How much would vegetarianism benefit humanity?

[Aitch]

Near Heathrow airport there are a number of reservoirs. They are surrounded by grassy fields. Unfortunately, these fields are at about 30 to 45 degrees off flat. Would be difficult to use them to grow crops (could be fun watching the tractors roll down them). However, they are used by a local farmer to graze sheep. Quite a lot of sheep.

Quite a lot of Wales, Scotland and parts of England (Yorkshire comes to mind) are very hilly/mountainous and no good for crops. Ideal for sheep.

It all depends on whether you like lamb/mutton, I suppose.

Mmmmm. lamb dupiaza!

 

[Baby Nemesis]

...Aluminum and Alzheimers? Aluminum is the most abundant mineral on earth and is found in all of us, in all animals, and in all plants. The real causes of Alzheimers are vastly more interesting:
http://www.emaxhealth.com/2/91/2655...brain-039-s-ability-export-toxic-protein.html

Those are interesting articles. Thanks.

I think I'll link to the Alzheimer's one in my Alzheimer's Research thread later.

 

[arthwollipot]

So... if someone gives you advice, you automatically reject it?

Please show me where I have suggested any such thing.

And are more prone to do so if they repeat the advice and insist it's important?

If I've heard and accepted your advice, but not acted on it (for whatever reason, valid or otherwise), it's probably not a great idea to keep repeating it over and over and over and over and over and over and over until I have to resist the urge to punch you in the mouth.

 

[arthwollipot]

Did you even read far enough down the OP to realise it wasn't telling people to give up meat, but discussing the issues in order that people have enough information to make up their own minds??

I get the distinction. But when I was a smoker, telling me how bad smoking was for me (so that I could make up my own mind) did not achieve the desired effect.

If saying how bad carnivory is for peoples' health and the environment isn't an attempt to get people to give it up, what is it? Well, it's a one-sided presentation of the facts, for a start. It ignores the nutritional benefits of eating meat. It presents only bad news, and in a format that is designed to be convincing. Claiming that "Oh, I'm just putting the information out there so that people can make up their own minds" is disingenuous in my opinion. You want people to make up their minds, otherwise you wouldn't have put the information out there. And the fact that you have put out one-sided and biased information shows that you want people to make up their own minds in a particular way. We all do it when we want to be convincing. It's just some of us are honest about our intention to convince.

 

[arthwollipot]

Seriously, how did you get stuck in a mode that most of us grew out of when we got past our rebellious teen years?

So you wouldn't get annoyed by someone following you around saying "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"

That's how it feels sometimes.

And boy, I'm definitely overreacting. I should get a grip.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Please show me where I have suggested any such thing.

If I've heard and accepted your advice, but not acted on it (for whatever reason, valid or otherwise), it's probably not a great idea to keep repeating it over and over and over and over and over and over and over until I have to resist the urge to punch you in the mouth.

Goodness yes, and that was exactly what was happening in this thread, wasn't it. Yes, it was all aimed at you personally. And yes, it was specifically designed to annoy you and to be repetitive. Yes, I was very aware that you've heard about the adverse effects of meat a dozen times before, because I am, as everyone here knows, a Randi's-Mind-blowing mind-reader! Oh yes, I'm the proof that all the debunking he's ever done was in vain! He tried and tried for years to convince people mind-reading didn't exist, but when I came along, he just had to bow to the overwhelming evidence! Now he's even more impressed at seeing me start this thread just to annoy you, even though I didn't have a clue before that such a subject did annoy you.

I'm not sure who deserves the million though, you or me. After all, I discerned by divination that you'd been told many times before that giving up meat would be good for you so I could start this thread just to annoy you; but you exhibited equal if not superior skill, in divining that I had in fact started this thread just to annoy you. So perhaps you deserve the million.

Or should we share it? Yes! Let's get on to Randi with that proposal right away! Perhaps you can have 60% and I'll have the rest.

Or could it be that in reality, you're just making a stupid mountain out of a mole hill and picking on people who don't deserve it? You really ought to have better things to do in life than read and complain about threads you don't want to read! If you haven't, perhaps you should acknowledge that as a problem and think about how you could restructure your life in ways that give you more interesting and worthwhile things to do.

