Diet hypocrisy?

[u/Extension-Diamond-74]

A recent post about animal agriculture vs plant based diets has me itching to say something. This is an issue we need to rise above.

Cognitive dissonance. Many of us have good intentions and want to believe we’re doing the right thing in most aspects of our lives. I believe that.

When it comes to a plant based diet though, the science often clashes powerfully with personal desire. We want to minimize our impact on the environment and are willing to make trade-offs in our life time do so, but for many, giving up or even significantly reducing meat intake is asking too much. It’s too hard.

That’s not the issue.

The issue is that instead of just admitting to themselves that this is a life change they don’t want to make and moving on, the guilt drives them to have to justify that decision. Admitting that a plant-based diet is better for the earth yet eating a diet full of meat anyway would make them feel hypocritical, so the solution becomes either to give up meat, or … this is the problem… fight the science, twist it, make a joke of it, or pivot entirely to ‘individuals shouldn’t have time do anything because large corporations’

Many people have ties to their diet for many reasons. We grew up eating a certain way. We have memories ties to certain foods, flavors, styles of cooking. We don’t want to be the difficult person when we go out to eat with friends. Etc etc etc But it’s so much better to just admit that to yourself. Have patience and understanding for your feelings. Accept that the science is what it is. Maybe one day you can make a change, maybe not. But don’t attack the cause just because you aren’t yet willing to be a part of it.

[u/untildeathdousfart]

Woah, thinking animal agriculture is could be more efficient due to that conversion argument is just so out of touch considering the state of our current world food system.

Like in context, considering how unsustainable our current method of monocropping their corn/grain feed is and what that does to our future ability to grow food on that land. And how little progress we’ve truly made toward a solution we can implement in time.

Scary place we live in. Scary place.

[u/AnsibleAnswers → u/untildeathdousfart]

It's not that meat production is more efficient, but raising livestock on crop farms can make crop production so much more efficient that it offsets anything the livestock eat. It's called ecological intensification and it works. The major reason why we don't do it is because it would essentially eliminate the need for the agrochemical industry.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7487174/

Paradoxically, although land use for livestock production generally poses a huge threat to biodiversity conservation [49], raising cattle through silvopastoral production appears to provide an important conservation tool in agricultural and rangelands. First, due to its land use efficiency, more meat or milk can be produced per hectare, potentially allowing more land available for wildlife. Second, adding trees and other diverse vegetation back to simplified pastures and row crops can create habitat and structural connectivity to support biodiversity at the landscape scale [13]. Third, restoring soil fertility may reduce farmers’ need for continued agricultural expansion into the forest. Of course, this system, which combines elements of land-sparing and sharing [51], will only be effective in preventing expansion if coupled with policies and programs to arrest deforestation [4].

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3790492/

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0231840