A pretty weak article and omits any new developments in the future of food production.
The main argument of the article appears to be that some farm land won't be used (perennial cropland) when people are on a vegan diet. Well, then use that space to build some aeroponic or hydroponic farms [1]. You'll get produce all year around.
Other studies have shown that it's not sustainable if we'd have to rely on meat to feed the world. The only reason why we keep eating meat is because it's cultural, traditional and pleasurable. Our society doesn't need meat anymore to survive, plenty of other protein sources available that doesn't involve killing other sentient beings en masse. Even some high performance athletes are relying on a plant-based diet only - making the argument 'you need animal protein to be strong' moot [2]
The future of food is going to be plant based [3].
In future all meat will be genetically engineered and grown in bioreactors, and it will be cheaper higher quality and suffering-free. As a result, the line between meat and vegetable will blur as to become irrelevant. We will engineer custom food according to nutritional needs and taste. That's assuming the corporations don't fuck everything up with their stupid greedy patent laws.
One of the larger problems I've found with the vegan diet is, where do you source your Omega 3 from? ALA (found in flax and chia seeds) has low bioavailability as opposed to EPA and DHA found in fish and eggs.
Not only that, flax and chia seeds are very high in Omega 6, thus promote dangerous levels of inflammation.
So, can a vegan please explain to me how your community has managed to solve this?
Going vegan isn't supposed to be as good for humanity as possible -- it is supposed to be as good as possible for all conscious beings, including non-human animals. It would be rather surprising if the best diet for humans would also be the best diet for humans and animals taken together. On the other hand, it is encouraging that these two goals do not conflict for the most part: The paper only finds pretty minimal land-use efficiency gains if one mixes some animal products into a plant-based diet.
Exactly. The idea of the vegan diet being "good for humanity" isn't something that crosses the minds of many "die-hard vegans", quite the opposite in fact. Many have a profound dislike of humanity and choose a vegan diet out of concern for the animals harmed in food production. Morrissey would be an excellent example of someone who really takes that philosophy to heart. For the record, I'm a vegetarian, my daughter is vegan, and I'm a Morrissey fan.
Besides that, the article is talking about 100% global adherence to the vegan diet. As long as there are some vegetarians, the non-human-only farmland will have use.
And even with 100% veganism, assuming no miracle crop is invented to use that additional land, it was still a pretty slim gap between the vegan diet and the "optimal" ones.
Really, the article kind of buries the lede when it puts veganism under the microscope considering that its numbers show how moving away from the modern meat-heavy diet would like triple the food supply.
The idea of the vegan diet being "good for humanity" isn't solely about land use which this article focuses on. It's mostly about use of energy.
Vegan diet: food from land -> truck -> grocery store -> my mouth.
Meat/dairy/what have you: food from land -> truck -> animal's mouth -> truck -> grocery store -> my mouth.
And when it comes to meat it means years feeding and water etc. until the product can actually be sent to the store. That's the idea behind it being "good for humanity". A lot of energy/pollution/water use is going into something we simply do not need in such large portions. If we ate less meat (like humans have been doing for most of our history) things would be a lot better for the environment and therefore humanity.
It's a pretty common trope that meat requires more resources to produce than plants, but it is wildly inaccurate.
Rather than breaking things down by meat or plant, we should just be looking at cost per calorie.
There are classes of plants which use much less resources than meat to produce a single calorie. These are generally grains, potatoes, and anything which produces edible oils (olive oil, canola oil, etc.)
There are also classes of plants which require much more resources than meat to produce a single calorie. Generally speaking, all fruits and vegetables, especially leafy greens (which are an order of magnitude more expensive per calorie than meat).
So, veganism or vegetarianism are not necessarily good for the environment. If you switch to being a vegan/vegetarian, but your grocery bill stays the same, then you environmental impact is probably about the same.
Tell that to someone forced to paleo diet due to health/performance reasons. We obviously don't have as complicated ingestion system as cows nor as simple as cats so we aren't "designed" to eat vegetables/meat only but most likely both.
The main point of the article appears to be that the vegan diet doesn't use the perennial cropland. Would be nice if they bothered to mention why. Are the perennial crops 100% feed crops and not something that humans can use, even in crazy reprocessed vegan food substitutes?
Reading the actual study, I can't help but think that the authors are being intellectually dishonest. Their logic is thus:
> Cropland in perennial forages included hay crops and grazing on land which could be cropped but is used for pasture.
A: Perennial cropland is used as pasture for animal agriculture.
> Perennial cropland requirements were zero in the vegan diet.
B: Vegans don't require pastures for animal agriculture.
> The ovolacto- and lacto-vegetarian diets used about half of the cropland restricted to perennial forages, while the vegan diet used none of the restricted cropland.
C: Therefore the vegan diet wouldn't have any use for perennial cropland.
Land is not a problem if vegetables come to reign, hydroponics and aeroponics will easily substitute the inefficient land-use.
