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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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B12 is the only thing, and we can buy food that reinforced with it so no big deal. Many cereals have it added, and this can not be overstated, it's the only thing that is problematic for vegans naturally. I'm not even a vegan, but B12 is added to all sorts of foods these days.
Also if that's the case, then eating meat is class warfare. While people are starving, we are growing food to feed to live stock, to get a food people think tastes better. For every 1000 calories of food fed to cattle, you'll get less than 100 calories of meat. There is not enough land on the planet for every person to eat meat the way folks in the US do.
https://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/meat-and-animal-feed.html#:~:text=Nearly%2060%25%20of%20the%20world's,kilometres%20of%20land%20to%20produce. "Nearly 60% of the world's agricultural land is used for beef production, yet beef accounts for less than 2% of the calories that are consumed throughout the world. "
That 60% is counting all the corn and soy agriculture that is fed straight to beef. The world is not big enough for humans to eat as much as meat as people do. As a delicacy? Sure. But eating it every day? Multiple meals? Part of the world will always starve if we do. There is nothing in meat that we can't get in other ways, not a single thing. So in all honesty if we want a stable world, we will need to figure out our addiction to meat.
That's a lot of words to miss the point.
Also, choline. Also, numerous micronutrients. Also, nutrient density and bioavailability. Also, non-arable grazing land makes up a large part of that 60% (see Australia). Also, locally sustainable nutrient complete. Also, not subject to needing supplementation from foods only available due to international commerce. Also, where do you think they grow the crops for extracting nutrients for supplements? Also, meat is the battery mass storage of the food world, you can charge it up, it's portable, easy to keep, won't spoil until harvested.
But go on, tell me again how the poor have access to nutrition and that it's not class warfare. Starvation must suck on a full stomach.
Literally every single thing you said is just factually wrong.
Choline is bountiful and not a concern https://www.pcrm.org/news/blog/clearing-choline-confusion. "Micronutrients" I'd love to know which ones. B12 also is in some vegetables, but vegetarians/vegans like to take the supplements just because it's the only one they "might" not get enough of.
Most of that 60% is used for growing corn and soy used to feed live stock, because letting them graze is inefficient. The vast majority of animals butchered for meat are from factory farms, which are powered by corn and soy. Which could have just been human grown soy and sweetcorn, but instead it makes more money to grow cattle grade. https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/us-factory-farming-estimates
Also they don't just keep fully grown beef cattle sitting around my friend. They slaughter them on a tight schedule to maximize profit. They don't function as batteries, they are treated as crops in factories where they are born and die on an optimal schedule. Keeping around a full grown cow marked for beef is a GIANT waste of money, because it needs food, water, and housing despite not going to grow much bigger.
https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/slaughter-cattle-grades-and-standards
And if meat is the food storage of the world how is it a measly 2% of calories consumed? It feeds next to no one. If it vanished, people would moan and grown, but basically no one would go hungry because it feeds just SO few people on the grand scheme of thing. In fact, if all cows vanished, we'd have vastly more food as the vast amounts of corn, grain, and soy that were going to be fed to cows at a 10:1 return would be sold to people, and instead of growing feed corn the next harvest would be food humans actually like.
I just can not stress enough that they eat 20X as many calories, most of which was grown in fields that could have been from humans, as they provide when eaten. The idea that they are grazing, just simply isn't true. Letting them graze is an inefficient use of land. https://cbey.yale.edu/our-stories/disrupting-meat
Not to mention you complain that it's only available due to international commerce... yet many countries import meat as well. https://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-imports-ranking-countries-0-106900#:~:text=China%20accounts%20for%20roughly%2030,South%20Korea%20and%20Hong%20Kong.
You're right, it is class warfare, rich countries should stop eating meat and instead focus fields on crops that are 20X more efficient until everyone has more food than they can possibly eat. https://www.arktide.org/how-much-food-can-we-grow/#:~:text=On%20land%2C%20soybeans%20can%20produce,18%20million%20calories%20per%20acre.
I'd be down for pescatarians though if we actually got around to taking care of the oceans and doing sustainable farming.
If you can't provide sources in a response I will just have to ignore as a troll though. Because every point you made was just... factually incorrect. I'm hoping you just heard those things somewhere else and repeated them without checking and didn't make them up to be a bother.
