The most bioavailable foods are animal foods. Plant form iron is not even remotely comparable to heme iron.
Heme iron is found only in meat, poultry, seafood, and fish.
Take a iron deficient person and give them plant iron and it will be weeks to never before their iron returns. Feed them a liver and see it spike up in a day.
The same can be said of vitamin A and many other vitamins. A No indigenous society on earth has ever been vegan. Even horses who eat grass sometimes eat birds.
Hong Kong has one of the highest life expectancies on earth and one of the highest meat consumption rates on earth.
Every “Vegan” body builder got their start on whey protein. And are in their 20’s usually. There is no good 50+ year old long term vegan body builders who aren’t on massive amount of steroids and who didn’t get their start on animal protein.
Vegan farming is unsustainable. Animals naturally help the soil become more nutritious.
Vegan foods are terrible for the environment. Mass produced mono crops destroy the soil.
Being a vegan is OK if you want to destroy your body. Pushing it on children is evil because it will limit their growth.
I disagree entirely with all your claims including your original. People don’t eat vegan because it’s healthier, they do it because we treat animals like shit and are killing the planet.
Cattle are the No. 1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide. Source: https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable
Beef production cause greenhouse gas emissions through the agricultural production process and through land-use change. Source: https://www.wri.org/insights/6-pressing-questions-about-beef-and-climate-change-answered
Unsustainable dairy farming and feed production can lead to the loss of ecologically important areas, such as prairies, wetlands, and forests. Source: https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/dairy
I won’t get into how inhumane the slaughter of animals is but the vast majority of meat bought at your grocery store or chain restaurant was killed in a cruel way. I used to live smack dab in the middle of 3 slaughterhouses and that shit was like a david cronenberg film.
Not to mention the water pollution from the slaughterhouses. Slaughterhouses and animal processing facilities that produce beef, chicken, turkey and other animal products are major water polluters. Source: https://frontiergroup.org/blogs/blog/fg/map-us-slaughterhouses-shows-watershed-level-pollution
Less vegan source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/18/epa-sued-weak-standards-allow-slaughterhouses-pollute-waterways-meat-processing
Even more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8694297/
I eat certain types of meat but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking any of it is ethical. Propaganda, all of it.
Yeah, lots of vegan propaganda there. Blogs are not peer reviewed sources by the way.
Edit: I see your new sources and they are all bull shit.
They are calculating it wrong. I can pull up many more sources but it’s not like you are going to read them.
Did you just say:
Blogs are not peer reviewed sources by the way.
and then try to debunk with a medium post?
Well, a vegan diet is indeed less healthy than a balanced diet, but most people who follow such a diet don’t do it for health. Farm animals are typically fed monocrops, and they are very inefficient at turning them into meat: eating an animal that fed on plants wastes an order of magnitude more amount of the plant than directly consuming it. They also produce greenhouse gases and contribute to antimicrobial resistance (which is a HUGE problem right now).
Hello, lets talk about these topics and try not to feel emotional. I am going to challenge some to all of these ideas but please do not take offense.
Farm animals are typically fed monocrops, and they are very inefficient at turning them into meat
This is completely false, or I should say 80% false. Farm animals are fed the scraps. Cows for example are not fed corn meant for human consumption most of the time. They are fed the leaf part, which represents over 80% of the plant. Humans cannot eat the green part. They are fed many other scraps that we can’t eat. They aren’t competing with us for food.
Most cows are also fed grass most of their life. And they are extremely efficient and converting grass to meat.
It is only until their last few weeks that they are fed corn humans could eat to fatten them up. In Japan they are fed rice.
You can slaughter them without feeding them grains and that is a better solution than not eating them. We cannot eat grass. Cows can, if you don’t eat cows you are wasting grass.
They also produce greenhouse gases
They produce methane, a very short lived greenhouse gas. Plants also produce methane. It was recently discovered that trees produce lots of methane,
You wouldn’t say we need less trees would you?
In either case, you can feed cows seaweed and their methane production goes to almost zero.
antimicrobial resistance
The answer to antimicrobial resistance is to just stop feeding them antibiotics and allow them to eat grass as they are supposed to. Not eating meat is not helping. Instead people should buy meat produced in healthy ways.
