If eating no meat at all is too hard, from a climate perspective eating no beef will have the biggest impact. Eating no ruminants to be specific, but hardly anyone is eating bison/sheep/goat on the regular.
I went like 90% vegetarian and switched to the meat substitutes. If I can do it, anyone can. I’ve always had a meat-a-saurus diet until 2-3 years ago.
I’ve only met one person who couldn’t go veg, because they had allergies to everything: soy, legumes, nuts.
There’s been a lot of obsession with protein in popular culture when in reality unless you’re a bodybuilder you don’t need a ton and a veg diet will suffice. And there are tons of vegan athletes.
The point I was making is that there is one step even the laziest can take to have an impact: just stop eating beef. Going full veg is better of course.
Lamb is popular in the UK. Beef is actually behind chicken and pork already.
Is lamb a regular dish or more of a Christmas and special occasion dish? I’m not in the UK so I genuinely don’t know. Not sure that you can get lamb at a fast food joint like you can with beef burgers.
Shepherd’s pie is a fairly regular Sunday meal.
And kebab meat is normally lamb. You can get that at pretty much any takeaway chippy in the country, and is traditionally eaten with about six pints of cheap lager.
I’m in the US and can get lamb at fast food joints. Go to any Mediterranean shop for a gyro. Afaik it’s even more available in the UK since it’s primarily sold as people food, not dog food like the US market.
I’m in Canada and there aren’t a lot of shops with gyros. Tons of shawarma though, but that’s all beef or chicken.
A joint of lamb is a special occasion dish, but I think the statistics are skewed by the massive number of drunkenly-consumed kebabs
While I support not eating meat, I am also realistic and reducing is good enough.
But the problem is that not every meat is created the same. There is one footprint for meat feom animals that are grazing and are used in regenerative agriculture and much bigger from industrial farming of cows fed with irrigated alfalfa in desert.
While I support not eating meat, I am also realistic and reducing is good enough.
No, we gotta completely uproot the animal agriculture industry if we want to save the planet and no “regenerative farming cattle” still uses too much land/water and has bovines abused and slaughtered for nothing.
Okay, then I might as well just keep eating as much meat as I do now though? If we have to be perfect and most people aren’t going to be perfect, there’s no point in even trying.
Or maybe get off your high horse, accept that humanity isn’t perfect, and try to get people to eat less meat first, then worry about getting them to eat no meat at all. 50% of people doing 70% of what they should is more useful than 10% doing 100%.
There are no baby steps to stoping animal abuse. It’s not hard to follow a 31 day challenge.
Do that first then comeback critic my “big ask”.
Your effect on people opting NOT to eat less meat because you’re trying to moralize them is going to outdo your personal contribution at least 10 to 1, maybe 100 to 1 if you interact with enough people.
Each child born produces as much CO2 as 71 people going vegan for life. That ignores all the other ways humans pollute. Given that 130M babies are born each year, even if the entire planet went vegan right now (forever), it would only offset the next 324 days. If you care about the environment at all, you would focus all of your ire on the the real danger: countries with high birth rates.
However I suspect this has nothing to do with the environment for you. There is a duplicitous tactic employed by vegans which seeks to hijack the environmental movement for moral aims. People such as yourself have a moral problem with eating meat, and you know that many others care about the environment, so you attempt to wed the two. I am of course happy to be proven wrong.
Hey how about you cut down on private jets and I keep eating my burgers
Yeah right, eating less meat smells awful lot like “calculate your carbon footprint”
Two things can both be done. Saying one thing is worse is only an excuse to do nothing. Those rich fucks on their jets will probably point to companies polluting more. Do what’s best and advocate the same for others. Everyone just pointing to something else is how we end up in the situation we’re in. “I got mine. Go attack them!” Changing ourselves allows us to see all issues and work on them all.
You transition out of meat to save the environment.
I transitioned out of meat because of meat recalls and all the chemicals they sneak in a cow, and was ripping the hardest farts that would clear out a room.
We are not the same.
Dat odorless, anxiety-free, harmles fun of vegan farts!
Not kidding. Had a vegan apologize when she ripped a loud fart because steamed carrots made her gassy.
Not a single person smelled anything.
A bit underwhelming when put into the context of the estimated number of cars being closer to 1.5B, but worthwhile to pursue regardless.
This would be 8 million cars in the UK alone, which has a population of 68 million.
Serves me right for not reading the article. I’ll keep my shame up for display in public
Thank you for your service 🫡
No need, most articles are bad and much longer than needed. Luckily chatgpt&friends are good at summarizing.
How many cars off the road does a dead executive take?
What about Taylor swift…
I am all about eating less meat for various reasons but this some idiotic thesis.
Why not both?
Are you implying that we should only do good things if they are the most good things in existence? Like, I shouldn’t have an electric car because planes exist? Please enlighten me.
This is BBC which speaks for big oil…
Eat less meat but don’t be confused what BBC is doing here…
yUoR CaRBON FoOTPriNt
So the problem is the hypocrisy of the news empire, not an idiotic thesis?
I am a fan of context. There were about 29.1 million vehicles on the road in the USA in 2023.
8 million is a lot, and part of the overall solution.
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/859950/vehicles-in-operation-by-quarter-united-states/
The article is just about the u.k. The number would be larger for the u.s. due to both population size, and that the u.s. eats more meat, around 50% more. Although we do drive more per car here as well, so that may effect it as well.
why are the slabs of meat in little towels like they’re on a spa day
It’s cheesecloth, and not sure. Dry aging? My immediate thought is someone has an Egyptian predilection. What are mummies, if not dry aged meat.
“new” study, draws half it’s methodology from referencing older papers, including the problematic poore-nemecek 2018 piece.
