[digitalnirvana]

Originally Posted by hserus

Fair enough but the reduction in meat consumption here is quite often because of being viewed in an "overall" sort of context, vegetarian and meat eater populations combined, and because local cuisines tend to use small pieces of chopped meat in gravies, fries etc, rather than big slabs of meat like is used in steaks and bacon.

True that. We aren't a meat and potatoes kind of eating culture.

[Jeroen]

It has been known for a very long time, nothing new here. What is new though, is that finally some action is being taken to address this. Farming in the EU has been heavily subsidised for as long as we have had the EU. That is being reworked. In the Netherlands we have seen weeks of farmers protest as part of the new environmental rules means they need to change their ways of farming. Dairy farms can not expand anymore, old farms are being bought up by the government etc.

There has been a push to eat less meat, for environmental as well as animal well fare reasons for a long time. It is slowly gaining traction in some parts of the EU.

The transition to a more sustainable world is going to have huge impact on everybody. This is one element

My wife and I have taken to eaten less meat many years ago. But hey, we do like our meat now and then, so we have not gone vegan yet and most likely will not ever. I have invested in solar panels so at least we are doing our thing for the environment by burning less gas to heat our home. Those solar panels are tremendously effective by the way. I produce more electricity than I’m using on an annual basis, so we are feeling very green. When reading something like this, it does make you wonder if you should not be doing more. Other than typing on the internet you are wondering if you should do more. You have to actually change some of your habits. And very often it is likely to cost you more or cause you some inconvenience.

Eating meat in the west is still very very cheap. Eating environmental friendly tends to be a bit of a pain, as you need to shop around and is likely to be more expensive too.

Jeroen

[Hayek]

Originally Posted by hserus

A kilo of lamb gets you 2,940 calories, a kilo of rice 1300 calories, cheese 4020 calories, potato 770 calories.

The calories from food depend on how you cook it. Eg for Potatoes, you have 87 cal per 100 gm if boiled, 93 if baked and 267 in French Fries.

Am sure the same applies to lamb as well. Your number of 294 cals per 100 gm is more than 258 cals per 100 gm for roast lamb that I found online.

[Hemicuda]

Originally Posted by digitalnirvana

Just going to leave these graphs here

Really interesting graphs and thanks for sharing.
Now if i do some analysis on this in my house. I consider myself someone who loves meat but then considering our Indian eating habits I would say I would consume 500 gms of meat a week. That would make it roughly 2 kgs of meat approx a month and then further adding on going up to 24 kgs in a year. Now In my home my wife is a vegetarian so a family we would roughly consume a similar amount as the graph would suggest. Considering there is a fair mix of Vegetarians and non vegetarians, non Meat eating days etc is pretty safe to say that number stands pretty strong for rest of India as well.

[Miyata]

The industrial production of meat is certainly been in focus for quite a while now as one of those things most harmful for the environment. Three parts to it -

1) Production - Involves also growing corn and soy that feeds all livestock. Apart for CO2 there's also issues with methane and high water consumption. Other aspect being use and abuse of antibiotics leading to resistant bacteria getting a serious issue. Use of antibiotics has become an issue because of the industrialized nature of livestock/meat production where they are crammed in filthy conditions. Eventually these antibiotics find their way into the local ecosystem including the humans that consume them.

2) Processing - the processing part might be comparable with industrialization on the veg things too : preservatives, cold storage, etc.

3) Distribution - Moving produced and processed stuff all around the world using more energy. This too might b comparable with the veg stuff as well.

I guess there may not be many that can organically produce the meat or animal products they consume. I know few families in the US and Italy that do that. They have their small family-size dairy farms. Occasionally, in the hunting seasons, they set out to get more meat from the hunt. Otherwise, it's largely their organically produced stuff.

Although I have been a vegetarian for the last 10+ years, I quite liked this model of the few families and their organically grown diary and meat needs.

[trek]

I was a vegetarian all my life and stopped consuming milk and milk products since about three years now. I went through this entire thread and reading all the comments including that of our moderators makes it very clear that even though we all claim and do our bit to reduce our carbon footprint, we will fight tooth and nails to justify animal abuse and exploitation because it requires a change in our eating habits. It's far easier to blame other things and causes but we will stop short of making changes in our diet.

