this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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In 2022, 19.7% of the EU population at risk of poverty were unable to afford a meal containing meat, fish or a vegetarian equivalent every second day. Highest % in Bulgaria (44.6%) and Romania (43%) (ec.europa.eu)
submitted 2 years ago by boem@lemmy.world to c/europe@feddit.de
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[–] YourFavouriteNPC@feddit.de 30 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Huh, I wonder why? Let's see...

  • My rent was raised by ~100€ over the last two years
  • My electricity bill is 30€ higher now, too
  • My food expenses exploded to about an extra 200€ per month, even though I pay more attention to prices now and go for me-too-products whenever I can
  • Not to mention the countless other things that got more expensive (heating, water bills, insurance, clothes etc.)

Meanwhile, my salary increased by a little more than 100€ in that same time span. And you're telling me people can't afford decent meals? Oh I fucking wonder why!

[–] Opafi@feddit.de 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

ELI5: How is it only a "proper" meal if it has meat or meatlike ingredients? What's wrong with dishes that are plainly vegetarian?

[–] Panamanap@feddit.de 28 points 2 years ago (3 children)

The article already mentions "or a vegetarian equivalent". Being vegetarian also means you have to have a balanced diet. That's not easy when you're poor.

[–] garden_boi@feddit.de 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Has anybody had the patience to investigate on the article and find out what is meant by "vegetarian equivalent"? I cannot believe that lentils or beans could be that expensive. Completely different picture for tofu, meat substitutes and the like.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Let's see getting the recommended dose of B12 implies three eggs or half a litre of milk a day, minimum what 60ct or such. Eggs should be preferred, more and better protein. Package frozen spinach, 80ct, potatoes until you're full let's say 500-1000g let's split the difference another 60ct.

Two Euros, not counting electricity or odds and ends (such as clarified butter to fry the potatoes (pro tip: ~1cm cubes, fry while steaming, then mash), salt, spices).

And that's if a) you're buying at Aldi in Germany, we have ridiculously low food prices and b) know WTF you're doing and c) have time and energy to do it. E.g. without a freezer you really shouldn't keep those spinach packages around. Also no matter how much I love spinach and eggs I wouldn't want to eat it every day.

Beans and rice are going to put you into malnutrition sooner or later, lack of micronutrients. The nice thing about meat is that you really won't have to care about that one.

[–] letmesleep@feddit.de 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Beans and rice are going to put you into malnutrition sooner or later, lack of micronutrients. The nice thing about meat is that you really won’t have to care about that one.

If you never switch that up, yes. But fortunately there's a lot of other cheap plants you can use. So you can avoid most issues by simply switching it up once in a while. And thanks to a long history of improving the seeds soy now has a comparable biological value to eggs (and beasts most meats). Hence those will work well as a start.

If you're a woman or lose blood for other reasons, you'll likely want some iron supplements, but those can be avoided if you really want to.

B12 however is the one thing you need to take as a supplement if you try to live of plants. So I don't get why you use mention that. It's in any vegan-diet starter post and while it's theoretically possible to obtain enough on a vegetarian diet via milk, consuming that much dairy defeats the purpose of vegetarianism hence most take those pills as well.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Half a litre isn't really much: A glass with your muesli, a yoghurt for dessert, some sprinkles of cheese somewhere and it's covered. A litre of milk is about 100g of semi-hard cheese (think gouda), so three slices can get you over the target.

Cheese and eggs are the foundation of much how peasants not just survived, but survived well, over the last couple of millennia. And those dishes contain all kinds of nutritional details that you have to care about if you want to forego all fish and meat, e.g. Quark, linseed oil and potatoes for that Omega 3 kick if you're too poor to even have fish (salmon was poor man's food back in the days...)

[–] letmesleep@feddit.de 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Half a litre isn’t really much: A glass with your muesli, a yoghurt for dessert, some sprinkles of cheese somewhere and it’s covered. A litre of milk is about 100g of semi-hard cheese (think gouda), so three slices can get you over the target.

That's a lot in terms of animal suffering and environmental damage. Cheese is worse for the climate than beef.

And given how peasants "survived", well they didn't do much more than that. There's a reason humans only regained their normal size recently. We were much healthier in the stone ages than as peasants. Milk really isn't particularly healthy and that's one of the reasons it's mostly a thing in European and a few populations. Half of the world is still lactose intolerant.

Basically: Milk had its purpose for a few millennia, but now it's time to ditch it again.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I get it you're vegan. Rest assured that I don't even buy non-organic milk, if only for the reason that it doesn't taste good when the cows only eat soy.

Malik still prefers most people stick with low-fat dairy, as this helps reduce your intake of saturated fat but still offers good amounts of nutrients.

I'm not even going to start commenting on that. The 50s want their commercial propaganda back.

Half of the world is still lactose intolerant.

Half the world is not culturally and partly genetically descendent from a particular pastoral culture in what's now Ukraine. You can flip the whole thing around and ask why other cultures didn't spread as hard and fast as Indo-Europeans did (speaking of initial expansion, not modern-day colonial bullshit).

Also, half a litre is still within what non-lactose tolerant people can tolerate. It's pushing it, but possible. I mean most Italians are lactose intolerant and they still have their cappuccino. Then, lactose doesn't even begin to be an issue when it comes to even moderately ripened cheeses. India would completely collapse without milk as their version of vegetarian doesn't involve eggs.