I wish cloned meat was a viable thing. No animal suffering, far less pollution, sticking it to the vegan.
There are great alternatives today like impossible, beyond and tofurky. There’s no need to wait for lab grown meat. That’s like saying sticking it to the abolitionists and feminists. It’s silly to want to stick it to the most moral people in the world.
No idea what that is about, maybe because I do want to eat meat, without the moral implications.
Anyway, I doubt I can get away with it in this conservative shithole country. If I didn’t live with my parents, I would have cut meat quite a lot. I actually prefer salads and such.
I don’t care what anyone says, take some dry aged ribeye cooked to perfection, or some smoked ribs falling off the bone and compare that to some frozen tofurky log and tell me with a straight face that that’s an alternative. Forget about ballpark, gardein and beyond aren’t even playing the same sport when it comes to something like a smoked turkey leg.
Veganism is admirable. Animal welfare, carbon emissions, nutrition, these are all good reasons to stop eating meat altogether. But let’s not delude ourselves here, meat can be just about the most delicious food in existence. I have tried tons of fake meat products and they all taste like sodium cardboard nuggets.
abolitionists and feminists fight for human dignity. comparing them to animals undermines human dignity
get abolishionists and feminists name out of ur mouth if ur just gonna use it to piss on vegans
talk about undermining dignity
Why would this be sticking it to a vegan if you are eating a cloned organism with no experience of life? Its not a zero sum game, you can both have some (vegan) pie.
Very mature of you.
But they hurt my fee fees with their mean words!
Fear porn. Keep eating meat. It’s far more nutrient rich than any of the overly processed vegan garbage. And I know because I was vegan for more than 8yrs.
Great an astroturfer…
You’re lying about ever being vegan as if you were you would’ve known that processed vegan food products are not the only alternatives to eating meat as there are pulses, peas, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds and whole grains you can have instead.
Plant-based meat is actually healthier than processed meat and red meat.
Nope, I definitely was vegan. And plant based meat is not healthier. What a cope if you believe that nonsense. I would even make my own vegan “chicken” nuggets using seitan. But nothing compares to the number of vitamins attained through a juicy steak. I’m glad I made the change back from being a vegan. A lot more energy throughout the entire day. Eggs are another great source of nourishment.
Someone is trolling.
Nah you’re just too stuck in dogma and propaganda. All good. Carry on.
Says the person obviously lying about having lower levels of energy despite the fact studies show that vegans are actually healthier.
A study published last week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that dietary protein derived from plant sources built muscle just as well as protein from meat sources. However meat also comes with additional components that are harmful to our health, including antibiotic residue, hormones, saturated fat, trans-fats, endotoxins, cholesterol, Neu5Gc, heterocyclic amines and contaminants such as high levels of metals including copper and arsenic. These undesirable elements increase inflammation and promote various diseases thus making meat a less desirable option when building muscle and long term health are considered.
A plant-based diet consists of exclusively plant foods, including fruit, vegetables, grains, and legumes, and avoids meat, dairy, and eggs. Plant-based foods are full of fiber, rich in vitamins and minerals, free of cholesterol, and low in calories and saturated fat. Eating a variety of these foods provides all the protein, calcium, and other essential nutrients your body needs. It’s important to include a reliable source of vitamin B12 in your diet. You can easily meet your vitamin B12 needs with a daily supplement or fortified foods, such as vitamin B12-fortified breakfast cereals, plant milks, and nutritional yeast. Those who eat a plant-based diet lower their risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and other health conditions. Research also shows that a plant-based diet can be less expensive that an omnivorous diet.
Enjoy your inflammatory seed oils and glyphosate laced vegetables, unless eating local and organic.
overly processed vegan garbage.
Am not vegan, but your issue here is eating all these “plant-based” ultra-processed food and thinking that’s the only way. Just eat more veggie and mushroom and bean.
Yeah but the slop being market to gen pop is literally same quality as a hotdog
It’s far more nutrient rich than any of the overly processed vegan garbage
Nothing more nutritious than slop. Keep stuffing your face with hamburger
I eat grass fed wagyu from a local farmer
Lies again, the vast majority of meat is factory farmed.
The exceptional rare “local farms” do not stop the exploitation and slaughter.
You do realize that plants are quite sentient, right? They communicate with one another, they feel pain, and even help one another. Trees will use mycelium to talk to one another if one tree needs help they will. So great work trading one sentient suffering for another. Pat yourself on the back for partaking in groupthink and keep feeding the ego that you’re doing any good for the environment.
Meat requires more plants than directly eating them. So if you really cared about the plants you would go vegan.
You’re filling out my Carnist bingo sheet proving once again that you were never vegan.
Meat requires more plants than directly eating them.
this isn’t true. most of what is fed to livestock is crop seconds and industrial waste. I don’t eat corncobs or corn stalks, or soy cake. but if I eat a pig that has been fed those, no more plants have been harmed.
It’s just so hard for your brain to comprehend maybe someone escaped the fear mongering and ego tickling of veganism. Yes, of course I had the lentils, tofu, seitan everything (because wheat gluten use is endless) and everything else. Had to eat throughout the whole day just to feel sustenance. But as said before, most of the foods targeted to vegans are overly processed. And way to ignore the fact that plants are probably crying as they’re ripped from their roots and start releasing toxins as defense mechanism.
It’s just so hard for your brain to comprehend maybe someone escaped the fear mongering and ego tickling of veganism.
That’s literally projection, as you were just fearmongering about plant-based alternatives.
And way to ignore the fact that plants are probably crying as they’re ripped from their roots and start releasing toxins as defense mechanism.
Ignores the fact meat requires more plants and that plants do not have a central nervous system to process pain.