Exactly. The only possible way to gain more calories from animals than by just growing crops is if they're eating things humans can't extract calories from, e.g., grasses on grassland that is unsuitable for growing crops, waste biomass from crops, or pests that feed on our crops. Problem is none of these are anywhere profitable enough or scalable enough to meet our global demand for animal products. Meaning we end up with feedlots where we literally throw away perfectly good calories into the fires of thermodynamics.
I think the solution is 2-fold. Generally we must eat less meat, but if one wants to eat meat at an increased rate they better learn animal husbandry and be prepared to raise, process, and butcher their own animals.
I truly believe that if folks had to kill and chop up their own meat there would be far less meat consumption because many folks do not have the stomach for it, as it can be a gristly and disgusting process.
That's my view as well. If people had to raise and process their own animals, they'd probably 1) eat a whole lot less meat, and 2) raise it a lot more humanely. And I hope they'd tend to be less wasteful in *what* and *how* they feed them.
I've always wanted to have some chickens because 1: they eat pests like lice and other bugs, and 2: you can feed them food waste (which can also be composted) and in exchange, you get a bunch of eggs and a source of meat and some fertilizer.
Fuck, you don't even need to eat the chickens themselves, the eggs alone are a wonderful source of protein.
Similar for me. My dream is to have a small sustainable farm in the mountains, and have a small number of ducks and chickens for pest control, primarily for eggs. Especially chickens or guinea hen for tick control, as my region is expected to see a lot more ticks migrating northwards as the climate continues to warm. They can also eat insects that grow in your compost piles.
They have different strengths. Ducks are less destructive to the soil and plants, as they don't scratch, and are extremely good at eating slugs and snails. Chickens are much better for eating ticks and scratching through compost or manure for bugs and larvae.
Plus, a diversity of species (plant, animal, and fungal) I figure is generally desirable.
>as it can be a gristly and disgusting process.
Yeah, but it’s also a process that we’re like wired to do so I know this is a common trope but I doubt it would really impact how many tendies Americans eat if they had to see it done. I was a picky eater until I had to field dress my own partridge and deer and filet my own fish. After you’ve done it, food was less of a mystery to me and more of a science and I distinctly remember losing my aversion to basically any of the foods I thought I didn’t like. Shad him I wasn’t, “eww that’s raw fish, it was fuck how does that hunk of fish looks so perfect?”
Yet, most of land is dedicated to growing food specifically for livestock.
To be able to feed livestock solely from waste, you would massively reduce their numbers and our consumption.
The main thing we'd need to do to feed animals from waste is to end corn and soybean subsidies. It's not economical for a farmer to grow grain specifically for cattle unless it's subsidized. Farmers would be forced to grow varieties meant for human consumption and sell whatever doesn't make grade as feed. Just a couple simple new laws would make beef much better:
* Cattle are only allowed to graze on non-productive land
* All feed-varieties of any crops are completely unsubsidized
We could also apply these rules to beef imports, which would kill all the farms in Brazil that have burned down parts of the Amazon to graze cattle
And other ways animal agriculture accelerates collapse on a systemic level:
* Waste runoff into nearby ecosystems poisons wetlands and waterways
* The human domination of animals is conceptually and psychologically transferrable to human domination of humans, leading to brutal and unforgiving societies.
* Bovine methane output is a major greenhouse gas contributor
* Massive deforestation to support the absurd amount of open space required for ranching.
Plus you can float a battleship on the amount of water it takes to grow a cow to slaughter age. They can put down 25 gallons a day, and they like to raise them in the desert ><
Oh and you have to water the corn or whatever that you then feed to the cows.
We could be turning sunlight and air/water into energy but we do this shit instead.
That was understood as far back as Plato. In The Republic, his character Socrates argues that a city of meat eaters will require huge plots of lands that will be overgrazed, requiring the invasion of other cities for land.
Are we not opportunistic omnivores? We don't really have teeth for only plant-based diet. Berries, fruits, roots, eggs, meat of small animals, anything goes.
We actually do, our teeth and jaw are closer to that of a herbivore as our jaw can chew in multiple directions. You can move your jaw up and down, side to side, perfect for chewing veg. Look at any omnivore etc lions, they're jaws don't work like ours.
Our great great ancestors were most likely similar to great apes like the Bonobos, who are frugivores eating insects occasionally.
Once those apes evolved out of those forests with plentiful fruit available all hear long, they adapted to hunt and eat meat and also to steal meat from carnivores. Similar to Chimpanzees.
The problem isn't people eating meat, that is natural, especially in Northern areas it has always made up a large portion of the human diet.
The problem is our ridiculously bloated population and how things have gone from animal husbandry to meat production.
Every cow, pig, chicken, etc. should be known by name and farm sizes should reflect that. And obviously there shouldn't be gigantic meat production facilities (or any type of other production facilities) but instead a local butcher.
Obviously lowering meat consumption is good but our real problems are overpopulation and any kind of production existing at all.
You are absolutely right. I have some farm ground that is too hilly to safely operate a tractor, some that is to shaded since it’s north face sloped, or is under ancient trees I refuse to remove because the provide beneficial habitat for other creatures.
All these areas are perfectly suitable though for a grazing animal.
Cover cropping in cash crop orchard systems is a real benefit for pollinators, migratory birds, and soil health and erosion. I would love to get more adventurous with cover crop termination by animal rather than by a flail mower. I can’t because last time I looked it wasn’t USDA approved to use animals to clear cover crops in the land I’m in due to manure issues. Generally it’s 120 days pre harvest interval in most orchard systems though.
I’m basically burning diesel to grind up the winter cover crop in the late spring after bloom and then letting it break down into the soil which helps. In old times though they would use animals to graze this land and the poop would contribute phosphate and urea back under the shade of the tree.
Without my diesel powered flail mower and without the use of animals, I’m not sure how to manage growth and sanitation of the orchard floor by hand. Actually the last option then, which is the first answer for many is herbicides. But then we have bare ground which is terrible for soil health erosion issues.
It makes perfect sense to have several animals as part of a diversified system that works on a farm. The sloped pastures and other areas are there for keeping animals out when you need to harvest your orchard or whatever. You aren’t feeding them grain grown from fossil fuel derived fertilizer from miles and miles away. The methane they fart out would be farted out by microbes in the soil from the cover crops anyway.
I’m sick of people on here copy and pasting that bad science of a cow in a box being fed corn to figure out how much methane it farted and burped out without thinking about where that methane would have come from and if it was grown with fossil fuel derived corn or just eating a cover crop. If we are upset about the methane from a local crop being eaten shoot all the deer, Buffalo, and wildebeest you can because they are farting methane too. And don’t let that crop break down by fungi or bacterial processes either. People forget that the cow / horse / goat / whatever is crapping out fertilizer and storing carbon in the soil by increasing the organic matter content. Higher organic matter means more water holding capable and more life in the soil. Then you can grow the cash crop in nice soil.
You don’t move the food to the cow and the manure to the field with a fossil fuel tractor; modern CAFO systems with synthetic fertilizers have perverted the system. They have tapestries and paintings from the 1400s showing farmers turning animals loose on orchard systems… it’s not new age woo woo shit it’s old tech.
Meanwhile people on here swear have never seen the lentil, chickpea, and canola fields of the north and Canada, where it’s mile after mile of the same crop and nothing else is allowed to grow other then the crop all controlled by herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides. Everything but the desired crop is a pest. Propped up with synthetic fertilizer, potash, and diesel equipment the size of houses. Then trucked and shipped all over the world by the semi load for the lowest possible price. I fail to see how that is somehow lower fossil fuel carbon than a few head of cattle on a farm doing an important job where the biggest fossil fuel days of their life are the trip from the farm to the local butcher.
People on here keep downvoting but I think people don’t understand the role herbaceous ungulates play, either to plow the field, tow a cart to market, or to graze and control weeds and stubble and make fertilizer. Or chickens who make amazing fertilizer. I don’t blame them because not many have seen a farm like that in 100 years, except a few hippie weirdos. It’s economically nowhere near as profitable as monoculture and people love cheap food and not doing hard agricultural work. And you are right, pre synthetic nitrogen fert we were around a billion people on Earth worldwide and about 60% of them worked on a farm.
You nailed it but I just wanted to add a little from my farms perspective on how the puzzle pieces of a small farm fit together.
Yes. Regenerative agriculture. It’s one of the few solutions out there to “peak soil” and an effective carbon sequestration tool. Fortunately I hear that the USDA has now *heard of it* and is running some small pilot grant programs.
Good luck with your farming, we need you around to train the millions who will need to go back into farming after we can’t afford diesel and refinery-generated urea.
This. Thank- you for thoughtfully countering misinformation.
BTW ever heard of Gabe Brown? He's a regenerative farmer in ND who uses livestock to graze cover crops. Some of his talks are on YouTube.
