so common?
I see a lot of people bringing up trophic levels for some reason with very strange conclusions. The number and structure of trophic levels (producers, consumers, decomposers) indicate ecosystem health because more complex webs with diverse links across trophic levels are generally more stable and resilient to disturbances, while simplified food webs from loss of species reduces complexity, making the ecosystem vulnerable.
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/08-2207.1
And yet I see people talking about reducing the number of trophic levels as if it were somehow a good thing.
Is this simply a misunderstanding where people have confused efficient with good because capitalism has infected us all with a compulsion to value doing more with less? I don't understand why so many vegans are making this detrimental argument as though it were positive.
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Why do people have imaginary arguments with straw men?
It's like half the posts here are just people inventing some strange moral positions that literally no one else has ever thought of before, that were only invented to sound ridiculous on purpose, claiming vegans hold those positions, and then posting their rebuttals.
Can you link to any vegan arguing what you are acting like they are?
You're in luck, they came to this post to show you.
Literally nobody is. You clearly only hear what you want to hear.
Most people are just perplexed with your position considering it is not based on anything anyone actually thinks and you only made it up to have an argument.
The rest are pointing out why your position is misconceived.
Unmanaged ecosystems produce lots of trophic levels as you say, and complexity yields resilience as the loss of one species to a complex ecosystem will have lots of species which can fill the now-vacant niche.
Using this as a blanket statement about more trophic levels being better is fallacious though. Complexity can be had without introducing a new trophic level, and additional trophic levels do not necessarily create the sort of complexity that yields resilience.
What you're going to need to do is provide a case for the need not only of having these particular animals humans exploit around, but why the exploitation itself is necessary to meet that need.
What need for animals? what need for exploitation? I am not making an argument for anything except to stop thinking it's somehow good to take the ingredients to life and mainline them from yeast vats into more humans while the remaining vitality of the world drains into just us and the yeast. There's a finite amount of phosphorus, other necessary ingredients as well. What's been sustainable for billions of years is all that stuff being distributed into as many different kinds of life as possible. What seems like a clear disaster is streamlining it.
This is an argument for fewer trophic levels, not more.
Pointing to something like phosphorus as the problem we need to solve offers a solution that includes a plant-based diet, but it's ultimately about circular vs linear food systems rather than about diversity of diet. The reason we're running out of phosphorus is ultimately because we don't collect and reuse what we flush.
Given a linear food system, being lower on the trophic pyramid slows the problem.
No it isn't. OMG please read the papers I linked.
If we have plants with phosphorus in them, then we feed those plants to pigs, there will be some phosphorus lost before it can reach humans. You accept that as fact correct?
I think you have confused energy levels with elements. There is a specific and finite amount of phosphorus on this planet. It can be bound up in different molecules, but it isn't destroyed or created on a large scale whatsoever. Trace elements and minerals that are necessary for certain biological processes move around between organisms, and put an upper limit on the total biomass on the planet overall. This is a different thing entirely.
Ok what was your point in highlighting there being a finite amount of phosphorus?
It's a bottleneck, not the only one, but one of them. Phospholipids are the building blocks of all cell membranes. It's in every single living cell on the planet. As the number of humans goes up, the amount of phosphorus available to be part of other living things goes down. As the amount, of... let's say bioengineered industrial producing yeast churns in massive bioreactors being supplied by an endless supply chain to produce the most efficient perfectly nutritious food for humanity goes up... well you get the idea.
Would you believe that processes that waste or inefficiently use phosphorus should be adjusted?
Nope, inefficiency and complexity are what lead to resilient food webs. They really are quite good papers.
Please quote the best evidence in those papers to support your argument. It's on you to demonstrate your point.
This is a PSA for any who don't want to keep making an awful argument that makes vegans look like shortsighted simpletons speeding towards a yeast vat bottom trophic level existence with just us and yeast.
Yeast isn't the bottom of the trophic pyramid lol
It is the most efficient producer that could take raw elements and produce a full set of amino acids and nutrients we need. It's just a bad idea to be efficient.
I don't think it's the most efficient way given that the sun exists, and I've never heard a vegan seriously advocate for this sort of food system. I just think it's better to eat beans than body parts.
I love beans. And my hippy grow your own food vegans are not who this is aimed at whatsoever. But the yeast bioreactor guys are there, advocating efficiency because tech bros do or something, i dunno.
The food you're referring to isn't part of an ecosystem. It's part of agriculture. People use trophic levels to highlight the giant increase in resources required every time you go up a level. So why would it be beneficial to feed 10x the crops to animals to receive the same amount of food?
Why would it be beneficial to eat plants? Why don't we just skip producing fertilizer, skip growing plants just so they can feed the microbes to break down nutrients? Why don't we just take the microbes and artificial nutrients and concoct everything in a vat? That must be more efficient.
You say this in jest, as though you have any evidence to suggest that this approach to sustenance for a future human population would be patently ridiculous.
Bets against scientific progress are always interesting, given our recent history.
In case you don't know this, culturing vats don't produce food magically out of nothing. The CM producers I'm aware of use inputs that are plants grown at typical industrial mono-crop farms: sugarcane, soybeans, corn, etc. Those do rely on ecosystems: they grown in soil that was produced over very long timespans by the actions of plants, animals, microorganisms, etc. Those organisms have interdependencies, such as microorganisms (which plants need to be functional) that exist in part due to animal feces and decomposed animals.
