Meat Eaters

Just did a slightly ludicrous calculation, but using the CO2 numbers from here: https://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_aviation.html
Assuming 70K fans flying to Madrid from London and Liverpool, that equates to 10,000 Tonnes of CO2.

1 Like

Using the greenhouse gas equivalence ratio of 25:1 CO2:CH4 (http://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause-of-global-warming-meat-methane-CO2).
And the fact that 1 Cow emits ~ 100KG Methane per year we get

10000 Tonnes CO2 = 400 Tonnes CH4 = 400,000Kg CH4

400,000Kg / 100Kg/Year/Cow = 4000 Cow Years

1 Like

Your own experience with food is not representative. There are certainly a minority of people with specific health needs that deviate substantially from the norm – for example some people are allergic to water, others have no immune system and must live in a controlled environment – and it’s possible that you are in a very small number of people who have been unable to identify foods that they can safely consume that are plant based but it does not mean that humans need meat. There are millions of people following a plant-based diet living healthy lives, if you look at primarily vegetarian populations you’ll see that on average they are healthier and live longer.

The unfortunate reality is that we still know very little about food, our understanding of nutrition is rapidly changing and is far behind relative to our understanding of other subjects. There is a lot of evidence that humans can live healthy lives without consuming any animal products. The way that we live our lives now – consuming meat, driving cars, sitting down, watching netflix, having bank accounts – is not a reflection on what humans need, it’s a reflection on what humans have created and it is important to separate that.

At this point in time following a healthy plant-based diet is more difficult than following a omnivorous diet but that’s a product of the approach we have taken to mass production of food and is not reflective of human needs. If we imagine a hypothetical in which humans collectively decide that meat is no longer acceptable and we all become plant-based humans, do you believe that we will all die out, or do you believe that humans will adapt our plant-based diets to accommodate our needs – as we have done consistently through our time on this planet, one of the primary reasons for our success as a species.

If you know that humans need meat to live healthy lives I would love to see some evidence because I have not seen any evidence of that yet.

6 Likes

I’m not sure of your logic.

The worst offenders are the grass-eating, methane-producing animals. Cows release the equivalent of 16kg of carbon dioxide for every kilo of meat produced. Sheep are only slightly better producing 13kg of CO2 for every kilo of meat.

Pigs and chickens, which eat a more mixed diet, are much better. Pigs produce about half as much carbon dioxide, and chickens are responsible for only 4.4kg of CO2 per kilo of meat.

So if you are worried about your carbon footprint you are much better off eating chicken than beef.

I’m not going to worry about every single bit of CO2 my lifestyle is producing, it’s impossible to be carbon neutral, but avoiding eating cow products is a simple change.

On that argument the veg eating humans must be producing lots of harmful gasses too then

My reply was based on your statement that humans do not need animal products to lead healthy lives. I said this isnt true, which is correct by your own reply here. But i didn’t state anything about what humans do need, I didn’t think there was a reason to. Humans have a varied diet around the world. Meat can provide most of the nutrients required for a human to live a healthy lives, and plants can as well for many people if the correct ones are consumed.

It is worth keeping in mind that while the examples given here are things we’ve created, humans have always eaten meat. We didnt create meat…

I believe this will never happen, and its a bit of a ridiculous goal that some people have. Eating meat or plants isnt a black and white issue. Humans eat meat… and plants, meat is a more nutrient dense food and is edible by everyone, and has been since recorded memory. In some places its the only source of food, and as already discussed for a number of people its one of the few edible foods that can give them the required nutrients.

(if it was enforced by law, i think you’d quickly find people going out hunting and getting meat locally to bypass the laws)

We should be careful not to fall into the pit of extreme and radical views which end up just being ridiculous. To stop eating meat because current farming methods aren’t the most environmentally friendly isnt a reasonable answer. The answer is likely to improve current farming methods to make both plant and livestock farming more environmentally friendly, to buy from reliable sources and to consider what we eat, plant or animal.

Both have environmental impacts. That wont disappear if you tried to get rid of livestock.

1 Like

While i don’t do this myself, there are local butchers and businesses here which sell local game and wild meat. You do have to consider sustainability in that though, but i believe currently its not an overly known or popular choice to be an issue currently.

Everyone should know this imo. You should know where you food comes from and how it butchered and how it gets to your table.

I respect vegans for their point of view not to eat meat as well as their reasons but I also expect them to respect my view to eat meat and my reasons. We are all different and varied people and we should respect each other for being different.

I look after the environment many ways - I don’t drive, I teach the next generation how to look after the planet, I recycle more than many people around me. I just like eating meat and don’t plan to change this.

