Soy protein for example is particularly low in Methionine and Cystine. If your goal is to get enough of those, you might have to eat three times as much soy as for example egg whites (by weight). But similarly soy protein has more Tryptophan than beef. "Completeness" is a binary that is not quite sufficient to describe protein quality.
There is a reason whey and egg proteins are more popular among strength athletes for example, as they are richer in leucine, which seems to be the limiting amino acid in muscle building.
I still think we should eat way less meat and soy is a very high quality substitute for it.
Impossible to scale however. Not sure how it is in other EU nations, but Germany in particular loves to put animals as closely together as they can get away with, which is basically in enclosures in which the animals can't move whatsoever.
It's especially egregious because these factories get subventions by animal, so everyone is paying to create these factories from hell - including people that don't eat meat for moral reasons. And no political party sees any issues with that.
Reminds me of a statistic that most people still like to eat food even though they could satisfy their protein requirements with a nutritional slurry at 34% of the cost with a 96% reduction in fueling times.
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!
We could encourage others to do the same with, as I said above, marketing, public awareness campaigns, and encouragement for meat-free restaurants. Not everyone would shift, but in aggregate we could change demand patterns and people would still be happy. I know I would much rather eat tempeh now than any kind of meat product.
I like some vegetarian and vegan dishes but they have to be meals where meat isn’t the “hero” of that dish. For example a good curry is about the flavour of the source rather than the flavour of the protein.
This is why I think lab grown meat is the way forward.
Can you explain why 20-39% of Indians, or 276 million Indians, are vegetarian while in China, Chile, Colombia, and France (to pick a few) it is 5%? [1]
Because it is either cultural, or it is genetic. And I doubt Indians have a genetic mutation that makes them vegetarian, I think it is cultural. If a good curry is what makes more people vegetarian, then we can cook good curries anywhere.
In a meat-heavy culture, a lot of people might not realize how much they would like vegetarian meals!
> I like some vegetarian and vegan dishes but they have to be meals where meat isn’t the “hero” of that dish.
Not to be snarky, but that is the definition of a vegetarian dish. But I know what you mean, and you are right, meat substitutes do not make for very good vegan meals. A good vegan meal is one where it's not just trying to emulate meat based foods, but building a flavor profile that celebrates the actual vegetables and other ingredients in harmony.
Go to any of these Michelin rated vegan restaurants [2] for example, and you will find absolutely incredible tasting vegan meals. It takes culture to spread this kind of thing to chefs and patrons, and that is something we have influence over. I have been to Millennium [3], and it is incredible. If more meals like this were available, people "liking the taste of meat" would not really matter that much, because they would LOVE the taste of this stuff.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country
[2] https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/california/san-francisco/re...
You’ve completely ignored what I said.
1. Some people like the taste of meat. Saying they shouldn’t and it’s just a cultural thing misses the point that the flavour is desirable. This is why I suggested other means of sourcing that protein which is ethical is a better path forward than simply saying we need to change culture.
2. I’d already said in curries the meat isn’t the hero of the dish.
> In a meat-heavy culture, a lot of people might not realize how much they would like vegetarian meals!
“You shouldn’t like X, you should learn to love a completely different thing instead” is, frankly, a silly argument. What needs to happen instead is X is replaced with an ethical alternative. In this case, lab grown meat.
As I’ve said already, most meat eaters will enjoy a lot of vegetarian meals too. The problem is they also like the taste of meat. So there needs to be an ethical alternative and soybeans sadly isn’t it.
> Not to be snarky, but that is the definition of a vegetarian dish.
The fact you’ve commented saying that proves you’ve not been reading my comment properly.
> A good vegan meal is one where it's not just trying to emulate meat based foods, but building a flavor profile that celebrates the actual vegetables and other ingredients in harmony.
That’s literally the point I was making that you knee jerk argued against!
I'm from a family where one of my grandfathers was a cattle rancher and the other one a butcher, still I only eat about 1 kg of meat a month. I was terrified recently to learn that that's 10% of average American consumption. But I go in for the good shit. A little smoked meat goes a long way in altering the flavor profile of a dish. I love cooking myself a €20 steak, but I only do that every couple months. I save my fat caps and off-cuts to make sausage every few months. I only buy organic or meat with another animal welfare certification. It's expensive. As it should be.
Though even there, it would be an uphill battle fighting the farming lobbyists.
The other piece is that meat should have its externalities priced in. We shouldn't be doing to animals the things we do in factory farming. Not being shitty to animals makes animal products a lot more expensive, which generally means people consume less of them. A carbon tax also wouldn't be crazy.