Whenever I ask how a system could work that cultures food in vats for us and doesn't rely on nature at all, nobody can ever articulate any option that's realistic. It's all "Technology would eventually solve it" but with not even a theoretical idea for how it would.
Do it
Please stop thinking it's somehow good to take the ingredients to life and mainline them from yeast vats into more humans while the remaining vitality of the world drains into just us and the yeast. There's a finite amount of phosphorus, other necessary ingredients as well. What's been sustainable for billions of years is all that stuff being distributed into as many different kinds of life as possible. What seems like a clear disaster is streamlining it.
If you have any inclination of concern about resource waste, you are not in the right universe with respect to where you have positioned yourself in this argument.
If you define resource waste as trophic complexity, you are not in the right universe with respect to having a complex and sustainable biome.
I define resource waste as deviation from sustainable outcomes for beings living on this planet.
Industrialization hasn't been sustainable so far, it's been mostly a disaster. Pre-industry, organisms and food cycled around the planet which only became more fertile. With industry, the major effects have been: ecosystem poisoning by crop products, tremendous amounts of pollution (of materials mined from underground that then off-balance the planet in various ways), erosion, declines in soil fertility, etc. Soil systems which exist through millenia or tens/hundreds of millenia of natural action have become severely eroded in a few human lifetimes.
What a useless definition.
If you're interested in biodiversity, then you shouldn't support animal agriculture because livestock terrestrial.vertebrate biomass has dwaaaaaarfed wildlife and consumed natural ecosystems with livestock monoculture.
Much of the land you're referring to is pastures, which can be excellent habitat for wild animals. Much of the rest is land for crops that are grown for both human and livestock consumption. You haven't mentioned an option for a human food system that doesn't dominate the planet. Eliminating livestock would necessarily result in much more of our food (and in greater proportion to livestock foods which are more nutritionally dense/complete/bioavailable) supplied from plant crops, so this doesn't eliminate the biodiversity problem you vaguely brought up.
No, you're very uninformed on this topic. There are a number of facts that you seem to be completely unaware of. Here's a full breakdown on the convertibility of our food system. This data was taken from an animal ag. org: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/s/Y8Bm0RV0OR
"Convertibility"? I'm familiar with the Mottet study and I haven't seen where it establishes that complete human nutritional needs would be met without livestock. Analyzing it would have to involve more than just comparing protein or calories vs. area of arable land that's available for farming. It would have to involve nuances such as compatibility of specific crops per-region. There are important reasons that corn farming dominates in some areas, wheat farming in others, etc. It would have to allow for variances in humans about nutrient conversions and such, that people cannot all eat the same foods and thrive due to individual biological differences. A study that makes no mention of heme iron (as one example, the term isn't in the study at all) probably doesn't do this. Lots of people have become anemic while eating lots of iron-rich plants but no animal foods.
This argument makes no sense. It's not all or nothing. In reality the ideal scenario for next few decades would be about reduction of livestock, not elimination over night.
Obviously every nation has different food systems. The argument is about the efficiency of plant based agriculture Vs animal. The argument is completely independent of nutrition
For the past few decades we have had a very globalised agricultural system. This means that in my country if we are unable to produce certain food we can import it. And if someone else cannot produce something we export it. There is no agricultural system in the future where this is not part of an optimal system.
So the entire premise of saying you don't believe 100% veganism is not possible is irrelevant since the reality is this is a sliding scale and any reduction is good. Even a move to a Mediterranean diet or equivalent would be a giant leap forward from the meat dominant diets of the west.
Do I really need to link where you were unable to provide any evidence for your iron claims? Iron is essential, not heme iron.
Animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of deforestation. It is quite literally destroying habitats for wild animals.
https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation
Yes, we would feed more people and use less land, especially when we consider the land used for pastures.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
And yes, you can still meet and exceed your nutritional goals being vegan.
These are the usual junk articles that exaggerate and cherry-pick. If you think there's a resource which scientifically shows that livestock cause more deforestation than coconut/palm/etc. plants-for-humans crops globally (claims by vegans seem to always focus on the Brazilian Amazon which is just one region) then feel free to mention it. If you can cite any scientific estimates for deforestation that would be likely to result after eliminating livestock, you can mention that.
I tried a plant-based diet and it was a disaster for me. I gave an explanation here and the ableist vegan I was challenging to mention a solution didn't reply at all. Of the many times I have brought this up to vegans, in no case did any ever mention a workable solution.
No, I've already cited evidence. We should trust experts, not some anti-vegan who asserts misinformation that is downplaying the negative effect animal agriculture causes without evidence.
Anecdotes are not evidence (that includes comments you've made previously in anti-vegan subs). For those who are serious about going vegan and for health concerns, there are plenty of resources online.
But you cannot show where those articles mention any details about how crops grown for both human and livestock consumption were assessed, so we can see that they didn't count a crop as 80-90% grown for livestock consumption (simply by calculating feed mass vs. human consumption mass) when the entire crop has to be grown for either type of crop produce. Right? And you cannot demonstrate a scenario for complete nutrition that doesn't involve livestock. Right? The plant foods that you eat, what proportion of the plant (by mass or volume) is human-edible? What proportion of a canola, wheat, etc. plant is eaten? Does such a crop somehow use only 10% of the land, if only 10% of the plant is human-consumed?
Then there's also no support for the belief in lifetime animal-free diets being sustainable, as this has never been studied and there are no real-world examples of populations that consume no animal foods.
