I calculated 40% by using one of the most calorie-efficient animals and lowest-calorie feeds to prove a point. With a little more Googling I found this:
Averaged over all categories, caloric and protein efficiencies are 7%–8%. At 3% in both metrics, beef is by far the least efficient.
At least you’ve started walking back from “mass adoption of veganism without far-reaching systemic change will do Literally Nothing to help” but you still seem to be missing the fundamental point that if we produce fewer plants, plant production is less bad.
We cannot support the current American diet just by changing the organization of our agriculture. We need to fundamentally change what we eat, and that will have more of an impact than changing how we produce it.
Seriously, I’m trying to figure out your proposal. Are you suggesting we dissolve cities and revert to small communities centered around farming?
In my mind, individual veganism is largely a political choice. In the same way you wouldn’t take me seriously as a feminist if I only paid female employees equally on Mondays, you should be less likely to take my suggestions to move society away from animal agriculture seriously if I don’t demonstrate that I’m willing to live that lifestyle myself. Individual actions make a real and calculable difference, but they’re dwarfed by the effects of activism.
The thread title is tongue-in-cheek. How fucking stupid did you assume I was this whole time, that you thought I hadn’t noticed the contradiction?
That said, I absolutely love the gymnastics that let people go from “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism” straight to “all consumption under capitalism is ethical (except Chick-fil-A lol)”.
I want to add, with vegans’ tendency towards “organic” foods and that “organic” foods typically need much more farmland than “non-organic” foods, everyone going to a vegan diet could result in the opposite of the intended impact.
Is the vegan obsession with organic produce really that common? I see way more discussions about which junk foods have whey powder than anything about organic food.
That’s definitely true for products marketed to vegans, but I’d always assumed those were less popular with vegans than, say, oreos. I have literally nothing to back that up though.
Being vegan for a decade and a half, I’d say that’s about 50/50 true for people who are vegan long-term, depending on where they live, but people who are just hopping into veganism as a fad-diet typically target vegan specific stuff while they’re doing it. I’d say in places like Portland, OR where veganism is incredibly popular, people tend to aim more at specifically vegan foods as it is easier to find those items.
Edit: I also want to add that this is beginning to skew more toward “organic” foods overall though, in large part due to the vegan products being carried by major business, such as Burger King (forgot that’s the Impossible Burger and not Beyond Burger) Carl’s Jr. or Tim Hortons, being “organic”.
I’ve been giving it up incrementally, Though I’ve got a bit of an edge in that I’ve been on a mediterranean diet my whole life by virtue of my Italian parents and grandparents. The jump from there to vegan is too much but to pescatarian is not so bad. I imagine the same will be true to vegetarian.
You’re working off the assumption that animals have to be fed entirely on grain. In small scale permaculture setups, fruit drops, duckweed, compost worms, grazing, & food scraps can provide a lot of the needed nutrition for egg production. If they do need grain, spent grain from breweries can be used. Additionally, for sustainable meat raising, there are much better candidates than chickens that can be pastured. But they are great for aerating & fertilizing soil & clearing weeds.
Basically This.
Also I’m not a fan of bad faith misrepresentations of other people’s stances just to fuel the fervor.