You’re right that livestock doesn’t compete with us for food. But I insist that it’s hugely inefficient.
Poultry, milk and eggs only contain about 20% of the protein input to the animal. I find this at least not that low of a figure, and thus personally don’t restrict those products in my diet. However, beef contains less than 5%. Since 1/3 of the total cultivated land is used as grassland, simply using it for crops would increase the total protein output.
Regarding energy output, it’s much lower than that in both cases. Even just burning the remaining parts of plants for energy, or turning them into biofuel, would be much more useful.
Antibiotic resistance is a problematic issue. On the one hand, you can avoid it by avoiding antibiotics altogether. On the other hand, this opens the door to numerous diseases to spread. Basically, it can be done, but you’d need government regulation everywhere, as…
- Using antibiotics is cheaper and increases yield, while avoiding losses due to epidemics.
- Even if a single place on Earth keeps using them while others don’t, resistant organisms can still spread.
However, beef contains less than 5%. Since 1/3 of the total cultivated land is used as grassland, simply using it for crops would increase the total protein output.
This makes several incorrect assumptions.
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That you can grow something that isn’t grass in those locations. There actually exist places in which you can grow grass but you can’t grow “corn,wheat,grains”. Many places in fact. We should be expanding our cows, goats, sheep into all those areas.
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That there isn’t supposed to be cows in those locations. Grass needs ruminant animals to eat it in order to grow. Ruminants and grass have a symbiotic relationship. Having cows graze land will actually make it easier to grow corn and wheat in those locations in the future. This is called regenerative agriculture.
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That there isn’t other things animals eat that we can’t or don’t want to. Chickens eat bugs. I don’t want to eat bugs but I do want to eat chicken. Let them eat the bugs and let me eat the chicken.
Antibiotic
Again, the solution is the same either way. The only solution is to not use antibiotics. Whether you accomplish that by not eating animals or not giving animals antibiotics doesn’t make a difference so this isn’t even a point worth considering.
All of that may be true, but most cattle and chicken currently don’t graze on that land. Rather, the plants (grass, grain or plant remains) are brought to facilities where the animals live. This means that symbiotic relationship needn’t hold anymore.
You’re also assuming that those grasslands should actually be used that way. Nowadays, much of the land has been obtained by deforestation, and an increased demand for energy and protein, combined with the inefficiency of animals, is an important factor contributing to this.
Plus, I doubt that the fraction of those grasslands usable for crops is less than 5%. Even 20% seems like a stretch, plus the remaining 80% could return to their native state.
As for antibiotics, I believe you’re partially missing my point. While reducing the number of animals reduces resistant organism spread proportionally, applying counter-resistance policies would only have an effect if a very large proportion of the animals are under that policy, that is, if nearly every country enforces it.
Also, not using antibiotics at all is not an option. They can be vastly reduced, and their utilization can be subjected to some conditions, but having so many animals living together with untreated diseases is a recipe for disaster.
All of that may be true, but most cattle and chicken currently don’t graze on that land.
Incorrect, most cows in the U.S. Are raised on grass most of their life.
In fact, more than 97 percent of U.S. beef cattle farms and ranches are family farms. It’s a myth and one that has really gotten out of control. Vegans will hunt for the worst farm and take a picture at the worst time to make it look like all those farms are that way. False, fiction.
You’re also assuming that those grasslands should actually be used that way. Nowadays, much of the land has been obtained by deforestation, and an increased demand for energy and protein, combined with the inefficiency of animals, is an important factor contributing to this.
Again this isn’t really true. Pre colonial America, the Buffalo were everywhere. Grass lands everywhere. America is where horses evolved. That is how much grass land is here. (they left but came back long story). Grass lands are very common naturally.
As for antibiotics, I believe you’re partially missing my point. While reducing the number of animals reduces resistant organism spread proportionally, applying counter-resistance policies would only have an effect if a very large proportion of the animals are under that policy, that is, if nearly every country enforces it.
Again I think you missed my point here. There is only one option either way. Stop using Antibiotics.
You can either stop using antibiotics by not eating meat or stop using antibiotics wile using meat. In either case you would have to force it in every country and in either case you will fail.
Also, not using antibiotics at all is not an option.
