Vegetarians or meat eaters - survival after TSHTF?

[goslow]

I was veggie for a couple of years when I was younger, but I eat quite a lot of meat/fish these days, and don't think its possible to be really healthy on a strict vegan diet. Eggs and cheese help of course for mainstream veggies.

Anyway, all concept of having a really healthy diet goes out the window if we are faced with food shortages or exceptionally high food prices. It depends on the type of food shortage. I have no idea if its likely that some of the protein-based foods that vegans depend on, most of which grow outside the UK, would be a problem to obtain in the future.

Meat quality could also go down. Similarly, a lot of animal feed is now based on imported corn and soya, maybe there will be some problems with that too.

I'm ready to manage with less meat if necessary, but don't see that as a healthier option.

[kenneal - lagger]

Meat quality could also go down.

It would actually go up as more beef and lamb would be grass fed which produces meat with an higher Omega-3 fat content.

Similarly, a lot of animal feed is now based on imported corn and soya, maybe there will be some problems with that too.

I'm ready to manage with less meat if necessary, but don't see that as a healthier option.

I've been saying that for some time for that reason and that many animals, cows, beef cattle, pigs and poultry, rely on home grown grain or grain supplements which will alos go up in price. Most people eat too much meat so a reduction in meat eating would do most people some good. The problem will be that many children, bought up on a junk food diet, won't eat vegetables. With the loss of "nutrient improved" foods such as breakfast cereals there could be a generation of children suffering from malnutrition in the UK and USA.

[rue_d_etropal]

Although it is sad that some children, possibly quite a lot, will become malnourished, but that ultimately might help steady popoulation increase, resulting in fewer, but healthier individuals.
One , there won't be the money or resources to keep less healthy people alive, so average life expectancy will go down , until a balance is reached. Note I say average!

[Bedrock Barney]

I don't like the taste of meat and have been a vegetarian for 28 years (in essence the whole of my adult life). However, if there was a choice between eating meat and starving then it would be a very easy choice to make for me.

I imagine nearly everyone would have the same viewpoint if there was a shortage of foods.......

[goslow]

If we got more grass fed meat this would be great.

Might get to the point where its interesting to reverse the ban on recycling waste food into pigswill.

[Lord Beria3]

Its all meat, ale and basic veg like potatoe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdqbi66oNuI

Love it!

[PS_RalphW]

I've been vegetarian 15 years now. Humans are omnivores by evolutionary design, although we can have reasonable health on a wide variety of diets. The Inuit traditionally being nearly carnivorous. Cannibalism is cultural. More widespread in past tribal cultures than liberal academics like to admit. Long pig.

Given that the UK hasn't been self-sufficient for many generations, it makes sense to match diet to the food most efficiently grown on the land available.

That would be arable/vegetable on much of the south, sheep farming on highland areas. Mutton back on the menu, beef and pork much reduced.
Ewe's milk is fine, especially as Feta. Not so keen on Goat's.

Pigs can be fed on scraps. When I was young liver, kidney, etc. was part of a normal diet. Even eaten pig's trotter.

I nearly married a Jain...

[rue_d_etropal]

Don't forget that to work the land some type of animal such as oxen would be required. On flatter ground cattle are ideal, and if managed properly can provide a very wide range of products. Although most Hindus don't eat meat(some are becoming westernised and want western diets), cattle are a very important part of the natural balance. Obviously cows produce milk, but also maintain grown cover, and provide a good quantity of fertiliser.
What to do with the meat would be a problem if there weren't the Untouchables as a lowest caste, who are expected to eat the meat. This is a good example of indirect use of animals for food, where one group's vegetarian diet is totally dependant on someone else eating meat.

[emordnilap]

Humans are omnivores by evolutionary design,

I agree (though 'design' would not be my choice of word). It was probably the discovery of fire that did it, making animal flesh digestible.

Not many nations could be healthily self-sufficient in food. However, sail power will always be around, making food trading possible.

[Catweazle]

Humans are omnivores by evolutionary design,

I agree (though 'design' would not be my choice of word). It was probably the discovery of fire that did it, making animal flesh digestible.

I'm not sure about that, our nearest evolutionary relatives are omnivores, and they don't light fires.

[UndercoverElephant]

Humans are omnivores by evolutionary design,

I agree (though 'design' would not be my choice of word). It was probably the discovery of fire that did it, making animal flesh digestible.

I'm not sure about that, our nearest evolutionary relatives are omnivores, and they don't light fires.

I agree. Fire does make meat more digestible, and more importantly it also makes it much safer to consume, but our ancestors ate meat long before humans learned to control fire. Most primates are omnivores - they will eat things like insects or shellfish if they can get their hands on them. Follow the line backwards and it is omnivorous right back to the early shrew-like mammals. Humans may well have had no fully vegetarian evolutionary ancestors since they were pre-fish.

[emordnilap]

our ancestors ate meat long before humans learned to control fire.

That's something I don't get - apart from bloody steak and some raw fish, is there that much animal flesh a human can eat without fire?

[UndercoverElephant]

our ancestors ate meat long before humans learned to control fire.

That's something I don't get - apart from bloody steak and some raw fish, is there that much animal flesh a human can eat without fire?

Yes, but not safely, unless you fancy getting a liver fluke or picking up some nasty virus. But this is a cultural thing more than anything else - if a wild animal gets a liver fluke then nobody cares. We wouldn't say that lions can't eat warthogs because they might get a liver fluke. If it wasn't for the near certainty of salmonella poisoning, there is no reason a human can't eat a raw chicken.

[GlynG]

I actually find it odd this idea that veggies have a better chance in the future...When we go back to a agrarian society where heavy labour is typical, having a meat-based diet will be essential.

We are going to have to go back to a simpler more agrarian way of doing things, but the future isn’t as simple as just returning to how it was in the past – we have sadly created way too much pollution for that.

I mentioned earlier that Dmitri Orlov argues specifically that in the future vegans will be those who have a better chance. This isn’t based on a nutritional comparison of good vegan food to good omnivorous food, but more so to do with the nature of toxicity and harsh evolutionary pressure i.e. we will have much higher death rates in omnivores.

Orlov and others point out our future world is going to be a lot more toxic and specifically radioactive than the world today. It is well known scientifically that animals accumulate toxins from what they eat and drink. If you eat a vegetable it can contain toxins in the soil and rainwater that has directly contacted it. If you eat beef or drink milk from a cow however, that cow can accumulate toxins from the much wider area it has grazed and the food you eat/drink will contain much higher levels of toxicity. Predators higher up the food chain eating a more meat based diet are the worst effected by such accumulation and suffer the most from it.

I second the notion of permaculture as being a good approach for future food production, though there's nothing really especially new in the concept, it's mostly things we've just conventionally forgotten/gone away from.

[woodpecker]

I actually find it odd this idea that veggies have a better chance in the future...When we go back to a agrarian society where heavy labour is typical, having a meat-based diet will be essential.

People who worked on the land - but were not landowners - often had diets with little meat (but maybe had other good sources of protein, such as chick peas in southern Europe)

You'd kill a pig once a year, if you had one, and share across households and make it stretch out forever by preserving it and by using every part of it; or you'd buy a lamb from a shepherd if you had the wherewithall, as an annual treat; but mostly it was chicken, once a week if you were lucky; and mostly you'd have huge amounts of legumes and root veg and bread and brothy stuff, and eggs, and you'd buy green milk and make cheese; and you'd buy carbs when you had some money

I don't think my mum saw meat from one year to the next in the 1940s living in a rural area, and my grandad didn't get any meat at all in the 20s when he worked as a (child) labourer on farms, though he slept in the same barn as the farm animals