None of those address my situation. It would be extremely unlikely that 100% of people saying (online or IRL) that they tried an animal-free diet and it didn't work out for them, even with doctor consultations and following the typical advice about it, are all faking our stories. If many of the famous vegan chefs and influencers, whose incomes relied on the perception that they do not eat animal foods, could not make it work out then this seems to say something important about biological compatibility with animal-free diets. "Oh but they all ate junk foods. They could have used standard advice about combining plants for complete protein and blah-blah-blah..." This belief could not be more ridiculous in the context of individuals such as famous vegan chef Alexandra Jamieson or YouTubers whose lifestyles were focused on healthy foods.
If you have evidence, then present it. Just because animals eat byproducts as well doesn't dismiss the large area of crop grown specifically to feed animals.
The WWF did a report that 40% of the most productive land in the UK is used to feed farmed animals and then on top of that they also import animal feed from Brazil which is one of the leading causes of current deforestation.
https://www.wwf.org.uk/press-release/transform-uk-farmland-boost-food-resilience
A plant-based diet has been shown to be healthy for all stages of life. I'm not a nutritionists and I'm not saying to speak to influencers, there are resources and even access to nutrionists. Again, I don't know what you've done personally or the validity of your claims as they are anecdotes.
Cool. I don't support it. What does that have to do with my post?
Appeal to futility
probably too costly
Agriculture is very much a part of the majority of earths ecosystem at this point, and supports a huge number of living things directly, not to mention the downstream decomposers, etc. We are well past pretending we aren't very much embroiled in a complex food web.
And your conclusion is the exactly backwards and wrong way to think of trophic levels. 10% transfers between levels, but it's not one way, and there are overlapping parts, especially wiith levels of omnivores, and all of the energy eventually ends up as heat, it's just a question of how many trophic levels it can support before it does. Starving out levels to efficiently conserve this constant energy coming from the sun and take a meandering current of energy that supports many levels of complexity and straighten it into a canal to move it directly from producers to apex is engineering a disaster.
The reason it seems wasteful is not because it wastes the suns energy that gets used by plants. it’s because it requires growing 10x the crops, which involves 10x the greenhouse gas emissions from farming and transport, 10x the water usage, 10x the land usage, 10x every downside of ag.
Agriculture supports humans, and harms almost everything else. It causes enormous amounts of deforestation, habitat loss, poisoning of water ways, etc. It is not a part of a balanced ecosystem, it is in direct conflict with it
So beyond getting rid of Animal ag what would you do to make agriculture more sustainable? (Since I assume that we agree that we aren't going back to hunting/gathering)
It sounds like the problem isn't that we have 10x as many plants growing, but the emissions from transport and harvesting that use fossil fuels. So we eliminate those emissions, already in progress, and what's wrong with a bunch of extra plants and a bunch of land devoted to growing them? At the core.
Transport is typically less than 10 of emissions from agriculture.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
I cannot ever get anyone to cite evidence for this which doesn't suppose that humans would be able to digest corn stalks and such. Nobody can ever cite any research which estimates a livestock-free food system which covers all nutritional needs for humans already existing (and the human population is still growing).
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
Why would it require less cropland to feed the world a plant-based diet than it currently does to feed the world if it doesn't require growing more crops to produce animal products than to produce plant products?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312201313_Livestock_On_our_plates_or_eating_at_our_table_A_new_analysis_of_the_feedfood_debate
The majority of what farm animals are fed is grown exclusively to produce farm animal feed; co and by-products of human-grade crops are a minority of farm animal feed.
The first article doesn't feature any calculations for complete nutrition. It doesn't recognize regional differences in soil types, etc., that restrict types of crops that can be grown in any particular area. It supposes a magical scenario in which farmers grow ideal combinations of plant foods for humans, regardless of economic conditions such as food prices. Grain production dominates plant farming, with specific reasons: compatibility with long-term storage, uses in processed food products, etc. Fruit and non-grain vegetable farming is much more limited due to quick spoilage, higher risk of crop failures in many cases, distribution issues, and other factors affecting profits.
This is only the case if counting pastures. Most pastures aren't arable. Humans cannot eat pasture grasses. Etc. It gets re-discussed almost daily. The study contradicts you, for example this text:
Why would it need to. The idea that you need meat is a marketing campaign, not anything based in science.
The Poore and Nemecek study it cites does factor this in. You have been caught lying about this study so many times it's actually insane that you're still allowed to comment here.
Once again you're lying about this and you can no longer link the study you used to (because you never actually read it until I pointed out it makes the opposite claims to you).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Environmentalism/comments/1o4nhbl/comment/njsbx7q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The relevant metric is not the relative amount of inedible animal feed, but the relative amount of human edible food used to produce meat. It's a net loss. You'd know that if you actually read the study you used to link all the time.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
That's funny because this one does it.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216
You have seen this before. You keep claiming that you debunked it based on flaws in the study. But when asked to specifically quote the sections from the study you're referring to you can't... Because you read the flaws on a blog posts by a farmer and blindly believed them.
Now before you've also pretended like a plant based food system cannot provide all nutrients. You've never provided an ounce of evidence for this, nor are you even capable of presenting a single essential nutrient that cannot be obtained without animal products. You usually go into anecdotal evidence but even then when asked for food diaries you can't even provide that
That's the infamous Poore & Nemecek 2018 study, which not only didn't estimate any livestock-free food system for complete human nutrition but when making calculations for global farming it ignored major regions to make livestock farming seem more industrial than it is in reality.
