To say that being a vegan is no better for the environment than being a meat eater?

[OnlyInYourDreams]

Unless you eat only home grown, locally sourced products?

Obviously some people are vegan because they don’t like the idea of using any kind of animal products. But all too often people say that they’re vegan because “it’s better for the environment when this is categorically not the case.

Lots of fruit/veg have to be imported which is actually worse for the environment because it involves pumping man-made substances into the environment.

Products like almond milk are terrible for the environment because e.g. it takes 1600l of water to produce 1l of almond milk. Coca-Cola is practically a green product in comparison…

If people want to be vegan, why not just say you want to be vegan. Coming up with reasons such as “it’s better for the environment” which are just rubbish and laughable is only going to increase the amount of people who don’t take vegans seriously.

I'm a bit torn too, on the one hand the saturation and mainstreaming of vegan food means there's more choice.
On the other hand it's not regulated in any way, so products vary greatly in nutritional benefit. For example some vegan cheeses will be fortified with calcium and b12, some not.
Yet if it was standardized we'd end up paying a further 'vegan tax'.
I tend to walk the line between whole foods and processed to varying degrees, depending on how busy I get.
But that dilemma isn't one unique to vegans, as soon as you rely on processed foods you miss out elsewhere, regardless of whether vegan or not.
Personally, I think if reducing was more common things might become better for price and nutrition overall, so I'm very happy when I see someone experimenting with Richmond vegan sausages next to their meat products in their trolley.

I'm an experimental cook so don't exactly follow a recipe but:
Fry onion and garlic
Either add curry paste(lazy) or make own out of chillies, sugar, curry powder and and plenty of coriander.
Stir in coconut cream (the blocks if not watching weight!) And 3 large spoons of peanut butter.
Boil up lentils, spinach, sweet potato, kale (whatever is on hand)
Heat. Mix. Serve 😉

THanks @RebeccaOfSunnyHellFarm - I'll give that a go. I like the idea of peanut butter in a curry

mani-life.com/blogs/recipes/creamy-peanut-butter-and-lentil-curry
It's lush. This is a bit similar except they use tomatoes. I find that savories it up a bit and prefer a korma like quality, but is nice in a different way.

Even if that is 100% accurate regarding cattle feed in the UK where pastures are green and plentiful is that true of cattle on a global scale? I highly doubt it. In addition, the vast land space required to graze and feed cattle globally in order to meet the demands (greed) of meat eaters the world over and it’s pretty clear the calculations do not add up in favour of cattle farming. If we had 1/4 of the amount of cattle we currently have we would need around 3/4 less arable land than we currently use as the crop grown would feed thousands rather than hundreds (including the remaining cattle). The methane byproduct from cattle rearing would also reduce 3 fold the affect it has on global warming. Fields yielding crops will absorb CO2 emissions also. We will hit a crisis point in the next 30 years where people will not have a choice but to reduce meat, dairy and fish consumption. It is simply unsustainable to carry on consuming as we are indefinitely.

As I said up thread, the vast majority of beef cattle in the UK eat very little grain - and much of the grain that they do eat isn't fit for human consumption. They eat grass, silage (made out of grass), crop residues, stuff like spent brewers grains, and sometimes hay or silage made out of plants like vetches, which are grown with a dual purpose - to make the silage, but also to give the soil a break from cereals (to reduce pests without spraying) and to capture nitrogen to fertilize the soil.

As upthread, we import a decent amount of silage and silage crops so there is the issue of what system they maize, sorghum etc has been grown in. A third of the beef we eat is imported, a lot of which is from Ireland, a lot of which is fed on soy or other imported feed.

But anyway, the majority of the meat eaten in the UK is chicken, which is almost all fed on soy.

As upthread, we import a decent amount of silage and silage crops From whom?

@Middersweekly That isn’t remotely true, grazing pastures capture carbon. By ploughing them up from permanent pastures and growing crops (I’d be interested in your recommendation of what crops can be grown in this often marginal land) you are releasing carbon into the atmosphere and causing loss nutrients, soil degradation and erosion.

I don’t disagree that people need to eat less, more high quality meat but making things up doesn’t help anyone.

@derxa I’d also be fascinated to find out where ‘a decent amount of silage’ is imported from

Too many vegans are coming out now to say how it’s destroying their health. It depends on our genes as well people in the north generally don’t do well on this diet. Read Aajonus Vonderplanitz and Natasha McCambell if you want to understand real health and want to live a life without disease. Prossessed grains ruins so many peoples guts and is a cause a lot of modern illness

And lots of vegans do fine. Usually I find at the bottom of all these unhealthy vegan stories are something really basic. Like giving infants adult milk (all babies should have breast or formula till one) or eating only fruit. There's a few stupid people who are the examples people hold up as typical of vegans. Like omnivores, it's a broad church. Besides, many of us have suggested that we reducing would be a sensible way to help both health and environment but of course certain people won't engage with this concept because it's not controversial and far too damn sensible.
You do you.
I'll do me.
Off to make a curry. Pip pip!

The problem is that op and co present it like it's vegan or nothing.
There's lots of options. Reduce. Only fish. Vegetarian. Ovo vegetarian.
I'm sure most vegans would be pleased at any reduction.
Or you can eat KFC every night. I'm pretty sure that won't work out well for the planet or your gut though.