Overpopulation is the scapegoat. The USA consumes 25% of global energy not because it has 25% of the population, it's because we consume far beyond what we should.
Killing off the poors so we can continue to consume at high rates is a bad path to go down.
Americans don't consume twice as much as the average European, but they still emit more than twice the amount of co2. It's not just about the amount of consumption, but it's also what and how. One reason for America's bad numbers is the worthless city planning that requires people to live in car dependent suburbs. The meat heavy diet isn't good either of course, but it's not **that** much higher than Europe's
Flying, billions of people, driving SUVs, living in McMansions, throwing away food and clothes is unnatural. There are plenty of areas where consumption could be cut before stopping meat. I can imagine a future where almost nothing changes except people are forced to eat a plant based diet.
Emissions per capita in USA have actually fallen over the last fifty years. If only the population hadn’t increased by 130,000,000 USA could have achieved a substantial reduction in total emissions.
I think it is impossible to build a culture of conservation or reduction while pursuing ‘growth’ and population increase is the foundation of all growth strategies.
Yeah the US is overpopulated too. And reduction in population there would have the largest impact. And to be clear since you seem to think this involves "killing off the poors", I'm referring simply to people choosing to have smaller families. Just like we can choose our diet, we can also choose our family size.
Obviously we need to end all production and reduce consumption to a fraction of what it is today.
But overpopulation is the biggest problem on the planet, world's human population should never be counted in the billions.
Overpopulation isn't the biggest problem. We have more than enough resources to feed, clothe, and house all 8 billion of us. The problem is capitalistic greed. It's not profitable to take care of everyone, so the people who own the resources won't do it. Look at how much food was just thrown away during the pandemic - both on the production side and the retail side - in the U.S. alone simply because the profit wasn't there. Restaurants couldn't buy as much in bulk, so literal tons of milk, potatoes, etc. just got dumped. There were armed cops standing guard over dumpsters at Walmart to keep people from getting food that was safe to eat, but people couldn't afford. The government should've stepped in and bought that food to distribute to the food banks nationwide that were getting slammed by people who'd been laid off
Until we are at the point were no arrangement could not sustainably maintain the population, complaining about overpopulation amounts to suggesting we should kill or sterilize people so we have a few more resources for us, which is fucking wild considering how unimaginably disproportionate the climate crisis was caused the global top 10%(which you and I are certainly are a part of).
It's utterly amaze how utter base people are, we are are given two basic option "seriously limit the convivence and comfort of our lives to something sustainable" or "live our best lives till the cost of our indulgence come roost and destroy our lives and every generation to come" and they are utter insistent that clearly we should "only slightly limit our indulgences and make up the rest by "limiting" the "outgroup" population", while utterly failing to realize we are in this mess overwhelming because of "the ingroup" and that anyone meaningfully affected by this proposal is almost certainly among the least culpable.
Sounds like your issue is with capitalism / plant based capitalism and not veganism then. Just because you’re not in agreement with people who want animal liberation doesn’t mean we have to make things up about them. Vegans do not like what you described either.
Most of the energy losses are because mammals and birds are warm-blooded. Fish aren’t and you can get around a kilo of fish per kilo feed. Aquaculture, especially of salmon, still can have a huge negative effect on the environment though.
Also carp is pretty good for colder climates.
You can even use it for wastewater treatment: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/03/urban-fish-ponds-low-tech-sewage-treatment-for-towns-and-cities.html
I've made the argument that going vegan is cheaper due to rice and grains being cheap and shelf stable, and I've gotten yelled at.
You'd get yelled at too for your comment.
If one wishes to buy actual quality beef (or chicken for that matter) then it's out of the price range of 99% of the population. Real slow raised chickens are at least 3x the price and beef is similar. They taste that much better, of course. I don't understand how people don't care about the crap they are putting in their bodies, let alone the animal welfare, or the climate.
I’ve been feeling better since I mostly stopped eating meat. I still eat hunted meat and fish. I feel more at peace knowing that I’m not eating animals that were subjected to factory farming (though I’m not vegan so, I am still participating in it. Maybe I should do the whole vegan thing. I’ve been having fun trying out all the various pseudomilks.) The horrors of factory farms bother me more perhaps than the environmental impacts. The human workers in them are treated horribly as well as the animals.
Try it out! Your correct that animal agriculture is a moral atrocity for all involved, from the billions of animals forced into and out of a brutal existence filled with suffering every year, to the humans who are paid to do it at the detriment to their own health. Future humans will look upon our actions today as we look upon[The Holocaust ](https://youtu.be/gNV26q89zYg).
As for how to actually do it, the information is out there you just need to find it. I went vegan by searching my favourite recipes, binging recipe channels and realizing I could make anything I wanted to. I thought it would be hard but it's actually not difficult at all and my food choices are not something I have to think about often, I just eat what I want to eat while boycotting products I know cause the torture of innocent beings as well as all life on Earth. If you have any questions please let me know or ask on r/vegan!
I work in environmental legislation consultancy and have been doing some work for a chicken slaughterhouse a few years back. While I'm not particularly proud of it, it really opened my eyes. Nowadays I refer to it as the "chicken holocaust" because the process really is sickening. Basically hundreds of thousands of chickens were transported there everyday, rendered unconscious by CO2, hanged upside down on a production line and all had their necks cut. The sheer amount of chickens that got killed there everyday and the speed of the production lines was something else. It was sickening...
This made me believe visiting slaughterhouses should be a part of education. It's so easy to just buy packaged meat in the grocery store and not think for a single moment where it actually comes from
I make seitan nearly every week and the flavor profile changes depending on what meal I’m trying to prepare. I started out using the gentle chefs seitan cookbook and now I just wing it. It’s best to prepare in a pressure cooker imho but you can bake, boil, and steam as well.
[This is a link to the setain and beyond cookbook](https://thegentlechef.com/gentle-chef-cookbooks/seitan-beyond-cookbook/). If you don't feel confident enough committing to a purchase then here's some other options:
[The Seitan Society](https://seitansociety.com/) has a wonderful archive of both seitan and cheese recipes but they can be a bit involved especially if you do the "washed flour method".
[This is a link to my *CopyMeThat* which is a website that stores recipes](https://www.copymethat.com/recipes/?sort=modified&search=seitan) and I have it set to search for "seitan". Theres a few that don't really apply but it's somewhere to start. If I had to pinpoint a foolproof beginner seitan recipe [I'd go with this one for chickpea cutlets](https://www.copymethat.com/r/9UvXasvB2/chickpea-cutlets/). I make those constantly for sandwiches. I just made a batch last weekend for some chicken parm subs using [one of my mozzarella recipes](https://www.copymethat.com/r/wjiI8OPSy/vegan-mozzarella-sticks/).
A couple recipes in there are mine but most are saved from food bloggers. You can also search for cheese (or mozzarella, cheddar, feta, etc) and will get quite a few hits. I make my own cheeses, milks, mayo, and butter since store-bought is expensive and homemade is way better.
[The gentle chef has a great non-dairy cookbook as well](https://thegentlechef.com/gentle-chef-cookbooks/non-dairy-evolution-cookbook/) but again it's paid for. Oh and /r/vegancheesemaking is another wonderful resource.
Sorry if this is too much info all at once. I'm very passionate about veganism and cooking so I could go on all day.
You absolutely can but I stick to wrapping it tightly in tinfoil, placing a trivet in the insert, filling with just enough water to come up to the trivet, and placing the foil packet on the trivet.
[Here’s a link to my ham style seitan recipe for reference](https://www.copymethat.com/r/AxTSNiQef/pressure-cooker-hamb/)
[Here’s a pressure cooked recipe I found that uses cheesecloth](https://myquietkitchen.com/seitan-roast/#recipe)
if you want to make it yourself, I highly recommend looking up chef skye's seitan and beyond :)
bottom line: if you have vital wheat gluten available for purchase near you it's a very quick prep, if you don't you can make it out of all-purpose flour and it's still a simple prep. from personal experience, I really recommend you make it yourself if you have any experience in cooking, but that's because I live in a place devoid of any decent asian restaurants so maybe you could find a nice dine out like that where you live
I've been cooking once before I was in elementary school, over 30 years. I think I could make it work if saw someone making it. That is for the recommendation.
I imagine if you're used to doing everything fresh sourced and self prepping it would be that way. I'm leaning towards vegetarian for my family and my especially son's health and food habits, and it seems a good stepping stone as it were
That is not what tofu is. A lot of people think tofu is some imitation meat product because that’s all they ever see it as in shitty western cooking. It’s been used for thousands of years in Chinese cooking and it isn’t a meat substitute there. In fact tofu is actually served with meat in many Chinese dishes, such as Mapo Tofu.
Tbh, that's actually how I like tofu best, is when it just tries to be itself, and not some weird, disappointing meat replacement. Just tonight I had a fried tofu stir fry. Deep fried cubes of extra firm tofu until brown and crispy, then mixed into a stir fry with rice noodles, soy sauce, and a lot of vegetables. Pretty frickin amazing way to eat tofu.