Many of us here are commenting on how eating meat is a personal choice and how we are okay with having 'my' meat and steak. It's not a personal choice, because there is a victim involved in this choice and in this case it's the animals. We feel okay about slaughtering them since we believe that they are bred for this specific purpose. Well, that does not take away the fact that they do NOT want to die, they will struggle till their last breath and scream in agony till it all ends. Just like there is no partial murder, partial slavery or partial rape there is nothing like eating less meat. A life cannot be anyone's property.

Our ancestors were eating meat but they used to also live in caves and murder / rape each other. Over centuries we have evolved into a civil society and now use cell phones, fly in planes, live in temperature controlled environments which earlier was not even in anyone's imagination. We cannot use the excuse of traditions and culture to justify our eating habits, that would be then just peer pressure from dead people!

[hserus]

Originally Posted by Hayek

The calories from food depend on how you cook it. Eg for Potatoes, you have 87 cal per 100 gm if boiled, 93 if baked and 267 in French Fries.

Am sure the same applies to lamb as well. Your number of 294 cals per 100 gm is more than 258 cals per 100 gm for roast lamb that I found online.

These are ballpark estimates so that within the nearest 50-100 calories you’re quite correct. Unlike metres, kilograms etc I am afraid there is no reference lamb at the SI institute for us to accurately measure how many calories an individual lamb may have, or one potato over another:

[AltoLXI]

USA uses 41% of its land for livestock. Could not find the equivalent land usage patterns for India though.

There’s a single, major occupant on all this land: cows. Between pastures and cropland used to produce feed, 41 percent of U.S. land in the contiguous states revolves around livestock.

Link

[shankar.balan]

What about considering at least a part of this huge negative detrimental environmental impact being caused by the unbridled human population explosion?
About time, dont you think, that humans stopped reproducing and creating more and more monsters to overload the poor planet?

[dark.knight]

Originally Posted by trek

We cannot use the excuse of traditions and culture to justify our eating habits, that would be then just peer pressure from dead people!

I request that you exercise extreme caution and restraint when it comes to this, the more you push, the hundred times more the other side will push and that will lead to a never ending debate and the real cause will long be lost, serving no purpose at all. This thread has already gone into a meandering course 100 miles away from its intended purpose and I'm sure it will be locked soon.

This coming from a lifetime vegetarian as well, but let us keep it in our hearts and bury it deep inside us.

Originally Posted by shankar.balan

What about considering at least a part of this huge negative detrimental environmental impact being caused by the unbridled human population explosion?
About time, dont you think, that humans stopped reproducing and creating more and more monsters to overload the poor planet?

Not going to happen, spiritually, I feel having a child is the most enlightening, grounding experience a couple can have, plus a man and a woman always think in terms of forwarding their genealogy.. someone to give their everything to, including knowledge and wealth. This would make running the rat race easier, and have them something to look forward to on a daily basis, and even awaken their inner child at times. Sure pets come somewhat close and might even seem like a way better idea at times but 99.99% think in terms of bloodline and genetics.

I would feel very uncomfortable discussing population control, because there is a certain magic to mankind that is so inexplicably blissful when it works. However, yes the days of 4, 5, and 6 children are certainly past.. because the earth will truly explode at its seams with that average.

The true fault lies in the capitalist, maniacal, money grubbing society which has made education much more expensive, food, clothing and shelter much more expensive and results in more wastage of resources than ever because the rich have access to 90% of all facilities and the poor have no scope with the remaining 10%.

[AZT]

We are conveniently missing the Elephant in the room. We can demonise beef all we want but what used to happen is that once bovine cattle outlive their milk giving prime, they were slaughtered for food and the farmer also gets compensated.

Now with slaughtering being banned, these cows which add no value continue producing CO2 and causing much more damage than the US because atleast there the outcome is good production which also leads to economic benefit. Here it’s more of keeping cattle up by continuing to feed them. What’s worse is that poor farmers can’t tend for these and purposely just release them to go free.

Once you keep religion out of it, the solution is simple, kill cattle after they don’t give milk. Banning beef is just virtue signalling for the environment unless you can end lives if cattle that aren’t adding value any more.

