Supermarket meats often contain a fair bit of water weight IME.
Burden of proof here
At the butcher I pay only slightly more, I know exactly which farm it came from, I know where it was slaughtered and processed, and I can ask for specific cuts/amounts, so less wastage.
Its also much higher quality and not as "wet", so its much nicer to cook with (and I'm not paying for water weight).
I've saved a metric shitload on my monthly food shopping by using the butchers and greengrocers in my area instead of the supermarkets.
It's all about the access to the vegetarian and vegan foods to those who want it, and it happens to become more popular, so market adapts.
But you present it like someone tries to take your food.
This last year I am really decreasing how much meat I eat (ill never give it up although I am excited about ground cricket meat and trying that). I am doing it for my health, costs, and because its good for the planet long term.
Cashew cheese really is not better for the planet the local organic milk cheese.
In north of Holland there huge patches of land only cow can grace the land and nothing else grows, and there is an abundance of the water. Yet everyone complains about milk and meat taking too much wayer, and that growing plants would be more efficient.
It all depends, you cant just say "data".
Same with health. You really can't claim fried soya or pea protein is healthier then ground beef from a cow that spends his summers outside.
I don't think cashew cheese grows in nature, i would never consider it vegetables and I am not advocating for processed foods. Merely stating that cutting down on how much meat you eat and eating more veg is better for your health and the planet. Well backed by data.
I've got a few friends who are vegan but it's mostly me doing the questioning as I'm curious about developments in that field (and agtech)
For instance, it's multiple times less co2 impact for me eating an avocado here in Norway that's been shipped half the globe around from south america, compared to eating meat from the local farm. The scales are just so incredibly different in production (vs transportation) that it's not to "gotcha" many believe to claim that something imported is automatically bad.
Next to that it's not always Plants vs meats. In many places only cattle can graze but not much of value can grow.
The CO2 issue is really a terrible comparison. Everything cows put out has been put in from the air. The airplanes are excreting new/old CO2 taken from fossil fuels. Some claim cows are still worse because of methane, but they forget to mention methane only had 12 years lifespan in the atmosphere.
The produce to feed the cattle is often detrimental to the environment too. They're not cutting down rain forests in Brazil to produce soy for meat substitutes but rather for produce to feed animals.
But it's absolutely important to eat local and if you're gonna eat meat ensure that the animal was fed local produce too.
The vast majority of soy production, particularly the environmentally destructive production that’s converting rainforests in South America into farmland, is for animal feed, not human consumption: https://ourworldindata.org/soy
Active people will (and should) win, that's the law of nature.
That timeline is long enough to also include the serious possibility of basically any weird currently-just-Sci-Fi option: https://youtu.be/Z_ZGq8Tah0k
By the way, "the government deciding" sounds like it's totally detached from public wish. But in democratic countries public has a lot of influence on the government, way more than popular meme says (speaking as an emigrant from autocratic regime), it just public is not exercising their right (or really trust the government). So it's actually "people are going to decide".
The upside for the politicians and suppliers seems too astronomical not to be at least thinking about it.
Vegan diets generally have protein and other nutrients.
> why I should exchange a well-functioning animal-based diet into a vegan one where I need to supplement by default to fulfill human needs
applies also in the protein domain, seeing how vegan protein sources lack or have minimal concentrations of some essential amino acids, for instance
This is so easy you're probably doing it already even as a meat eater: Mexican chilli with rice? Beans and rice compensate for each other's weaknesses. Peanut butter on bread? Peanuts and wheat cover each other.
There are some things that are technically complete by themselves, but mycoprotein (Quorn) which I think is complete, isn't available for purchase everywhere.
Conversely if you do single-foodsource-diet with meat, you can also get problems, most famously protein poisoning and scurvy.
Veganism is a lifestyle based around the notion of reducing as much harm to animals a feasibly possible. No one claims that a vegan diet is centred around health. After all, you could be vegan and eat nothing but Oreo’s and Dorito’s.
Hopefully, they will. The HN community is rather hostile towards ethics (i.e. doing the right thing); but I have say it again—evil things are evil, and they must end.
They can take the animal meat (and eggs, and dairy products) from my cold dead hands..