In any case, I think it would be advisable to end this discussion now and return the thread to our regularly scheduled programming.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

I get the distinction. But when I was a smoker, telling me how bad smoking was for me (so that I could make up my own mind) did not achieve the desired effect.

If saying how bad carnivory is for peoples' health and the environment isn't an attempt to get people to give it up, what is it? Well, it's a one-sided presentation of the facts, for a start. It ignores the nutritional benefits of eating meat. It presents only bad news, and in a format that is designed to be convincing. Claiming that "Oh, I'm just putting the information out there so that people can make up their own minds" is disingenuous in my opinion. You want people to make up their minds, otherwise you wouldn't have put the information out there. And the fact that you have put out one-sided and biased information shows that you want people to make up their own minds in a particular way. We all do it when we want to be convincing. It's just some of us are honest about our intention to convince.

Again, you prove you did not read the OP, perhaps further down than the first few lines! If you must create shoddy posts, go and create them elsewhere! This thread attempts to bring to the fore information that many people will not have heard about, information that some may well find usefully educational. Why do you imagine the world revolves around you - either that or that everyone will have heard about this stuff - so much so that you appear to imagine that if you don't happen to like this thread, it should dictate whether or not it's considered a good thing to have on the board?

For goodness' sake, if you believe I'm presenting a one-sided case, the sensible and intelligent thing to do would be to put forward the other side, not to whinge and protest with violent imagery about how disgruntled you are that someone should have started a thread like it! After all, isn't that what discussion forums are for? Someone puts a case for something and others put forward counter-arguments so all sides of the issue can be examined? How was it that the idea of doing that just didn't occur to you?

And no, I am not being disingenuous. If I was to start the thread and then ask the mods to close it, and then claim I'd meant both sides of the argument to be explored fully, then you could legitimately accuse me of being disingenuous. But as you can see, there's plenty of opportunity for anyone who wants to to put their point of view, backed up by as much research as they like.

Another reason your accusation of disingenuousness is so obviously fallacious is because the OP does, in fact, - and you would have fully realised this yourself if you had only bothered to read it - put more than one side. The quote at the end of it concludes that rather than giving up meat altogether, a diet containing a fair amount less of it than the average American diet but in fact on a par with diets common in European countries would be enough to mitigate the worst effects of the problems. Also, if you'd actually bothered to follow the links in the OP, you'd have discovered that at least one of the articles goes into detail about various things that can remedy the problems caused by large-scale production of meat, and they are enormously more creative than a simple admonition to people to give it up!

Please try responding more intelligently to threads you don't want to read in future, if you must participate in them at all!

 

[Aepervius]

Well for me the "personal" debate between meat and vegetarianism always ended like this : as long as we allow people to drink alcohol or smoke cigarette, then i should be allowed to eat meat, no matter the benefits or disadvantage.

Now that said on individual freedom and choice above, would the world profit from being vegetarian ? I would like to see first a study, which show how many different crop would need to be eaten, then calculate the transportation cost, fertilizing and growing cost, and make an honest assessment of the pollution versus nutrition (especially water consumption), and distribution. Also count in that study as cost "change the mentality and culture of billion of people, TRAIN them to make a really healthy vegetarian meal". Loss of cultural type of meal (new one might come through). I never see that type of cost estimated. Especially in palce where growing crop is difficult, but letting herd graze is easy.

I call dishonest to focus on beast fed by grain, when most if not all the herd could be fed by grass on unused land (case in point, here around I see nobody which fed its beast with grain, unless the grain would be thrown out or sometime sold at loss).

That remind me of the "organic" thread.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Well for me the "personal" debate between meat and vegetarianism always ended like this : as long as we allow people to drink alcohol or smoke cigarette, then i should be allowed to eat meat, no matter the benefits or disadvantage.

Now that said on individual freedom and choice above, would the world profit from being vegetarian ? I would like to see first a study, which show how many different crop would need to be eaten, then calculate the transportation cost, fertilizing and growing cost, and make an honest assessment of the pollution versus nutrition (especially water consumption), and distribution. Also count in that study as cost "change the mentality and culture of billion of people, TRAIN them to make a really healthy vegetarian meal". Loss of cultural type of meal (new one might come through). I never see that type of cost estimated. Especially in palce where growing crop is difficult, but letting herd graze is easy.

