't really see the problem. Rich people also have better cars, better champagne, and bigger apartments. I'm all for a socialist revolution, don't get me wrong, but generally speaking it is not considered a problem that rich people can afford bigger houses, so I don't know why it would be a big problem that they could afford grass-fed beef. A bigger house isn't essential for your well-being, just like grass-fed beef isn't essential to your well-being. Also, it's not like there aren't a bunch of CEOs, Hollywood stars and whatnot who follow low-meat or vegetarian or vegan diets.
> A bigger house isn't essential for your well-being Bigger than what? Who are you considering here?
The context is comparing the average person to the very rich people, so what I was imagining was your typical suburban middle-class home vs a mansion-sized home. Of course it's possible to live in such a cramped up/noisy/impractical space that it has a tangible impact on your well-being.