Irrelevant since that study doesn't pertain to what I was talking about.
You're referring, again, to a conversation in which I linked several intensively-scientific resources which in turn linked citations and explained it all. You demanded hand-holding about it, after ridiculing me based on ONE of the cited articles having a bias (not relevant because it used citations that could be checked independently of the article) and since you would not answer my questions about your claims I gave up on the conversation. You have brought this up at least five times now to misrepresent what happened. If you don't have a factual argument about the topic at hand, you should just refrain from commenting.
See the paragraph above.
Oh yes I have. This study calculated that removing livestock from the USA food system would reduce GHG emissions only slightly (even while comparing cyclical livestock methane with net-additional fossil fuel methane as though they are equivalent), and lead to increased nutritional deficiencies in the human population. The amount of food produced was more, but the additional food was much lower in nutrient density so there was a net loss of nutrition produced. Also, this is just for USA where CAFO farms are prolific and subsistence livestock farming is rare. Measured on a global scale, the GHG change would be much lower and the nutritional deficits much higher. The USA is better suited than most countries for arable land, for this reason most places would fare much worse without their livestock.
Oh yes, I'm well aware of the criticisms by processed-foods-worshipping Willett and other "researchers" which disregard that no study estimating such a radical change in the food system could be perfect. The study authors wrote a response, explaining the logical problems of the critics.
I've done this but you seem to have not understood, which I'll not be making my problem.
Yeah the 'infamous' study that is the most comprehensive analysis of the environmental impact of food production. I guess it's infamous because Brian's favourite blog writer told him so?
As I said, This is only true if you assume animals are required for complete nutrition.
But you can't provide any evidence of it. So it did actually provide that.
And and and... It's also completely irrelevant to the environmental impact assessment. Even if veganism was impossible and we're all imaginary, it still has absolutely nothing to do with the environment impact. Do you get that? Your entire argument is gish galloping...
Can you quote the text where they did this (spoiler: he won't because he's making that point up... We've don't this dance before).
No, you didn't. You linked a blog post written by an anonymous farmer that vaguely referred to ideas about the study that aren't true. When I asked you, not the anonymous farmer, to highlight the text that this is referring to, you cannot. Because you've yet to read the paper.
Are you serious? I provided you with the most comprehensive study on this topic ever produced. You made a false claim about the methodology, and you are unable to back it up. Your sources previously was other people saying the same things but none of you actually cite the text. Listen, it's nobody's responsibility but you to learn critical thinking.
Here I show that A) you didn't even read the study because you were confused about my rebuttal and B) that they make wild assumptions such as the food production system would not at all adapt to market trends over the decades it would take to go plant based and that humans would eat 1000s of surplus calories per day, and that everything else would be burned. It's so stupid it's actually insane. You know you've been debunked before. You're purposely being dishonest.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1klsmtv/comment/msfg973/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Every time I correct you on methane and the carbon cycle you ignore it so I will just link a previous example.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/1nq2zk8/comment/ngcikm3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Ah the bias strikes again. Let's see folks do you want to take advice from the most cited nutrition scientist of all time, or an anti vegan who gets caught lying on a weekly basis?
Yeah fuck your PhD and decades of research experience. OG Brian on Reddit just put your credibility in inverted commas. Get rekt
And it's not a good one. They just repeat their arguments but phrases differently.
No, you haven't. You said iron but offered no evidence. Still waiting
Plants also waste solar energy. Why don't you eat microbes which are 10x more efficient?
The first sentence literally says it has nothing to o with wasting solar energy lol
And the next few ones talk about resources. Read it buddy.
So what food are you suggesting we are ethically inclined to eat vs plants that would result in significantly less greenhouse gases / use less water / use less land ?
What are you confused about? I literally said it already.
You said "eat microbes" but idk what that is. Like what foods are microbes and what aisle of the grocery store do I find them in?
You can find them in the cope section, right beside the bad faith arguments.
This dude doesn't care about anything. He just wants to make whataboutism arguments
Microbes are impractical for a number of reasons. Complexity of farming, unpalatable as food on their own, lack of variety/nutrients. Their theoretical efficiency at turning sun into calories doesn’t translate into efficiency at producing edible, desirable calories in a grocery store for a given amount of farmland/co2/water usage. That isn’t true for plants vs meat.
Irrelevant
Wrong
Wrong. Microbes use much much less land and resources compared to plants
Give a better reason than “wrong” haha, as far as I can tell it’s not done at scale in reality so it doesn’t seem like it works in practice. It seems impractical/unprofitable for producers based on the fact that it is not done on a large scale, and isn’t an option for consumers because it’s basically not available anywhere. Telling people to eat microbes is like telling them to get all their power from nuclear
So after looking at it, do you realize that you were wrong? And is that why you switched to not done at scale? It's a new thing so of course it'll take time.
Lol, what a logic. It's because people like you who are not educated about the topic but like to talk nonsense.
How much edible calories per land and edible calories per water usage do we get from microbes versus plants?
10x more
I would love to see what microbe can be mass-farmed and give us 10x the calories compared to plants, while able to meet all nutritional needs. Do you have any research that I could look up?
Here's one of them
https://www.solein.com/whats-the-impact/
Which ones, what aisle of the supermarket?
Solar energy is infinite on a human timescale
It's land use that is the major issue. And GHG emissions of course
Please educate yourself. You are ignorant on this topic. Microbe farming is better than crop farming on all of those accounts.
