Can going veggie save the planet?

Thoushaltnot

Gonna be a feature in tomorrow's Sunday Business Post.

sweet-rasmus

Cool. I wonder if they'll have an online edition. If not, maybe someone coud scan it in for us Ah, it must be online...

Pjays

Brilliant, cant't wait to read it. It was my main reason a few years ago to jump ship and become a vegetarian. I still stand by it. Intensive farming contributes to a huge amount of methane emissions each year. I'm sorry I don't have the statistics on me but I'm sure they'll feature in the articles.
Even if people don't believe in climate change, they must realise they are overconsuming and in the long term that is not sustainable. I try to do my part and I will always believe going vegetarian has been my biggest contribution.

monellia

Coolies. I probably wont get the Post but I'm glad this is getting coverage. Adopting a vegan diet is twice as effective in reducing greenhouse emissions than switching to a hybrid car, innit.

sweet-rasmus

oh! i wish i could quote the above! lol! my boss would love that. him and his hybrid

Slaphead07

monellia wrote: »

Adopting a vegan diet is twice as effective in reducing greenhouse emissions than switching to a hybrid car, innit.

Feckin' hybrid cars... mostly nonsense. A far more environmentally friendly option is to buy an old diesel (mid '90s Mercedes 2.5 diesel is ideal) and run it forever. The batteries from those hybrid cars will be dead and dumped long before the Merc stops running.

Tom65

Got the SBP, the article is alright, nothing incredible. The best part though, is a little segment on how celebrity chefs, more and more, are including vegetarian options and catering to vegetarians. Turn the page and there's a recipe for roast chicken or something.

Slaphead07

Tom65 wrote: »

Turn the page and there's a recipe for roast chicken or something.

and that from Richard Corrigan, a man who couldn't serve a salad unless it contained 7 different woodland creatures stuffed into some endangered species.

Crumble Froo

sooo... for those of us on the wrong side of the equator... any links?

Slaphead07

Crumble Froo wrote: »

sooo... for those of us on the wrong side of the equator... any links?

does Google not work in that heat?

here ye go... http://www.sbpost.ie/agenda/is-meat-murder-43819.html

the_syco

I'm told that you must eat a shed load of greens to balance the lack of vitamins that you miss out on from not eating meat, so would we have enough land to create said greens?

Slaphead07

the_syco wrote: »

I'm told that you must eat a shed load of greens to balance the lack of vitamins that you miss out on from not eating meat

Presumably it was a beef farmer that told you that? A normal balanced diet gives you all the vitamins etc that you'll ever need.

raah!

William shatner says alot about this in his movie "vegetarian world". Pretty good movie that.

Sapsorrow

the_syco wrote: »

I'm told that you must eat a shed load of greens to balance the lack of vitamins that you miss out on from not eating meat, so would we have enough land to create said greens?

Man no offence but you really need to go and research agriculture and livestock rearing a bit if you don't know the answer to that one!

Salvodor Herb

"According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) seminal 2006 report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, meat production accounts for 18 per cent of annual greenhouse gas emissions, compared with just 13 per cent from cars, buses and aeroplanes."

WOW....

I had no idea about this!
Thanks for the link postage;)

Tar.Aldarion

I read that study for the laugh a while ago, I'm such a cool person. :S

Must read this thing now...

the_syco

Slaphead07 wrote: »

Presumably it was a beef farmer that told you that? A normal balanced diet gives you all the vitamins etc that you'll ever need.

It was actually one of those health freaks.

Sam Kade

the_syco wrote: »

I'm told that you must eat a shed load of greens to balance the lack of vitamins that you miss out on from not eating meat, so would we have enough land to create said greens?

Yes I heard that too you would want to eat 8 glasses of spinach to get the same amount of calcium as 1 glass of milk and the source was a nutritionist.

Sapsorrow

Thats an absurd point to make, for a start spinach isn't necessarily the best vegan source of calcium so how efficient in terms of land space or fuel consumption spinach farming is doesn't matter. Meaningless littles bite in information like that are petty points to bring up which have no relationship to the broader issues as are usually used by people who don't understand whats going on.
Secondly land area is not the issue, if it were then the land would be much better used to grow vegetables than for growing soy and corn to feed cattle to make burgers. This adds to the cost of food not only the fuel needed to produce the corn and soy in the first place but also the transport of that food to where ever the animals are and then the additional cost in fuel of housing and rearing the animals themselves. Anyway Russia has some of the most suitable land in the world for producing food and most of it isn't in use.
The hunger problem isn't a calorie deficit it's that we gorge ourselves silly in the developed world eating so many calories that now for the first time the obesity epidemic has become more of a significant public health concern than starvation and malnutrition, whilst millions of others can't get enough to stay alive.
The issue is a lack of water and oil both of which are used in an extremely calorie inefficient way by animal husbandry. Sooner or later with global warming and the eventual impact of the oil crisis we are not likely to have much choice about whether we eat meat or not. I'd imagine in the future it will be a luxury only the wealthy can afford, the same will probably go for driving a car etc..
We're living the lives we live on borrowed time thanks mainly to the US government, we simply don't have the resources to keep on like this (unless they manage to start tapping into Russia as well as the middle east of course) and with the current economic crisis the subsidization of the corn and soy industry will have to come down.
Americans subsidize the production of corn and soy the surplus of which is then dumped in the third world thereby flooding their national market with a pile of food for sale cheaper than it is to produce. This push's local food producers farmers out of business or forces them to convert to monoculture in order to compete. This has the indirect effect that these people then suffer from malnutrition because they're not growing and therefore eating a variety of foods anymore. Another problem with this is that if anything were to go wrong for them in one year of growing they're basically screwed (like the irish in the famine) as they've invested all their resources into one or two crops and if either of these fail they're likely to be out of a liveliehood for good (not having the luxury of insurance policies)
This is the seedy underbelly of corn and soy production (for meat and other processed food production) that people just don't seem to think about.
Another issue in terms of saving the planet or humanity etc is the fact that the oil is going to run out and organic food production happily doesn't depend on anything like the amount of oil as conventional farming with all it's artifical fertilizers etc..

Sam Kade

khrystyna100 wrote: »

Thats an absurd point to make,

And you would have a better knowledge of this than a nutritionist because?

Tar.Aldarion

Did you even read the post?

Sapsorrow

I know as well as a nutritionist because I'm my fourth year of a nutritional science degree and we discuss this sort of thing a lot in class. Also the term nutritionist isn't regulated by any legislation and a lot of people like to call themselves nutritionists when all they've done is a nutritional therapy diploma so not very one who says they're a nutritionist is credible.

Sapsorrow

Also regarding Calcium and vegetarianism/veganism, calcium is actually one of the most complicated essential nutrients in terms of absorption and metabolism. It's nothing near as simple as eating x amounts of calcium translates as x amount in my system doing it's job.
For a start only 30% of dietary calcium is even absorbed and the capacity of the body to absorb and assimilate calcium depends on several other factors such as your hormone levels, your vitamin D status, the amount of animal protein in your diet (which increases calcium loss from the already laid done bone mass through the urine) and the amount of phosphorous in the diet. These are only the main influential factors it's a lot more intricate than this so looking at a food simply in terms of it's calcium content isn't really useful by itself for determining it's value as a dietary source.