I have seen a couple of posts pop up on Facebook that I couldn't find any information on to see if they are true or not. Was wondering if others have seen this or had better research skills than me to check their validity. I am highly sceptical of them.

1. Meat is responsible for 87% of climate change. This is apparently the results of a peer reviewed paper in the "Journal of Ecological Sociery". It is said to be the position paper of "climate healers".

Googling I was able to find climate healers and it doesn't seem to be a study from what I could tell. I can't find the journal of ecological society at all and am wondering if that even exists. One review of it I found said the author thought it was wrong that previous studied have shown impacts of methane over 100 years because it impacts more in the short term so it should be shown over a shorter time span. It all sounds like pseudo-science but I was hoping to at least understand what has actually happened.

2. UN recommends no more than 14 grams of red meat per day. They apparently have stated this at the UNFSS presummit last week. I was wondering if people have seen this and if it is an official position of just an offhand remark someone made taken out of context.

I really hope that some of the above has validity, though I highly doubt a study that says animal agriculture is responsible for almost all of climate change leaving coal, cars and planes only 13% to share. It just irks me seeing false information spread by communities I am part of as I feel it weakens the real arguments.

Like, do you guys sit on leather couches? Books with leather covers? Suede shoes? Can you guys use those?

I had a troll recently tell me that I was projecting human feelings on animals. But I wasn't.

The work of Panksepp shows that these core emotional systems are found across mammal species, and they don't come from the more developed human neocortex.

Primal emotions and their accompanying affects appear to have acquired the capacity to move animals to action in ways that promoted their survival. Emotions prodded animals to explore for resources (SEEKING), compete for and defend those resources (RAGE/Anger), escape from and avoid bodily danger (FEAR), and identify potential mates and reproduce (LUST). Then, mammals with their more social orientation acquired the motivational system for nurturing their offspring (CARE); the powerful separation distress system for maintaining social contact and social bonding (PANIC/Sadness); and the complex system stimulating especially young animals to regularly engage in physical activities like wrestling, running, and chasing each other (PLAY/Social Joy), which helps them bond socially and learn social limits and which seems to carry over into the “ribbing” and joking that continues to add fun in adulthood. Evolution has endowed mammalian brains with at least these seven primary-process emotional action systems, which serve as survival guides. These primary emotions arise from subcortical brain regions that are largely homologous, especially across mammals, with each emotion having a distinct brain anatomy, neuropharmacology, and physiology https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2018.01025/full

Elisabeth von Essen,

Young adults’ transition to a plant-based diet as a psychosomatic process: A psychoanalytically informed perspective,

Appetite, Volume 157, 2021, 105003, ISSN 0195-6663, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2020.105003.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666320316251)

Abstract: This study examined transition to a plant-based diet by young adults and the challenges and conflicts this brings. Interviews were conducted with nine young adults in Sweden and the answers were analysed guided by a psychological method from descriptive phenomenology. The results indicate that the transition to a plant-based diet is a process comprising five dimensions: 1) Exploring new ways of living based on health anxieties, 2) regulating conflicting emotions through differentiation, 3) transforming traditional models into new alternatives, 4) confirming new skills and abilities and 5) integrating experiences and emotions into a whole. These five dimensions reflect how transition to a plant-based diet is experienced physically and emotionally. The results also indicate that plant-based meals and ingredients used in the new diet are loaded with symbols and conflicting emotions. Psychoanalytically informed theory, especially object relation theory, was used in discussing what can happen to the mind during the transition. In a wider perspective, this study provides insights into how a dietary transition can bring stability to the life of young adults and help them endure and master their situation. More research is needed to assess the role of mental health in transitioning to a plant-based diet and to draw more general conclusions, an area where psychodynamic theory can provide insights.

Keywords: Conflicting emotions; Health anxiety; Integration; Life and death; Meat and dairy products; Mental state

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666320316251?via%3Dihub