[nickatnite]

Originally Posted by trek

I was a vegetarian all my life and stopped consuming milk and milk products since about three years now. I went through this entire thread and reading all the comments including that of our moderators makes it very clear that even though we all claim and do our bit to reduce our carbon footprint, we will fight tooth and nails to justify animal abuse and exploitation because it requires a change in our eating habits. It's far easier to blame other things and causes but we will stop short of making changes in our diet.

Many of us here are commenting on how eating meat is a personal choice and how we are okay with having 'my' meat and steak. It's not a personal choice, because there is a victim involved in this choice and in this case it's the animals. We feel okay about slaughtering them since we believe that they are bred for this specific purpose. Well, that does not take away the fact that they do NOT want to die, they will struggle till their last breath and scream in agony till it all ends. Just like there is no partial murder, partial slavery or partial rape there is nothing like eating less meat. A life cannot be anyone's property.

Our ancestors were eating meat but they used to also live in caves and murder / rape each other. Over centuries we have evolved into a civil society and now use cell phones, fly in planes, live in temperature controlled environments which earlier was not even in anyone's imagination. We cannot use the excuse of traditions and culture to justify our eating habits, that would be then just peer pressure from dead people!

Plants are living organisms too and they undergo tremendous pain when they are plucked out of their habitat as other living beings. Plants emit waste too and rotting leaves are as odorous as rotting flesh. Being vegetarian does not absolve anyone from cruelty to living beings. What one doesn't see is more powerful than the obvious. I believe whoever designed earth designed everything in it to be eaten or decay and be replenished. Till the time it is our turn let us enjoy our time here and respect everyone's choice.

[AZT]

Originally Posted by nickatnite

Plants are living organisms too and they undergo tremendous pain when they are plucked out of their habitat as other living beings. Plants emit waste too and rotting leaves are as odorous as rotting flesh. Being vegetarian does not absolve anyone from cruelty to living beings. What one doesn't see is more powerful than the obvious. I believe whoever designed earth designed everything in it to be eaten or decay and be replenished. Till the time it is our turn let us enjoy our time here and respect everyone's choice.

While your argument is correct, we also have to see we are actually growing these animals to be eaten. They have been genetically modified too and this isn’t Mother Nature regulating the animal population.

Again for India, dairy consumption is the bigger problem considering we can’t kill these cows once they can’t provide milk ( unlike in other countries). So in the big picture national milk consumption growth is what should scare us.

I like beef myself but long term plan would be to go dairy free and only have fish over other meat.

[digitalnirvana]

Originally Posted by nickatnite

Plants are living organisms too and they undergo tremendous pain when they are plucked out of their habitat as other living beings.

Sorry but plants don't have a central nervous system or pain receptors. They certainly react to stimuli and it is a hotly debated topic whether their response to stress can be categorised as feeling pain, till we have a more clear view simply stating that they feel pain is disingenuous.

Secondly, and I am well aware that this is off topic, but surely we need to recognise that the more complex / evolved the animal i.e. the more sentient it is, killing it without adequate precautions (like stun guns or tranquilizing gases) is more inhumane. So killing a mealworm or a fish is order of magnitudes less painful for the animal compared to say slaughtering a cow or a pig.

Factory farming is simply focused on economics of scale & efficiency. Day old male chicks are pulverised en masse to become chicken feed (the irony!) or pet food. Dairy cattle is slaughtered after they cannot give milk. Veal is considered a delicacy. Let's not go into how cheese is made. Milk giving cattle are kept continuously pregnant through artificial insemination. The list is endless and frankly too vast and also off topic for this thread.

America, Australia, China to an extent have a very meat-heavy eating culture. They've got to adapt. It's simply not sustainable to factory farm cattle at this scale.
We all got to start somewhere. Baby steps. Eating meat less frequently (especially red meat) is a comparatively easy choice till such time as lab meat is commonplace and economical. There is a video by Nas Daily called "being a Reducetarian (ie not giving up meat, just reducing it)". Worth a watch.

[vibbs]

I don't see this discussion going anywhere.
We have seen this in the Vegan thread as well. But I do hope that with all the fighting confined to this one, that can be used to share some good Veg recipes!

That said, I love my beef and there is no argument in the world that can make me change my stance. Human beings were meant to eat meat and I will continue eating my steak!