Beef environment cost 10 times that of other livestock

[emordnilap]

I enjoy having an animal-exploitation-free life immensely

Hardly possible ; whilst I agree with you in principle I am not convinced you are living without the use of animal products or by-products

Sadly you're right though I'm reasonably aware (not totally but way more so than average) of the encroachment of animal-exploitation businesses into everyone's lives.

For instance, most people seem stunned at fairly basic stuff like Guinness, tyres, sugar, shampoo etc. I can either seek out plant-based alternatives or cut out my need for the guilty product, like making my own toothpaste, only using water on my hair, not buying sugar, buying vegan drinks etc etc.

Even plastic bags can be creature-exploitative (some manufacturers use animal fat) giving another sound reason to never accept plastic bags.

[kenneal - lagger]

I enjoy having an animal-exploitation-free life immensely

Hardly possible ; whilst I agree with you in principle I am not convinced you are living without the use of animal products or by-products unless you are living naked in the Garden of Eden.

But a lame point anyway; you are doing what you feel is right and I applaud that.

I am not a 'big' meat eater by the way ... I probably eat beef about once every couple of months, for example. I do not drink dairy. But I lurve cheese

However, the planet will not be saved by lentil munching I'm afraid. I am adamant that the only solution to so many of the worlds problems is to have less human beings.

We have become an infestation.

Once again, I agree with you M.

We are behaving like the famous yeast in the bottle and blindly consuming our way to oblivion. The formerly poor Chinese are adopting a western diet with alacrity and in the process inflating their carbon consumption like a balloon attached to a gas cylinder. That is happening to possibly a billion of the formerly poorest people in the world. At least their numbers are not increasing as the rest of the world's poor are thanks to their "one child" policy.

Getting back to the main part of the thread, US beef production differs markedly to that in the EU and probably the rest of the world as it is firmly based on massive feed lots where food in trucked in to feed the animals and waste is leached out! The trucking in uses huge amounts of fossil fuel to power the system and the food is often grain based which, in itself, has consumed a massive amount of power to grow. The leaching of the cattle waste into storage ponds, where is rots away, releases even more methane into the atmosphere to join the excess produced by the grain based diet over the more natural grass based diet prevalent in the rest of the world.

Regarding the eating of meat or not, it has been postulated that the difference between human development and that of the apes was the greater amount of meat which proto-humans consumed. This extra high grade protein gave our ancestors the additional energy to develop and support a larger brain. Whether or not a vegetarian diet in the long term will lead to a corresponding reduction in brain size we will have to wait and see!! After all an entirely vegetarian diet is a comparatively recent thing in terms of human evolution.

I do agree, even being a beef farmer in a small way, that we should consume much less meat. The amount of meat eaten by our proto-human ancestors would have been a fraction of that eaten by the average US or even EU person. Some humans, though, seem to have survived quite well and quite healthily on a 100% meat diet: the Inuit, for example. Most people survive, in health, on a diet comprising of "a little of what you fancy does you good." A balanced and varied diet gives the broad range of nutrients that ensures health.

[emordnilap]

Regarding the eating of meat or not, it has been postulated that the difference between human development and that of the apes was the greater amount of meat which proto-humans consumed. This extra high grade protein gave our ancestors the additional energy to develop and support a larger brain. Whether or not a vegetarian diet in the long term will lead to a corresponding reduction in brain size we will have to wait and see!!

That's quite a common misconception, Ken: the idea that a single energy source somehow helped humans' brains develop.

You'll be glad to know that the best theory about human brain development isn't a defence of vegetarianism, btw though when humans were totally vegetarian, their brains were smaller and, significantly, their guts were bigger and their teeth were quite different (naturally), overall more like other modern herbivores.

No, the single thing that differentiates us from other species is cooking. Most foods release more (some say up to 50% extra) and require less energy to metabolise when cooked. So meat, veggies, whatever, you can thrive and develop far better once you introduce cooking. Without it, you spend most of your time trying to extract the nutrients and energy and this is more true of meat than other energy sources.

Studies have shown that even pure vegetarians - of several species - thrive better when some or most of their food is cooked. It's not 'better' protein - another myth - but all nutrients more easily metabolised.

Less time and energy spent chewing and metabolising frees up resources for other activities, which then helped humans develop in other ways. Indeed, cooking could have helped to 'civilise' us because most food is simply better - to the nose and the tongue and the teeth - when cooked.

I echo what you say - a varied diet of cooked and raw food is ideal; meat might form part of it (it's purely a choice after all, unnecessary for health and distinctly unhealthy in modern amounts) but in a list of possible foods, it's a tiny percentage.

If meat helps develop big brains, then that explains why maggots and lions have PHDs.