Tom et al. (2015) [1] also show that in the US the switch to a vegan diet would be less efficient. But it's natural, from an economic perspective, that existing processes are optimized for efficiency and low costs and given the high demand for vegetables and fruits there would obviously be a huge incentive to optimize the production processes and lower the prices.
Vanham et al. (2013) [2,3] show that EU would benefit from a vegan diet when it comes to water usage.
Overall, it's quite obvious that the medical costs of today are extremely large mostly due to overconsumption of animal products. It is unfortunate that they can be easily overconsumed and thus cause health issues. Diet that includes animals is much more destructive when it comes to dead ocean zones, rainforest destruction, species extinction and water pollution, being the biggest factor in mentioned issues.
It doesn't matter: it's a hit piece. Maximising 'the number of people that can be supported by existing farmland' is not the be all and end all of 'good for humanity'.
This made me wonder: Maybe returning these lands to their wild state can also be good for humanity when looking at it from another angle than just food production. Something to also consider.
I didn't get that either, there certainly are crops grown solely for animal feed, but it's not at all clear why that land can't be repurposed for human-edible crops.
If I am reading the original paper correctly, there is a bottleneck with the vegan diet that essentially requires you to only use cultivated cropland to get enough of a balanced diet.
The vegan curve never flattens out, because it is entirely dependent on cultivated cropland, unlike the other diets:
There is an implicit assumption that maximizing the number of people who can be squeezed on to the planet is "good" for humanity. I have never heard a reasonable justification for this. Anyone who's taken a long car trip in an automobile packed to maximum passenger capacity will intuitively understand the counterargument.
I sometimes wonder if curing cancer and other diseases is such a noble cause. More people consuming more of the finite resources that we have. Its a difficult question, and I am thinking of lots of outliers as I type this. Extending a 70 year olds life by a few years is different from curing a child leukemia sufferer.
One thing that is often overlooked is the impact on biodiversity. Nothing kills off as many species as converting an area to cropland. Turning it into an enforced monoculture destroys the habitat for all the other plants and animals that would usually live there.
Grazing animals can co-exist with other life, and some cases like forest grazing [1] (which used to be the standard way of grazing animals in europe and is slowly gaining traction again), has been shown to actually increase biodiversity.
So paradoxically enough, if what you care about is biodiversity and the livelihood of animals, you might consider reducing your consumption of cropland produced products like vegetables and grains in favor of meats from grazing animals.
Don't know why land use would be the determining factor for food access. If the goal is to maximize access to food, that seems like a food distribution problem, and not a production problem. Hungry people need cheap markets, not farms.
Interesting article. I have long been of the opinion that a little meat is no big deal. However, the argument that we can feed more people with a mostly vegetarian diet vs a full vegan one doesn't mean going vegan is less efficient. If we want the average diet to have less animal products, then if some people completely give up meat it will be better than if they just cut down - they are in a sense making up for everyone else still eating their daily KFC bucket. Until most people are mostly vegetarian, we can still thank the vegans for taking one for the team.
The article seems to focus more on instances where food production is a limiting factor. Land use is less of a problem in places where we have (collectively) enough food and people tend to focus more on the very serious environmental impact of large-scale agriculture. In the latter case, I would except a diet lower in meat to fare much better than the alternatives simply because it requires fewer acres to be farmed (or the same acres less often as the article points out) and thus has lower pollution output.
Rather misinformed. Also, if farmland is the issue, has nobody in the science world noticed the magic of hydroponic cultivation? Vertical gardening is possible, a skyscraper has the footprint of a huge field when you use every floor to grow food. Can't do that with cows.
Interesting, if a bit vegan shaming :-p According to the research referenced a vegan diet is about 1.8x as efficient as a normal american diet. Seems pretty good for humanity.
Limiting meat consumption by ~50% would have a similar sustainability impact to a vegan diet.
Talk about a strawman. The world is no where near 100% vegan. The fact that all of humanity being vegan isn't the most efficient use of our resources has no bearing whether it's better for you, today, to be vegan.
100% of humans being cops is bad for humanity. Does that imply being a cop is not good for humanity?
cryodesign|9 years ago
The main argument of the article appears to be that some farm land won't be used (perennial cropland) when people are on a vegan diet. Well, then use that space to build some aeroponic or hydroponic farms [1]. You'll get produce all year around.
Other studies have shown that it's not sustainable if we'd have to rely on meat to feed the world. The only reason why we keep eating meat is because it's cultural, traditional and pleasurable. Our society doesn't need meat anymore to survive, plenty of other protein sources available that doesn't involve killing other sentient beings en masse. Even some high performance athletes are relying on a plant-based diet only - making the argument 'you need animal protein to be strong' moot [2]
The future of food is going to be plant based [3].
[1] http://aerofarms.com/ [2] http://thediscerningbrute.com/more-vegan-athletes-rise-to-th... [3] http://beyondmeat.com/
tkvtkvtkvtkv|9 years ago
DiabloD3|9 years ago
Not only that, flax and chia seeds are very high in Omega 6, thus promote dangerous levels of inflammation.
