10 ms·

'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

21 points by chunkyslink 4y ago

vegan_wgat 4y ago
Throwaway for obvious reasons. What's the current academic consensus on nutritional deficiencies of vegan / lacto-vegeterian diet? I grew up on a lacto-vegeterian diet in India. I can't shake off the feeling that I would've had a better physique and growth if I had access to non-vegetarian food during my youth.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  There are even vegan body builders so I would probably say that's not necessarily true.
  - vegan_wgat 4y ago
    Yes but I think they are heavy on the lacto part, which I don't think a common person can follow.
    - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      They are full vegan, but the majority heavily supplement or juice. Both which aren't things the average person will do and which a significant portion won't have access to.
- cute_boi 4y ago
  I think its just a propaganda by meat industry that you need to eat meat to live a healthy life. If you take vitamin b12 properly or take fortified foods you should be ok. (Also, the vitamin b12 is supplied to animal in many industry, so people shouldn't use vitamin b12 to argue to vegans.)
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    The propaganda argument could be turned around, too. There are more than enough vegan companies trying to make a quick buck out of this. You take your average vegan burger package, it's stuffed with the same crap as a regular premade burger, except it uses tofu or beans instead of ground beef. Regardless, the bigger problem is the lack of long term research we have on mindful omnivores vs mindful vegetarians vs mindful vegans, etc. Most comparisons are between mindful vegans and omnivores living off of incredibly poor diets.
- 0x20cowboy 4y ago
  > It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/
  - vegan_wgat 4y ago
    How much difference in cost between 'well planned vegeterian diet' and normal healthy diet with animal products?
    - lm28469 4y ago
      > normal healthy diet with animal products Most people don't eat a "normal >healthy< diet with animal products". It takes as much work to have a meat based healthy diet as a vegetarian based healthy diet.
      - uptime 4y ago
        This. Any healthy diet today involves actively choosing and avoiding products marketed to us. Eating meat is not magical, and I called myself a vegetarian for a while when I was really a carb-etarian and my fitness suffered.
- stefantalpalaru 4y ago
throwaway22032 4y ago
If I spent 1/8 of what I earn, eight of me could live on my salary. It's functionally achievable, people live in my country on that amount. But I don't like that, so I spend a bit more. There is no sense in reducing the entire human experience to the lowest common denominator one in order to fit more people on the planet. If that's in your plans, you have a literal fight on your hands.
- myshpa 4y ago
  Eating pigs & poultry requires less than 5% of land than beef. Eating something more sustainable is not equal to reducing the human experience. That's just your taste buds talking. You could say, that the only way to have the entire human experience, is to eat carnivores (lions, anyone?). With carnivore diet how many people you think the planet would support? Would there be a place for yourself, now? What about your children and children of your children? For wildlife? For nature? Come on, grow up, people.
  - throwaway22032 4y ago
    And there will be some way of eating that requires 5% of the land of whatever you suggest, ad infinitum, until we have tens of billions of humans and we end up back at square one. A line in the sand will be drawn somewhere, here's mine. I don't believe in infinite growth, it will result in us all drinking Soylent in cages. The objective for me is to have a high quality of life for a reasonable number of people, not a low quality of life for the maximum amount possible.
    - myshpa 4y ago
      > until we have tens of billions of humans We don't even have enough room to supplement the current population on western version of meat-eating diet. We already use more land for beef production, than we have forests. > until we have tens of billions of humans Agree, we have to abandon our current notions of growth, if we want to preserve life for future generations. On our current path we're going to hell (too many things to enumerate here). > a high quality of life for a reasonable number of people Plant-based diet means a higher quality of life for everyone - people, animals, wildlife. I for one would rather have more forests, than beef burger packaged in plastic. If you think that we handle animals humanly, please see Dominion (2018) movie [https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch]. If you can watch it till the end and still have the same opinion about putting meat above your taste buds, please, let me know. You'd be the first.
Normille 4y ago
...and the wind could generate electricity for a similar number. Conversation might be a bit limited though. The need to tell everyone you meet, within 5 minutes of meeting them, that you're a vegan would be removed.
- Flankk 4y ago
  Similar to how you resort to cheap stereotypes within five minutes of being exposed to an uncomfortable topic.
- ChrisRR 4y ago
  - ricardobayes 4y ago
    I don't blame them. Food is the mortar between the bricks of society. So if someone questions that it makes a lot of people feel unsecure. It's a completely natural reaction.
    - myshpa 4y ago
      Our perception of traditional food is heavily skewed by last 50 years or so. Our ancestors were not used to so much meat and dairy as we are now. Eating plants was much more common then we think. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNIoKmMq6cs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNIoKmMq6cs - Anthropologist Debunks the Paleo Diet] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI - DAIRY IS SCARY! The industry explained in 5 minutes]
      - ricardobayes 4y ago
        You are preaching to the choir as I've been eating exclusively plant-based for years. That said if you start eating differently than most people around you, one quickly becomes a social pariah.
- encrux 4y ago
fdsfdsfdsu 4y ago
According to the linked paper, the UK would require 3 million hectares to provide sufficient calories (assuming everyone ate nothing but barley stew). It also points out that, at least in 1975, that's more or less what happened - the UK grew enough barely in that year, using 3.6m hectares, to "feed" its population (at least, in terms of calories needed). So - it's already true! We grow all the barley we need to sustain ourselves, and the rest is given over to other produce that provides the other nutrients we need, as well as some luxury. Yay vegan sustainability!
vintermann 4y ago