Yet you offer no evidence apart from telling others to educate themselves.
If microbe farming is so brilliant then why have I never seen microbe based food in stores?
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Mods come on? Look at this. They're not even trying to engage in good faith.
Just Google it, and any variation of that is not a permitted argument here. Read the rules.
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You think they have it backwards?
If it takes for example 10x as much land, energy, water etc to produce calories via livestock than calories via plants you don’t understand why that would be an environmental issue people would bring up?
I think you don’t understand why trophic levels are brought up.
Oh no, 10X the plants growing and making oxygen and providing habitat. The horror...
Seriously, what is wrong with that?
What’s wrong with it?
It takes more water, land and agricultural products to create the same amount of calories while also contributing more towards global warming.
I guess if you need it stated very explicitly, using much more of our limited resources while also contributing way more towards global warming is a negative thing.
Do you think we have infinite resources and that there is no scarcity and no climate change?
Oh no, more land growing plants! it would be so much better if it were concrete! Growing more plants is a carbon sink. Sure there are fossil fuel based ag shit that is bad, but it's not the core problem. It is precisely because we do not have infinite resources that the worst thing possible to do would be to funnel it all through the lowest trophic level and just have vast yeast vats and humans.
How the mods haven’t banned you considering the entire thread is you acting like this and not engaging intellectually with anyone is beyond my understanding.
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Do you think a dense rainforest absorbs more carbon or a field of soybeans?
Rainforest, but the value of a rainforest is infinitely more than a carbon sink.
I appreciate you actually answering as it is rare for some posters. You recognize we clear rainforest to grow food for livestock correct? So the point before about growing carbon sinks should be invalid.
Rainforest is cleared most often initially for timber profits. In the Amazon, the next most common is soy plantations almost all of which are also producing soy oil for human consumption (as biofuel, ingredients in processed foods products, inks, candles, industrial lubricants, etc.). For most of those crops, it is the bean solids left after pressing for oil that are fed to livestock. Arguments that this is land cleared for livestock, but don't acknowledge the human consumption, are dishonest and it's the foundation of "Amazon deforestation for livestock." In every OWiD article I've seen about this, and many that are similar, they using this dishonesty.
BTW, much of the "Amazon deforestation for ranching" has actually been deforestation for the above-mentioned timber and soybeans, and then after soybean farming wrecks the soil an area is then used for grazing which is more tolerant of poor-quality soil (and builds soil quality over the long term).
I've mentioned these things with citations lots of times, but anti-livestock people have just ignored or talked around the info.
Of course I recognize that, I am not in any way advocating for livestock.
"Calories... calories... calories..."
If humans could thrive on just calories, and we ignored everything else about sustainability (repetitively growing a plant crop unavoidably off-balances soil systems and promotes crop pests, effects of crop chemical products on environments, that healthy soil relies on animal activity, etc.), then "trophic levels" could be a valid argument.
Can you quote where anyone suggested we solely live off calories?
You do this every time and you can never do it. Calories is the baseline, not the finish line. We simply need to produce enough calories to feed humans. Literally nobody, I mean nobody, ever argued that we stop considering what's in the food after that.
Can you name one single essential nutrient that is more efficiently produced by animal agriculture? Just one?
You're asked every time you engage in this topic and you never respond.
Because you have no answer.
Stop pretending like this is an argument.
You even went so far before as to claim humans require less calories if they only eat meat. You offered no evidence when pushed
Unsurprisingly considering our interaction history, you're misrepresenting my comment. By considering only calories for land use efficiency, there is an implicit assumption that the utility of farm land is only in producing calories. It is similar for calculations of just protein, humans cannot live on protein either or any combination of just calories and protein. Globally, nutritional deficiencies tend to involve: iron, Vit D, Vit B12, calcium, magnesium, etc.
Well you've misrepresented the issue so this is nonsensical.
There's nothing logical here. Levels of essential nutrients do not follow from calories. A human could have an infinite amount of corn, soybeans, wheat, and rice and eat them in any combination yet starve to death.
Well all of them, basically, from a certain perspective. Globally, most farm land is pastures. Most of that is not arable (compatible with growing plants for human consumption). Livestock animals such as beef cattle (I prefer bison/elk/yak but whatever) can convert pasture grasses into nutrition that's highly compatible for humans, with sunlight and rain as the main inputs. A human could have access to an infinite amount of pasture grasses yet starve to death, it is not edible food for us.
If I were to pick one nutrient to highlight, it would be iron. Many humans have low performance in converting iron from plants into heme iron (available in animal foods) which human bodies cannot function without. But there are other nutrients that are low or have low compatibility in plant foods. If you were interested in discussing this sincerely, there's a lot of science info I could mention.
I very often respond, so you're lying here. The things I'm mentioning here are repeats from other conversations, but you keep returning with these fallacies.
Most of the rest of your comment is just repetition of what you've said already.
Another lie. I would not ever have said that and I'm sure you cannot cite an example. I may have said that a human would need a lower volume of food, because nutrition in animal foods is more bioavailable and with less (or even zero) undigestible components.
If humans could thrive on just calories.
You're committing a motte and bailey fallacy here.
No the only calories part is just in your mind. Nobody ever said we ignore all other variables.
But let's take this one step at a time. Can you concede that plant agriculture is in fact much more efficient than animal agriculture in terms of calories per unit land?
You say I misrepresented you but then you make this claim. Bro... Who said we could? Do you have anything other than a strawman?