Yes it is. And actually, feeding animals more of their natural diet would make it more possible. One of the reasons cows get bacteria over growth is when they are fed to much corn. It messes with the ph balance of their stomach. If you feed them only grass, they won’t need antibiotics at nearly the amount the do now.
So antibiotics is a non issue.
Weird, 97% is a really high number… In my country it’s about 10%, even with the EU laws to promote extensivization. I’ll take it though.
Grass lands are common, but what about the animals? There couldn’t have been nearly that many if a few early colonists hunted them down so quickly. Also the kind of grassland those lived in was vastly different from what cows need, let alone chicken.
Messing with their pH balance? As in, giving them diarrhea? Yes, that’s usually treated with antibiotics if severe, but still insufficient. Cattle get many different kinds of infections, anything from infected cuts to insect-transmitted diseases.
If we humans get and transmit diseases today, animals do the same. The first risk factor for that is the total number of individuals, so that needs to be cut down, and livestock are much more numerous than us.
Most of what this person says is made up.
Grass lands are common, but what about the animals? There couldn’t have been nearly that many if a few early colonists hunted them down so quickly.
It wasn’t actually that quick. It was over many generations. White people did hunt them by the millions but also the natives were newly armed with horses and guns and so could hunt them down much more efficiently, then sell the hides.
Messing with their pH balance? As in, giving them diarrhea?
Not just diarrhea, salmonella and other diseases. Their stomachs are not designed for corn. Feeding them mostly corn makes them vulnerable to lots of bacterial over growth. That is the reason they need antibiotics to begin with.
Maybe in parts of the EU people should protest cattle farming but here in the states I see lots of really happy cow farms.
The only source I can find for the claim that beef is 97% family farms is the Kansas Livestock Association.
Most others say 98% of farms are family farms - not cattle farms, just farms, and then use a weird definition of family farm. Small family farms are 89% but there is no indication of how much of the cattle farms are family owned.
USDA says “Finally, large-scale and non-family farms dominate production of beef production and high value crops which include vegetables, fruits/tree nuts, and nursery/greenhouse products.”
What’s your source? Save me from digging, I’m tired lol
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Only source I can find that beef are largely grass fed is various websites funded by the cattle industry. Citation?
All the farms where I live
Your own source says "Nobody is arguing that trees are therefore bad for climate and should be cut down. Indeed, in most cases, their carbon storage capability easily outweighs their methane emissions. "
Please tell me what about cow burps outweighs their methane emissions to make the comparison to trees sound.
Please tell me what about cow burps outweighs their methane emissions to make the comparison to trees sound.
Cows shit makes the ground so much more fertile the plants that grow where they live absorb so much carbon in balances out. Methane is a short lived greenhouse gas. Carbon a long lived. If you are worried about it you can also feed them seaweed.
Yeah but we don’t feed them seaweed. The article you linked says “There are approximately 1 billion cows used in the global meat and dairy industries, and, combined with other animals raised for livestock, are responsible for releasing the methane equivalent of some 3.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. If cows were a country, they would be the world’s third-largest greenhouse-gas emitter, behind China and the U.S., and ahead of India.” Your own source says you’re wrong.
Yeah but we don’t feed them seaweed.
So feed them sea weed.
Note: The author of this post has repeatedly attempted to shift the burden of proof. They provided no evidence for the many broad claims in their original post, yet demands “peer-reviewed” sources from others as a dismissal.
At this point in time (3 days after original post), every claim in the original post has remained unsourced.
Examples of shifting the burden of proof in this thread:
- “Yeah, lots of vegan propaganda there. Blogs are not peer reviewed sources by the way.”
- “Gonna need a source for that claim buddy. / edit on your new sources: Those aren’t peer reviewed sources.” in reply to a simple denial of an unsourced claim in the original post.
- Deflecting a request for source with anecdote: “All the farms where I live”
Examples in other threads:
-
False unsourced claim of Germany’s divorce rate increasing since 2002, which incidentally was another questionably cause fallacy.
Yeah, @mrpotato needs to bring some evidence to the table. Claims should be substantiated by evidence. if you’re trying to debunk someone else’s claim which is substantiated with evidence, you definitely need evidence.
So basically everything you say in this entire post is nonsense that you made up with no sources. I left reddit to get away from this blather but I guess the internet is just filled with misinformation to make ourselves feel better huh.
