I was so annoyed about the implications of this article I decided to post photos of the delicious nutritious #vegan food I'm preparing for my family for the next few days. It's really not hard. Today Nasi Goreng (or at least my version of it, with organic pea protein pieces, katsup manis, lots of spices and fresh vegetables...
fediscience.org/@Ruth_Mottram/…
@Ruth_Mottram - "Veganism wasn’t meant to be like other food fads: it was intended to benefit not just the individual but society as a whole. Eating less meat would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and animal suffering. The evidence is clear. But right now we can’t be bothered "
Why the vegans lost on.ft.com/4mzHgFz
"Veganism wasn’t meant to be like other food fads: it was intended to benefit not just the individual but society as a whole. Eating less meat would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and animal suffering. The evidence is clear. But right now we can’t be bothered "
Why the vegans lost on.ft.com/4mzHgFzWhy the vegans lost
Veganism didn’t become less good for us or the planet, so what changed?Henry Mance (Financial Times)
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picofarad
in reply to Ruth Mottram • • •my tentative understanding is, with current agricultural science (and nutrition sci), if everyone in the world became vegan, most people would starve, as the input feedstock for animal products is inedible; further, the areas that grow animal foodstocks cannot be used to produce human food - think like no native human edible plants that grow in such a way that it becomes worthwhile to grow that instead of animal feed.
So, it's not that "we can't be assed" - it's untenable at all.
Ruth Mottram
in reply to picofarad • • •picofarad
in reply to Ruth Mottram • • •for reference, it's about 11 acres per a family of 4 for "food year round" - assuming that a sustainable amount and variety of human edible food grows in that location. That's if you grow all food you eat.
There's also the "where do your supplements come from" - to name one, where is everyone going to get vitamin D that needs it? The stuff you buy in stores and is in fortified foods comes from sheep. The sheep live through it, it's oil at the base of their wool.
e.g.
picofarad
in reply to picofarad • • •Ruth Mottram
in reply to picofarad • • •@picofarad as I mentioned: 1 I don't think it's realistic to expect everyone to go permanently vegan. 2. I *definitely* never said that everyone should grow their own food. Farmers are eat more efficient at that. 3. The 11 acres number is irrelevant if you don't also include the number needed to support animal agriculture. 4. Animal feed has a huge land use requirement and removing that cuts necessary land use in half (at least. 5. There will definitely still need to be some transport between regions and across borders to cover everyone's needs. 6. Yes supplements are important and major reason why I think total veganism is unrealistic and yet we could still remove maybe 90% of meat + dairy in our diets with no ill effects.
Finally, I'm old enough to remember that even in 1980s, meat + dairy were not normal every meal time or even every day. Somehow we survived. Even if we didn't call it veganism...
picofarad
in reply to Ruth Mottram • • •I was alive in the 1980s and i remember breakfast cereal, and basically every dinner had meat. most lunches included things like tuna or ham and cheese. Now, school lunches and the like could be more vegetarian (not vegan though, because that's a regulatory minefield as we've glanced at here).
I think it is *fine* to promote and support vegan ideals. At least we agree that it is unsustainable for the entire population.
I got no beef (excuse me) with vegans at all.
picofarad
in reply to picofarad • • •so you'd still have to deal with the huge ecological impact of transporting perishable food vast distances to ensure everyone had a complete diet as opposed to just eating rice all day, or quinoa, or wheat.
Native plants grow natively, and if we can eat them, great, if not, we can eat something else that eats the native plants.
Ruth Mottram
in reply to picofarad • • •wroof
in reply to Ruth Mottram • • •thermonuclear small claims
in reply to Ruth Mottram • • •I've been seeing articles about how veganism is over regularly for the last two decades. Plant-based eating has dramatically increased in that time.
That writer is doing what they all do, using selective statistics and anecdotes to make a fatalistic point. There is no better way to challenge this silliness than with delicious vegan food 🍲
Dаn̈ıel Раršlow 🥧
in reply to Ruth Mottram • • •"One high-profile vegan, crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, is in jail. Another, New York mayor Eric Adams, turned out to like eating at fish restaurants."
Golly, we're meant to take two fantasist assholes as above-the-fold proxies for veganism as a whole, I guess.
Ruth Mottram
in reply to Dаn̈ıel Раršlow 🥧 • • •