If sustainability is more important, eating at least fish too is bound to be better. There's no way leaving 71% of the surface of the planet off-limits for nutrients isn't going to increase pressure on the other 29%. And yes, much fishing and aquaculture is presently unsustainable, but that can be said about agriculture too. It's not nearly an adequate argument for abandoning it entirely. The argument for full veganism has to be that animals are people. Sustainability arguments won't cut it. If animals aren't people, you never get to full veganism, and if animals are people the sustainability argument is redundant anyway.
- myshpa 4y ago
  Please see SEASPIRACY if you have a chance. Eating fish is not sustainable. Overfishing and by-catch is a real problem (already more than 90% of sharks are exterminated), and in near future the seas could be totally devoid of life (except for jellyfish). [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy ] > The argument for full veganism has to be that animals are people I don't agree. (1) We shouldn’t be cruel to animals, i.e. we shouldn’t harm animals unnecessarily. (2) The consumption of animal products harms animals and Earth. (3) The consumption of animal products is unnecessary. (4) Therefore, we shouldn’t consume animal products.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    I even addressed that argument in advance, you made it anyway... Again: No matter how bad harvesting of sea resources is, it can't be enough to abandon the oceans entirely, any more than the vast land-use impact of agriculture can be used as argument for abandoning agriculture.
    - myshpa 4y ago
      > No matter how bad harvesting of sea resources is, it can't be enough to abandon the oceans entirely I probably don't understand your point (sorry english is not my first or second language). At this moment we're seriously overfishing our oceans and killing it's population, that's what i have beef with (pun intended). So your argument is - let's continue fishing? > any more than the vast land-use impact of agriculture can be used as argument for abandoning agriculture I'm arguing for changing agriculture (or better land management practices), not its abandonment.
0dayz 4y ago
I don't think at the end of the day that the issue is the sustainablility of meat that will be its downfall (with the exception of greed, as you can see already with the big shots in the meat industry trying to lobby away lab grown meat / TLM products even though they barely exist). Instead it's the very wasteful food culture especially the west has, let's take steak as an example, for the around 5 steaks a family of 3 will eat you could easily make a stew for 4 with only 3 of those steaks.
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  How exactly is eating and fully digesting something "waste"? Is it a waste for me to use a nice keyboard because a cheap 5 quid one will do?
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  That's a very lenient definition of waste, when nothing keeps you from eating that stew without steak. Pretty sure the bigger problem is still the tons of food we throw away after going through everything to grow and ship it.
- cute_boi 4y ago
  This is not a good example of waste. Also, I don't agree that people like to waste food or resource. There is no reason to waste food unless you are super duper rich. And according to normal distribution majority of people aren't rich, even in America.
nikolay 4y ago
It's important to differentiate between "surviving" and "thriving"!
- myshpa 4y ago
  You can easily thrive on vegan diet. You can't just leave meat and eat the rest and call it vegan diet. Most anti-vegans never had a real vegan meal. We all have an idea of vegan meals - but your mum's vegetable dish, which left you hungry after eating it, is not a real representative of vegan diet. You'll just need to learn to cook differently - or better, what to substitute with what. No need to invent new recipes. There is a lot of vegan meals in India, Mexico, Greece, Ethiopia, even your country for sure has some. Just make sure you eat diverse food and don't forget your B12 supplement (in vegan variant, because B12 is from earth bacteria or seaweed, not from meat). When searching for a recipe (burger recipe) on the net, just add "vegan" (vegan burger recipe) and you'll certainly find something you'll enjoy. [https://www.peta.org/living/food/vegan-egg-replacer-guide/ https://www.peta.org/living/food/vegan-egg-replacer-guide/ - 24 Ways to Replace an Egg] [https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20replace%20meat https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20replace%20meat] [https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20milk%20recipes https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20milk%20recipes]
  - nikolay 4y ago
    Vegan fake meat is frankenfood. Yes, you can try to mimick a carnivore diet, but you eventually will have to eat frankenfoods. Lots of plant foods are loaded with natural antinutrients and toxins.
    - myshpa 4y ago
      Not everybody eating plant-based is trying to mimick a carnivore diet. But nobody likes to eat baked vegetables and porridge all the time. Just because we have meats, milks and cheeses, it does not mean we're after the taste. We're after variety in taste and structure. We also have favorite foods from our time not being vegans, and recreating them in plant-based version is satisfying. And no, it does not taste 100% like the "real" thing. If it would, some (I) would not eat it. And plant-based meat does not have to be frankenfood [1] [2]. Take some plant-based protein (wheat, peas, what have you), marinate it in some vegetable broth and soya sauce, maybe color it with beet root, and you've got perfectly healthy meat replacement [3]. [1] https://www.peta.org/living/food/meat-contamination/ https://www.peta.org/living/food/meat-contamination/ - Meat Contamination [2] https://sogoodsoyou.com/6-lessons-eating-plant-based-dr-gregers-book-not-die/ https://sogoodsoyou.com/6-lessons-eating-plant-based-dr-greg... - The best way to minimize your exposure to industrial toxins may be to eat as low as possible on the food chain, a plant-based diet”. Pollutants that find their way into the soil will eventually work their way up the food chain. When you eat meat from an animal, you must consider the thousands of pounds of (potentially contaminated) plants it consumed before being slaughtered. Avoid these pollutants entirely by eating lower on the food chain [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY2YN6krVtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY2YN6krVtk - Washed Flour Seitan Recipe from Start to Finish
stefantalpalaru 4y ago
uptime 4y ago
I do think that vegan diets are a good goal and industry will catch up. It will come down to comfort, not avarice. Vegan diets lower inflammatories and increase meaningful longevity. Joints hurt less over time, lots of expensive cardio issues go away. Tom Brady of NFL fame eats that way specifically for injury recovery properties etc. and no one would call him a treehugger. I don’t think I’ll ever be pure vegan but I’ll see how far I can get. Except for cheese as noted elsewhere, most meals are not lacking anything in terms of taste or satiation.