@RebeccaOfSunnyHellFarm

The problem is that op and co present it like it's vegan or nothing. There's lots of options. Reduce. Only fish. Vegetarian. Ovo vegetarian. I'm sure most vegans would be pleased at any reduction. Or you can eat KFC every night. I'm pretty sure that won't work out well for the planet or your gut though.

But at least if you ate KFC every day the chickens would have been lucky enough to have lived a life of luxury with as much food and healthcare as they could possibly need in their delux barn and spa before they are generously allowed to avoid old age by being eaten.

[quote 21Flora]@derxa I’d also be fascinated to find out where ‘a decent amount of silage’ is imported from [/quote]
So would I. It's expensive enough to make your own. Importing it? Naw

Kfc is actually the reason my husband became vegan. We lived in a country that didn't really do farms. They had a few scrawny backyard chickens. Very rural. Yet there was a KFC in every built up area. DH started to question where the chickens were coming from. How far, what the welfare was like.
He found the answer (he's great at research). It wasn't good.

Also a very Buddhist area so lots of vegetarian restaurants, even chains. I still dream of their lions mane mushrooms. They were the bomb.

Cba to rtft so apologies if thishas been posted before but OP, if you're seriousabout being interested in what is environmentally better then here is an excellently presented summary of the academic literature.
ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

Your instincts make intuitive sense, but I'm afraid they're misplaced. Too much emphasis has been put on food miles. What you eat matters far more than where it is from. And the eniro-vegans are basically right.

Hope you findit interesting.

I'd also encourage anyone who thinks they know better than the NHS to present their findings. At present they agree a balanced vegan diet is suitable for all stages of life.

So would I. It's expensive enough to make your own. Importing it? Naw

£2.4bn a year of feed crops are imported a year, unsurprisingly from places where it’s cheaper to grow feed crops. Maize silage comes predominantly from Ukraine, France, Ireland, Canada and Romania, for example. According to USDA, the UK is the world’s fourth largest importer of maize silage.

According to Defra stats, as much cattle feed is in the ‘purchased’ category by tonnage as for poultry.

I'm sure most vegans would be pleased at any reduction

I don't understand who we are supposed to be pleasing?

The vegan society is a good place to start

I would never advise anyone to look for information at the Vegan Society as it's unlikely to be impartial.

I would get young girls to see a dietitian (probably a couple of them with different and opposing views) and to get regular labs done. I would also encourage them to read from a variety of sources.

In my opinion, optimal nutrition is related to one's genetics and physiology. It has nothing to do with ideology.

I agree that eating a plant based diet is better for the environment than being an omnivore, however, whilst it is admirable to do it for health or animal cruelty reasons, any environmental reasons for doing so have a small effect. Giving up your car, giving up flying, going all-electric for heating and cooking and purchasing "green" electricity all have a much higher environmental benefit. But even these are all insignificant compared to the biggest thing you could do to reduce CO2 - something that saves 25 times as much CO2 as all the others put together - HAVE ONE LESS CHILD.

PS. Both vegans and omnivores could make a significant environmental impact if they gave up coffee. It is a significant cause of forest and habitat destruction in the latitudes where it is grown. It needs to be transported from those areas and it has to be roasted producing more CO2. A single espresso has a carbon footprint of 0.28kg (equal to driving 2km in a Ford Fiesta) and adding milk (cow or plant based) increases the footprint.

the school i work in does a vegan monday in the canteen now so everyone eats vegan that day. I think over time it will be only one day offering meat and one day fish and 3 days vegan

If a school needs to do this in order to keep costs down, logistics, simplicity, fair enough.

I would have a massive issue though if schools tried to convince children (or parents, for that matter) that veganism is healthier. They would be completely irresponsible and overstepping their remit (and should be held accountable for any ill health suffered by children -at the time or in the future- as a result) It would be akin to religious or political indoctrination. Utterly inappropriate.

@mustlovegin

the school i work in does a vegan monday in the canteen now so everyone eats vegan that day. I think over time it will be only one day offering meat and one day fish and 3 days vegan

If a school needs to do this in order to keep costs down, logistics, simplicity, fair enough.

I would have a massive issue though if schools tried to convince children (or parents, for that matter) that veganism is healthier. They would be completely irresponsible and overstepping their remit (and should be held accountable for any ill health suffered by children -at the time or in the future- as a result) It would be akin to religious or political indoctrination. Utterly inappropriate.

How would you trace ‘any ill health suffered by children -at the time or in the future’ back to eating one vegan meal three times per week while at school?

@mustlovegin

the school i work in does a vegan monday in the canteen now so everyone eats vegan that day. I think over time it will be only one day offering meat and one day fish and 3 days vegan

If a school needs to do this in order to keep costs down, logistics, simplicity, fair enough.

I would have a massive issue though if schools tried to convince children (or parents, for that matter) that veganism is healthier. They would be completely irresponsible and overstepping their remit (and should be held accountable for any ill health suffered by children -at the time or in the future- as a result) It would be akin to religious or political indoctrination. Utterly inappropriate.

A vegan lunch could be something as dangerous as vegetable soup - your kids are probably already eating vegan meals at school without your knowledge.