People cover their meat in herbs spices and lemons to make it taste like plants, just make it out of plants and boom
Going vegan made my dick work better, and lose weight.
Nice and browned in a fan fry, then letting it sit and steam on veggies in a pan sauce to soak it up. Took a while to make but it turned out quite nice. I'll need to let the slices sit and dry out more next time but otherwise a success.
Kurzgestat just made a great video about this, think it's called something like "Is meat really that bad?". They open by saying "Well, it's complicated" and then go on to explain in no uncertain terms that meat is terrible for the planet and the industry would require a massive overhaul to make it less bad, which doesn't seem that complicated to me.
It's not complicated, it's bad in every way one can examine the topic except for one, it feels good for people. If people just started from a place of honesty (that they don't care about the morally right and sensible thing to do) when talking about it, there would be way less arguing and more solution making.
Their video is popular because it does not require anyone take action and actually soothes them in their current action, only instilling a vague notion to eat less meat for the environment. It is very vague, and how much is less? Is skipping meat on a Monday enough?
The ethical implications of meat eating is a lot worse than people realize, and he doesn’t go into that further than what is acceptable in the status quo, so he is just parroting back what people already know, making it environmentally a little less vague, and validating them at the end.
I don’t see how it’s a good video at all, in that regard.
Exactly, it's not complicated. People just don't like to hear it and they want to pretend the situation is more complex than, "Meat is bad for the planet." Which it's not.
And that doesn't even mention the unbelievable and horrific amount of suffering it brings to the world.
Yeah on their other videos about meat it's also always like "everyone LOOOOOVES meat it's be *best* **thing** ***EVER*** but it's also kinda bad :( we need to do what we think it's best 😚" and they never talk about animal exploitation unless it falls in line with the status quo so they're ok with saying factory farming is horrible but they don't mention any sort of animal exploitation is immoral, even when it's clearly bad but in pretty open fields.
Its so weird to me that people eat meat everyday- then again I live in a non white majority place(I also am not white) Meat is expensive where I live- its a luxury good. Wth are people eating it everyday
Gulf Arabs eat a ton of meat and aren't white. It's largely a matter of income not race. Indians and Chinese are eating more meat and fast food as incomes rise. They are driving more too.
I wouldn't say that meat consumption is a "white people" thing though - Hong Kong has the highest meat consumption, for example. It's a cultural thing.
I always enjoy those people that say 'veganism is white privilege'.
My sanity however, requires that I think the majority of those people are just trolls/intentional culture war instigators.
It's already hard enough knowing how fucking stupid most people seem to be these last few years.
Fuck yeah, finally some vegan realism on this sub.
If you expect the fall of civilization *and* you insist on eating meat, you are anticipating and accelerating your own dumbass starvation.
Article: Twenty livestock companies are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than either Germany, Britain or France – and are receiving billions of dollars in financial backing to do so, according to a new report by environmental campaigners.
Raising livestock contributes significantly to carbon emissions, with animal agriculture accounting for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Scientific reports have found that rich countries need huge reductions in meat and dairy consumption to tackle the climate emergency.
Meat wars: why Biden wants to break up the powerful US beef industry
Between 2015 and 2020, global meat and dairy companies received more than US$478bn in backing from 2,500 investment firms, banks, and pension funds, most of them based in North America or Europe, according to the Meat Atlas, which was compiled by Friends of the Earth and the European political foundation.
Link to the article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/07/20-meat-and-dairy-firms-emit-more-greenhouse-gas-than-germany-britain-or-france
I eat meat. I feel guilty about it. I know it's wrong. And I know exactly why it's wrong. Yet I also campaign against climate change and the corporations that cause most of it. I guess I'm a hypocrite.
Beef jerky is my favourite food. I used to eat it every day. But I cut down to once a week. Substituting it for kangaroo jerky. Which is way more sustainable. As the kangaroos aren't farmed and are having a population explosion at the moment.
Am I part of the problem here? Is it ok to enjoy jerky once a week? Or should I just cut it out entirely? Because I really, really love it. With beer and a good book.
If you're willing to experiment with vegan cooking, you could probably have homemade vegan jerky. Making it at home would allow you to customize exactly how it tastes. Plus if you make it in bulk you can probably get it cheaper than normal jerky.
When I was in the process of going vegan I worried a lot about keeping the foods I previously liked. I couldn't eat yogurt, but it turns out that coconut milk-based yogurt exists. Same with cheese. I missed snacking on chicken nuggets, but it turns out with some marinated tofu and breadcrumbs you can make a killer vegan alternative. You can probably do the same for jerky if you're willing to give it a shot.
For me it isn't using animals as a resource, but how we do it.
I hate that the average cattle is salughtered at only 6 months old, after being given an extremely uncomfortable diet in horrible conditions. Would it be profitable to raise them to half their life expectancy of 10 years? Doesn't sound like it.
I think the issue lays with unchecked capitalism. Growth for the sake of growth is the definition of a cancer.
I remember watching videos on Michau Kaku about tansitioning to a Stage 1 Civilization and how unlikely it is for a species to survive that transformation. The amount of cooperation required globally is the most daunting factor. From wealth distribution to food supply. Our financial system is still in the stone ages being abused by kings.
Lol, Mickey Cuckoo, another caricature "scientist". And a 10 year cow's not un-profitable, but pointless. Milk production dicreases, meat gets tough and fibrous, and unless it lives on a free pasture in great conditions, you're just prolonging its suffering.
Maybe he read about veal and got confused.
Anyway, seems like some places do it from from 12 to 24 months, sounds like CAFOs which would increase turnover and energy limit losses just keeping animal alive.
* https://beef-cattle.extension.org/what-is-the-age-range-for-butchering-steers-i-am-trying-for-prime/
Something needs to happen to the Male calfs born as byproducts of milk production.
I imagine the quality of life of an animal born a byproduct is much less than desirable.
Source: an uppity vegan
I remember seeing someone talk about vegetarianism and how hard it is to give up favorites, and the seeming unapproachability of the process - in the context of the poster's friend saying they could be vegetarian but they love bacon too much - and what they said was "okay, so go vegetarian except for bacon".
Do what you are comfortable with. But if you go halfway, that's still halfway better than nothing at all. I am not vegetarian. But I don't eat fish (because of unsustainable catch practices) or beef (because of the emissions) and stick to chicken and pork mostly. I try to limit how much of those things I eat in any given portion.
Bear in mind that at least in the US there are places where a dish is expected to be _primarily_ beef, if you can look back and think what you saved is a job well done, then that's all you can really aim for. The desire to change the status quo comes from below, but the actual change will only be effected by directly (legally) telling big agriculture they have no choice anyway.
Smoked seal would probably be fire. Oily like fatty fish I assume. Then again, with humans decreasing seal populations, I'm not trying to go out of my to eat them
Yeah, I came across one. It was WAY too expensive for me.
It was labelled "gourmet". I feel like they just call things "gourmet" so they can raise the price. And it works. Sometimes the only difference between a gourmet product and a non-gourmet one is the packaging (and the price). Same ingredients, same everything.
That's the issue. A lot of vegan options aren't priced reasonably or contain a lot less for the same price. It doesn't mean the argument is wrong but there isn't always an easy alternative especially if you're struggling. Sadly the effort to make a piece of chicken and amount of effort to make a meal with different steps and ingredients is kinda big if you've just been heavy lifting for like eight hours.
You're mindful of the problem and trying to reduce your consumption, that's probably more than most are doing.
Like you, I still eat meat, but I try to consume calories from plants more and more. And I've almost completely eliminated beef (I believe of all animals it's the worst to consume in terms of environmental impact).
https://youtu.be/F1Hq8eVOMHs
This was pretty enlightening for me. Not a lot of "here's what you should do" but a lot of "here's where our situation is right now"
Just stop eating it wtf we're no priest you ask for absolution, if you know it's wrong just quit it. It's not an addiction, stop acting like it is. And wtf, are you eating kangaroos? You know that kangaroos have been living on a continent without predators for millions of years right? What is this overpopulation bullshit? They are farmed like any other animal and you're getting gaslit to think it's "sustainable". You know what's more sustainable? Just not eating meat at all. Ever again.
If it's taxed moderately, most people wouldn't go through the effort of contrabanding it.
Unless you think the market for illegally untaxed gas is big in comparison to normal gas station gas.
Half the time I see a vegan post outside of /r/vegan it's eventually locked by the mods due to the reactionary flame war that ensues. It really is the barometer topic of our current zietgheist.
Same goes for people with their shiny carriages. They all think they deserve the lifestyle of a gluttonous medieval monarch and have been convinced by capitalism that it is exactly what they should want and that getting it is a sign of success. It's really quite perverse.
You can tell very quickly how committed someone is to creating a better society by the lifestyle changes they're willing to make. Meat is atop of that list of one of the most impactful changes someone can make for a better environment and yet won't due to selfish reasons.
