The answer is war and famine OR science and innovation.
As has been said, this is always all academic. People do not work the way we want them to.
I would support semi-plausible first steps like banning uber-farms and removing subsidies and applying that same subsidy money to sustainable aquaculture/livestock R&D.
We need to technologically force the practices to be greener. You cannot make the people better but you can make the systems and the tools better.
I know it sounds pretty fatalist but this isn't like weening off oil or something. This is thousands of years of human nature, culture, etc... and that is ignoring the political aspect as Shryke mentioned.
Shifting subsidies to better incentivize the use of higher efficiency meats is probably a workable improvement. If chicken takes 1/6th the resources per pound of beef, then the prices should reflect that.
Why is fish so expensive, anyway? Is it that much harder to transport and store than chicken?
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
The answer is war and famine OR science and innovation.
As has been said, this is always all academic. People do not work the way we want them to.
I would support semi-plausible first steps like banning uber-farms and removing subsidies and applying that same subsidy money to sustainable aquaculture/livestock R&D.
We need to technologically force the practices to be greener. You cannot make the people better but you can make the systems and the tools better.
I know it sounds pretty fatalist but this isn't like weening off oil or something. This is thousands of years of human nature, culture, etc... and that is ignoring the political aspect as Shryke mentioned.
This is just capitalist nihilism.
Human nature is malleable and responds to environmental constraints. The specifics of legislation or a propaganda campaign can be discussed, but it's just unhelpful and unproductive to hold that our only options are continued imperialism or to ~Science!~ our way into being able to continue consuming at an increasingly - unsustainable pace.
Honestly, this feels like conversations we've had in socialism threads.
There's no way you're ever going to get people to give up their comfort for your utopia. Especially not when you're talking about the global good.
You can't even convince people to give up fast food and soda, you think you're going to get them to settle for two eggs per week?
If a government tried to enforce such a thing, that government would be gone the next election.
I'm also curious how exactly people expect the huge productive capacity of the countries that raise the meet and crops is going to be used to feed the rest of the world, both practically and politically.
This diet is the equivalent of noting that the world GDP per capita is ~$17,000. It's interesting, I guess, but the more interesting and realistic question is 'How do we get the numbers bigger' because you're not going to cram everyone above that number down to $17,000/two eggs per week without mass bloodshed.
Honestly? I think we'll only stop eating beef and pork and such when we're not longer physically able to produce it.
Which will never happen because the act of growing enough vegetables and grains to live on produces sufficient inedible stalks and stems that you can feed enough sheep to eat 18g per day per person, weighted again by the table I showed above.
Not eating meat at a low level is literally wasteful, requires more effort and energy composting, and is a meaningless sacrifice. Meat should be more expensive, not non-existent in our diet.
Arguments that we should make more than this are missing the point. You can trade out red meet for crickets who will also eat your leftovers, and that does give more calories, and you can rebalance away from chicken meat to more eggs. But other than that this is what the earth can make unless we...
1) cause more mass extinctions
2) expand farmland
3) destroy the ocean completely
4) magic technology
Shifting subsidies to better incentivize the use of higher efficiency meats is probably a workable improvement. If chicken takes 1/6th the resources per pound of beef, then the prices should reflect that.
Why is fish so expensive, anyway? Is it that much harder to transport and store than chicken?
Fish is typically considered and sold as a premium product in the USA when you see it at a fishmonger. Fish is actually pretty cheap. Consider the price of a 6 oz can of tuna, or a pack of fish sticks. In other countries, meat of that grade is available per pound.
I do think that in reality to best thing we might be able to persuade people to do is shift from beef to lamb or goat and then shift more red meat to poultry and farmed salmon/shrimp. Both of those are shifting from cultural preference to something equally delicious, but more efficient. So that's st least something.
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Shifting subsidies to better incentivize the use of higher efficiency meats is probably a workable improvement. If chicken takes 1/6th the resources per pound of beef, then the prices should reflect that.
Why is fish so expensive, anyway? Is it that much harder to transport and store than chicken?
Fish is typically considered and sold as a premium product in the USA when you see it at a fishmonger. Fish is actually pretty cheap. Consider the price of a 6 oz can of tuna, or a pack of fish sticks. In other countries, meat of that grade is available per pound.