2 Likes

Humans are omnivores and as which need all sources of foods. We can live healthy lives on all sorts of diets because we adapt so well to what we have. But in our original form we were foaraging for food so would have eaten anything we could largly fruit veg nuts etc but meat would have been a big prize for the levels of e energy and protein it provides. Coastal people would have eaten a lot of shell fish like muscles and limits. Also insects would have been eaten. This is a practice we should go back to really as the protein values in insects a much higher than any other source and insects are easily sustained.

1 Like

The history of human consumption of meat is often misunderstood. The way that we eat today is a relatively new phenomenon, if you look back even just a century ago you’ll find our diets were very different and it’s important to consider history in context. For example, while it’s true that early humans ate meat – or at least, evidence we have points to that – it’s also important to understand that meat was not the majority of their diet and early humans were as much gatherers as they were hunters. Yes, humans have likely always eaten meat but the amount we eat now and the type we eat now has no precedent in history.

For me the ethical argument is far more compelling than the environmental argument, from my perspective it is indefensible for us – not you as an individual or a meat eater but us as a species – to kill hundreds of millions of animals per day when we don’t need to. The conversation would be different if it was impossible for humans to survive without meat but fundamentally we do not need to eat meat and therefore we are subjecting hundreds of millions of animals to torture and death every single day because we like it.

Although free range grass fed beef is less ethically compromised and it is likely better for someone to eat only free range grass fed beef, it is still many times more harmful than the typical plant based diet and I think it is very important to consider the options together, not in a vacuum. If your choice is between killing 10 animals or 20 animals, of course choosing to kill the 10 animals is better but if the choice is between killing 0 animals, killing 10 animals or killing 20 animals, does it make sense to focus on how much better killing 10 is than 20, instead of focusing on how you could instead kill 0?

3 Likes

Right, well now I can see you’re not actually interested in finding out about other peoples reasons for eating what they eat I’m sorry I bothered :roll_eyes:

2 Likes

I said this as you issue was with gasses release by grass eating animals but with that in mind humans are the biggest producer of those gasses. And most animals walked this earth long before us. So by comparison we should all at fault too

Edit. Are you stopping people owning dogs and cat who’s diet is solely meat based in most homes even though they can survive o veg and wild dogs especially would eat fallen fruits etc and only eat meat when it’s caught after less than once per month in the wild.

You can’t. No one can. Yes we can improve the ethical nature of things, i absolutely agree that we can and should improve and change our agriculture for the better, but a plant based diet does not mean that no animals will die. It would be a delusion to think so.

To be alive is to suffer, we can improve things, reduce suffering, but there’s no getting around it. I say, welcome to Earth.

I’m not sure these two sentences aren’t contradictory.

We can live on all sorts of diets, but need all sources of food?

Maybe I’m misunderstanding?

What I’m trying to get across is that the body will adapt to any diet over time but a truly balanced diet should contain both animal and plant based nutrients

They gathered insects, snails, shellfish, worms etc.

This is an assertion you keep making, but it is just that, an assertion not a proven fact. Until recently there was no way to get an adequate intake of vitamin B12 without eating animal products. Using only local plants it is almost impossible to obtain a complete amino acid profile - you’ll still be missing taurine without eating meat and it is found in all muscles. We do not yet know the long term effects of eating disorders like veganism, because our ancestors didn’t subscribe to it in enough numbers to allow us to measure them.

Time will tell, but all properly conducted studies show that when you take out the confounding factors (vegan studies usually compare the anally retentive health obsessed vegans with people who eat at MacDonalds every day), the omnivorous diet is far more healthy than the vegan diet.

2 Likes

I mean… Its a thread about meat eaters. There’s a thread for non meat eaters for that particular discussion too. We could keep it semi on topic :smile:

Its incorrect, or mis-written. Humans can survive on varied diets, but can also survive on restrictive diets depending on the type of food. For example a number of human communities survive primarily only on meat or fish, particularly coastal communities in harsh cold environments with no access to arable land.

I take you back to my comment that humans adapt very well and quickly. But still an omnivorous diet is much healthier for us.

Edit. I may have worded some of the comment wrong writing isn’t a strong point of mine

It depends on the person I think. I wouldn’t make this a statement of fact as food intake does vary depending on human, some groups of humans are more tolerable to some plant based foods than others, others have never eaten a plant in their lives for generations.

All down to adaptability really though. At tge end of the day we once ate grass hence why we have a pancreas. It is now useless to us and if damaged is dangerous it’s all part of our adaptation and evolution .