21 points by chunkyslink 4y ago

Throwaway for obvious reasons. What's the current academic consensus on nutritional deficiencies of vegan / lacto-vegeterian diet? I grew up on a lacto-vegeterian diet in India. I can't shake off the feeling that I would've had a better physique and growth if I had access to non-vegetarian food during my youth.

ricardobayes 4y ago
There are even vegan body builders so I would probably say that's not necessarily true.
- vegan_wgat 4y ago
  Yes but I think they are heavy on the lacto part, which I don't think a common person can follow.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    They are full vegan, but the majority heavily supplement or juice. Both which aren't things the average person will do and which a significant portion won't have access to.
cute_boi 4y ago
I think its just a propaganda by meat industry that you need to eat meat to live a healthy life. If you take vitamin b12 properly or take fortified foods you should be ok. (Also, the vitamin b12 is supplied to animal in many industry, so people shouldn't use vitamin b12 to argue to vegans.)
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  The propaganda argument could be turned around, too. There are more than enough vegan companies trying to make a quick buck out of this. You take your average vegan burger package, it's stuffed with the same crap as a regular premade burger, except it uses tofu or beans instead of ground beef. Regardless, the bigger problem is the lack of long term research we have on mindful omnivores vs mindful vegetarians vs mindful vegans, etc. Most comparisons are between mindful vegans and omnivores living off of incredibly poor diets.
0x20cowboy 4y ago
> It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/
- vegan_wgat 4y ago
  How much difference in cost between 'well planned vegeterian diet' and normal healthy diet with animal products?
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > normal healthy diet with animal products Most people don't eat a "normal >healthy< diet with animal products". It takes as much work to have a meat based healthy diet as a vegetarian based healthy diet.
    - uptime 4y ago
      This. Any healthy diet today involves actively choosing and avoiding products marketed to us. Eating meat is not magical, and I called myself a vegetarian for a while when I was really a carb-etarian and my fitness suffered.
stefantalpalaru 4y ago

throwaway22032 4y ago

If I spent 1/8 of what I earn, eight of me could live on my salary. It's functionally achievable, people live in my country on that amount. But I don't like that, so I spend a bit more. There is no sense in reducing the entire human experience to the lowest common denominator one in order to fit more people on the planet. If that's in your plans, you have a literal fight on your hands.