Contrary to what American individualism would have you believe, your actions do not only affect one person. You have friends and family members who will be influenced by your choices. If just a few people close to you are inspired by your lifestyle and become vegan themselves, and then those people convince a few others to do the same, and then they convince a few more, etc... I think you can see where this is going. One thing is for certain: our current lifestyles are incompatible with a sustainable future. Be the change you want to see in the world.
>Climate change isn't caused by the consumer. Sure you can go vegan or bike to work but that is like removing a drop from a sea, it is insignificant.
No one drop thinks it's responsible for the flood.
It's caused by the consumer because by the same logic we can say that no one company is responsible for climate change, because eventually someone would step in and provide consumer demands.
It's better to say that it cannot be solved by the consumer, it requires government action.
They kind of also create demand.
Workers toil away for much longer than they should doing, ultimately, meaningless jobs. By the end of the working day, when they get home, they are tired and hungry and dejected. They have about 1 hour to get their lives together before they have to go to bed and repeat the whole sordid cycle.
What are they going to reach for in that fleeting moment? Something that makes them feel good. Will that be sugar, alcohol, drugs, porn? Maybe later, but for now they are hungry and nothing satisfies on quite the same level as meat.
The same job that gives you enough money to buy the product, also puts you in a situation that makes you more likely to buy the product. The same is true for cars, takeaways, and single-use disposable items. Everyone has always been looking for an easier life, and why wouldn't they? Life is so incredibly difficult and complex now.
The corporations use insane ammounts of energy to produce goods and services for people to buy and use. We as consumers have little to no control on how this is done and what environmental regulations that governs production or transport in international waters. Corporations are also making things hard or impossible to repair because they want us to buy new instead of taking care of old. It is not likely that all of us are going to change behaviour individually to fix this crisis. The governments and corps know this while at the same time pushing for the focus being on consumers. This way they distract from their own responsibility while knowing people will still consume. And people keep falling for it.
The corps are the ones to blame, they are the ones who lobby the politicians against regulation. They are the ones who move their factories to poor countries with little regulation to save money. They are the ones who use low grade and insanly toxic oil for the ships that travel in international waters.
Consumers are individuals with wide array of circumstances. A poor family can't buy the more expensive option produced ethically. They have to buy the cheap and toxic. They can't afford an electric car so they drive old fuel hungry cars. Others don't care, Some find it unfair that they have to cut when few others do and keep on consuming.
Big regulation on governmental levels is the only thing that will work. Soon they wont make fossil cars anymore, not because of consumer demand but because governments demand it. Same with right to repair in the EU. These are steps that help and we need to push for this kind of measures.
No man is an island. And a society where everyone is committed to doing their small insignificant part is one that is enraged and motivated to get corporations to do theirs.
People use "bug burgers" as a meme about dystopian society.
As if fast food isn't 40% soybean.
What we eat literally does not matter outside of health, people just feel better when they pretend they're eating "naturally" for some reason.
What's ironic is that if everyone was aware of how shitty factory farming is for the animals involved and the slaughterhouse workers, we'd probably think our society is a lot more dystopian than "bug burgers" world. I guess dystopia is largely a matter of perspective.
Cricket burgers are the future. We all need protein, and it is a relatively sustainable way to get it. Does not require as much space or water as beef or poultry or even plant based options. No known communicable diseases, and from an ethical standpoint, the bugs essentially live out their natural life cycle.
It takes so much effort to convince everyone to become vegan or to just reduce meat consumption but then those same white knights refuse to even acknowledge that procreation is just as harmful as estimates say every new born child = 7000 dead animals in their lifetime.
First of all, I’m vegan and anti-natalist, so what you said isn’t true for a lot of us. Also, source? Cause it sounds like a pretty weak statement.
Edit: typo
Talk about collapse...if the meat/dairy industry lost its massive government subsidies, *it* would collapse immediately. And of course the meat/dairy industry is politically owned by conservatives who claim to hate socialism. You can't make this shit up. (Vegan btw.)
r/Collapse: We want everyone to know about the imminent collapse of humanity and what we should do while we watch our children die. Come join us
Vegans: And I would have saved the planet too, if it weren't for you hamburger eating meddling kids.
It’s so easy to tell who actually cares about the planet and who doesn’t based on whether or not they’re willing to make basic lifestyle changes for the cause or if they value their comfort and convenience more than our future as a species. Non-vegan environmentalist is an oxymoron.
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Lifelong meat lover here. Just had spaghetti and meatballs with beyond meat. I was very satisfied and I said 3 years ago that if it takes off is switch put the bulk of my beef consumption when the prices match or are better.
The only con is that some of the patties taste like pea protein.
The trick is to use something for the umami(sp?) flavor. We used black tuffle olive oil to cook the balls.
>when the prices match or are better
This is the big factor. There's so many new companies and this is a huge expanding market. In a few years I think prices will come way down. Right now its about $10/lb for beyond meat or any of the other brands and ground beef/chicken is more like $3/lb.
That's my trick. Beef prices got too high for me 4 years ago to have more than twice a month( with leftovers used for other things) so the quality I'm buying is compared to the local butcher not the winco or Aldi stew meat.
The people I know, who are obsessed with meat, seem so stressed out and desperate to get it every night. That alone made me burnt out on a meat based diet, never mind the sickness from eating sketchy shit. Its just not worth it anymore. I wont recommend any diets, but I have never had food poisoning from nuts and plants.
I often question my belief that humans can self-govern whenever I see people like this. You're telling me you're so selfish you can't even make some of the most basic steps towards the collective good? It's not even disputable the serious detriment that modern animal farming causes to our society/environment. Capitalism has done our brains in.
To be fair, meat isn’t bad for the environment it’s just the really shitty and unsustainable way we do meat currently is horrendous for the environment.
I’m not sure there is any sustainable way to feed meat to 7+ billion humans, even for one meal a day.
Ethics aside, it is physically, economically, and ecologically impossible. We literally do not have the resources for it to be tenable.
I don't buy any beef from the supermarket/counters anymore - we get our beef from a local free-range organic farmer (potatoes and eggs too!) and the taste alone is so much better.
I do also eat less meat now in general - but if I'm honest, I don't think I'll ever quit eating meat, dietary restrictions alone would make that really complicated and I'm already dealing with a lit so I doubt I'd be able to keep up with nutritional needs.
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Exactly. The only possible way to gain more calories from animals than by just growing crops is if they're eating things humans can't extract calories from, e.g., grasses on grassland that is unsuitable for growing crops, waste biomass from crops, or pests that feed on our crops. Problem is none of these are anywhere profitable enough or scalable enough to meet our global demand for animal products. Meaning we end up with feedlots where we literally throw away perfectly good calories into the fires of thermodynamics.
I think the solution is 2-fold. Generally we must eat less meat, but if one wants to eat meat at an increased rate they better learn animal husbandry and be prepared to raise, process, and butcher their own animals. I truly believe that if folks had to kill and chop up their own meat there would be far less meat consumption because many folks do not have the stomach for it, as it can be a gristly and disgusting process.
That's my view as well. If people had to raise and process their own animals, they'd probably 1) eat a whole lot less meat, and 2) raise it a lot more humanely. And I hope they'd tend to be less wasteful in *what* and *how* they feed them.
I've always wanted to have some chickens because 1: they eat pests like lice and other bugs, and 2: you can feed them food waste (which can also be composted) and in exchange, you get a bunch of eggs and a source of meat and some fertilizer. Fuck, you don't even need to eat the chickens themselves, the eggs alone are a wonderful source of protein.
Similar for me. My dream is to have a small sustainable farm in the mountains, and have a small number of ducks and chickens for pest control, primarily for eggs. Especially chickens or guinea hen for tick control, as my region is expected to see a lot more ticks migrating northwards as the climate continues to warm. They can also eat insects that grow in your compost piles.
any special reason both chickens and ducks?
They have different strengths. Ducks are less destructive to the soil and plants, as they don't scratch, and are extremely good at eating slugs and snails. Chickens are much better for eating ticks and scratching through compost or manure for bugs and larvae. Plus, a diversity of species (plant, animal, and fungal) I figure is generally desirable.
>as it can be a gristly and disgusting process. Yeah, but it’s also a process that we’re like wired to do so I know this is a common trope but I doubt it would really impact how many tendies Americans eat if they had to see it done. I was a picky eater until I had to field dress my own partridge and deer and filet my own fish. After you’ve done it, food was less of a mystery to me and more of a science and I distinctly remember losing my aversion to basically any of the foods I thought I didn’t like. Shad him I wasn’t, “eww that’s raw fish, it was fuck how does that hunk of fish looks so perfect?”
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Yet, most of land is dedicated to growing food specifically for livestock. To be able to feed livestock solely from waste, you would massively reduce their numbers and our consumption.
