[alphabetatheta]

I'm actually surprised how much dairy products contribute to global warming. It's only veganism that really cuts down on carbon emissions.

[karmakurtisaani]

I suppose theoretically optimal diet would have to be some flavour of vegan, plus maybe some fish if available. In practice, a major reduction of meat and dairy would probably be enough to make a difference.

[Tade0]

Not really. I looked at the different scenarios and we would probably do fine on chicken and cheese in terms of water consumption, CO2 and land use.

Pork is where it starts being risky.

Beef, lamb etc. are the most problematic parts.

[himinlomax]

The water use claim regarding beef has been debunked, it was based on the weird accounting trick where you count rainfall on pasture as wasted water for some reason.

Also speaking of pasture, afaik the equation for cattle is completely different whether they're fed corn vs grazing on marginal land as they're supposed to.

[choeger]

This. There needs to be a pyramid in top of the food pyramid. Beef is not bad per se, it just shouldn't be your weekly meat.

[klipt]

Isn't beef bad because cows release methane, but feeding cows seaweed can mitigate that?

[Aromasin]

One of the major issue's isn't just the calorific inefficiencies in the fodder->dairy process, but the simple act of creating pastures for animals. About 85% of deforestation world-wide is being driven by animal agriculture; of which dairy makes up a huge part of that. We could use less land to produce food if we ate less dairy, by a huge margin.

[NovaDudely]

I'm not too surprised, in some ways Dairy is the meat industry by proxy. All dairy cattle end up in the same abattoirs.

[asterix_pano]

On top of that they have one of the most miserable life we could imagine. Birthing babies and getting them taken away ASAP to give milk to a machine and getting slaughtered when you are less productive... It's hard to describe our lack of empathy to create and accept such systems.

[choeger]

I often wonder, how much double counting goes into these stats. Of course, dairy currently relies on fossile energy often. But how much of it is attributed elsewhere as well? Diesel, for instance, is often also attributed to big oil companies like shell. Cows are slaughtered and sold as meat at some point - is the dairy CO2 emission subtracted here? I don't think so.

[cinntaile]

Since you often wonder, I suggest you spend some time reading some relevant papers and their methodology. You won't have to guess and assume if you do that.