People eat a lot more meat than they used to because it's cheap now. Eating meat with every meal is a relatively recent cultural phenomenon in the west. Making it not cheap again would put us back to where we were a few generations back.
People liked cigarettes as much as they liked meat, but social norms, policy changes and price hikes have made it to where people smoke now a lot less than they used to. Having a cheap / enjoyable alternative is a nice route, but it's not the only one.
And then you can just get a good quality slab of meat, give it a good char and sprinkle some salt on it and it'll stand on its own as basically a whole meal.
I think meat could 10-50x in price and I'll still find a way to eat it or I'll venture off into the wilderness and hunt it myself. No one could convince me otherwise - there's really nothing like catching your fish and cooking it over an open fire to round a day spent in the outdoors...
Gathering some nuts and fruit and blending soybeans to make tofu just doesn't have the same appeal to me... Even though wild fruit really are delicious and my friends stories of eating wild durian really inspire me to brave the sweat (and creepy crawlies and snakes) and venture off into the jungle
Yeah, this is the main reason why I mainly cook with meat. I am a lazy cook and I can cook vegetarian, but not with the same tasty resulty but I know it can be done..
But yeah, in the end we all try to justify our actions. No argument will be convincing enough if one values their taste buds more than someone’s life or the planet.
But in any case I don't think turning consumption into something moral will ever scale. If you want to curb consumption you have to price in the externalities. This is true for everything - fast fashion and cheap flights too.
I don't think it is cultural - my point is that as someone who appreciates food for more than just sustenance you'll never convince me that tempeh/tofu/jack fruit/bugs will one day make me forget that meat is delicious.
I will gladly vote with my wallet or blood sweat & tears to continue eating meat especially if it becomes sustainable via price hikes. And I don't say this from a position of arrogance - I'm saying that I would cut many many many other things out of my life before I gave up meat due to affordability issues.
I agree with the idea that a capitalist society should work harder than we do to price in externalities in order to fulfill the social value of a free market.
As a counter example to it being the only way though is how the modern world has drastically reduced and now culturally shuns (although we still have things to fix) human slavery without doing it via economic sanctions or price regulation.
I don't actually have any hope here though - politically in the US I see more of a slide away from free markets and toward techno-feudalism and culturally in the US I see a backslide in empathy and personal values people are willing to make sacrifices for.
You can't regulate people into having particular values (for good or for ill).
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-colle....
Also, soy bean based products are abundant. Tofu, tempeh, and soy milk are everywhere. Soy beans are one of the most significant crops in the world. The deliciousness of soy beans is present in the existing simple foods. I don’t personally believe the thing missing is some new kind of soy-based food. One thing we can do is encourage individuals all over the world to eat more vegan meals, and dine out at vegan restaurants. This will encourage more restaurant owners to offer more vegan options. I really don’t think this is a problem that can be solved by one big company. Soy is not some secret. We just need meat-focused cultures to understand both the problems of meat based diets and the deliciousness of vegan options. And as a vegan of five years now, the tastiest vegan meals are not some heavily processed product made from extracts of soy. It’s the basics that have existed for thousands of years, cooked well and paired with delicious vegetables, legumes, grains, and beans.
I'm not saying you're wrong, because I'm aware that modern life is different from our ancestors who depended on meat, but I want you to be aware of the magnitude of the force you're fighting against, and not say "it's just cultural, so easy to change". Imagine saying "the fact that most Americans speak English instead of Mandarin is just cultural, we could literally change it overnight if we wanted to".
What I said was that with education, outreach, and other nudges, we could, over time, affect the statistical distribution of meat consumption. Which is correct. I did not say it was easy, in fact I did not comment on how hard it would be, I just said it is possible.
In fact, fixing humanity's over-consumption of resources will be very hard. But we have no choice. We will perish if we do not. So, idk about you, but I think we had better try.
By the way, and I want to say this as a genuine bit of feedback, but it is not very interesting conversation if you are going to take what I said, turn it in to hyperbole, and then point out that the hyperbole you made up is unrealistic. I would encourage you to read comments carefully, and make sure you have really understood what the person has said. Cheers, and nice username.
Though the crowd that created the term sure doesn't mind being racist so who knows.
Often people can't change. It takes generations to leave behind. But even then, if not even acknowledged, it will continue.
I suggest being the change and tempering your language to match your intent.
If you call someone fat it’s racist?
If you call someone clumsy it’s racist?
So basically everything is racist?
