Could you go fully plant based? U

[JC2021]

Any vegans/ strict vegetarians on here? Your views on climate change?

Any meat eaters ready to go green and move to a plant based diet for a better environmentally friendly planet?

I've been plant based for 18 months now (vegi for many years). I'd been considering going plant based for a while because of the way animals are treated by the dairy industry, but health reasons were my main driver - giving up dairy cured my IBS symptoms pretty much overnight.

Since joining vegan groups on Facebook I now have a much better understanding of the impact of the meat industry on the environment so I'm pleased that by cutting out meat and dairy, I can do a tiny bit to help.

There's so many meat and dairy alternatives nowadays, I found it incredibly easy to make the switch.

I’ve given up dairy recently (mainly for health reasons). We also eat a lot of plant based food. I don’t really want to eat processed vegan alternatives and I’m not ready to give up eggs. Also eat meat sometimes for diet variety but probably only twice a week. I think it’s hard to go full on vegan but giving up dairy isn’t too bad and eating plant based most days of the week is easy. It’s hard to satisfy children with vegan packed lunches though!

Nope

Nope. We have soya, oat and legume allergies in our house so while we are dairy free we could never go completely plant based.

I probably could move to a plant based diet but it feels like a job trying to learn about how to do it properly. We've reduced our meat consumption and that's enough for me for the moment!

Nope.

I don’t particularly want to ruin my health and become a burden on the NHS and other services.

Isn't this one of those things that's ideal in theory, but if everyone tried to do it, we wouldn't be able to support it? The amount of land needed for plants is much bigger than the equivalent nutritional value of animals, and farmers rely on animal waste to fortify the soil in between crops.

50 billion bees were killed in one single year (2018/19) just to produce oat milk

I fail to see how that saves the planet

No. I would be very unhappy. I don't eat lots of meat but I do need cheese in my life. On a daily basis. Vegan cheese is horrible, I've tried. Also eggs are lovely.

No here, each to their own but I love beef and chicken. I only dont eat pork because I saw an episode of casualty and a woman had been aboard and eaten an infected bit of pork and she had a massive tapeworm

@hamstersarse

Nope.

I don’t particularly want to ruin my health and become a burden on the NHS and other services.

50 billion bees were killed in one single year (2018/19) just to produce oat milk

Really? To make oat milk? Do you have a link about that @hamstersarse? Do you mean Almond milk?

@hamstersarse

50 billion bees were killed in one single year (2018/19) just to produce oat milk

I fail to see how that saves the planet

It's pesticides on almond plantations for almond milk that is linked to this. Oat milk is by far the best option, taste and environmentally.

The Guardian says almond milk

Yeah sorry, right amount of bees, wrong shitty milk

www.thecut.com/2020/01/almond-milk-honeybee-deaths.html

I'm very slowly cutting down on meat and dairy. I think th

I'll stick with oat milk for now then. I much prefer it to cows milk (boak)

In my family we have soy and gluten allergies so it’s already difficult to find food products we can eat. Prepared vegan foods nearly always contain either soy or gluten. Gluten free bread sometimes contains milk and egg. We do try to eat vegan occasionally, but for health reasons nothing to do with climate.

Yes. I'm pretty much there. Have cheese and fish occasionally, but 90% or more of my meals are just plants. Loads of fruit, nuts, beans, rice and loads of different veg etc. But I never did get on with milk, yogurt or eggs.

I've been vegan for 25 years.

I tried to be gluten and egg free for a while, it was a nightmare as most gluten free foods have egg white.

Been vegan 30+ years, vegetarian before that.

Amazingly still alive!

Didn't do it for environmental reasons, did it because I could so I thought why not.

No. I enjoy meat. I love cheese. I have no desire to change to a plant based diet.

I don't believe we can sustainably produce enough plant based food without causing more damage. The poly tunnels in Europe. The huge palm oil causing deforestation. Avocado production and the huge impact pesticides have had on the effect of the health of the local population.

What we actually need are less people in the world. Less consumerism. Not total véganism - which isn't practical in some areas of the world anyway. Though I do think animal welfare standards are bloody awful and we should eat high welfare meat less often.

With these milk products, it’s really difficult to get the full picture.

You’ll read things like ‘Dairy is terrible for greenhouse gas emissions compared to plant based milk’

But that fails to mention firstly that the ‘greenhouse gasses’ emitted by cows is totally degraded within a decade and hasn’t risen for over a century because of this. The gases from cows are not the same as those from industrial emissions.

Secondly, the mono-cropping required for large scale production of these plant products is devastating for ecosystems, and that includes oat milk.

It depends on what’s important to you I guess

USDA data from 2015 showed that fertilizers were applied to 76% of acres surveyed throughout the 13 top oat-producing states. Herbicides were applied to 51% of planted acres, fungicides to 9%, and insecticides to 4%.11

•Oats generally don't need all these synthetic treatments to grow—as is proven by the Certified Organic label—but chemicals are still ubiquitous in grain growing, and they pose serious risks to affected ecosystems. In the U.S., pesticides affect more than 96% of all fish and 600 million birds.”

I get more bothered by the destruction of natural habitat than some theory about cows farting.