So in my personal experience, I wasn’t able to figure out veganism or vegetarianism more until recently, but it still doesn’t feel sustainable for me.
I tried a few times and didn’t have adequate nutrients, and would feel like I needed meat so would eat it. Lately I realized that mainly in my view vegans and vegetarians replace meat and dairy with beans, rice, legumes, nuts, seeds, etc. - that is basically their “meat”. So once I figured this out, at least I feel more able to sustain the diet. I think before I was simply not getting enough protein or complete proteins, because “just don’t eat meat or dairy” is vague and doesn’t suggest what to eat instead. I have also known vegetarians who had deficiencies.
So lately I’ve been able to go a few days at a time without meat and it feels ok. I feel my current limit may be like a week while four days feels comfortable.
I also crashed doing this recently when I did some like “lifting” exercise and no matter how much veggie protein I tried to get in, it was feeling inadequate.
It feels like reproduction, physical work (and maybe mental at times), or strenuous exercise require meat.
Otherwise there is a strong tradition of celibates of being vegan or vegetarian; in many lives of saints I keep reading that they vowed to abstain (which means no meat, but might allow dairy or fish) or ate only “vegetables” (which I assume must mean some of the specific proteins I mentioned, likely beans and something, unless they miraculously feasted on something insufficient which is alleged in some cases of saints).
So there is a Western spiritual consideration of avoiding meat for spiritual gains, even if the meat would otherwise nourish the body and give more health and longevity.
Even those who are married or engaged in physical work can tolerate days of abstinence which are obligatory (in Catholic tradition anyway. Orthodox too I think). Other religions like Hindus I think also are vegetarian but they have milk, which definitely can make the diet more sustainable because milk has a lot of nutrients in it that other plants don’t give the same amount of.
Yeah so for kids too veganism is unhealthy I think (religiously fasting isn’t recommended to a certain age, although maybe abstinence has been spoken of as being ok, I forget).
As far as environmental impact goes, in general I was thinking about this, food seems to be rough on the environment. Because how “green” is growing a bunch of beans? They’re probably going to be grown by tractors, requiring all kinds of fuel and factories to produce it. idk how many farms are using animals to plow with - but then that’s kind of an “animal” product and not vegan. It almost feels inescapable that animals will be used for food. Or will die when veggies are being harvested. I know a farmer who just ran a deer over the other day while cutting hay (idk if the animal died). But yeah the standard vegan diet is probably pretty harsh on the environment. If they aren’t using tractors, then I would be curious what vegans think of using horses and if they use them? What does the ideal vegan diet look like that isn’t having a negative environmental impact?
However on the other hand, it does seem to take less resources to make meat at times so they may have a point there. But then this argument goes back and forth because we have enough resources to feed people with meat. So it may use more of the environment but we have more environment that can be made use of.
So anyway I’m comfortably “flexitarian” currently, limiting meat intake. Mostly because it’s easier to not cook meat some days or have to clean up as much. That’s as far as I feel comfortable going with veganism. I think that’s a reasonable compromise.
You say Hong Kong has a higher life expectancy but fail to say that study after study has shown that this is because they largely don’t smoke and are economically affluent and therefore not subject to diseases of poverty. The correlation of them being meat eaters is not the cause of their longevity.
The correlation of them being meat eaters is not the cause of their longevity.
Gonna need a source for that claim buddy.
this is because they largely don’t smoke
edit on your new sources:
Those aren’t peer reviewed sources.
You made the initial dubious implication that being increased meat eaters has a major role in Hong Kong’s longevity. You have just shifted the burden of proof; you never provided a peer-reviewed source (let alone any explanation!) of why meat eating would be impactful.
Supply initial evidence for your claim, hopefully addressing how it would be more impactful than their:
- universal health care
- safe streets
- substantial greenery in cities
- walkable city and cheap, safe public transport
- good weather
- culture (which encourages public group exercise at all ages)
Furthermore, the implied claim that high meat consumption correlates with high longevity is not true. USA is one of the highest meat consumers per capita and has a far lower life expectancy. Same with Argentina and Brazil, and almost all the South American and Pacific nations with notoriously high meat consumption.
