Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

[Jeff Robinson]

What impact would we have on the planet if everyone decided to fuck meat off and become a vegetarian?
Would it be better for the environment or would we end up with all the rivers and lakes awash with pesticides and herbicides?

There would be significantly less because huge amounts of crops are grown to feed 'livestock'.

 

[sealion]

how are the facts relevant

Because a fact is a fact, don't matter if they eat organic bollock hair, the fact still remains. You are trying to discredit someone because they eat meat, imo that's daft.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

There would be significantly less because huge amounts of crops are grown to feed 'livestock'.

^This. Also, the crops that are fed to animals are often the ones that have the highest use of pesticides and herbicides.

 

[ddraig]

Because a fact is a fact, don't matter if they eat organic bollock hair, the fact still remains. You are trying to discredit someone because they eat meat, imo that's daft.

i'm not trying to discredit them, i'm trying to show how the "well crops blah blah" argument that you see almost every single time cutting out/back on meat and dairy is brought up is bollocks if they also eat crops

 

[Baronage-Phase]

"Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon," said Paul Fischbeck, one of the researchers. "Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think. Eggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken."

Interesting.....


Vegetarian And 'Healthy' Diets May Actually Be Worse For The Environment, Study Finds

 

[ddraig]

Interesting.....

do people not have lettuce in their BLT's then?? just B&T these days?

oh and sciencealert.com, seems legit!
wonder who Paul Fischbeck is funded by too...

 

[8ball]

do you just eat meat then??

Pig’s blood.

All you need.

 

[Sea Star]

Debunking Claims that Lettuce is 3 Times Worse Than Bacon

What’s going on here? How could this possibly be? Basically, the researchers decided to measure the environmental impact of meat vs. veggies in the most misleading way imaginable: by comparing the highest-calorie meats to the lowest-calorie vegetables.

Let’s accept this study’s findings that lettuce in fact generates three times the greenhouse gas emissions per calorie as bacon to see where that gets us. Suppose you were to eat four slices of bacon. That’ll give you 468 calories worth of bacon before it gets pan fried. How much shredded green leaf lettuce would you need to eat to reach 468 calories? Oh, a mere 93 cups.

Since 93 cups is an insane amount of food, and hard to envision, let’s simplify it. That amount of shredded lettuce will fill a standard full-sized grocery bag almost to the brim, and weigh 7.3 pounds.* I hope you’re hungry! The reality here is clear: if you’re trying to meet your caloric needs by eating lettuce, you, sir or madam, are a lunatic.

That lettuce is full of vitamin A and fiber. And unlike bacon it’s fat-free, and has no association whatsoever with colorectal cancer.

I don’t see anything in the study’s notes that acknowledges meat industry funding, but it’s hard to imagine that using the calories of lettuce vs. meat is a good-faith and honestly-intentioned way to analyze this issue. You don’t eat vegetables—especially super low-calorie items like lettuce, cucumbers, and eggplant (which one of the coauthors calls out by name)—for the calories. You eat them for the taste, the fiber, the nutrients, and the fact that higher vegetable consumption has a strong association with better health. And you certainly don’t go eating 93 cups of lettuce in a sitting.

No, lettuce is not worse for the climate than bacon

Actually, no. Researchers compared the foods calorie-for-calorie, which can be misleading. “It is absurd to compare the environmental impacts between bacon and lettuce when you’re using calories as the denominator,” Brent Kim of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future’s Food Production and Public Health Program told ThinkProgress. “A serving of lettuce has fewer calories than a stick of gum.”

In other words, you’d have to eat a huge number of salads to equal the same number of calories you get from a few pieces of bacon. Just how many salads? We made this handy chart to illustrate.

 

[sealion]

do people not have lettuce in their BLT's then?? just B&T these days?

I have never eaten Lettuce with Bacon.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

The obvious difference being that a vegan has a negligible impact on chickens, so the two positions aren't as equal as all that.

Yes, obviously but the thread is about the impact eating meat and dairy has on the environment not its impact on chickens.

 

[8ball]

I have never eaten Lettuce with Bacon.

You should give it a go and report back. The tomato and bread are important too.

 

[8ball]

Debunking Claims that Lettuce is 3 Times Worse Than Bacon



No, lettuce is not worse for the climate than bacon

This seems to be mainly confirming that eating lettuce is largely pointless from a nutritional perspective.

The BLT is still nice, though.

 

[Sea Star]

This seems to be mainly confirming that eating lettuce is largely pointless from a nutritional perspective.

The BLT is still nice, though.

Not nutritional - just calories. Vegans eat other things for calories.

 

[8ball]

Not nutritional - just calories. Vegans eat other things for calories.