It’s been common knowledge for decades that maintaining a nutritionally balanced vegan or vegetarian diet is not as simple as just eliminating meat as doing so causes a severe lack of several key nutrients and vitamins. The main offenders are vitamin B12, Omega 3, vitamin D, Zinc, and Choline. Some of these can be accounted for by increasing variety in the diet but others require supplements for a multitude of reasons, either recommended daily consumption cannot be met due to self imposed dietary restrictions, a lack of nutritionally rich sources, or simply how much food you can eat.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8746448/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7073751/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261561420306567
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/9/2129
Nutritional deficiencies caused by incorrectly managed vegan diets are why doctors in Italy and Belgium are pushing for it to become illegal to feed children vegan diets, because the number of malnourished and dead children of vegan parents are rising in those nations.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37034619
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/16/parents-raise-children-vegans-should-prosecuted-say-belgian/
Choline is a nutrient that was identified in the 1800’s but wasn’t known as essential to human development until the late 90’s, it’s found primarily in animal protein and severely impacts brain development in young children and has ongoing effects on mental capability and brain function during adulthood and deficiencies have been linked to multiple memory related diseases. According to nutritional data from the US National Institute of Health on Choline density in foods a vegan would have to consume two and a half cups of soybeans every day to meet minimum RDI for an adult as opposed to 300g of animal protein. The next nearest vegan source of choline is chickpeas which have 50% lower Choline density than soybeans (5 cups a day to meet RDI!)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4422379/
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Choline-HealthProfessional/
Source? Are those numbers including livestock consumption of non-meat products? Pet consumption of meat products? You bitch about not sourcing information when none were requested then drop that bullshit with no source?
Whole soy beans make up less than 6% of an American production cow's diet, they can't handle more, the rest is made up from industrial food waste such as soybean meal from soymilk production, beet pulp from sugar production, cotton seeds from clothes production, brewers grains from alcohol production, citrus pulp from fruit production, corn gluten from corn syrup production, candy and bakery waste. Numbers from non waste food consumption in cows is as low as 2-3%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding
https://nre.tas.gov.au/Documents/cattlefeed.pdf
https://www.agriculture.gov.au/sites/default/files/sitecollectiondocuments/natural-resources/soils/national-factsheet-farm-practices-grazing.pdf
https://www.redmeatgreenfacts.com.au/environment/land-use/land-use-faqs/just-3-of-australias-land-mass-is-suitable-for-cropping/
https://wwf.org.au/what-we-do/food/beef/
https://www.csiro.au/en/work-with-us/industries/agriculture/sustainable-food-and-agriculture-systems/understanding-and-navigating-global-change-in-our-food-systems/grazing-systems-in-sustainable-food-futures
https://www.climateworkscentre.org/land-use-futures/australias-land-use/
http://era.daf.qld.gov.au/id/eprint/4249/
https://landcareaustralia.org.au/landcarefarming/innovationsinag/regenerativerangelands/
https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/dry-seasons-and-drought/grazing-native-vegetation-and-revegetation-farms-%E2%80%93-western-australia
https://www.ari.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/36084/ARI-Technical-Report-252-Understanding-the-relationship-between-grazing-and-wetland-condition.pdf
Which has higher caloric density and thus is more environmentally sustainable than transporting the same nutritional value in produce. It's like you want to burn more fossil fuels in the shipping industry than necessary.
Crop management, pesticides, and harvesting kill far more animals of varying species for the same equivalent nutritional value of a single head of cattle. Animals are also often raised on land that can't be used for crops turning useless land into sustainable food resources, here in Australia over 70% of all our cattle are grass fed on non-arable land that can’t be used for farming crops and that soil health requires both crop rotation and animal biodiversity otherwise you’re not going to be able to grow vegetables there for long. The only reason a healthy nutritionally balanced vegan or vegetarian diet is even remotely possible is due to globalised trade and access to internationally produced and shipped vegetables. To maintain a nutritionally complete vegan diet for an individual year round actually requires far more use of fossil fuels and directly released carbon emissions due to limited seasonality and local accessibility than a cow produces for the same nutrient density and complexity locally.
Here’s a “fun” fact, first world demand for fruit and grain variety has out priced primary sources of food for local populations in third world countries including things like lentils, quinoa, and avocados.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-there-s-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/veganism-environment-veganuary-friendly-food-diet-damage-hodmedods-protein-crops-jack-monroe-a8177541.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa
https://thetab.com/uk/2020/02/12/tofu-vegan-food-staple-bad-for-the-earth-143688?fbclid=IwAR1aBfNlh_OPSrF8odvUf6O5X14zE_VbCdXrn-a87AGip2zhXsohzMnNcHk
If self-awareness was a disease, you'd be the healthiest person alive.
TIL i'm dead
Hopefully only between the ears.
Not arguing with you, but I wanted to contribute by saying that most people, at least in the US, are also deficient in magnesium, zinc, and vitamin D. For all this effort carnivores are putting into to convince others that their diets are sufficient, often times those making those claims haven't looked inward to see what they themselves are lacking. Perhaps it's a complex issue, dunno
That is a wonderful point!
I actually ran into someone with big conspiracy energy at a food expo the other day, and he like started ranting about how the government has proven that it's more interested in promoting what food pays the most in lobbying over actually caring about our health and it's like... bro you are channeling some major conspiracy theory vibes but I can't at all argue with your point. Between the food pyramid being drawn up by farmer lobbyists, corn syrup being put into everything despite it poisoning the lower class, and corps only getting a slap on the wrist when they make false food claims... it's pretty obvious the government isn't super concerned with our actual well being with our diets and we should all make sure to look inward.