I do think that in reality to best thing we might be able to persuade people to do is shift from beef to lamb or goat and then shift more red meat to poultry and farmed salmon/shrimp. Both of those are shifting from cultural preference to something equally delicious, but more efficient. So that's st least something.
If you ask people on an American diet to just switch to a couple eggs a week and mostly grain, for the most part they'll give you the finger.
I would, for example.
But substitution of similar will get you far. I've already dropped most beef from my shopping because it's too expensive except when on sale. So it's mostly chicken, eggs, and turkey, then pork, and then distant third beef.
Do something like phase out all direct and indirect subsidies for beef in particular and other meats in general and you'll see most people start to trend away from less efficient sources of protein.
I still think it will be an uphill and generational battle to replace our massive over-consumption of animal-based protein with plant-based protein--nevermind shifting to insect-based protein. At least on anything other than an individual scale.
I mean, unless there's an event sufficient that a government can enforce rations, which we haven't seen in 80 years.
Honestly, I think the eggs restriction is the biggest deal breaker. It's just unfathomably low for a basic ingredient in so many other things. Meat I've already reduced in my diet, though I periodically need a meat boost, but hell eggs are even used to give that golden brown coating to a million foods, like pizza and pies.
More chicken per day than eggs doesn't really make sense to me.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
IDK, what kind of irks me about some of the thinking here is that it seems oriented around figuring out the minimal nutritional requirements for a healthy human (constantly negotiated) and working up from there rather than just figuring out where we can meet between making sure everyone has enough to eat and producing as much of as many things as we can reasonably and responsibly manage.
I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as a hedonist but I think on the whole its the most desirable state of human existence. Life is to be counted in many things, but a major one is meals and when people talk about shuffling their caloric budget around to include a wrap or something that seems already half dead to me.
IDK, what kind of irks me about some of the thinking here is that it seems oriented around figuring out the minimal nutritional requirements for a healthy human (constantly negotiated) and working up from there rather than just figuring out where we can meet between making sure everyone has enough to eat and producing as much of as many things as we can reasonably and responsibly manage.
I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as a hedonist but I think on the whole its the most desirable state of human existence. Life is to be counted in many things, but a major one is meals and when people talk about shuffling their caloric budget around to include a wrap or something that seems already half dead to me.
I got the impression the plan in the OP was "this is literally the most you can have to be sustainable for everyone"
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I think we should look towards ways of reducing the waste we have now (imperfect fruits being tossed as an example) instead of figuring out a paste on which people could subsist within nebulously determined margins.
Because yeah we "first world countries" waste a lot of damn food in the pursuit of what is largely superfluous.
I'm just not convinced that with our current regulations that any massive diet change won't end up with corps ratfucking the entire thing like they have with our current food.
A major thing too is that a lot of cultures are very, very strongly tied to their traditional cooking, and tend to take food restrictions as an attack on their cultural identity.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
edited January 2019
Half joke / half serious... but if there were no more diners drive-ins and dives around the country for Guy to drool at as he eats fries doused in chili and pimento cheese beside a massive burger... the world would be a lesser place for me.
The trick is to convince people that the frequency of those places in their diet can be diminished by pricing it appropriately for what it is doing ecologically.
I would spend 40-50 bucks on the meal I described above and treat it as conspicuous consumption every now and then; something to save up for from both a money and a health perspective.
Extra Value meals that exist due to subsidies and bad business practices need to die.
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Let's play Mario Kart or something...
IDK, what kind of irks me about some of the thinking here is that it seems oriented around figuring out the minimal nutritional requirements for a healthy human (constantly negotiated) and working up from there rather than just figuring out where we can meet between making sure everyone has enough to eat and producing as much of as many things as we can reasonably and responsibly manage.
I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as a hedonist but I think on the whole its the most desirable state of human existence. Life is to be counted in many things, but a major one is meals and when people talk about shuffling their caloric budget around to include a wrap or something that seems already half dead to me.
I got the impression the plan in the OP was "this is literally the most you can have to be sustainable for everyone"
You are correct. Demanding more than above is saying...
Someone else must have less
Someone else must starve
I think we should look towards ways of reducing the waste we have now (imperfect fruits being tossed as an example) instead of figuring out a paste on which people could subsist within nebulously determined margins.
Because yeah we "first world countries" waste a lot of damn food in the pursuit of what is largely superfluous.
