BlackRoseEating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than being vegan, landmark study finds
This study misses two major things that need to be considered to properly evaluate a majority vegan diet for the population vs a diet that has meat. Whatever your personal thoughts, we should be able to agree that we don’t have a full picture without this information.
What are emissions, land use, and water use going to look like if vegan food production is scaled up to provide the same calories that a diet with meat has? This is a nontrivial consideration especially since meat is more calorie dense. You will need a larger quantity of vegan options to match a caloric equivalent of meat.
Humans need amino acids that are only found in meat for our full health. This is easy enough to counteract by taking vitamin supplements, but if the entire world needed to take these supplements regularly, what sort of emissions and water use would the scaled up production have? Is manufacturing a high quantity of necessary vitamins going to be better environmentally? I honestly don’t know.
Assuming we want the global population to have at least the same food access and nutrition as today, these are questions we need to know the answer to. Maybe the points I’ve raised are easily addressed without significant emissions. That would be fantastic – we just need to have a full picture.
pejosnicHumans need amino acids that are only found in meat for our full health. This is easy enough to counteract by taking vitamin supplements
There are no aminoacids that you can’t find in plants. And there are no aminoacids that can be replaced by vitamins. Iron deficiency is a real possibility when eating a vegan diet, but B12 deficiency is a certitude for those who don’t supplement.
I was fully vegan for about 2 years. Being a clinical biologist, I’ve been having blood tests done regularly and inspecting my own blood smears. After a year or so I’ve began to see my hemoglobin and ferritin levels drop, so I started trying various iron supplements. Only one of them worked (a sucrosomial iron supplement) and started raising my hemoglobin. Sadly, I deemed it to be too slow and too expensive, so I started eating eggs again, occasionally some fish and chicken. After a few weeks I started gaining muscle mass and I saw some drastic improvent in my fitness levels (I guess I was also underestimating my necessary protein intake). After a year of eating meat and eggs, my ferritin has normalised, and so has my hemoglobin and erythrocite indices. After my experiences I’m still not going to discourage people from at least trying a vegan diet. I’ve seen enough vegans who are healthy, and I’ve seen people for whom a vegan diet is insuitable. It’s ok to quit if it affects your health.
Fair enough, thanks for the explanation