I call dishonest to focus on beast fed by grain, when most if not all the herd could be fed by grass on unused land (case in point, here around I see nobody which fed its beast with grain, unless the grain would be thrown out or sometime sold at loss).

That remind me of the "organic" thread.

Thank you for responding constructively.

Some interesting points are being made about things like some parts of the world being unsuitable for grain production so if they're to be utilised, cattle grazing is a good way of doing it. And the points you make are interesting. There's no dishonesty here - I've just quoted what I've come across - articles by the United Nations and others about the problems of meat production. One article I quoted does inform people of the fact that many cattle in developing countries are fed on grasslands rather than on grain so raising them doesn't cause the problems that cattle fed on grain does. It's interesting to have such issues examined.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Here's a quote from an article on a report produced by the United Nations on food production I linked to and quoted earlier in this thread. It illustrates that I made a deliberate attempt not to be one-sided in the information I cited:

Livestock impacts on the environment

A new report from FAO says livestock production is one of the major causes of the world's most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Using a methodology that considers the entire commodity chain, it estimates that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport. However, the report says, the livestock sector's potential
contribution to solving environmental problems is equally large, and major improvements could be achieved at reasonable cost. ...

 

[Aepervius]

Here's a quote from an article on a report produced by the United Nations on food production I linked to and quoted earlier in this thread. It illustrates that I made a deliberate attempt not to be one-sided in the information I cited:

Livestock impacts on the environment

"dishonest" That was not directed at you, but at most debate I see on vegetarian/omnivore.


Now let us look at the linked article :

At the same time, the livestock sector has assumed an often unrecognized role in global warming. Using a methodology that considered the entire commodity chain (see box below), FAO estimated that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport. It accounts for nine percent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, most of it due to expansion of pastures and arable land for feed crops. It generates even bigger shares of emissions of other gases with greater potential to warm the atmosphere: as much as 37 percent of anthropogenic methane, mostly from enteric fermentation by ruminants, and 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, mostly from manure.

So to come up with that 18% they considered everything from preparation, to transport.

My point is, this is then what I consider a "shocker" number not a useful one. Because the same number for crop would have to be compared , as fertilizer transportation, preparation, and all the crop which is simply thrown out and get decomposed on fields (an article on some legumes showed as much as 20% due to aesthetic consideration was left on fields !). One can certainly make also the argument that livestock is an emitter of methane/CO2, but this is CO2 which return in the atmosphere from being grazed of grass (read : carbon neutral). But Nearly 1/6 of the population is livestock dependent from the same article, and those are the poorest.

So really the only supernumerary CO2 would be from burning trees to make pasture.
But the real question is as above : if we take off the livestock, would not this forest be burned the same way to make place to crop of various nature with various requirement in fertilization and soil, making that "9% burned due to livestock" transform into a "x% burned to legume/crop" ?

This is my main problem with all those article. They place the accent on an absolute number which is meaningless, whereas the useful number would be what part of CO2 would be gained / loss if we switched to vegetarianism. And that number is AFAICT lacking.

 

[Tapio]

Why? What's the point?

The amount of meat eaten by most industrialised nations is not in the least an ecological and sustainable way of life.

So, you ask others to change their eating habits and think they are unreasonable to resist?

Maybe you didn't read what I wrote before commenting on it, at least not carefully enough.

I was talking about simply a hypothetical possibility, a mind game, with no pressure to actually change anything. Your answers, as well as some others in this thread prove my point, though.

What if somebody asks you to change your nutrition?

As an active part of the community I live in I'm faced with requests to modify a lot of aspects of my life, my diet included. When this happens, I call for reasons why, and then really think about it. That's how I've gone from omnivore to lacto-ovo-vegetarian to vegan to omnivore (which is now, tilting towards a vegan phase once again). I'm happy to let others live as they wish, but when their lifestyle is starting to cause more 'harm' than 'neutral' or 'good', I'm inclined to question it's value (as I hope will be done for me regarding my lifestyle).

So, to make it simple. IMO meat eating is ok, natural, beneficial, to some extent (which to me is healthy survival). What's happening around the world at the moment is far from it. Little to do with health and survival it's more like hedonistic meat abuse (just like in the way every other possible thing usable to humans is abused).

 

[Aepervius]

The amount of meat eaten by most industrialised nations is not in the least an ecological and sustainable way of life.