At this point in time, I agree that raising children on a poorly-planned vegan diet is unethical, in the same way that raising them on any other unbalanced diet is (there is a similar problem, at least in parts of the US but easily possibly elsewhere, of children raised on highly-processed foods with high-fat high-sugar and high-sodium (you get the point) and with little-to-no fruit or vegetables beyond potato chips and tomato sauces).
I honestly don’t know if a well-planned vegan diet is adequate for children. My very quick review of recent academic literature had conflicting claims on whether a well-planned vegan diet could be effective. Ultimately, I would base my answer of ‘unhealthy/destructive to young children’ on a food science consensus and I’m not confident there is one.
Regardless, there’s some pretty broken arguments in the original post, including the descriptor ‘evil’ (what does that even mean in this context? malicious?) and the appeal to ‘natural’ as a positive argument in itself. Pasteurizing milk isn’t natural.
Vegan farming is unsustainable. Animals naturally help the soil become more nutritious.
Vegan doesn’t mean animals don’t exist, and theoretically they should be a part of the environment. If it were run by pro-animal vegans rather than merely for vegans, I would expect some kind of permaculture including animals. Also, I’m guessing there are industrial work-around like packaged fertilizer if that’s the implication.
Vegan foods are terrible for the environment. Mass produced mono crops destroy the soil.
Are you implying that mono animal farming is any better for the soil?
Take a iron deficient person and give them plant iron and it will be weeks to never before their iron returns. Feed them a liver and see it spike up in a day. The same can be said of vitamin A and many other vitamins
Is this meant to be an argument? The point is to plan a diet to not be iron deficient in the first place! Prevention > Cure
Every “Vegan” body builder got their start on whey protein.
Is this meant to be an argument? Most people aren’t aiming to be body builders, which is in fact an unhealthy, unnatural and destructive lifestyle itself. Also, [dubious claim, citation needed]
Hong Kong has one of the highest life expectancies on earth and one of the highest meat consumption rates on earth.
Correlation ≠ Causation. One country doesn’t form a trend. USA has a life expectancy of around 50th in the world. Brazil are around 55th. Argentina are around 65th. Samoa is around 115th. These are all nations that top the charts of estimated meat consumption per capita, USA by far.
Hong Kong has other social reasons for a high life expectancy. I really don’t think you can chalk it up to ‘more meat’. Take, for instance, their universal health care, safe streets, public transport & walk-ability, good weather, varied diet. Diet plays a role but evidently increased meat consumption doesn’t make a nations suddenly live the longest. It’s a very dumb argument and you should reconsider any source that you read that implied it was a good argument.
Furthermore, meat consumption is often associated with wealth, as it’s generally more expensive, and people with wealth have more opportunity to be healthy.
You say that heme iron is found only in meat as if we need it but iron from any source will give you your nutritional needs. Every Hindu on the planet has somehow survived without eating meat so it’s weird to represent heme-iron as if it’s somehow superior. Easier to absorb, yes, but also might give you colon cancer so it’s kind of a mixed bag.
You say that heme iron is found only in meat as if we need it but iron from any source will give you your nutritional needs.
False. Plant iron absorption varies greatly from person to person. And everyone can absorb heme iron better. Its why vegans are so often iron deficient.
Every Hindu on the planet has somehow survived without eating meat
Great point. India has more vegetarians than almost any where else. Have you seen their life expectancy? Its complete shit. Like 67. If veganism were at all healthy surely it would have effected their life expectancy. Its a killer. Veganism kills.
Lmfao You’re ignorant and a racist (based on your other posts). I am indian, in a wealthy country and every indian I know lives to be ancient because the cause of lower mortality in India is the same as the higher mortality in Hong Kong. Say it with me - poverty leads to more death. Wealthy people live longer.
You are so obviously a right wing shill with no critical thinking skills. Why are you on Lemmy?? Go away. I’m blocking you and I hope everyone else does. You’re a fool.
Typical vegan brain fog behavior. When any of your ideas are challenged you scream racist and block.
Rather than face the fact that the country with the most vegetarians has one if the lowest life expectancies you just scream racism.
Hong Kong proves meat doesn’t kill. That’s enough right there never to be a vegan.
I for one will enjoy my steak well into my 70’s.