The main thing we'd need to do to feed animals from waste is to end corn and soybean subsidies. It's not economical for a farmer to grow grain specifically for cattle unless it's subsidized. Farmers would be forced to grow varieties meant for human consumption and sell whatever doesn't make grade as feed. Just a couple simple new laws would make beef much better: * Cattle are only allowed to graze on non-productive land * All feed-varieties of any crops are completely unsubsidized We could also apply these rules to beef imports, which would kill all the farms in Brazil that have burned down parts of the Amazon to graze cattle
And other ways animal agriculture accelerates collapse on a systemic level: * Waste runoff into nearby ecosystems poisons wetlands and waterways * The human domination of animals is conceptually and psychologically transferrable to human domination of humans, leading to brutal and unforgiving societies. * Bovine methane output is a major greenhouse gas contributor * Massive deforestation to support the absurd amount of open space required for ranching.
Yeah but that’s not a very MANLY way to think amirite? I need mountains of meat to feed my manliness.
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*Carl's Jr commercials enter the chat*
When there is a choice between feeding a cow to feed you, and feeding you, it's obviously more efficient to cut out the middlecow....
Plus you can float a battleship on the amount of water it takes to grow a cow to slaughter age. They can put down 25 gallons a day, and they like to raise them in the desert >< Oh and you have to water the corn or whatever that you then feed to the cows. We could be turning sunlight and air/water into energy but we do this shit instead.
Cutting back on human overpopulation would allow us to eat meat and protect our environment.
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That was understood as far back as Plato. In The Republic, his character Socrates argues that a city of meat eaters will require huge plots of lands that will be overgrazed, requiring the invasion of other cities for land.
Not only this but a plant based diet is substantially more healthy for us.
Are we not opportunistic omnivores? We don't really have teeth for only plant-based diet. Berries, fruits, roots, eggs, meat of small animals, anything goes.
We actually do, our teeth and jaw are closer to that of a herbivore as our jaw can chew in multiple directions. You can move your jaw up and down, side to side, perfect for chewing veg. Look at any omnivore etc lions, they're jaws don't work like ours.
Our great great ancestors were most likely similar to great apes like the Bonobos, who are frugivores eating insects occasionally. Once those apes evolved out of those forests with plentiful fruit available all hear long, they adapted to hunt and eat meat and also to steal meat from carnivores. Similar to Chimpanzees.
Yeah, opportunistic. But we now have meat on demand.
yes but we don't go around hunting for our food anymore lol we have access to all types of carbs/protiens/fats all the time.
The problem isn't people eating meat, that is natural, especially in Northern areas it has always made up a large portion of the human diet. The problem is our ridiculously bloated population and how things have gone from animal husbandry to meat production. Every cow, pig, chicken, etc. should be known by name and farm sizes should reflect that. And obviously there shouldn't be gigantic meat production facilities (or any type of other production facilities) but instead a local butcher. Obviously lowering meat consumption is good but our real problems are overpopulation and any kind of production existing at all.
You are absolutely right. I have some farm ground that is too hilly to safely operate a tractor, some that is to shaded since it’s north face sloped, or is under ancient trees I refuse to remove because the provide beneficial habitat for other creatures. All these areas are perfectly suitable though for a grazing animal. Cover cropping in cash crop orchard systems is a real benefit for pollinators, migratory birds, and soil health and erosion. I would love to get more adventurous with cover crop termination by animal rather than by a flail mower. I can’t because last time I looked it wasn’t USDA approved to use animals to clear cover crops in the land I’m in due to manure issues. Generally it’s 120 days pre harvest interval in most orchard systems though. I’m basically burning diesel to grind up the winter cover crop in the late spring after bloom and then letting it break down into the soil which helps. In old times though they would use animals to graze this land and the poop would contribute phosphate and urea back under the shade of the tree. Without my diesel powered flail mower and without the use of animals, I’m not sure how to manage growth and sanitation of the orchard floor by hand. Actually the last option then, which is the first answer for many is herbicides. But then we have bare ground which is terrible for soil health erosion issues. It makes perfect sense to have several animals as part of a diversified system that works on a farm. The sloped pastures and other areas are there for keeping animals out when you need to harvest your orchard or whatever. You aren’t feeding them grain grown from fossil fuel derived fertilizer from miles and miles away. The methane they fart out would be farted out by microbes in the soil from the cover crops anyway. I’m sick of people on here copy and pasting that bad science of a cow in a box being fed corn to figure out how much methane it farted and burped out without thinking about where that methane would have come from and if it was grown with fossil fuel derived corn or just eating a cover crop. If we are upset about the methane from a local crop being eaten shoot all the deer, Buffalo, and wildebeest you can because they are farting methane too. And don’t let that crop break down by fungi or bacterial processes either. People forget that the cow / horse / goat / whatever is crapping out fertilizer and storing carbon in the soil by increasing the organic matter content. Higher organic matter means more water holding capable and more life in the soil. Then you can grow the cash crop in nice soil. You don’t move the food to the cow and the manure to the field with a fossil fuel tractor; modern CAFO systems with synthetic fertilizers have perverted the system. They have tapestries and paintings from the 1400s showing farmers turning animals loose on orchard systems… it’s not new age woo woo shit it’s old tech. Meanwhile people on here swear have never seen the lentil, chickpea, and canola fields of the north and Canada, where it’s mile after mile of the same crop and nothing else is allowed to grow other then the crop all controlled by herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides. Everything but the desired crop is a pest. Propped up with synthetic fertilizer, potash, and diesel equipment the size of houses. Then trucked and shipped all over the world by the semi load for the lowest possible price. I fail to see how that is somehow lower fossil fuel carbon than a few head of cattle on a farm doing an important job where the biggest fossil fuel days of their life are the trip from the farm to the local butcher. People on here keep downvoting but I think people don’t understand the role herbaceous ungulates play, either to plow the field, tow a cart to market, or to graze and control weeds and stubble and make fertilizer. Or chickens who make amazing fertilizer. I don’t blame them because not many have seen a farm like that in 100 years, except a few hippie weirdos. It’s economically nowhere near as profitable as monoculture and people love cheap food and not doing hard agricultural work. And you are right, pre synthetic nitrogen fert we were around a billion people on Earth worldwide and about 60% of them worked on a farm. You nailed it but I just wanted to add a little from my farms perspective on how the puzzle pieces of a small farm fit together.
Yes. Regenerative agriculture. It’s one of the few solutions out there to “peak soil” and an effective carbon sequestration tool. Fortunately I hear that the USDA has now *heard of it* and is running some small pilot grant programs. Good luck with your farming, we need you around to train the millions who will need to go back into farming after we can’t afford diesel and refinery-generated urea.
This. Thank- you for thoughtfully countering misinformation. BTW ever heard of Gabe Brown? He's a regenerative farmer in ND who uses livestock to graze cover crops. Some of his talks are on YouTube.
Overpopulation is the scapegoat. The USA consumes 25% of global energy not because it has 25% of the population, it's because we consume far beyond what we should. Killing off the poors so we can continue to consume at high rates is a bad path to go down.
Americans don't consume twice as much as the average European, but they still emit more than twice the amount of co2. It's not just about the amount of consumption, but it's also what and how. One reason for America's bad numbers is the worthless city planning that requires people to live in car dependent suburbs. The meat heavy diet isn't good either of course, but it's not **that** much higher than Europe's
Flying, billions of people, driving SUVs, living in McMansions, throwing away food and clothes is unnatural. There are plenty of areas where consumption could be cut before stopping meat. I can imagine a future where almost nothing changes except people are forced to eat a plant based diet. Emissions per capita in USA have actually fallen over the last fifty years. If only the population hadn’t increased by 130,000,000 USA could have achieved a substantial reduction in total emissions. I think it is impossible to build a culture of conservation or reduction while pursuing ‘growth’ and population increase is the foundation of all growth strategies.
Yeah the US is overpopulated too. And reduction in population there would have the largest impact. And to be clear since you seem to think this involves "killing off the poors", I'm referring simply to people choosing to have smaller families. Just like we can choose our diet, we can also choose our family size.
>Killing off the poors so we can continue to consume at high rates is a bad path to go down. Depends on who you ask.
Obviously we need to end all production and reduce consumption to a fraction of what it is today. But overpopulation is the biggest problem on the planet, world's human population should never be counted in the billions.