You might have meant the way the meat is PRODUCED is not sustainable nor ecological, because the amount of meat has nothing to do with ecology and we certainly sustained that way of life for some time, and could sustain it for quite a longer time, at least in the industrialized nation.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

... But the real question is as above : if we take off the livestock, would not this forest be burned the same way to make place to crop of various nature with various requirement in fertilization and soil, making that "9% burned due to livestock" transform into a "x% burned to legume/crop"?

This is my main problem with all those article. They place the accent on an absolute number which is meaningless, whereas the useful number would be what part of CO2 would be gained / loss if we switched to vegetarianism. And that number is AFAICT lacking.

That sounds like a fair point.

(an article on some legumes showed as much as 20% due to aesthetic consideration was left on fields !).

I hope people in the vicinity could take them home to eat and they weren't left somewhere to rot.

 

[McHrozni]

Quite a lot, it would seem, although some believe that for the entire planet to turn vegetarian would mean the poorest wouldn't get an adequate diet.

In the long run, the net effect would be approximately zero. In the short to medium run, there might be a small net positive effect, but that would be more than counterbalanced by the more severe problem later on.

What am I talking about? That even if we all went vegetarian or vegan (or whatever), and thus feed the hungry impovrished masses, our population would continue to grow until we would again face the shortage of food, water and arable land to feed them all. In fact, historical precendes shows a huge increase in population over a short period of time, and so does common sense - the number of children born wouldn't decrease significantly in a short time, yet their survival rates would.

In short, we would face an identical set of problems slightly later in the future - only more severe, with several billion extra mouths to feed.

This short delay (on the order of 10-20 years at the most) we'd buy in this way is not worth a significant change in my diet. Sorry. You may disagree if you want, though I can't see how would that be rational.

McHrozni

 

[Aitch]

A bit of a side-issue, but what we we do with the millions(?) of animals that we wouldn't need any more? Can't keep them, because they would still be eating. Not enough un-farmable land to keep them on.

 

[SatanicSheep]

To add to McHronzi's point, I don't eat to simply wake up the next morning and I can't rationalize sacrafice that would enable more people (possibly myself included) to get closer to living at a bare minimum level existance.

There are pharmacological/psychotropic benefits to eating certain non vegan things like fish or yogurt. I understand the virtues of trying to limit excess, but severely reducing my quality of life in not an option for me. A more noble approach would be efforts to get imporished people closer to my level existance in a responsible way, not the opposite. It seems similar to foregoing the extermination of vermin or skipping vaccines because not everyone can enjoy these luxuries...call me selfish...

 

[arthwollipot]

Talk to the hand, BN. I'm done here.

 

[sol invictus]

You might have meant the way the meat is PRODUCED is not sustainable nor ecological, because the amount of meat has nothing to do with ecology and we certainly sustained that way of life for some time, and could sustain it for quite a longer time, at least in the industrialized nation.

It's the way it's produced that's at issue here, although it's not clear to me there's any way to continue to produce the amount we do now purely by (say) grazing on non-arable land.

This boils down to physics (like everything ): food is calories. When you feed it to animals, nearly all of it is "wasted" by their metabolism. So if you feed them food that humans can eat, or if you set aside arable land for them, that's very inefficient if your goal is to maximize the calories available to humans.

In the long run, the net effect would be approximately zero. In the short to medium run, there might be a small net positive effect, but that would be more than counterbalanced by the more severe problem later on.

What am I talking about? That even if we all went vegetarian or vegan (or whatever), and thus feed the hungry impovrished masses, our population would continue to grow until we would again face the shortage of food, water and arable land to feed them all. In fact, historical precendes shows a huge increase in population over a short period of time, and so does common sense - the number of children born wouldn't decrease significantly in a short time, yet their survival rates would.

In short, we would face an identical set of problems slightly later in the future - only more severe, with several billion extra mouths to feed.

This short delay (on the order of 10-20 years at the most) we'd buy in this way is not worth a significant change in my diet. Sorry. You may disagree if you want, though I can't see how would that be rational.

McHrozni

"They're going to starve anyway, so let 'em starve now."

Pardon me if I reject that view as disgusting.

 

[SatanicSheep]

If it's that disgusting you could always move to a famine stricken part of the world.