I'm just not convinced that with our current regulations that any massive diet change won't end up with corps ratfucking the entire thing like they have with our current food.
The diet above includes a 50% reduction in food waste to achieve those yields for everyone.
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
IDK, what kind of irks me about some of the thinking here is that it seems oriented around figuring out the minimal nutritional requirements for a healthy human (constantly negotiated) and working up from there rather than just figuring out where we can meet between making sure everyone has enough to eat and producing as much of as many things as we can reasonably and responsibly manage.
I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as a hedonist but I think on the whole its the most desirable state of human existence. Life is to be counted in many things, but a major one is meals and when people talk about shuffling their caloric budget around to include a wrap or something that seems already half dead to me.
I got the impression the plan in the OP was "this is literally the most you can have to be sustainable for everyone"
You are correct. Demanding more than above is saying...
Someone else must have less
Someone else must starve
That feels backwards to me. This diet assumes away so many issues mentioned already in the thread (cultural, dietary restrictions born from religion or allergies, etc) - its just a non starter as a global solution.
You would do better selling me on population control as a salve alongside attacking cattle and corn subsidies which would in turn raise the price on a lot of the foodstuffs that are ecologically problematic and shift behavior towards different options, more often, without forbidding others... and that would do more to fix the issue than tilting at the windmill of this bland, sad one-size-fits-few diet.
Especially population control, if we are being extreme here.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
IDK, what kind of irks me about some of the thinking here is that it seems oriented around figuring out the minimal nutritional requirements for a healthy human (constantly negotiated) and working up from there rather than just figuring out where we can meet between making sure everyone has enough to eat and producing as much of as many things as we can reasonably and responsibly manage.
I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as a hedonist but I think on the whole its the most desirable state of human existence. Life is to be counted in many things, but a major one is meals and when people talk about shuffling their caloric budget around to include a wrap or something that seems already half dead to me.
I got the impression the plan in the OP was "this is literally the most you can have to be sustainable for everyone"
You are correct. Demanding more than above is saying...
Someone else must have less
Someone else must starve
That feels backwards to me. This diet assumes away so many issues mentioned already in the thread (cultural, dietary restrictions born from religion or allergies, etc) - its just a non starter as a global solution.
You would do better selling me on population control as a salve alongside attacking cattle and corn subsidies which would in turn raise the price on a lot of the foodstuffs that are ecologically problematic and shift behavior towards different options, more often, without forbidding others... and that would do more to fix the issue than tilting at the windmill of this bland, sad one-size-fits-few diet.
Especially population control, if we are being extreme here.
It is too late for population control to keep the population below 10 billion. It is the number we get WITH population control (mainly from educating women)
This is the average diet. Allergies can be easily addressed by exchanging, nuts for beans, milk for fish, fish for poultry and so on. So no issues there.
Cultural norms outside the USA are compatible with this diet. The cultural desire of the elites in a society is not, but most of humanity for most of their history has eaten a lot like this. A little bit of meat for taste, combined with a lot of grains and vegetables.
This diet is not bland, it lacks meat and dairy, important elements of many American dishes, but it contains garlic, peppers, onions, eggplant, corn, spices, herbs, etc. It contains citrus and fruit etc. If bland to you means "not a steak" then the future has bad news for you. You still can have beef once a week.
I think you're missing a very important consideration: A lot of people wouldn't be happy with this and if non-violent political action doesn't change the situation you're looking at very likely violent action whether that's towards the state or towards vulnerable populations.
A major thing too is that a lot of cultures are very, very strongly tied to their traditional cooking, and tend to take food restrictions as an attack on their cultural identity.
This is a hard truth.
Mainly because "it's my culture" is a pretty shitty reason to do anything but no matter how shitty a reason, it's very powerful.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
This is the average diet. Allergies can be easily addressed by exchanging, nuts for beans, milk for fish, fish for poultry and so on. So no issues there.
This makes zero sense. Nuts and beans are fundamentally different nutritional profiles: One is dietary carbs, the other fat, and fill completely different roles. And fish vs milk, I am completely baffled on how those are interchangeable. The amount of milk you'd need to get the protein for a serving of fish is IMMENSE. Whatever a kilogram of milk is to equal 100 grams of fish, which throws everything out of whack. Now 3 people have to give up their entire daily dairy, according to logic you presented, for 1 person to get 35 grams of protein. And now you've got a vitamin D and calcium problem.