“Many of the Apician dishes will not appeal to the beef eaters. It is worthy of note that much criticism was heaped upon Apicius some 200 years ago in England when beef eating became fashionable in that country. The art of Apicius requires practitioners of superior intellect. Indeed, it requires a superior clientèle to appreciate Apician dishes. But practitioners that would pass the requirements of the Apician school are scarce in the kitchens of the beef eaters. We cannot blame meat eaters for rejecting the average chef d’œuvre set before them by a mediocre cook who has learned little besides the roasting or broiling of meats. Once the average man has acquired a taste for the refined compositions made by a talented and experienced cook, say, a composition of meats, vegetables or cereals, properly “balanced” by that intuition that never fails the real artist, the fortunate diner will eventually curtail the preponderant meat diet. A glance at some Chinese and Japanese methods of cookery may perhaps convince us of the probability of these remarks.
Nothing is more perplexing and more alarming than a new dish, but we can see in a reversion to Apician cookery methods only a dietetic benefit accruing to this so-called white race of beef eaters. … One has but to study the methods of ancient and intelligent people who have suffered for thousands of years under the perennial shortage of food supplies in order to understand and to appreciate Apician methods. Be it far from us to advocate their methods, or to wish upon us the conditions that engendered such methods; for such practices have been pounded into these people by dire necessity. They have graduated from the merciless school of hunger. Food materials, we repeat, were never as cheap and as abundant as they are today. But who can say that they always will be so in the future?”
Try to not eat meat in Asian countries. My wife gave up being vegetarian while we were over there.
Whether it's Japan, Korea, Philippines, or otherwise, they love meat, in many forms. Especially chicken.
As do I.
Eh, some Asian countries are easier than others.
I've had no issues avoiding meat/dairy in when living in Japan[1]/Taiwan/Singapore, and these are all cases where you can find a vegetarian or vegan version of a local dish so you're not missing out on the culture. I know many over there who make it work without issue too.
Korea and the Philippines though... for sure an example of higher difficulty.
[1] Okinawa is slightly harder than mainline Japan due to regional cuisine differences, but even then it's not the end of the world.
When you see their very tiny cages in animal shops, or eating octopus alive (“but they don’t feel anything”).
It is a bit like if they still live in the 90s (though it’s an amazing place! Like the 90s were).
But my point was that pretty much all asian countries love meat.
I mean, food in South Korea and the Philippines is 90% chicken.
Meat consumption is everywhere, because it provides the calories people need, easily, and tastes delicious.
People don't want to (and sometimes can't!) eat the stuff we feed to cows and chicken, anywhere.
I agree that it's not necessarily easy to find dishes with no meat at all in Asian countries, though.
It's probably a better strategy to try to convince people to eat less meat per dish (as in many Asian preparations) than to go vegetarian, anyway. At least it would be easier to convince me, that's for sure... if my country had the hawker stalls that they have in Singapore, I would already be eating less meat.
In Japan many dishes are what you describe.
In Korea and the Philippines, many dishes are pure meat.
I have no strategy or intent to control peoples diet though.
(source: self-travelled, have multiple contacts in different APAC countries)
you can even go to any mcdonalds there and get the most delicious, juicy white meat chicken you've ever had. not nuggets, full fried breasts.
literally every place serves fried chicken and it's amazing, every place also has spaghetti which I found... odd.
What i will do is eat both meat _and_ tofu.
The idea that people would voluntarily stop eating meat and switch to a vegitarian diet is just wishful thinking.
Similar, if you can get a population to reduce their consumption by x%, it doesn't matter if that's because x% went totally without (and the rest didn't change anything), or whether you could a more uniform, mild change.
Convincing people to give up some meat is pretty straightforward: one proven way is for meat to become more expensive. People react to economic incentives on the margin after all. Other ways might be to make the alternatives more appealing.
(About the margins: meat would have to get extremely expensive for many people to completely give up on it. But if sometimes you are deciding between going to a steak place and a pasta place, and then price can sway your decision fairly easily. The meal at the pasta place can still have meat in it for this example to work, just less of it.)
I feel like shit after eating pasta, so I never eat it. I feel great after eating meat, so I always eat it.
But we don't eat out, that's more wasteful and expensive than anything else. fires up the grill
> But we don't eat out, that's more wasteful and expensive than anything else. fires up the grill
That might be true for you. But there are also people who eg want to eat stuff from the grill perhaps once a year, and storing their own idle grill the other 364 days would be wasteful.
And yes, I'm constantly deciding between different amounts of meat I can eat, it usually depends on how hungry I am.
I decide the amounts, what meat protein, then pick veggies that go with it, and add a small amount of carbs.
In terms of overall utilitarian impact, I mean. Not in terms of some moral systems.