OK? Globally most people consume animal products so I guess that solution isn't working eh?
And all of these can be more efficiently produced without animal agriculture so... Thanks?
But you can't name any? Ok well you've set this up so that if I name a single nutrient that's more efficiently produced by plants you are then wrong. Protein. Simple eh?
And you had to put in the disclaimer of from a certain perspective since all the metrics you actually want to use label plant agriculture as more efficient.
Irrelevant since we don't want to use it for that. We want to rewild it. You know this.
Can you even pretend like you don't get your talking points from beef marketing campaigns?
Do I really need to sit you down and explain why ecosystem destruction in favour of monocropping grass is a bad thing?
No, sunlight and rain are not the main input. Land is. Why are you trying to pretend like this is some free food or something?
Ok and? Who is A) claiming we want to eat grass and B) suggesting we continue to tear down ecosystems and preserve grassland monocropping for human food instead of just rewilding?
Everything you've said so far is nonsense, strawman arguments and you know it because you repeatedly come in here and pretend like you haven't been debunked by dozens of users.
Source that it's more efficiently produced by animals? Lots of buzzwords here Brian but zero science. Quick question, where do animals get said iron from...? Is it sunlight and rain?
But you can't link even a single instance?
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1oh0wbt/comment/nlx2swj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Here when told you can get all the nutrients you need in the daily calorie intake from plants alone you respond with meat eating requiring less food. Less food by what other metric Brian?
Edit: Notice how he ignored basically most of my comment here in his reply...
This is more of the same, just sophistry. You insinuate that iron in plants is the same, which anyone with a bit of familiarity about the topic would know is false. I would challenge you to point out where it is shown that plants have heme iron, or alternately where it is shown scientfically that humans do not need it. But such a discussion would be pointless with you in particular, because see above.
You claimed I said that humans would need less calories if they only eat meat, and I explained that you must be referring to a comment in which I said the volume of food could be smaller (food volume and calories obviously are not the same thing). You've responded here to double-down on it, without any logic. I'll add that I would never suggest anyone eat just meat, as a carnivore diet to be sustainable would have to involve organs and other nose-to-tail consumption.
Your comments towards me typically are like this: illogical nonsense, misrepresenting things I've said, dragging the discussion off-topic, claiming your beliefs as a given but demanding intense citations for anything I say even when the claim isn't controversial, etc.
Missed this the first time. The definition of starvation is a sever calorie deficit unable to support life. Here is the definition from wiki:
Another from Google:
And also from Oxford dictionary:
I don't get why you make wild unnecessary arguments when you don't even know what the words you're using mean
Not sure what your argument is...
No one says in a vacuum we are ethically obligated to consume food sources from a lower trophic level.
It's in response to people that make the factually incorrect claim that animal products are needed to feed the human population...
It's please stop acting like efficiency is good in a food web. An anti-argument.
I'm not sure I really understand your point. If we feed food to pigs and then eat the pigs that will be less efficient than eating the food we grew directly. It's honestly that simple.
And efficiency is a very bad thing to have in a food web.
Citation needed. What is this even supposed to mean?
Citation given, that's what those two very well researched papers I posted are.
A hyperlink isn't a citation
And this isn't even an attempt to open your mouth for spoon-feeding.
I'm not wasting my life opening random links for no reason.
You made a proposition, support it.
asks for citations, refuses to look. I see who you are.
Au contraire. I did look. I'm eager to see how you get to your conclusion per the study.
Ahh, so you are just full of lies. Toodles.
Then surely you can quote them to prove your point.
Surely they won't.
You're gonna need to explain that one. We are growing food ourselves to feed animals. We don't exist as part of a food web.
We absolutely do. We are part of the detrius cycle as a producer for skin mites. Our bodily waste is floor level for another. Our trash especially food waste. Things are far more complex than is easy to see at first glance. And this isn't an anti vegan argument at all. It's an anti smashing producer and apex trophic levels together imaging only good times. Care must be taken or we are going to be in a horrorshow of yeast vats and endless urban sprawl.
In your mind, what benefit comes from clearing first to grow food to feed to pigs?
I did not say we should grow food to feed pigs. I don't think we should. You may be reading more into what I am saying than what I am saying.
Please clarify your point then. Based on your original post and what you just wrote it's unclear what your suggestion or point is.
His point is making up a ridiculous argument, claiming vegans believe it, then trying to get people to argue with him about it.
But instead, people are just wondering what he's talking about.
If you agree we should eschew efficiency in food webs we are on the same side. And I've been clear this is aimed only at those thinking the lower trophic level you get your food from the better. If that's no one , please explain the other posts.
You are making baseless generalisations to a specific argument. All people are saying is that eating a plant-based diet won't lead to an increase in total crop production or land use. You are trying to generalise this specific point which isn't even a moral point, to a claim about the moral worth of trophic levels.
You fundamentally failed to begin outlining why that approach is invalid.
The only "trophic levels" argument I've seen vegans use is to refute those who claim that eating a plant-based diet will lead to more deforestation and land use. The opposite is true and this can be understood through tropic levels.
Plants are on a lower level than herbivores so some energy is going to be lost and there will be less efficiency in eating a cow versus eating crops of the same amount of calories or protein.
This is also supported by the amount of land use dedicated to crops for humans and those related to animal agriculture: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
The argument for reducing trophic levels isn't a moral argument based on the inherent worth of trophic levels themselves.
Thank you for attempting to clarify here, OP's argument is so odd and blatantly strawman-y....