Fish for poultry is the only thing up there that's even remotely alike.
So yes, lots of issues just there alone. This thing falls apart the instant it's even mildly scrutinized. It almost feels like a way for people who already have a bias towards this kind of diet to determine what's best for everyone.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Not to mention we've already determined a grain-heavy diet is not exactly healthy.
The answer is war and famine OR science and innovation.
As has been said, this is always all academic. People do not work the way we want them to.
I would support semi-plausible first steps like banning uber-farms and removing subsidies and applying that same subsidy money to sustainable aquaculture/livestock R&D.
We need to technologically force the practices to be greener. You cannot make the people better but you can make the systems and the tools better.
I know it sounds pretty fatalist but this isn't like weening off oil or something. This is thousands of years of human nature, culture, etc... and that is ignoring the political aspect as Shryke mentioned.
This is just capitalist nihilism.
Human nature is malleable and responds to environmental constraints. The specifics of legislation or a propaganda campaign can be discussed, but it's just unhelpful and unproductive to hold that our only options are continued imperialism or to ~Science!~ our way into being able to continue consuming at an increasingly - unsustainable pace.
It's got nothing whatever to do with capitalism. It predates it and it be around after it.
Also, not directed at you but societies who have a diet compatible with the OP aren't choosing that instead of a western diet. They don't have a choice.
You can see this as cultures become richer they eat "worse".
It's got nothing to do with bland-ness, it's the amount "allowed".
A major thing too is that a lot of cultures are very, very strongly tied to their traditional cooking, and tend to take food restrictions as an attack on their cultural identity.
This is a hard truth.
Mainly because "it's my culture" is a pretty shitty reason to do anything but no matter how shitty a reason, it's very powerful.
See, the thing is that humanity is all about culture. You don't get to not address it, even if you don't like most cultures.
This is the average diet. Allergies can be easily addressed by exchanging, nuts for beans, milk for fish, fish for poultry and so on. So no issues there.
This makes zero sense. Nuts and beans are fundamentally different nutritional profiles: One is dietary carbs, the other fat, and fill completely different roles. And fish vs milk, I am completely baffled on how those are interchangeable. The amount of milk you'd need to get the protein for a serving of fish is IMMENSE. Whatever a kilogram of milk is to equal 100 grams of fish, which throws everything out of whack. Now 3 people have to give up their entire daily dairy, according to logic you presented, for 1 person to get 35 grams of protein. And now you've got a vitamin D and calcium problem.
Fish for poultry is the only thing up there that's even remotely alike.
So yes, lots of issues just there alone. This thing falls apart the instant it's even mildly scrutinized. It almost feels like a way for people who already have a bias towards this kind of diet to determine what's best for everyone.
I haven’t read the report yet, but I feel like we are getting too caught up in the details. Just as a start, vegetarians and vegans exist. So clearly it’s possible to reduce meat consumption and still be healthy.
That includes professional athletes by the way. So it’s not just low activity people who are vegetarians.
I would say that the point is to drive the average towards those numbers. What it isn’t, is a prescribed diet that everyone must follow exactly.
And honestly it’s probably not that hard to drive people closer. Cut subsidies for things like sugar, dairy, beef. Put some additional regulations on environmentally damaging practices (commercial beef farming for example). Regulate or tax waste more heavily.
You could make huge gains with small economic nudges.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
This is the average diet. Allergies can be easily addressed by exchanging, nuts for beans, milk for fish, fish for poultry and so on. So no issues there.
This makes zero sense. Nuts and beans are fundamentally different nutritional profiles: One is dietary carbs, the other fat, and fill completely different roles. And fish vs milk, I am completely baffled on how those are interchangeable. The amount of milk you'd need to get the protein for a serving of fish is IMMENSE. Whatever a kilogram of milk is to equal 100 grams of fish, which throws everything out of whack. Now 3 people have to give up their entire daily dairy, according to logic you presented, for 1 person to get 35 grams of protein. And now you've got a vitamin D and calcium problem.
Fish for poultry is the only thing up there that's even remotely alike.
So yes, lots of issues just there alone. This thing falls apart the instant it's even mildly scrutinized. It almost feels like a way for people who already have a bias towards this kind of diet to determine what's best for everyone.
