Not talking about meat vs vegetables being better or not but do you think that vegetables aren't factory produced? Do you think that fruits and vegetables aren't picked before fresh and sprayed with chemicals to make them the 'right' color or slow ripening or keep them from spoiling? There is also the often un-talked about issue of calorie density by weight or volume. All these things need shipped from where they are grown to your store/house. Meat is generally 10 times more calorie dense. So to ship the same calories we would need 10 times the trucks which would have a huge CO2 implication. Fruits and vegetables have tons of fiber and water which are good for us but it costs to ship them. The only way to make fruits and vegetables more weight/volume dense and reduce the fiber would be to blend them up into something akin to a smoothie. But then this will require more chemicals to keep it fresh. Also, I don't want to eat all my vegetables as a liquid so....

In the end, there are hugely interconnected issues and most people take one small facet, extrapolate it to infinity and ignore all the ripple effects and consequences of even the smallest change.

> Meat is generally 10 times more calorie dense. So to ship the same calories we would need 10 times the trucks which would have a huge CO2 implication

Where do those animals get their calories from? And how efficient are they at converting those calories into consumable flesh?

Meat and animal products is a good source for essential nutritional components that you have to make a conscious effort get from a pure plant base diet.

The problem is not eating meat. It's the amount of meat people eat that's unsustainable.

"I would have to think" isn't a very compelling argument here, imo. People eating the standard American diet don't have to think because:

1. That's the most popular diet, and foods have been fortified to add vitamins and minerals the diet tends to be deficient in.

2. Well, they're not exactly beacons of health, anyway.

There are billions of vegetarians in the world. They tend to live longer and have lower rates of cancer and heart disease than their meat-eating counterparts. "Thinking" seems like worthwhile effort.

Including poor people that cannot afford meat in this statistic make your argument seem like you're not serious.

If we take India, which is the country with more vegetarians than the rest of the world combined. It's estimated that 30-40% are vegetarians. A country with a strong cultural history of vegetarianism, religious beliefs that vegetarianism is "right", have the most developed vegetarian cuisine, and a system that makes it super simple to see if something is vegetarian or not - 60-70% still eat meat. If you move to the coast less than 5% are strictly vegetarians.

The issue is not consumption of meat - it's the amount. If you add nuts, beans, and protein heavy vegetables - a family of 4 can get by with 1-1.5kg of meat weekly and make sure all their micro nutrient needs are met without even trying. 1 day with fish, 1 day with red meat, and 1 day with white meat. It's a significantly more achievable goal than cutting meat all together, and it would probably result in a more healthy population than cutting meat all together because it covers all nutritional needs.

> They tend to live longer and have lower rates of cancer and heart disease than their meat-eating counterparts

As far as I've read it's not the meat that causes this, but the lack of vegetables, browning of meat, and addition of processed meat - so while a vegetarian diet solves the problem, you can retain meat in the diet and get the benefit anyway. If you have some peer reviewed scientific papers that show otherwise, I would like to see them because I have papers showing the opposite in abundance.