So, can a vegan please explain to me how your community has managed to solve this?
DominikPeters|9 years ago
patcheudor|9 years ago
Pxtl|9 years ago
And even with 100% veganism, assuming no miracle crop is invented to use that additional land, it was still a pretty slim gap between the vegan diet and the "optimal" ones.
Really, the article kind of buries the lede when it puts veganism under the microscope considering that its numbers show how moving away from the modern meat-heavy diet would like triple the food supply.
watchtheworld|9 years ago
Vegan diet: food from land -> truck -> grocery store -> my mouth.
Meat/dairy/what have you: food from land -> truck -> animal's mouth -> truck -> grocery store -> my mouth.
And when it comes to meat it means years feeding and water etc. until the product can actually be sent to the store. That's the idea behind it being "good for humanity". A lot of energy/pollution/water use is going into something we simply do not need in such large portions. If we ate less meat (like humans have been doing for most of our history) things would be a lot better for the environment and therefore humanity.
Turing_Machine|9 years ago
Years? No. Chickens are normally slaughtered at around 40 days. Pigs, 4-10 months. Beef cattle around 14 months.
toasterlovin|9 years ago
Rather than breaking things down by meat or plant, we should just be looking at cost per calorie.
There are classes of plants which use much less resources than meat to produce a single calorie. These are generally grains, potatoes, and anything which produces edible oils (olive oil, canola oil, etc.)
There are also classes of plants which require much more resources than meat to produce a single calorie. Generally speaking, all fruits and vegetables, especially leafy greens (which are an order of magnitude more expensive per calorie than meat).
So, veganism or vegetarianism are not necessarily good for the environment. If you switch to being a vegan/vegetarian, but your grocery bill stays the same, then you environmental impact is probably about the same.
bitL|9 years ago
rimantas|9 years ago
jahewson|9 years ago
wlesieutre|9 years ago
jhardy54|9 years ago
> Cropland in perennial forages included hay crops and grazing on land which could be cropped but is used for pasture.
A: Perennial cropland is used as pasture for animal agriculture.
> Perennial cropland requirements were zero in the vegan diet.
B: Vegans don't require pastures for animal agriculture.
> The ovolacto- and lacto-vegetarian diets used about half of the cropland restricted to perennial forages, while the vegan diet used none of the restricted cropland.
C: Therefore the vegan diet wouldn't have any use for perennial cropland.
This would be true if perennial crops for humans didn't exist, but that's just not true. For example, we can grow perennial sunflower (!), grain (!!) and rice (!!!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_crop#Example_crops
hoggleboggle|9 years ago
Tom et al. (2015) [1] also show that in the US the switch to a vegan diet would be less efficient. But it's natural, from an economic perspective, that existing processes are optimized for efficiency and low costs and given the high demand for vegetables and fruits there would obviously be a huge incentive to optimize the production processes and lower the prices.
Vanham et al. (2013) [2,3] show that EU would benefit from a vegan diet when it comes to water usage.
Overall, it's quite obvious that the medical costs of today are extremely large mostly due to overconsumption of animal products. It is unfortunate that they can be easily overconsumed and thus cause health issues. Diet that includes animals is much more destructive when it comes to dead ocean zones, rainforest destruction, species extinction and water pollution, being the biggest factor in mentioned issues.
[1]: Energy use, blue water footprint, and greenhouse gas emissions for current food consumption patterns and dietary recommendations in the US http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10669-015-9577-y
[2]: The water footprint of the EU for different diets http://temp.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Vanham-Bidoglio-2014....
[3]: Potential water saving through changes in European diets http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412013...
WalterSear|9 years ago
gorhill|9 years ago
GFK_of_xmaspast|9 years ago
chris_va|9 years ago
The vegan curve never flattens out, because it is entirely dependent on cultivated cropland, unlike the other diets:
https://images.elementascience.org/611000.elementa.f005.PNG_...
reflexive|9 years ago
I'm more sympathetic to the idea of maintaining a population level within which people can live with some amount of dignity e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones#Inscriptio...
collyw|9 years ago
astigsen|9 years ago
Grazing animals can co-exist with other life, and some cases like forest grazing [1] (which used to be the standard way of grazing animals in europe and is slowly gaining traction again), has been shown to actually increase biodiversity.
So paradoxically enough, if what you care about is biodiversity and the livelihood of animals, you might consider reducing your consumption of cropland produced products like vegetables and grains in favor of meats from grazing animals.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvopasture
johnnybowman|9 years ago
analog31|9 years ago
Yenrabbit|9 years ago
dgax|9 years ago
sova|9 years ago
bane|9 years ago
mixonic|9 years ago
Limiting meat consumption by ~50% would have a similar sustainability impact to a vegan diet.
W.K. Kellogg funded the research. Their grant: http://www.wkkf.org/grants/grant/2009/02/foodprints-and-food...
solipsism|9 years ago
100% of humans being cops is bad for humanity. Does that imply being a cop is not good for humanity?
tumbas|9 years ago
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unknown|9 years ago
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