myshpa 4y ago
Eating pigs & poultry requires less than 5% of land than beef. Eating something more sustainable is not equal to reducing the human experience. That's just your taste buds talking. You could say, that the only way to have the entire human experience, is to eat carnivores (lions, anyone?). With carnivore diet how many people you think the planet would support? Would there be a place for yourself, now? What about your children and children of your children? For wildlife? For nature? Come on, grow up, people.
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  And there will be some way of eating that requires 5% of the land of whatever you suggest, ad infinitum, until we have tens of billions of humans and we end up back at square one. A line in the sand will be drawn somewhere, here's mine. I don't believe in infinite growth, it will result in us all drinking Soylent in cages. The objective for me is to have a high quality of life for a reasonable number of people, not a low quality of life for the maximum amount possible.
  - myshpa 4y ago
    > until we have tens of billions of humans We don't even have enough room to supplement the current population on western version of meat-eating diet. We already use more land for beef production, than we have forests. > until we have tens of billions of humans Agree, we have to abandon our current notions of growth, if we want to preserve life for future generations. On our current path we're going to hell (too many things to enumerate here). > a high quality of life for a reasonable number of people Plant-based diet means a higher quality of life for everyone - people, animals, wildlife. I for one would rather have more forests, than beef burger packaged in plastic. If you think that we handle animals humanly, please see Dominion (2018) movie [https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch]. If you can watch it till the end and still have the same opinion about putting meat above your taste buds, please, let me know. You'd be the first.

Normille 4y ago

...and the wind could generate electricity for a similar number. Conversation might be a bit limited though. The need to tell everyone you meet, within 5 minutes of meeting them, that you're a vegan would be removed.

Flankk 4y ago
Similar to how you resort to cheap stereotypes within five minutes of being exposed to an uncomfortable topic.
ChrisRR 4y ago
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  I don't blame them. Food is the mortar between the bricks of society. So if someone questions that it makes a lot of people feel unsecure. It's a completely natural reaction.
  - myshpa 4y ago
    Our perception of traditional food is heavily skewed by last 50 years or so. Our ancestors were not used to so much meat and dairy as we are now. Eating plants was much more common then we think. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNIoKmMq6cs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNIoKmMq6cs - Anthropologist Debunks the Paleo Diet] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI - DAIRY IS SCARY! The industry explained in 5 minutes]
    - ricardobayes 4y ago
      You are preaching to the choir as I've been eating exclusively plant-based for years. That said if you start eating differently than most people around you, one quickly becomes a social pariah.
encrux 4y ago

fdsfdsfdsu 4y ago

According to the linked paper, the UK would require 3 million hectares to provide sufficient calories (assuming everyone ate nothing but barley stew). It also points out that, at least in 1975, that's more or less what happened - the UK grew enough barely in that year, using 3.6m hectares, to "feed" its population (at least, in terms of calories needed). So - it's already true! We grow all the barley we need to sustain ourselves, and the rest is given over to other produce that provides the other nutrients we need, as well as some luxury. Yay vegan sustainability!

vintermann 4y ago

If sustainability is more important, eating at least fish too is bound to be better. There's no way leaving 71% of the surface of the planet off-limits for nutrients isn't going to increase pressure on the other 29%. And yes, much fishing and aquaculture is presently unsustainable, but that can be said about agriculture too. It's not nearly an adequate argument for abandoning it entirely. The argument for full veganism has to be that animals are people. Sustainability arguments won't cut it. If animals aren't people, you never get to full veganism, and if animals are people the sustainability argument is redundant anyway.

myshpa 4y ago
Please see SEASPIRACY if you have a chance. Eating fish is not sustainable. Overfishing and by-catch is a real problem (already more than 90% of sharks are exterminated), and in near future the seas could be totally devoid of life (except for jellyfish). [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy ] > The argument for full veganism has to be that animals are people I don't agree. (1) We shouldn’t be cruel to animals, i.e. we shouldn’t harm animals unnecessarily. (2) The consumption of animal products harms animals and Earth. (3) The consumption of animal products is unnecessary. (4) Therefore, we shouldn’t consume animal products.
- vintermann 4y ago
  I even addressed that argument in advance, you made it anyway... Again: No matter how bad harvesting of sea resources is, it can't be enough to abandon the oceans entirely, any more than the vast land-use impact of agriculture can be used as argument for abandoning agriculture.
  - myshpa 4y ago
    > No matter how bad harvesting of sea resources is, it can't be enough to abandon the oceans entirely I probably don't understand your point (sorry english is not my first or second language). At this moment we're seriously overfishing our oceans and killing it's population, that's what i have beef with (pun intended). So your argument is - let's continue fishing? > any more than the vast land-use impact of agriculture can be used as argument for abandoning agriculture I'm arguing for changing agriculture (or better land management practices), not its abandonment.