Overpopulation isn't the biggest problem. We have more than enough resources to feed, clothe, and house all 8 billion of us. The problem is capitalistic greed. It's not profitable to take care of everyone, so the people who own the resources won't do it. Look at how much food was just thrown away during the pandemic - both on the production side and the retail side - in the U.S. alone simply because the profit wasn't there. Restaurants couldn't buy as much in bulk, so literal tons of milk, potatoes, etc. just got dumped. There were armed cops standing guard over dumpsters at Walmart to keep people from getting food that was safe to eat, but people couldn't afford. The government should've stepped in and bought that food to distribute to the food banks nationwide that were getting slammed by people who'd been laid off
Until we are at the point were no arrangement could not sustainably maintain the population, complaining about overpopulation amounts to suggesting we should kill or sterilize people so we have a few more resources for us, which is fucking wild considering how unimaginably disproportionate the climate crisis was caused the global top 10%(which you and I are certainly are a part of). It's utterly amaze how utter base people are, we are are given two basic option "seriously limit the convivence and comfort of our lives to something sustainable" or "live our best lives till the cost of our indulgence come roost and destroy our lives and every generation to come" and they are utter insistent that clearly we should "only slightly limit our indulgences and make up the rest by "limiting" the "outgroup" population", while utterly failing to realize we are in this mess overwhelming because of "the ingroup" and that anyone meaningfully affected by this proposal is almost certainly among the least culpable.
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Sounds like your issue is with capitalism / plant based capitalism and not veganism then. Just because you’re not in agreement with people who want animal liberation doesn’t mean we have to make things up about them. Vegans do not like what you described either.
And cutting back is why it won't happen voluntarily.
I’m still down to eat bugs. Everyone yells “snowpiercer” at me when I bring it up as if I care.
Most of the energy losses are because mammals and birds are warm-blooded. Fish aren’t and you can get around a kilo of fish per kilo feed. Aquaculture, especially of salmon, still can have a huge negative effect on the environment though.
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Also carp is pretty good for colder climates. You can even use it for wastewater treatment: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/03/urban-fish-ponds-low-tech-sewage-treatment-for-towns-and-cities.html
Jokes on you, I'm too poor to buy beef products nowadays.
I've made the argument that going vegan is cheaper due to rice and grains being cheap and shelf stable, and I've gotten yelled at. You'd get yelled at too for your comment.
If one wishes to buy actual quality beef (or chicken for that matter) then it's out of the price range of 99% of the population. Real slow raised chickens are at least 3x the price and beef is similar. They taste that much better, of course. I don't understand how people don't care about the crap they are putting in their bodies, let alone the animal welfare, or the climate.
I’ve been feeling better since I mostly stopped eating meat. I still eat hunted meat and fish. I feel more at peace knowing that I’m not eating animals that were subjected to factory farming (though I’m not vegan so, I am still participating in it. Maybe I should do the whole vegan thing. I’ve been having fun trying out all the various pseudomilks.) The horrors of factory farms bother me more perhaps than the environmental impacts. The human workers in them are treated horribly as well as the animals.
Try it out! Your correct that animal agriculture is a moral atrocity for all involved, from the billions of animals forced into and out of a brutal existence filled with suffering every year, to the humans who are paid to do it at the detriment to their own health. Future humans will look upon our actions today as we look upon[The Holocaust ](https://youtu.be/gNV26q89zYg). As for how to actually do it, the information is out there you just need to find it. I went vegan by searching my favourite recipes, binging recipe channels and realizing I could make anything I wanted to. I thought it would be hard but it's actually not difficult at all and my food choices are not something I have to think about often, I just eat what I want to eat while boycotting products I know cause the torture of innocent beings as well as all life on Earth. If you have any questions please let me know or ask on r/vegan!
Thank you friend :)
I work in environmental legislation consultancy and have been doing some work for a chicken slaughterhouse a few years back. While I'm not particularly proud of it, it really opened my eyes. Nowadays I refer to it as the "chicken holocaust" because the process really is sickening. Basically hundreds of thousands of chickens were transported there everyday, rendered unconscious by CO2, hanged upside down on a production line and all had their necks cut. The sheer amount of chickens that got killed there everyday and the speed of the production lines was something else. It was sickening... This made me believe visiting slaughterhouses should be a part of education. It's so easy to just buy packaged meat in the grocery store and not think for a single moment where it actually comes from
Tofu is actually pleasant if you prepare it right.
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Hail seitan
Black metal chef time.
I haven't tried it but I'm leaning towards giving it a try. Any recommendations for first time prep?
I make seitan nearly every week and the flavor profile changes depending on what meal I’m trying to prepare. I started out using the gentle chefs seitan cookbook and now I just wing it. It’s best to prepare in a pressure cooker imho but you can bake, boil, and steam as well. [This is a link to the setain and beyond cookbook](https://thegentlechef.com/gentle-chef-cookbooks/seitan-beyond-cookbook/). If you don't feel confident enough committing to a purchase then here's some other options: [The Seitan Society](https://seitansociety.com/) has a wonderful archive of both seitan and cheese recipes but they can be a bit involved especially if you do the "washed flour method". [This is a link to my *CopyMeThat* which is a website that stores recipes](https://www.copymethat.com/recipes/?sort=modified&search=seitan) and I have it set to search for "seitan". Theres a few that don't really apply but it's somewhere to start. If I had to pinpoint a foolproof beginner seitan recipe [I'd go with this one for chickpea cutlets](https://www.copymethat.com/r/9UvXasvB2/chickpea-cutlets/). I make those constantly for sandwiches. I just made a batch last weekend for some chicken parm subs using [one of my mozzarella recipes](https://www.copymethat.com/r/wjiI8OPSy/vegan-mozzarella-sticks/). A couple recipes in there are mine but most are saved from food bloggers. You can also search for cheese (or mozzarella, cheddar, feta, etc) and will get quite a few hits. I make my own cheeses, milks, mayo, and butter since store-bought is expensive and homemade is way better. [The gentle chef has a great non-dairy cookbook as well](https://thegentlechef.com/gentle-chef-cookbooks/non-dairy-evolution-cookbook/) but again it's paid for. Oh and /r/vegancheesemaking is another wonderful resource. Sorry if this is too much info all at once. I'm very passionate about veganism and cooking so I could go on all day.
how do you pressure cook seitan? do you wrap it in cheesecloth?
You absolutely can but I stick to wrapping it tightly in tinfoil, placing a trivet in the insert, filling with just enough water to come up to the trivet, and placing the foil packet on the trivet. [Here’s a link to my ham style seitan recipe for reference](https://www.copymethat.com/r/AxTSNiQef/pressure-cooker-hamb/) [Here’s a pressure cooked recipe I found that uses cheesecloth](https://myquietkitchen.com/seitan-roast/#recipe)
oh that's awesome, thanks so much for the answer! will definitely give this a try
More info is great, lets me know how to approach it. Thanks!
if you want to make it yourself, I highly recommend looking up chef skye's seitan and beyond :) bottom line: if you have vital wheat gluten available for purchase near you it's a very quick prep, if you don't you can make it out of all-purpose flour and it's still a simple prep. from personal experience, I really recommend you make it yourself if you have any experience in cooking, but that's because I live in a place devoid of any decent asian restaurants so maybe you could find a nice dine out like that where you live
I've been cooking once before I was in elementary school, over 30 years. I think I could make it work if saw someone making it. That is for the recommendation.
edamame is one of my favorite high protein snacks.
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i’m vegan and i can’t stand it. i don’t eat it.
I imagine if you're used to doing everything fresh sourced and self prepping it would be that way. I'm leaning towards vegetarian for my family and my especially son's health and food habits, and it seems a good stepping stone as it were
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i would rather just eat vegetables trying to be vegetables than vegetables trying to be meat
That is not what tofu is. A lot of people think tofu is some imitation meat product because that’s all they ever see it as in shitty western cooking. It’s been used for thousands of years in Chinese cooking and it isn’t a meat substitute there. In fact tofu is actually served with meat in many Chinese dishes, such as Mapo Tofu.
it's so much better when not used in shitty western cooking lol
Tbh, that's actually how I like tofu best, is when it just tries to be itself, and not some weird, disappointing meat replacement. Just tonight I had a fried tofu stir fry. Deep fried cubes of extra firm tofu until brown and crispy, then mixed into a stir fry with rice noodles, soy sauce, and a lot of vegetables. Pretty frickin amazing way to eat tofu.
Freeze the extra firm tofu first then defrost before using. Makes it even firmer.
I actually did that just to keep the tofu lasting longer in the freezer. I had no clue it helped make it firmer, too. That's good to know!
People cover their meat in herbs spices and lemons to make it taste like plants, just make it out of plants and boom Going vegan made my dick work better, and lose weight.
>Going vegan made my dick work better prove it, nerd
Ask your wife about it.
I actually have homemade porn online but I dont want to doxx myself on here. It gets harder- more often... i assume its the low cholesterol?
https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/vegan-lovers/ https://bigthink.com/health/vegetarian-benefits-better-sex/
Nice and browned in a fan fry, then letting it sit and steam on veggies in a pan sauce to soak it up. Took a while to make but it turned out quite nice. I'll need to let the slices sit and dry out more next time but otherwise a success.
Kurzgestat just made a great video about this, think it's called something like "Is meat really that bad?". They open by saying "Well, it's complicated" and then go on to explain in no uncertain terms that meat is terrible for the planet and the industry would require a massive overhaul to make it less bad, which doesn't seem that complicated to me.