I haven’t read the report yet, but I feel like we are getting too caught up in the details. Just as a start, vegetarians and vegans exist. So clearly it’s possible to reduce meat consumption and still be healthy.
That includes professional athletes by the way. So it’s not just low activity people who are vegetarians.
I would say that the point is to drive the average towards those numbers. What it isn’t, is a prescribed diet that everyone must follow exactly.
And honestly it’s probably not that hard to drive people closer. Cut subsidies for things like sugar, dairy, beef. Put some additional regulations on environmentally damaging practices (commercial beef farming for example). Regulate or tax waste more heavily.
You could make huge gains with small economic nudges.
Yes, absolutely it's possible to reduce meat consumption. But that's not the only thing this proposed diet is trying to accomplish.
Also I would be curious how many professional athletes who have publicly switched to and endorsed a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle engaged in an entirely vegetarian or vegan diet during their peak periods of development and how many likely used or currently use PEDs.
And I'd like to point out again that the beef industry isn't an economically insignificant industry, so there's going to be damage there to not just the national economy but also local economies. While one may not care about that or actively think the beef industry should be burnt to the ground, from a policy perspective this isn't something that can just be ignored.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
This is the average diet. Allergies can be easily addressed by exchanging, nuts for beans, milk for fish, fish for poultry and so on. So no issues there.
This makes zero sense. Nuts and beans are fundamentally different nutritional profiles: One is dietary carbs, the other fat, and fill completely different roles. And fish vs milk, I am completely baffled on how those are interchangeable. The amount of milk you'd need to get the protein for a serving of fish is IMMENSE. Whatever a kilogram of milk is to equal 100 grams of fish, which throws everything out of whack. Now 3 people have to give up their entire daily dairy, according to logic you presented, for 1 person to get 35 grams of protein. And now you've got a vitamin D and calcium problem.
Fish for poultry is the only thing up there that's even remotely alike.
So yes, lots of issues just there alone. This thing falls apart the instant it's even mildly scrutinized. It almost feels like a way for people who already have a bias towards this kind of diet to determine what's best for everyone.
I haven’t read the report yet, but I feel like we are getting too caught up in the details. Just as a start, vegetarians and vegans exist. So clearly it’s possible to reduce meat consumption and still be healthy.
That includes professional athletes by the way. So it’s not just low activity people who are vegetarians.
I would say that the point is to drive the average towards those numbers. What it isn’t, is a prescribed diet that everyone must follow exactly.
And honestly it’s probably not that hard to drive people closer. Cut subsidies for things like sugar, dairy, beef. Put some additional regulations on environmentally damaging practices (commercial beef farming for example). Regulate or tax waste more heavily.
You could make huge gains with small economic nudges.
I agree with all of that, but...
The OP has continually stated that it's this diet or nothing and that's the perspective I'm taking that line of discussion.
I am all for reduction in sugar as a first step, including notifications that HFCS is being used (not that I think HFCS is necessarily even worse for you than sugar, it's that it's used in everything) but I feel like it's going to take a lot of time to switch this. These are massive industries made up of millions of people probably in the US by itself, and derailing everything immediately will cause yet another crisis that has barely been touched on.
A lot of places depend on their local agriculture. I live in a farm-heavy state, which gives me the benefit of low-cost, low-carbon food everywhere because most of the grocers here carry local produce almost exclusively. You'd send this entire region into a tailspin (Again, which would have knock on effects for other industries in these areas, not to mention devestating the local economies and governments and everything that goes into keeping those aloft) unless it is done properly. I can't imagine it's much different elsewhere.
So yeah, it does kind of feel like people completely disconnected from this are making blind decisions based on spherical cows in a vacuum.
This is the average diet. Allergies can be easily addressed by exchanging, nuts for beans, milk for fish, fish for poultry and so on. So no issues there.
This makes zero sense. Nuts and beans are fundamentally different nutritional profiles: One is dietary carbs, the other fat, and fill completely different roles. And fish vs milk, I am completely baffled on how those are interchangeable. The amount of milk you'd need to get the protein for a serving of fish is IMMENSE. Whatever a kilogram of milk is to equal 100 grams of fish, which throws everything out of whack. Now 3 people have to give up their entire daily dairy, according to logic you presented, for 1 person to get 35 grams of protein. And now you've got a vitamin D and calcium problem.