As usual, it's an OWiD article that supposes: humans could use calories in corn stalks and such, "calories" are all that humans need, most of those crops "grown for livestock" are not also grown for human consumption, and eliminating livestock would not cause much-increased expansion of plant crops (including crops that often result indeforestation such as palm and coconut) for human consumption.
Where does it suppose that? If we take that 16% of land used for crops for human consumption then double it, we'd use roughly 1/3 the land we use total and feed us 1.5x the amount.
The 16% figure: most ag land is pastures, most of which is not arable (compatible with growing human-edible plant crops). Nobody can ever demonstrate how this would work out for complete nutrition that humans need, it's all "I read it in an article" with no recognition at all for reasons that crops are grown the way they are now (regional compatibilities about soil/climate/etc., economics, etc.).
Where has it ever been established scientfically that there could be a realistic livestock-free scenario that meets minimum nutritional needs? Even putting aside human incompatiblities with animal-free diets (such as people sensitive to carbs/fiber/whatever, combinations of allergies/sensitivities that leave too-few options for sufficient nutrients, and so forth)?
You're completely misrepresenting the data. There are multiple sources that show that there is a large percentage e of crop grown to feed animals.
If we look at what crops at the UK we can see that not only 40% of the most productive land is used to grow food for animals but animal feed is imported from place like Brazil that is responsible for some of the worst deforestation.
https://www.wwf.org.uk/press-release/transform-uk-farmland-boost-food-resilience
So, not only are you promoting a system that violently exploits, tortures, and kills animals, you are promoting a system that is having a devastating effect on the environment.
Oh he knows what he's doing. He's purposely lying about this and has been caught on multiple occasions doing so
https://www.reddit.com/r/Environmentalism/comments/1o4nhbl/comment/njsbx7q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
So do you believe out of the ~80% of agricultural land - a lot of which is used for growing crops to feed humans - that we couldn't find an absolute 16% percent suitable to growing plants to feed humans? Not to mention much of that land used for grazing animals could be converted too even if it currently isn't suitable.
I think that that demand is a ridiculous standard to impose. Should I ask you if it's realistic to meet everyone's needs on an omnivorous diet? I'm not a biologist or ecologist or whatever so I doubt my own abilities to provide a rigorous analysis of it, however there maybe be some experts who've done that already. Can you provide evidence for that claim on your own end, that an omnivirous diet can meet everyone's needs? I'd like to see it because then those people may have also done a similar analysis on a plant-based diet. This might be less likely since the world is full of meat eaters and therefore a plant-based analysis might not be relevant to the current omnivorous world.
Nevertheless I am convinced that an omnivorous diet can feed everyone adequately because I look around and see plenty of healthy meat eaters. Considering a plant-based diet will use less land and I see plenty of healthy vegans, I too think that it's adequate.
Another thing to mention on sustainability, apart from land and calories, is water usage and CO2. If we want a more equitable world then we need to cut down on meat because of the amounts of water use and CO2 that it uses.
EDIT: Just to add, if you have any doubts about a specific nutrient that can't be fulfilled by a plant-based diet then I'm more than happy to discuss the land use about a specific nutrient as I feel like I can do that analysis quite easily.
It seems then that you don't know of any evidence for a livestock-free farming system providing complete nutrition for humanity. It's just your belief.
Water use for livestock is extremely exaggerated. The resources that vegans like, whenever I check, have counted every drop of rain falling on pastures as if it is water used by livestock although nearly all of it passes immediately to water tables/streams/etc. as it would without livestock. Meanwhile, crops such as avocados and almonds use tremendous amounts of pumped water.
As for your ableism, I described my health circumstances which make me fully incompatible with animal-free diets here. Whenever I bring this up with any vegan who claims everyone can thrive without animal foods, they don't have any practical suggestions for my specific situation.
No, they don't count every drop. They account for green and blue water use. You know this because you've been told before.
Can you share a food journal from when you were vegan? How can anyone make suggestions when you have not offered any specifics?
May I ask some questions about your conditions? Not in regard to veganism actually, just medically interested.
If you aren't setting me up for some kind of trolling, then sure go ahead.
ok thanks.
How do they find out about this, can they do genetic testing?
Is that tested by raised IgM-ALA?
Not a question, but feel you. have the same issue and sucked as a kid. It's actually super commmon, I see an ENT physician every few months for cleansing and he once said half his work is just patients who need this done.
To give more background, I had obvious signs of certain issues in early childhood. Moderate tasks such as lawn mowing were more challenging for me than they should have been. I was the first to tire out on a soccer field although up to the point of fatigue I did like exercise. I suffered from cold infections often for weeks where others getting the same infection would resolve it in a day or two. My skin was dry and I depended on lotion due to rashes. I've had obvious fungus growing under toenails since the earliest age I can recall. Etc.
I used the 23andMe home test, ten years ago which was well before they were a partner of GlaxoSmithKline. I would definitely use a different service these days. I then downloaded the raw data and ran it through a few interpretation services: Genetic Genie which was free but I found it too basic, Promethease which cost five bucks at the time and is excellent, etc. I found I have some SNPs commonly associated with certain nutritional bottlenecks, such as being genetically set to make less of one or another important enzyme so that certain nutrient conversions work slowly. The MTHFR SNPs are among the most well-known, but there are others. Some SNPs have to do with too-slow metabolism of stress chemicals or something similar. Such as, having a "slow" COMT can result in too-high catecholomines (COMT stands for Catechol-O-methyltransferase which names an enzyme and the genetic location for it). Having a SNP of a certain type doesn't always mean that a health issue would manifest, there are epigenetics involved (such as having a low-stress vs. traumatic childhood) and SNPs can express to lower and higher levels. My idiot Boomer parents ensured that my health issues would express to just about the maximum extent.
