Exposing the hypocrisy of meat based diets

@SunshineGirl "if it takes 20kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef why not just eat the grain?"
And there you have it. It's a more efficient way for you to get your protein than having to consume all those plants yourself!
There is a reason why we find ourselves higher up the food chain!

@Maturebate Well in terms of land use and all the additional inputs that go into livestock husbandry, it's not an efficient use of resources. And if farming were not subsidised by taxpayers' money I am fairly confident the market would not support meat production.

@SunshineGirl eat it

@oldguy73 I could probably live off that for a week.

@SunshineGirl Plus quinoa has a lot of protein, some grains do too. I learned that sorghum has 11 grams per cup. Grains are so tasty anyways. I love oats with cooked dates, warming spices, figs 🥴

@SunshineGirl I am not arguing livestock versus broadacre versus market gardens in terms of efficiency .
All have their high input costs in energy, labour and a host of resources.
And there are economies of scale to try and make food production more efficient in order to feed the world.
Yes we also have subsidies and world markets and climate change to deal with making agriculture a tricky business for many.

My point is that humans are omnivores and survive on a range of foods and while we can adapt to many diets i don't believe in fads or restrictions when a healthy balance is simpler and more effective in the long term without costly supplements.

@Maturebate I agree, but at this point in time meat production seems increasingly unsustainable as we try to feed more and more mouths. Crop production enabled humans to move out of the jungle and shift the focus from hunting-gathering to building civilisation. Technology will help us to overcome land scarcity by building vertical farms, intensively farming fish, synthesising meat . . but I don't see much of a future for traditional animal husbandry.

@Maturebate Supplements aren't that costly and humans have always been deficient in vitamins since the beginning of our evolution. There's around 92% of both meat eaters and vegans who are at least deficient in one vitamin or more. Most people just assume they know what their vitamin levels are and I'm sorry but unless you been tested, how do you know? There's actually hundreds of vitamins and you need around 3,000 mg potassium daily (except maybe in those that can't have potassium.)

But the reality is that there's no such thing as "healthy" ancestors either, their blood tests weren't taken, we have no idea what they were missing or not. Balance is such a myth it's not even funny.

How do you define what is balance when human beings evolved in all different climates? That makes no sense, are inuits balanced with their raw blood and raw meat eating? Are the rainforest tribes who live off grains and seaweed balanced? Like what do you mean balanced?

You can only go off peer reviewed literature and peer reviewed literature currently makes the case for eating a little bit less meat. Everything else is anecdotal. So can you be both balanced vegan and balanced meat eating? Yes.

@SunshineGirl If you ever worked on a ranch you would know that much of the beef you eat is the result of grasses that you can't eat. Cows can and thrive on it and the grass is healthier if it is grazed. Almost like it was designed that way.

@hippyjoe1955 Cows aren't natural in nature lol, in fact a lot of our foods aren't and many animals weren't here and are the product of over breeding only.

@SatanBurger Yeah they are. They are animals just like the bison that used to roam the prairies.

@hippyjoe1955 Modern cows are human-engineered through thousands of years of selective breeding for traits like docility, milk production, and meat yield.

Without humans, most modern cows wouldn't survive well in the wild. For example, Holsteins (dairy cows) are bred to produce excessive milk and need to be milked regularly, or they’ll suffer health consequences. So no, not natural.

I honestly don't care what is natural or not, there's lots of things that aren't natural that we all do today but you said it was designed that way. Cows are in fact, human engineered.

@SatanBurger No they are just animals with 4 stomachs like a bison. There is no need to engineer nor is there any way to engineer a cow. Yes they give them growth hormones and hormones to control heat cycles but the basic animal is the same animal it always has been.

@hippyjoe1955 Grass is an arable crop, just the same as grain. It requires energy and human inputs to grow sustainably and can take productive land out of use for growing crops that humans could eat. Yes, livestock husbandry is more efficient in pasture-rich environments, but there are still trade offs.

@SunshineGirl Well good luck eating the grass I am thinking about and growing other crops on the land I am thinking about. I bet you grew up in the city didn't you. Too Funny. I grew up raising cattle on some very marginal scrub land. About the only other thing the land was good for was raising sheep or goats. Farmers in the area who tried to grow grain found that they couldn't grow enough grain to pay for the fuel they needed to plant the crop in the first place. Only recently with the advent of genetically modified grains (you read that right) has crop production been possible. Funny thing is the grains you eat are genetically modified with bits of animal DNA spliced in whereas the animals I eat are still the same animals they always were. You can breed the bad traits out of an animal without genetically modifying it. Look at dogs. Every different breed there is is still the same basic animal. No gene splicing has been done.

@hippyjoe1955 No, I grew up in the UK where we have some of the most abundant pasture in the world. Some of it is in upland, marginal areas (where it has to be grazed carefully to avoid degrading the soil), much of it is in relatively fertile lowlands which can, and often are, used for crops.

Do you eat pork? Look at my photo of the naked piglet above. Pigs were naturally hairy until the 1970s when abbatoirs expressed a preference for the shaved variety.

Nitrate fertilisers, greater understanding of weather and geology, low tillage ploughing, are just as important to the agrarian revolution as genetic modification.

@SunshineGirl Of course I eat pork. And not those are not naked pigs. That is their natural hair. They were like that back in the 1930s according to pictures we have of my grandparents pigs. We raised them on the farm and they survived -40 C very easily. We did have to de-tusk them when they were young though and we didn't mark their ears. We did turn the boars into barrows but that was for safety as boars love to fight and get very aggressive.

@hippyjoe1955 Beautiful pigs.

@SunshineGirl That is their skin tone not their hair. We had back pigs and brown pigs and pink pigs on the farm The hair on the pink pigs is hard to see especially on the little ones. When they grow up they have lots of hair.

@hippyjoe1955 Those are Devon Blacks. Our old landlord bred them and we ate them. They are pretty hairy 🐷

Note the superb ear design (to keep mud out of eyes).