Fish for poultry is the only thing up there that's even remotely alike.
So yes, lots of issues just there alone. This thing falls apart the instant it's even mildly scrutinized. It almost feels like a way for people who already have a bias towards this kind of diet to determine what's best for everyone.
I haven’t read the report yet, but I feel like we are getting too caught up in the details. Just as a start, vegetarians and vegans exist. So clearly it’s possible to reduce meat consumption and still be healthy.
That includes professional athletes by the way. So it’s not just low activity people who are vegetarians.
I would say that the point is to drive the average towards those numbers. What it isn’t, is a prescribed diet that everyone must follow exactly.
And honestly it’s probably not that hard to drive people closer. Cut subsidies for things like sugar, dairy, beef. Put some additional regulations on environmentally damaging practices (commercial beef farming for example). Regulate or tax waste more heavily.
You could make huge gains with small economic nudges.
I agree with all of that, but...
The OP has continually stated that it's this diet or nothing and that's the perspective I'm taking that line of discussion.
I am all for reduction in sugar as a first step, including notifications that HFCS is being used (not that I think HFCS is necessarily even worse for you than sugar, it's that it's used in everything) but I feel like it's going to take a lot of time to switch this. These are massive industries made up of millions of people probably in the US by itself, and derailing everything immediately will cause yet another crisis that has barely been touched on.
A lot of places depend on their local agriculture. I live in a farm-heavy state, which gives me the benefit of low-cost, low-carbon food everywhere because most of the grocers here carry local produce almost exclusively. You'd send this entire region into a tailspin (Again, which would have knock on effects for other industries in these areas, not to mention devestating the local economies and governments and everything that goes into keeping those aloft) unless it is done properly. I can't imagine it's much different elsewhere.
So yeah, it does kind of feel like people completely disconnected from this are making blind decisions based on spherical cows in a vacuum.
I have not said anything of the sort. I am quoting and discussing a well researched academic study which talks about the amount of food the planet can produce, and how much we all get if you divide that by 10 billion. Do you have your own study you would like to discuss?
The only realistic criticism is that they have clearly removed eggs and dairy from the budget to increase meat, and I think eggs and dairy are more useful than meat. I've seen no evidence that the planet can produce more food than this. This is an enormous amount of food, it's just divided amongst 30% more people.
The nutritional need of athletes has always been an exception anyway.
I don't really like the balance of the diet. I already supplement my protein with whey because I am seldom in the mood for meat and I don't really like buying a bunch of out of season fruit.
In my efforts to give this thing a go, I'm definitely going to be substituting some things. Definitely more fish and eggs, no red meat or chicken. I'll probably also not stop my hobby of baking bread and pies and giving them away at work.
Certain regions of the world grow almost anything in huge quantities others can't grow anything. This whole thing is very science'y and that's not an insult or something but it definitely misses the mark on messaging and nuance (which most things like this do).
So do we take it literally? Do we use it as a goal that will probably change in 4-5 years?
Adhering to the diet seems pointless even if you support the idea of everyone eating that, since it's a hypothetical which assumes food is distributed fairly and efficiently across the world while making full use of existing food production capacity. Capacity which only exists because people are buying the food it produces.
Adhering to the diet seems pointless even if you support the idea of everyone eating that, since it's a hypothetical which assumes food is distributed fairly and efficiently across the world while making full use of existing food production capacity. Capacity which only exists because people are buying the food it produces.
The only reason I'm willing to give it a shot is peak boredom and a little curiosity. Agriculture doesn't even make it sustainable right now as best I can figure. I'm wondering what my prep time and such will look like, and how bored I'll get with the food.
I don't mind lentils, but they need to be cooked in a stock/broth of some kind, even if it's vegetable... same with beans. Which probably invalidates the entire thing! Oh well.
I went vegetarian by perceived necessity due to some health problems, when my previous diet involved plenty of burgers, steaks, chicken, kebabs etc.
At first, I was thinking it was going to suck, but grains, beans, nuts, vegetables, fruit and dairy still leaves you with a massive choice of food possibilities (also high calorie and high protein stuff). I discovered I really enjoy Indian cooking and try to replicate it at home. They make magic happen with lentils, moong beans and whatnot. If you have skilled chefs, pretty much anything can be absolutely delicious. I'm down for some well-prepared cricket.