Plenty of omnis eat lettuce.

 

[ddraig]

thank you Sea Star

 

[ddraig]

Pig’s blood.

All you need.

Plenty of omnis eat lettuce.

well done, carry on!

 

[8ball]

well done, carry on!

GP - get the zinc levels tested.

 

[ddraig]

GP - get the zinc levels tested.

pardon?

 

[8ball]

pardon?

To be fair, inferring causality from diet seems unwarranted with small sample sizes, but you do seem more than a little tense.

 

[ddraig]

why do you often get personal with your ire and why are you so obsessed with shitting over/dominating threads that discuss vegans/ism?

 

[8ball]

why do you often get personal with your ire and why are you so obsessed with shitting over/dominating threads that discuss vegans/ism?

I’m pretty sure you’re the first on this thread to get personal on this topic. Anyone who points towards anything but wholesale adoption of veganism is a “fragile carnist” in your view, it seems. The paper quoted in the OP was addressing the environmental impact of rearing meat (especially certain kinds) but wasn’t directly discussing veganism.

You even insist on attacking people broadly in agreement with your point of view if they deviate from your perception of purity.

Since you insist you’re on the right side of history, maybe chill out a bit.

 

[ddraig]

I’m pretty sure you’re the first on this thread to get personal on this topic. Anyone who points towards anything but wholesale adoption of veganism is a “fragile carnist” in your view, it seems. The paper quoted in the OP was addressing the environmental impact of rearing meat (especially certain kinds) but wasn’t directly discussing veganism.

You even insist on attacking people broadly in agreement with your point of view if they deviate from your perception of purity.

Since you insist you’re on the right side of history, maybe chill out a bit.

dodge the question and make a load of conjecture and assumptions, wrong on all counts

will not carry this on so enjoy your last word and many other posts no doubt

 

[8ball]

On the left, under your little finger.

The shift key.

 

[Sea Star]

Plenty of omnis eat lettuce.

ok. I'm not really sure why you felt the need to tell me that.

 

[editor]

"Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon," said Paul Fischbeck, one of the researchers. "Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think. Eggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken."

Interesting.....


Vegetarian And 'Healthy' Diets May Actually Be Worse For The Environment, Study Finds

That article is littered with undated updates. Here's one of them:

The researchers did not find that vegetarians or vegetarianism are harmful to the environment, or that producing vegetables is more harmful to the environment than producing meat

So, complete and utter bollocks, then.

And WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SITE? It's full of shitty shitty clickbait. I never want to look at it again.

Edit: I see others have corrected the stinking shite in that article. That site - and all of its ilk - are really really awful. They encourage ignorance and stupidity, but, sadly, manage to influence some people into believing their cod-science codswallop. Kill them in the face, say I!

 

[8ball]

ok. I'm not really sure why you felt the need to tell me that.

It seemed to make sense in the context of your reply. I might have misread...

 

[Sea Star]

It seemed to make sense in the context of your reply. I might have misread...

i was just pointing out that non-animal product eaters find things other than lettuce to get their calories. Of course if you eat animal products its not a problem.

 

[8ball]

So, complete and utter bollocks, then.

Seems harsh. I’m pretty sure vegetarians are harmful to the environment.

 

[8ball]

i was just pointing out that non-animal product eaters find things other than lettuce to get their calories.

Well, they’d need to eat an awful lot of lettuce otherwise. Not that there’s anything wrong with lettuce, I should stress.

Edit: though I do think iceberg lettuce is fairly pointless if you have another supply of clean water.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

Kill them in the face, say I!

Eh?

Why being vegan isn’t as environmentally friendly as you might think


We are buying blueberries...all year round.... often from 2000km away ... one would suspect that to preserve freshness, these are bound to have been flown in. So, that would suggest that the environmental footprint of some of our fruit and veg isnt great ..is it? It has gotten to the stage where people expect to be able to eat certain fruits and vegetables all year round...and these are imported from thousands of km away, which means 1000s of air miles.

Yet one can go down the road and buy a steak from a local butcher..from a local farm...from a local cow...Fed by local grass....organic...no pesticides.. if one chooses, and it will have less impact on the environment than a punnet of strawberries in January flown in from the middle East.

It is something that needs to be looked at surely?

Whatever happens in the future with our food there is no doubt that if we are to "save" the planet then surely whatever we eat should be locally produced....and sustainable. This will mean that major efforts will have to go into growing fruit and veg in our own country...in a way that will require energy. Sustainable energy.
I've no doubt it can be done...and it should be cheaper and have a lower carbon footprint than importing fruit and veg. Maybe that's something to look at?