0dayz 4y ago

I don't think at the end of the day that the issue is the sustainablility of meat that will be its downfall (with the exception of greed, as you can see already with the big shots in the meat industry trying to lobby away lab grown meat / TLM products even though they barely exist). Instead it's the very wasteful food culture especially the west has, let's take steak as an example, for the around 5 steaks a family of 3 will eat you could easily make a stew for 4 with only 3 of those steaks.

throwaway22032 4y ago
How exactly is eating and fully digesting something "waste"? Is it a waste for me to use a nice keyboard because a cheap 5 quid one will do?
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
That's a very lenient definition of waste, when nothing keeps you from eating that stew without steak. Pretty sure the bigger problem is still the tons of food we throw away after going through everything to grow and ship it.
cute_boi 4y ago
This is not a good example of waste. Also, I don't agree that people like to waste food or resource. There is no reason to waste food unless you are super duper rich. And according to normal distribution majority of people aren't rich, even in America.

nikolay 4y ago

It's important to differentiate between "surviving" and "thriving"!

myshpa 4y ago
You can easily thrive on vegan diet. You can't just leave meat and eat the rest and call it vegan diet. Most anti-vegans never had a real vegan meal. We all have an idea of vegan meals - but your mum's vegetable dish, which left you hungry after eating it, is not a real representative of vegan diet. You'll just need to learn to cook differently - or better, what to substitute with what. No need to invent new recipes. There is a lot of vegan meals in India, Mexico, Greece, Ethiopia, even your country for sure has some. Just make sure you eat diverse food and don't forget your B12 supplement (in vegan variant, because B12 is from earth bacteria or seaweed, not from meat). When searching for a recipe (burger recipe) on the net, just add "vegan" (vegan burger recipe) and you'll certainly find something you'll enjoy. [https://www.peta.org/living/food/vegan-egg-replacer-guide/ https://www.peta.org/living/food/vegan-egg-replacer-guide/ - 24 Ways to Replace an Egg] [https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20replace%20meat https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20replace%20meat] [https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20milk%20recipes https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20milk%20recipes]
- nikolay 4y ago
  Vegan fake meat is frankenfood. Yes, you can try to mimick a carnivore diet, but you eventually will have to eat frankenfoods. Lots of plant foods are loaded with natural antinutrients and toxins.
  - myshpa 4y ago
    Not everybody eating plant-based is trying to mimick a carnivore diet. But nobody likes to eat baked vegetables and porridge all the time. Just because we have meats, milks and cheeses, it does not mean we're after the taste. We're after variety in taste and structure. We also have favorite foods from our time not being vegans, and recreating them in plant-based version is satisfying. And no, it does not taste 100% like the "real" thing. If it would, some (I) would not eat it. And plant-based meat does not have to be frankenfood [1] [2]. Take some plant-based protein (wheat, peas, what have you), marinate it in some vegetable broth and soya sauce, maybe color it with beet root, and you've got perfectly healthy meat replacement [3]. [1] https://www.peta.org/living/food/meat-contamination/ https://www.peta.org/living/food/meat-contamination/ - Meat Contamination [2] https://sogoodsoyou.com/6-lessons-eating-plant-based-dr-gregers-book-not-die/ https://sogoodsoyou.com/6-lessons-eating-plant-based-dr-greg... - The best way to minimize your exposure to industrial toxins may be to eat as low as possible on the food chain, a plant-based diet”. Pollutants that find their way into the soil will eventually work their way up the food chain. When you eat meat from an animal, you must consider the thousands of pounds of (potentially contaminated) plants it consumed before being slaughtered. Avoid these pollutants entirely by eating lower on the food chain [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY2YN6krVtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY2YN6krVtk - Washed Flour Seitan Recipe from Start to Finish

stefantalpalaru 4y ago

uptime 4y ago

I do think that vegan diets are a good goal and industry will catch up. It will come down to comfort, not avarice. Vegan diets lower inflammatories and increase meaningful longevity. Joints hurt less over time, lots of expensive cardio issues go away. Tom Brady of NFL fame eats that way specifically for injury recovery properties etc. and no one would call him a treehugger. I don’t think I’ll ever be pure vegan but I’ll see how far I can get. Except for cheese as noted elsewhere, most meals are not lacking anything in terms of taste or satiation.