So I knew that I had these SNPs, and that some are associated with specific health issues I was experiencing. I used this info to give me clues for potential workarounds/treatments. I used trial-and-error to determine certain supplements that could assist my sluggish nutritional pathways. Oh yes I know, I often speak against vegan beliefs but I use supplements. Well, these are nutrients not found substantially in any whole foods, so diet cannot be a solution for these. I found that a lot of things worked better when I used folinic acid for folate, and hydroxocobalamin/adenosylcobalamin for B12.
Knowledge of the SNPs helped me understand some reasons that my gut is so sensitive. Eating fiber at every meal had been far too much for me, it abraded the linings of my intestines beyond what would be repaired between meals. I transitioned further and further into eating animal foods, because they were easier on my gut and I could get enough with two meals/day for a longer repair break between last meal of a day and first meal the next day. I had some success with gut-repair formulas (I recall using UltraInflamX by Metagenics, as one example) but only initially as I was recovering from having been plant-based. As I went further towards a diet that worked well for me, I found that using additional nutrient products didn't help at all.
I made a lot of adjustments with the help of doctors and research documents I located myself. Over time, I went from having tragic eczema (to the point of sometimes-bleeding rashes all over) to having perfect skin most of the time. My skin makes enough oil, I wash dishes now barehanded where I had to use gloves before, I don't use skin products at all, etc. It's been a major quality-of-life improvement to not have to wear hand protection for routine things such as folding clean laundry.
Ah, I used to know this. The data is on a hard drive someplace. I recall a blood draw specifically for testing HLA, at a doctor's office. From a text file, I see that my HLA haplotype is 15-6-51 which is associated with mold illness. I'm definitely susceptible to mold: ever since an unfortunate experience living in an apartment that the IDIOT neighbor above created a water issue and the place became moldy, I've been much more ill and have experienced reactions to perfumes, lots of industrial aromatic materials such as adhesives in housing/furniture, etc. This was a major reason that I had lived in an RV for awhile at ranches: being away from pollution including pesticides and traffic smog. HLA vs. mold illness is controversial, mainly because the science is newer. HLA config vs. immune sensitivity is not at all controversial for certain things, in fact a person's HLA is a major part of a routine hospital assessment about organ donor compatibility.
"Cleansing"? I was using cholestyramine powder to bind mycotoxins so that I poop them out. It wasn't covered by insurance, was expensive, and the taste is unbelievably unpleasant even when taken with yogurt/whatever. But it had a major effect. These days, I do maintenance by taking activated charcoal capsules which are inexpensive and easily tolerated.
Gish galloping.
The environmental claims are completely independent of the nutritional claims.
Vegans don't want to "reduce the number of trophic levels." We want to consume at lower trophic levels because that causes less overall harm.
Do you? You can eat microbes which would cause less harm. Why don't I see any vegans advocating for that?
We all eat microbes, do you mean eat only microbes? I don't think that's possible.
Let me explain this better. Veganism is about avoiding animal exploitation. When we talk about trophic levels, it's not about reducing the number of trophic levels, it's about consuming at lower trophic levels. That causes less overall harm and that's a benefit of eating at lower trophic levels, but the goal of veganism is not to cause the least amount of harm possible. The goal of veganism is to avoid animal exploitation. That goal is achieved AND the goal of less harm (which is often a shared goal between vegans and nonvegans, particularly in terms of environmental harm) is achieved by eating at lower trophic levels, which is not about "reducing the number" of trophic levels.
If the food web collapses because you've smashed producers and apex together it will cause a lot more harm. My whole point is that your goal is at odds with your method because you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what is healthier for a food web. I put two very good papers in my post about this. This is not saying don't be vegan.
lol what? A vegan world would have more apex and meso apex predators because we’d use less land for agriculture and give back land to native animals. Instead of destroying their habitats to grow food to feed cattle, pigs, chickens, even fish we’d just give that land back to nature. Vegan diets use less land.
Can you show me what foods are available that meet this definition that you keep referring to?
From your sources I can't find anything that says more trophic levels are needed for stability, it requires tropic complexity in the food web instead. Two ways to achieve that are "a majority of weak links" or by "strong links concentrated on the lower trophic levels".
Now let's look at the addition animal farming brings us. The farmed animals are fed by us from the lower levels. Then pretty much all of the farmed animals feed into the human layer. In nature, many animals would die and decompose for different lower trophic levels, now it's humans eat them, and their poo goes straight all the way down to microbes in sewage treatment facilities. That's two very strong links connected at the highest trophic level. Ie. the opposite of "a majority of weak links" or "strong links concentrated on the lower trophic levels".
In nature more trophic levels and biodiversity is a good thing. Agriculture isn't nature. Our modern diet also isn't nature. Veganism concerns itself with what living things are raised and/or killed for us to eat. Veganism isn't a debate about the natural ecosystem in the wild.
Trophic levels come up sometimes as a response to "what if plants feel pain?" or "what about all the little bugs that die to grow plants?". The transfer of energy up the food chain is VERY inefficient. We deforest and spray pesticides far far less when we eat the lowest on the food chain.
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