Could not eg. some commercially succesful chain restaurant and some key recipes that go viral in popularity cause incremental shifts in dietary behaviour? No one's going to stop eating what they like for some abstract long term goal, but slowly popularizing great food in line with that goal seems doable.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I went vegetarian by perceived necessity due to some health problems, when my previous diet involved plenty of burgers, steaks, chicken, kebabs etc.
At first, I was thinking it was going to suck, but grains, beans, nuts, vegetables, fruit and dairy still leaves you with a massive choice of food possibilities (also high calorie and high protein stuff). I discovered I really enjoy Indian cooking and try to replicate it at home. They make magic happen with lentils, moong beans and whatnot. If you have skilled chefs, pretty much anything can be absolutely delicious. I'm down for some well-prepared cricket.
Could not eg. some commercially succesful chain restaurant and some key recipes that go viral in popularity cause incremental shifts in dietary behaviour? No one's going to stop eating what they like for some abstract long term goal, but slowly popularizing great food in line with that goal seems doable.
I've gone through a big diet change myself semi-recently. Mostly for health reasons. My blood pressure, resting heart rate, triglycerides, ldl, and weight have all dropped and my hdl has gone up, so it's been amazing.
The two things I count nearly obsessively are carbs and sugar so I don't go over that daily limit of 30-50gs of either. I've also nearly wiped out red meat from my diet and have a lot of nuts, veggies, and healthy fats like olive oil. I've found quite a lot of food like this so missing the grains and sugars and red meat was easy to wave off.
This diet proposed would put me back on the higher carb path, which on the days I've faltered have been bad days for me.
The only reason I'm willing to give it a shot is peak boredom and a little curiosity. Agriculture doesn't even make it sustainable right now as best I can figure. I'm wondering what my prep time and such will look like, and how bored I'll get with the food.
I don't mind lentils, but they need to be cooked in a stock/broth of some kind, even if it's vegetable... same with beans. Which probably invalidates the entire thing! Oh well.
@dispatch.o , how did this go? Were you able to pull it off?
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IIRC cattle is by far the worst source of meat because of how inefficient it is to produce. I suppose lab grown meat would likely mitigate some of the issues with it because that would allow the use of land that isn't fit for agriculture. Not sure if you could use the land that your meat plants sit on for additional uses (aka roof used to grow shit, while you have other floors on the structure for other industries). Also with lab meat, you're only growing what you intend to eat, rather than the whole animal. I kind of suspect this would let you make it a little more efficient in the resources it's using. Last I checked, the consensus was that you could probably use current lab grown meat for any recipe that uses ground meat because it's texture is consistent with what you expect from ground meat. The issue with it is that the texture doesn't work for things that aren't supposed to be ground meat, but seems like they a possible solution for that, in the form of Lego inspired cornstarch bricks.
The big issues outside of the too much beef being consumed come down to shitty toxic culture pushing people into unsustainable diets. Cooking isn't exactly as quick and easy as people make it out to be and often times the most time consuming parts of cooking are the parts that aren't usually considered cooking (prep, cleanup & procuring ingredients). When you have a bunch of asshole suites insisting that you should be happy with pay that barely gets you buy, while also having most of your time consumed by shitty work hours, well that leaves you at the mercy of what's available in restaurants that you can afford to frequent. Last I checked, most of the affordable options tend to be meat heavy and place an emphasis on beef based dishes. From personal experience, if I don't want leftovers because I can get them refrigerated in a timely manner, my only real options tend to be mostly burger joints. Hell, most of the typical fast food in the US tends to be pretty devoid of vegetables. Your typical Chinese food restaurant tends to be a better option (not the garbage that is Panda Express) since even if they are a bit meat heavy, they also tend to include vegetables (well a few dishes have zero vegetables and it various based on restaurant), but again my experience is that most have servings larger than what I can eat in a single meal (usually 2 meals for me), so getting the leftovers refrigerated is a must. There's also the issue where current work culture in the US really interferes with getting appropriate exercise. In short, current use work culture tends to force people go with settling for meat heavy meals, that are often beef based, while also not maintaining a proper weight (IMO, you'd see a noticeable down tick in US meat consumption if you drastically cut the number of people that considered obese).
