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

21 points| chunkyslink | 3 years ago |theguardian.com

65 comments

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throwaway22032|3 years 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|3 years 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.

spacemanmatt|3 years ago

> reducing the entire human experience to the lowest common denominator

Care to clarify what this means, if not a hyperbolic statement about how much you enjoy eating meat?

vintermann|3 years 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|3 years 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 ]

> 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.

uptime|3 years 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.

fdsfdsfdsu|3 years 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!

0dayz|3 years 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.

cute_boi|3 years 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.

throwaway22032|3 years 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|3 years 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.

vegan_wgat|3 years 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.

0x20cowboy|3 years 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/

cute_boi|3 years 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.)

ricardobayes|3 years ago

There are even vegan body builders so I would probably say that's not necessarily true.

nikolay|3 years ago

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

myshpa|3 years 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/ - 24 Ways to Replace an Egg] [https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20replace%20meat] [https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20milk%20recipes]

Normille|3 years 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.

encrux|3 years ago

At this point I'm fairly convinced anti-vegans chiming in after 5 minutes of conversation claiming vegans can't keep it to themselves for 5 minutes is more common than vegans actually being unable to not mention it.

Flankk|3 years ago

Similar to how you resort to cheap stereotypes within five minutes of being exposed to an uncomfortable topic.

ChrisRR|3 years ago

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