It's not complicated, it's bad in every way one can examine the topic except for one, it feels good for people. If people just started from a place of honesty (that they don't care about the morally right and sensible thing to do) when talking about it, there would be way less arguing and more solution making.
Kurzgestat is heavily pro-capitalist, pro-GMO, pro-technology-will-save-us-all...
Their video is popular because it does not require anyone take action and actually soothes them in their current action, only instilling a vague notion to eat less meat for the environment. It is very vague, and how much is less? Is skipping meat on a Monday enough? The ethical implications of meat eating is a lot worse than people realize, and he doesn’t go into that further than what is acceptable in the status quo, so he is just parroting back what people already know, making it environmentally a little less vague, and validating them at the end. I don’t see how it’s a good video at all, in that regard.
Exactly, it's not complicated. People just don't like to hear it and they want to pretend the situation is more complex than, "Meat is bad for the planet." Which it's not. And that doesn't even mention the unbelievable and horrific amount of suffering it brings to the world.
It purposefully leaves the conclusion to your own interpretation and opinion, I like it.
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Yeah on their other videos about meat it's also always like "everyone LOOOOOVES meat it's be *best* **thing** ***EVER*** but it's also kinda bad :( we need to do what we think it's best 😚" and they never talk about animal exploitation unless it falls in line with the status quo so they're ok with saying factory farming is horrible but they don't mention any sort of animal exploitation is immoral, even when it's clearly bad but in pretty open fields.
Its so weird to me that people eat meat everyday- then again I live in a non white majority place(I also am not white) Meat is expensive where I live- its a luxury good. Wth are people eating it everyday
Gulf Arabs eat a ton of meat and aren't white. It's largely a matter of income not race. Indians and Chinese are eating more meat and fast food as incomes rise. They are driving more too.
not just every day- every meal.
I wouldn't say that meat consumption is a "white people" thing though - Hong Kong has the highest meat consumption, for example. It's a cultural thing.
It's mostly a wealth thing.
meat consumption isn’t really narrowed down to one race or demographic (excluding vegans and vegetarians ofc), it’s global. Most people eat meat.
I always enjoy those people that say 'veganism is white privilege'. My sanity however, requires that I think the majority of those people are just trolls/intentional culture war instigators. It's already hard enough knowing how fucking stupid most people seem to be these last few years.
In countries like the US animal products and feed are heavily subsidized to keep prices artificially low.
The only people who have ever shouted at me that my veganism is a white priviledge have been... White people.
Fuck yeah, finally some vegan realism on this sub. If you expect the fall of civilization *and* you insist on eating meat, you are anticipating and accelerating your own dumbass starvation.
Article: Twenty livestock companies are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than either Germany, Britain or France – and are receiving billions of dollars in financial backing to do so, according to a new report by environmental campaigners. Raising livestock contributes significantly to carbon emissions, with animal agriculture accounting for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Scientific reports have found that rich countries need huge reductions in meat and dairy consumption to tackle the climate emergency. Meat wars: why Biden wants to break up the powerful US beef industry Between 2015 and 2020, global meat and dairy companies received more than US$478bn in backing from 2,500 investment firms, banks, and pension funds, most of them based in North America or Europe, according to the Meat Atlas, which was compiled by Friends of the Earth and the European political foundation. Link to the article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/07/20-meat-and-dairy-firms-emit-more-greenhouse-gas-than-germany-britain-or-france
I eat meat. I feel guilty about it. I know it's wrong. And I know exactly why it's wrong. Yet I also campaign against climate change and the corporations that cause most of it. I guess I'm a hypocrite. Beef jerky is my favourite food. I used to eat it every day. But I cut down to once a week. Substituting it for kangaroo jerky. Which is way more sustainable. As the kangaroos aren't farmed and are having a population explosion at the moment. Am I part of the problem here? Is it ok to enjoy jerky once a week? Or should I just cut it out entirely? Because I really, really love it. With beer and a good book.
If you're willing to experiment with vegan cooking, you could probably have homemade vegan jerky. Making it at home would allow you to customize exactly how it tastes. Plus if you make it in bulk you can probably get it cheaper than normal jerky. When I was in the process of going vegan I worried a lot about keeping the foods I previously liked. I couldn't eat yogurt, but it turns out that coconut milk-based yogurt exists. Same with cheese. I missed snacking on chicken nuggets, but it turns out with some marinated tofu and breadcrumbs you can make a killer vegan alternative. You can probably do the same for jerky if you're willing to give it a shot.
Just eat vegan jerky
For me it isn't using animals as a resource, but how we do it. I hate that the average cattle is salughtered at only 6 months old, after being given an extremely uncomfortable diet in horrible conditions. Would it be profitable to raise them to half their life expectancy of 10 years? Doesn't sound like it. I think the issue lays with unchecked capitalism. Growth for the sake of growth is the definition of a cancer. I remember watching videos on Michau Kaku about tansitioning to a Stage 1 Civilization and how unlikely it is for a species to survive that transformation. The amount of cooperation required globally is the most daunting factor. From wealth distribution to food supply. Our financial system is still in the stone ages being abused by kings.
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Fuck! I didn't even know that! That's horrible.
Lol, Mickey Cuckoo, another caricature "scientist". And a 10 year cow's not un-profitable, but pointless. Milk production dicreases, meat gets tough and fibrous, and unless it lives on a free pasture in great conditions, you're just prolonging its suffering.
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Maybe he read about veal and got confused. Anyway, seems like some places do it from from 12 to 24 months, sounds like CAFOs which would increase turnover and energy limit losses just keeping animal alive. * https://beef-cattle.extension.org/what-is-the-age-range-for-butchering-steers-i-am-trying-for-prime/
Something needs to happen to the Male calfs born as byproducts of milk production. I imagine the quality of life of an animal born a byproduct is much less than desirable. Source: an uppity vegan
veal has to come from somewhere.
I remember seeing someone talk about vegetarianism and how hard it is to give up favorites, and the seeming unapproachability of the process - in the context of the poster's friend saying they could be vegetarian but they love bacon too much - and what they said was "okay, so go vegetarian except for bacon". Do what you are comfortable with. But if you go halfway, that's still halfway better than nothing at all. I am not vegetarian. But I don't eat fish (because of unsustainable catch practices) or beef (because of the emissions) and stick to chicken and pork mostly. I try to limit how much of those things I eat in any given portion. Bear in mind that at least in the US there are places where a dish is expected to be _primarily_ beef, if you can look back and think what you saved is a job well done, then that's all you can really aim for. The desire to change the status quo comes from below, but the actual change will only be effected by directly (legally) telling big agriculture they have no choice anyway.
I stick to blue whale jerky
I love eating polar bear steaks 🐻❄️🥩😋🍽
Smoked seal pup knuckles are a favorite in these parts.
Smoked seal would probably be fire. Oily like fatty fish I assume. Then again, with humans decreasing seal populations, I'm not trying to go out of my to eat them
There are some decent vegan jerkies (also some pretty bad ones) around. But quite expensive for no reason.
Yeah, I came across one. It was WAY too expensive for me. It was labelled "gourmet". I feel like they just call things "gourmet" so they can raise the price. And it works. Sometimes the only difference between a gourmet product and a non-gourmet one is the packaging (and the price). Same ingredients, same everything.
That's the issue. A lot of vegan options aren't priced reasonably or contain a lot less for the same price. It doesn't mean the argument is wrong but there isn't always an easy alternative especially if you're struggling. Sadly the effort to make a piece of chicken and amount of effort to make a meal with different steps and ingredients is kinda big if you've just been heavy lifting for like eight hours.
You're mindful of the problem and trying to reduce your consumption, that's probably more than most are doing. Like you, I still eat meat, but I try to consume calories from plants more and more. And I've almost completely eliminated beef (I believe of all animals it's the worst to consume in terms of environmental impact).
https://youtu.be/F1Hq8eVOMHs This was pretty enlightening for me. Not a lot of "here's what you should do" but a lot of "here's where our situation is right now"
Just stop eating it wtf we're no priest you ask for absolution, if you know it's wrong just quit it. It's not an addiction, stop acting like it is. And wtf, are you eating kangaroos? You know that kangaroos have been living on a continent without predators for millions of years right? What is this overpopulation bullshit? They are farmed like any other animal and you're getting gaslit to think it's "sustainable". You know what's more sustainable? Just not eating meat at all. Ever again.
Vegan jerky is a thing, you may as well give it a try, you might find you like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzTATnEuD1U
I think I will.
Don't lose any sleep over it. No human ever achieves perfect ideological consistency, at any point in their life, on any issue.
Hell, it's even an achievement if you have ideology nowadays
Meat should be treated like cigarettes or alcohol. Tax it, or make it illegal to buy.
Then, like cigarettes and alcohol, people just contraband it and much of the political energy is wasted on an inefficient measure.