If you want to get your B12 from other sources, be my guest. I literally don't care. If you want to argue against milk consumption for other reasons, also be my guest. All I wanted to do is how "vegetarian substitute for meat" can be interpreted in a European context that's on a budget. And it didn't even involve milk because eggs are more bang for the buck nutrition-wise.

[–] letmesleep@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I'm not vegan, more like vegetarian and flexitarian with dairy. I'm just trying to explain why (obviously in an orderly fashion, revolutions are expensive) milk from out diet would be a good idea. By now it's fairly clear that the plant based option have more advantages than disadvantages.. Milks isn't particularly bad, but it*s in the "controversial" category. I.e. the stuff one should only consume if one likes the taste, but not for health reasons.

Edit: With eggs the calculation is indeed quite different. They're less of a problem regarding the climate (if you use the water-free portion as a reference) and indeed helpful for protein.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

is high in saturated fats,

Argh that again. No, saturated fats are not unhealthy. Trans fats, hardened fats, different issue but the saturated scare was an advertisement technique to push margarine at butter prices flanked by a campaign by the sugar industry demonising fat as a whole. The whole "science" behind it is "fire fighters found near conflagration thus fire departments cause fires" type logic. The actual epidemic of heart disease back then was due to people smoking like chimneys but how could you blame cigarettes doctors said they're healthy...

Producing plant-based milks is also easier on the environment than producing cow’s milk, which requires large amounts of water and causes high levels of greenhouse gas emissions

Is that based on those "tons of rain falls on cow pastures and cows drink and pee and we're counting all of that as water usage" numbers. Especially almonds have a much worse water problem, methane burps are an issue yes but can also be addressed by better animal feed and natural supplements, up to 90% reductions and it's not even expensive.

[–] letmesleep@feddit.de 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's indeed not easy. But we're speaking about one of the cases where you actually can substitute money with knowledge, planning and some effort. Cheap and healthy vegan (not just vegetarian) diets are doable, they just require cooking and looking up what you do. Or at least switching it up a lot.

[–] Panamanap@feddit.de 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You are right, it is possible for an individual.

But this is not about an individual but about a society. Poor people will be less likely to achieve this diet. (Less time, more stress, less education).

[–] letmesleep@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

True. But continuing to subsidizing meat (without those it would never have been affordable) is the least efficient way to go about it. Saving the money (if we include the environmental costs we're easily in the hundreds of billions per year for Europe alone) that goes into subsidies for livestock, could pay for a lot of programs that make plant-based healthy eating more widespread. By education, but also by targeted subsidizing of healthy foods.

Edit: Also: Meat being take off the menu by prices makes it more complicated to obtain amino acids, but it also has a lot of positive side effects. Red meat and especially processed products cause quite a bit of problems. Heck, maybe we should bring back rationing.

[–] Panamanap@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago

Wholeheartedly agree, since we are talking about societal measures.

[–] plistig@feddit.de 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But what is actually needed, then? I can 100% assure you that you can survive or even thrive on a diet consisting of nothing but potatoes and beans and a bit of green stuff.

[–] Panamanap@feddit.de 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You can assure me how?

Aside from nutritional value it's not really feasible for the whole world to only eat potatoes, beans and a bit of green stuff. They will not grow everywhere in sufficient quantities.

Be noted that I am not advocating eating meat is necessary or healthy the way we do it currently. I was just explaining that you did not read the article carefully.

[–] plistig@feddit.de 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Have a look at e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-11864290. That was only a fun self-experiment, and not a scientific study at all, of course.

But who was mentioning the population of the whole world? This is a channel about Europe, linking an article about Europe.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That article is dangerous. For one specific reason: It lists what potatoes lack, but that list is incomplete, which is worse than listing no details at all. A healthy adult will have enough e.g. B12 reserves to easily last those two months without real adverse effects but a kid would already be in malnutrition.

[–] Panamanap@feddit.de 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You are already aware of my counter argument, great. Also it's for 60 days only and a publicity stunt. That's not really shattering my knowledge about nutrition.

So you're saying for Europe is possible?

[–] plistig@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How about a year? https://www.menshealth.com/weight-loss/a19536403/can-the-potato-diet-help-you-lose-weight-safely/

Why are you so confrontational, dude? The sun is hot today, so we should be mellow.

[–] Panamanap@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago

Men's health. Naw.

Why? https://xkcd.com/386/ You know other people might read this and think they can live and prosper only with potatoes and beans. And to be honest, that's not good advice, which I assume you also don't live by.

But I agree, let's chill, it's really too hot.

[–] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Here in Romania, it's a pretty gigantic price and standard of living difference between the cities and the countryside. I wonder if they took into account the price difference, or they just assigned a national average and compared that to their salaries.

Also, how would you even do this calculation for a family growing their own food and raising livestock in a village?

[–] febra@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago

Yeah, if you live in the city you pretty much can afford to eat meat on a daily basis. Most people that live in the countryside grow their own chickens, pigs, and so on. They might not be able to buy meat every day based on their income, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t eating meat. They just aren’t buying it. Funnily enough, most Romanians eat meat on a daily basis. Romania has a comparable meat consumption per capita to Estonia, Belgium and Switzerland [1]

1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption

[–] Habnab@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Sustainable eating is cheaper and healthier - Oxford study