this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
101 points (91.7% liked)
[Dormant] moved to !politicalcompassmemes@piefed.social
413 readers
1 users here now
COMM MOVED TO !politicalcompassmemes@piefed.social
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
the bottom two quadrants may be making that up.
edit: the user below who claims it is environmentally better is using a dubious study from 2018 in which LCA data is compiled against the explicit recommended use of LCA data. this simply isn't good science. the go on to claim it's cheaper using a study that didn't include anyone who gets free or subsidized food, which effectively eliminates any poor people from the study. the scope of the study simply isn't broad enough to substantiate the claim.
The bottom two quadrants are indeed not making that up.
* EDIT: So far, in fact, that egg prices are now ballooning (recent drop due to imports etc.) from us packing birds so close together that commercial egg production has turned into a game of The Last of Clucks. Good job, humans. π₯³
I have to say, I'm highly skeptical of anyone who says that meat is bad for you. It is delicious, satiating, and full of nutrients. With a few exceptions, it is seen as a prized food in almost every culture in the world. Even in cultures which ban some meats, other meats are still eaten as often as possible. And in cultures with a total ban on all meat, they eat other animal products.
The reality is, data on the relationship between health and meat eating will invariably be skewed since meat eating is the default, while not eating meat takes conscious effort, which implies that the non-meat-eater puts at least some thought into what they are eating. While a vegan eating a meal of seitΓ‘n, brocholli, and brown rice is certainly healthy, I have a hard time believing it is substantially more healthy compared to substituting the seitΓ‘n for a grilled pork chop. But comparing a vegan diet to a "normal" omnivorous diet isn't doing this, since a normal modern diet also includes a healthy serving of Doritos, Slim Jims, and Little Debbie snack cakes.
Argumentum ad populum
Conversion of plant material to animal feed, for the resulting caloric equivalent, is extremely inefficient. The amount of land, labor, and resources spent on animal feed is a disproportionate expense in the modern day, as feed and coverage are not grown primarily in a crop rotation, but as desired monocultures themselves.
In other words, the costs of feeding a society (or the average citizen, if you will) a vegan diet, compared to a non-vegan diet, might be more efficient than a very well planned society on a non-vegan diet (as many animal feed crops restore soil fertility, grow in less-arable environments, and have only marginal use for human consumption), but in the current environment of economic incentives, a vegan diet would be immensely more efficient.
I say this as a filthy meat eater who has no ethical problem with eating (non-factory farmed) meat.
that can be true while it's still a fact that no matter how many beans you buy the meat dairy and egg industries continue to grow.
How so? Growing environmentally friendly crops is obviously cheaper and better for the planet than growing 10 times that amount and feeding it to a cow for meat.
for some people it's cheaper. for some it's not. for everyone though, regardless of how many beans you buy, the meat dairy and egg industries continue to pollute in ever greater amounts.
No, reduced demand will wreck the prices for the producers, who will reduce supply and thereby reduce the overall volume of production, which will reduce the volume of pollution, water usage, etc. Beef production in the U.S. has been relatively stable since 2000, despite the population growth and increased consumer spending on food. The market responds to input costs and demand, and things like drought conditions drop production significantly.
meat production grows every year
Yes, but so has demand. I'm saying if demand goes down, so will production.
whatever your excuse, being vegan has not decreased meat production
That doesn't sound right. A big part of the reason why beef keeps getting expensive much faster than pork or chicken is because it's getting a lot more expensive to raise pastured animals than factory farming feedlots. It's also why, historically, a culture's preference for pork over beef (or vice versa) could be predicted by looking at how urbanized that culture is.
Not all meat is equal, and beef is particularly inefficient at turning plant biomass (and water) into meat, and needs a lot more land area for traditional methods. Even modern feedlot methods don't actually help that much in terms of competition with other meat animals, because chickens and pigs are also easier to feed in feedlot settings.
Vegetarian diets are pretty cheap for meeting the bare minimum nutritional requirements. Legume+grain is the staple food for many cultures for a reason.
But also in the real world, most people want variety and taste, and meat is often a cheaper and easier way to provide that higher level of enjoyment, compared to the work necessary to process non-animal sources into certain tastes and textures that are easier to find from animal sources. So when we're talking about the diets of rich societies, who can afford to spend money and effort well beyond the bare minimum to keep us alive, we're spending plenty of effort on adding non nutritive flavors, including stuff like spices or fermented sauces.
So you're probably right when focused only on the rich western societies where it is true that the typical vegan spends more on food than the typical omnivore in the same rich society. But it's not broadly true across the board, and at the very upper ranges of luxury spending, I'm not sure that still holds up (some meats and seafoods can get quite expensive at the very very high end).
I think I may have been careless with my wording.
In short, If we converted all pasture land that did have agricultural viability to be used as crop fields instead we would have more competitive non-meat produce prices worldwide.
That's fair, I was more speaking on principle. I know that retooling the production chains that feed millions of people isn't as easy.
Personally I am a vegetarian, I enjoy milk, cheese and eggs way too much to not eat any. I am very conscious about where I source my food from though, and luckily I am German and we have a robust and reasonably affordable selection of organic and local produce to choose from.
Having recently visited Germany I agree your available for a vegetarian diet is much better than mine and I would say the majority of places. The German people are more health conscious(likely due to average earnings) than many other developed nations.
Depends on time and place for bottom right; bottom left is just true.
bottom left would be true if being vegan decreased agricultural impact. The agricultural industry is continue to pollute at ever greater amounts.
Vegans consume a small fraction as many plants as meat-eaters do. There are ten livestock for every human on Earth, and none of them are going hungry. They are all (to within a tiny rounding error) eating agricultural products. So yes,
by a huge amount.
Why so confidently incorrect. Got emotional feelings on the subject?
but being vegan doesn't decrease meat production.