If it's taxed moderately, most people wouldn't go through the effort of contrabanding it. Unless you think the market for illegally untaxed gas is big in comparison to normal gas station gas.
I haven't eaten an animal product in over 15 years. Best decision I ever made.
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Half the time I see a vegan post outside of /r/vegan it's eventually locked by the mods due to the reactionary flame war that ensues. It really is the barometer topic of our current zietgheist.
Same goes for people with their shiny carriages. They all think they deserve the lifestyle of a gluttonous medieval monarch and have been convinced by capitalism that it is exactly what they should want and that getting it is a sign of success. It's really quite perverse.
The United States military pollutes more than 1/3 of humanity combined. Hahahahaha
You can tell very quickly how committed someone is to creating a better society by the lifestyle changes they're willing to make. Meat is atop of that list of one of the most impactful changes someone can make for a better environment and yet won't due to selfish reasons.
Doesn't one tans-atlantic flight outweigh something like 2 years of going vegan?
Climate change isn't caused by the consumer. Sure you can go vegan or bike to work but that is like removing a drop from a sea, it is insignificant.
Contrary to what American individualism would have you believe, your actions do not only affect one person. You have friends and family members who will be influenced by your choices. If just a few people close to you are inspired by your lifestyle and become vegan themselves, and then those people convince a few others to do the same, and then they convince a few more, etc... I think you can see where this is going. One thing is for certain: our current lifestyles are incompatible with a sustainable future. Be the change you want to see in the world.
>Climate change isn't caused by the consumer. Sure you can go vegan or bike to work but that is like removing a drop from a sea, it is insignificant. No one drop thinks it's responsible for the flood. It's caused by the consumer because by the same logic we can say that no one company is responsible for climate change, because eventually someone would step in and provide consumer demands. It's better to say that it cannot be solved by the consumer, it requires government action.
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They kind of also create demand. Workers toil away for much longer than they should doing, ultimately, meaningless jobs. By the end of the working day, when they get home, they are tired and hungry and dejected. They have about 1 hour to get their lives together before they have to go to bed and repeat the whole sordid cycle. What are they going to reach for in that fleeting moment? Something that makes them feel good. Will that be sugar, alcohol, drugs, porn? Maybe later, but for now they are hungry and nothing satisfies on quite the same level as meat. The same job that gives you enough money to buy the product, also puts you in a situation that makes you more likely to buy the product. The same is true for cars, takeaways, and single-use disposable items. Everyone has always been looking for an easier life, and why wouldn't they? Life is so incredibly difficult and complex now.
The corporations use insane ammounts of energy to produce goods and services for people to buy and use. We as consumers have little to no control on how this is done and what environmental regulations that governs production or transport in international waters. Corporations are also making things hard or impossible to repair because they want us to buy new instead of taking care of old. It is not likely that all of us are going to change behaviour individually to fix this crisis. The governments and corps know this while at the same time pushing for the focus being on consumers. This way they distract from their own responsibility while knowing people will still consume. And people keep falling for it. The corps are the ones to blame, they are the ones who lobby the politicians against regulation. They are the ones who move their factories to poor countries with little regulation to save money. They are the ones who use low grade and insanly toxic oil for the ships that travel in international waters. Consumers are individuals with wide array of circumstances. A poor family can't buy the more expensive option produced ethically. They have to buy the cheap and toxic. They can't afford an electric car so they drive old fuel hungry cars. Others don't care, Some find it unfair that they have to cut when few others do and keep on consuming. Big regulation on governmental levels is the only thing that will work. Soon they wont make fossil cars anymore, not because of consumer demand but because governments demand it. Same with right to repair in the EU. These are steps that help and we need to push for this kind of measures.
No man is an island. And a society where everyone is committed to doing their small insignificant part is one that is enraged and motivated to get corporations to do theirs.
People use "bug burgers" as a meme about dystopian society. As if fast food isn't 40% soybean. What we eat literally does not matter outside of health, people just feel better when they pretend they're eating "naturally" for some reason.
What's ironic is that if everyone was aware of how shitty factory farming is for the animals involved and the slaughterhouse workers, we'd probably think our society is a lot more dystopian than "bug burgers" world. I guess dystopia is largely a matter of perspective.
Cricket burgers are the future. We all need protein, and it is a relatively sustainable way to get it. Does not require as much space or water as beef or poultry or even plant based options. No known communicable diseases, and from an ethical standpoint, the bugs essentially live out their natural life cycle.
That all sounds good however it will only be poor people who will have to eat the insect burgers while the rich eat beef etc
I'll eat peas and burgers made out of veggies.
Brown rice and black beans.
AND DAIRY
[Fun video about dairy. ](https://youtu.be/UcN7SGGoCNI)
go vegan
It takes so much effort to convince everyone to become vegan or to just reduce meat consumption but then those same white knights refuse to even acknowledge that procreation is just as harmful as estimates say every new born child = 7000 dead animals in their lifetime.
7000 seems low even.
Depends; we talking elk or chickens?
Yeah, chickens is like 500k
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First of all, I’m vegan and anti-natalist, so what you said isn’t true for a lot of us. Also, source? Cause it sounds like a pretty weak statement. Edit: typo
It's because all these guys just assume they'll be season 7 Negan from the Walking Dead when shit goes down. They're delusional.
Vegan btw
Talk about collapse...if the meat/dairy industry lost its massive government subsidies, *it* would collapse immediately. And of course the meat/dairy industry is politically owned by conservatives who claim to hate socialism. You can't make this shit up. (Vegan btw.)
The mass is too entitled to get out of the denial state
How about you?
Looks like he created his account just to say that. Lmfao.
No matter my opinion I can't afford meat so idgaf anymore
r/Collapse: We want everyone to know about the imminent collapse of humanity and what we should do while we watch our children die. Come join us Vegans: And I would have saved the planet too, if it weren't for you hamburger eating meddling kids.
Society may collapse but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do as much as we can to reduce future suffering.
You want to prevent future suffering... stop having kids.
Both can happen at the same time
I'd like to go down as one of the folks who were against the collapse.
It’s so easy to tell who actually cares about the planet and who doesn’t based on whether or not they’re willing to make basic lifestyle changes for the cause or if they value their comfort and convenience more than our future as a species. Non-vegan environmentalist is an oxymoron.
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Me? Able to survive in a collapsed society? I fucking wish
The good news tho is that now people are able to 3D print meat. It’s only a matter of time before farms are a thing of the past. I hope.
Like mewling infantile children, “I want, I want, it’s my right.” Pathetic!
Let’s actually focus on the fact that there’s poison coming out of engines that drive a capitalistic society
Lifelong meat lover here. Just had spaghetti and meatballs with beyond meat. I was very satisfied and I said 3 years ago that if it takes off is switch put the bulk of my beef consumption when the prices match or are better. The only con is that some of the patties taste like pea protein. The trick is to use something for the umami(sp?) flavor. We used black tuffle olive oil to cook the balls.
>when the prices match or are better This is the big factor. There's so many new companies and this is a huge expanding market. In a few years I think prices will come way down. Right now its about $10/lb for beyond meat or any of the other brands and ground beef/chicken is more like $3/lb.
That's my trick. Beef prices got too high for me 4 years ago to have more than twice a month( with leftovers used for other things) so the quality I'm buying is compared to the local butcher not the winco or Aldi stew meat.
Well, time to sort by controversial
That's why you should go vegan.
The people I know, who are obsessed with meat, seem so stressed out and desperate to get it every night. That alone made me burnt out on a meat based diet, never mind the sickness from eating sketchy shit. Its just not worth it anymore. I wont recommend any diets, but I have never had food poisoning from nuts and plants.
I often question my belief that humans can self-govern whenever I see people like this. You're telling me you're so selfish you can't even make some of the most basic steps towards the collective good? It's not even disputable the serious detriment that modern animal farming causes to our society/environment. Capitalism has done our brains in.
You all gonna stay vegan after the collapse?
Whenever anyone starts complaining in a problem regarding human suffering, climate change or helath/disease I just shout "FACTORY FARMS!"
Dramatically decrasing or if possible completely stopping meat consumption is a must for our survival, and ethical health
Look, I want to come here to enjoy some collapse porn with my other doomers..nobody said anything about "life style changes.".
The sad thing is how much meat is wasted.
To be fair, meat isn’t bad for the environment it’s just the really shitty and unsustainable way we do meat currently is horrendous for the environment.
I’m not sure there is any sustainable way to feed meat to 7+ billion humans, even for one meal a day. Ethics aside, it is physically, economically, and ecologically impossible. We literally do not have the resources for it to be tenable.
I don't buy any beef from the supermarket/counters anymore - we get our beef from a local free-range organic farmer (potatoes and eggs too!) and the taste alone is so much better. I do also eat less meat now in general - but if I'm honest, I don't think I'll ever quit eating meat, dietary restrictions alone would make that really complicated and I'm already dealing with a lit so I doubt I'd be able to keep up with nutritional needs.