I think people around here would charge too much to go vegan.
It might be cheaper use people on the West Coast.
In the grand scheme of things, Americans are very expensive people. For example, Argentinians both eat a lot of meat, and are currently in dire need for some hard currency.
I don't know if there's an app for this. However, you could do the next best thing and find a charity that works on promoting eating-less-meat in Argentina.
(Argentina is just an example, I have no clue whether it's the best value for money for this very specific. I'm just fairly sure that they are better value for money than spending money in the US.)
https://blog.givewell.org/2010/12/27/animal-welfare-charitie... might be an interesting read.
Is it? I know many people who have done this.
and how many people do you know, out of all of the people in the world?
And how many of those won't do it?
What you have as evidence of it happening is merely sampling bias.
This is the level of strawman we show to small children as examples of terrible strawman arguments. I haven't seen anyone in this thread asking for involuntarily forcing people to give up meat. There isn't a single significant politician in the USA or Europe who is talking about forcing people to give up meat.
I can only hope you were deliberately trying to make a shitty argument for some reason, otherwise it seems likely that the BGH, HFC and antibiotics in your diet have addled your brain.
The most radically environmentalist thing people are arguing for is for you to take a modicum of responsibility for the negative impacts of your choices. If you love beef for some reason then just plant a couple of trees when you eat it or do some other actions that offset the carbon.
When you look at the diets by age group it's also pretty telling: https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1313072/vegan-by-age-grou...
and I wouldn't compare slavery to meat consumption.
Marjorie Spiegal wrote about it in length in her book "The Dreaded Comparison"
https://archive.org/details/dreadedcompariso0000spie_o7y4/pa...
You can attempt to argue for the merits of the comparison, in your own words, if you'd like.
Not saying that it was 100% economic and moral/ethical awakening didn't play an important role, but the economic changes definitely helped. And this kind of favorable factors aren't apparent in the case of convincing everyone to go vegetarian.
This is like saying Americans like corn chips. Sure... but they would probably prefer beef patties. (lol)
I absolutely love tofu and lived in East Asia. But it doesn't replace meat.
Deforesting South America to grow protein rich cow food for Europeans is absurd.
> Meat production kills environment
The link above is responding to the "no it doesn't" by providing evidence that it does.
But to answer your question (it's in the link, but I'll save you a click), the next biggest cause is "oil seeds", which includes a large hunk of soy. Most of the soy goes to animal feed, 13% goes to oil for human consumption, some goes to industrial uses, and about 7% goes to human consumption of what would usually be considered alternative to animal products (tofu, tempeh, soy milk, etc).
Yes, eating anything is going to contribute to resource depletion, but what we eat makes a huge difference!
But, I was just answering the question. And 70% of soy grown globally goes to feeding animals.
And while I agree that some (I doubt it's most, but happy to see numbers) cattle is raised on marginal lands, that isn't the point being made. Animal agriculture is still the leading cause of deforestation.
Also, just because land can't grow crops doesn't mean it has to be cleared of it's native flora and fauna to grow meat. It's still deforestation.
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...
Reduce your footprint by changing what you eat:
I'm past links proving anything.
I think this is exactly the point the OP is making.
People enjoying this experience are clearly morally corrupt lumpenproletariat deserving to be shamed and cowed by the self flagellating self appointed protectors of the summum bonum.
I'm sorry that people taking personal responsibility for the results of their actions provokes such a response in you.
No one is claiming that beef and tofu are identical in flavour or whatever. No one (as far as I can tell) is particularly shaming people for eating meat. I see people mostly making pretty sensible and measured arguments.
Your comment is just arguing against a couple of strawmen you've cooked up. You aren't really engaging in the debate you're replying to.
The dynamics of global soybean trade remain heavily influenced by China, which accounts for about 60% of worldwide soybean imports. China’s soybean imports are driven by demand for animal protein and edible oils, two essential components of a diversifying Chinese diet that reflects rising living standards. China predominantly sources its soybean supplies from Brazil and the United States. For many years, the United States was the top supplier, but in the last 15 years China has depended more on imports from South America, especially from Brazil. From 2019-2023, 73% of Brazil’s exported soybeans have headed to China, versus a 51% average for the United States (see Figure 2).
Source: https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2024/02/the-united-states-....
https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation#is-our-a...
The figure is 75% of global soy goes to animals, and China is more than Europe (although EU is second largest importer of Brazilian soy after China).
So the figures are 75% and China+Europe, not 95% and Europe.
Either he got it wrong or I remembered it wrong! Thanks for pointing that out.