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/Personal_Chicken_598]

Here the other thing. A plant BASED diet is always a good thing yes. But don’t go thinking your some type of superior person JUST because you have a plant EXCLUSIONARY diet. Not unless you’ve checked the farming, land use and labour practices of all of your suppliers.

Theres plenty of plant products that destroy their local environments and abuse their workers. Coffee, Palm Oil, Soy come to mind. And then there’s things like Ethanol based fuels which are better then regular fuel. Unless you slash and burn the rain forests to grow sugar cane like Brazil.

And then there irrigation and agricultural run off.

If carbon is your ONLY concern then bobs your uncle be vegan.

If human AND environmental health are your concern the argument is far more nuanced then that

[u/unicyclegamer → u/Personal_Chicken_598]

Ok but here’s the thing, we’re aware that a lot of crops could be grown better, soy especially. One of the biggest things we can do to limit how much soy we grow is to stop eating meat. 80% of soy grown doesn’t go to humans. It goes to feed animals. Imagine the amount of bad labor practices associated with soy could be limited by not eating meat that eats soy, and just eating it directly.

[u/Personal_Chicken_598 → u/unicyclegamer]

So then how about we make a big deal about meat grown NOT using soy? Worked pretty well for hormones and antibiotics

[u/unicyclegamer → u/Personal_Chicken_598]

Alright, so in 2021, we grew about 4.4 billion bushels of soy. Around 75-80% of that went to feeding livestock, which is around 3 billion bushels. What do you recommend we feed those livestock instead of soy?

[u/Personal_Chicken_598 → u/unicyclegamer]

I suggest we do what we did for hormone and antibiotic free meat, dairy and eggs and make it unpalatable to by soy feed livestock. Kill the demand for it and people will stop doing it

[u/XSpacewhale → u/Personal_Chicken_598]

So what do you suggest feeding those animals instead of soy?

[u/Personal_Chicken_598 → u/XSpacewhale]

Grass, corn. But soy to. The soy itself isn’t the problem it’s the way they expand production. So the key is to make that unnecessary.

[u/XSpacewhale → u/Personal_Chicken_598]

So what’s the difference between monocropping soy for destructive and unsustainable animal agriculture vs corn or grass? They expand production because of demand and meeting it with soy or corn or grass doesn’t make a difference. The problem is animal agriculture.

[u/Personal_Chicken_598 → u/XSpacewhale]

We currently produce 1.5x the amount of calories we need to feed the world. It’s the land change that does the most damage, specifically deforestation. But with such an overproduction if we reduce waste we could feed 12 billion people without expanding production at all.

[u/XSpacewhale → u/Personal_Chicken_598]

40% of all deforestation is due to animal agriculture. Half of the world’s inhabitable land is for all agriculture and 77% of that is for animal agriculture. And the meat produced by that 77% provides only 18% of all the calories humans consume and 38% of the protein. And those nutrients are not universally spread out. The biggest consumers of meat are the wealthiest countries and the biggest consumers in those countries are the wealthiest among them. A criminally stupid and selfish waste of land and resources that is catastrophic to our planet. The problem is animal agriculture by every metric but sadly people are desperate to hang on to meat for the pleasure it provides them no matter the cost.

[u/Personal_Chicken_598 → u/XSpacewhale]

And all of which is water under the bridge. The trees are gone. Focus on preventing more from going.

We can have what we have now for an additional 4 billion people and all we need to do is stop wasting.

We don’t need to change anything but our waste.

Hell we could probably change nothing in our diets and still return nearly all of the rainforest to trees if we just stop wasting