Really the first big step would probably be doing some serious pushback against the shitty entitlement that most employers have, where they expect everyone to give up their lives, so they can get another shitty yacht. Bit easier to sell people on charging up their diet if they had the time and money, to forgo having to stop at a burger joint daily. Even if you can't convince them to change up their diet, perhaps being less stressed by their job and being able to exercise, results in them eating less. Then from there, try introduce the idea of bug sourced protein into their diets, while also encourage them to branch out into other protein sources that aren't beef (and to a lesser extend, if they eat seafood, to pick up more sustainable options like tilapia & catfish, while eating less or no tuna and salmon).
The processed food issue could work in the favor of changong diets though. Instead of ground cricket call it Cool Flour and put a cartoon cricket on the front. We dont really know half the stuff in our food or most of the supply chain. If you just replace parts of existing food people might not even notice.
Zapprr Bars might be out of lentils and ants but who cares if they taste good.
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The only reason I'm willing to give it a shot is peak boredom and a little curiosity. Agriculture doesn't even make it sustainable right now as best I can figure. I'm wondering what my prep time and such will look like, and how bored I'll get with the food.
I don't mind lentils, but they need to be cooked in a stock/broth of some kind, even if it's vegetable... same with beans. Which probably invalidates the entire thing! Oh well.
@dispatch.o , how did this go? Were you able to pull it off?
Partially. The preparation wasn't bad on any individual evening as long as I did as much as possible on days off - cut vegetables, soak legumes, make a soup for lazy days. I lost interest after about 3 1/2 weeks because cooking several different items every night for dinner after 10+ hours at work has so very much cleanup.
I think for my life I'd have to learn a lot of single skillet recipes or really enjoy stews/soups way more than I do. I found myself skipping breakfast and just having soup or beans for lunch. Which after a while isn't that appealing.
I suspect that if you learned to eat like that growing up, it wouldn't bother you at all. I actually work with a guy from Jamaica who is vegan and grew up without refrigeration and we were talking about it and his diet has always been very close to the recommendations.
I'll probably keep trying to improve my diet but I don't think I'll be able to strictly adhere to the recommendations. I like baking sourdough bread and making pizza from scratch on weekends.
The fiber increase did make for some enormous poops though. That was fun.
Edit: I ate minimal meat before, so that didn't change. One piece of chicken every 2-3 weeks, no pork and one steak in the last 2 years.
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As has been said, this is always all academic. People do not work the way we want them to.
I would support semi-plausible first steps like banning uber-farms and removing subsidies and applying that same subsidy money to sustainable aquaculture/livestock R&D.
We need to technologically force the practices to be greener. You cannot make the people better but you can make the systems and the tools better.
I know it sounds pretty fatalist but this isn't like weening off oil or something. This is thousands of years of human nature, culture, etc... and that is ignoring the political aspect as Shryke mentioned.
Why is fish so expensive, anyway? Is it that much harder to transport and store than chicken?
This is just capitalist nihilism.
Human nature is malleable and responds to environmental constraints. The specifics of legislation or a propaganda campaign can be discussed, but it's just unhelpful and unproductive to hold that our only options are continued imperialism or to ~Science!~ our way into being able to continue consuming at an increasingly - unsustainable pace.
Which will never happen because the act of growing enough vegetables and grains to live on produces sufficient inedible stalks and stems that you can feed enough sheep to eat 18g per day per person, weighted again by the table I showed above.
Not eating meat at a low level is literally wasteful, requires more effort and energy composting, and is a meaningless sacrifice. Meat should be more expensive, not non-existent in our diet.
Arguments that we should make more than this are missing the point. You can trade out red meet for crickets who will also eat your leftovers, and that does give more calories, and you can rebalance away from chicken meat to more eggs. But other than that this is what the earth can make unless we...
1) cause more mass extinctions
2) expand farmland
3) destroy the ocean completely
4) magic technology
Fish is typically considered and sold as a premium product in the USA when you see it at a fishmonger. Fish is actually pretty cheap. Consider the price of a 6 oz can of tuna, or a pack of fish sticks. In other countries, meat of that grade is available per pound.
I do think that in reality to best thing we might be able to persuade people to do is shift from beef to lamb or goat and then shift more red meat to poultry and farmed salmon/shrimp. Both of those are shifting from cultural preference to something equally delicious, but more efficient. So that's st least something.
If you ask people on an American diet to just switch to a couple eggs a week and mostly grain, for the most part they'll give you the finger.
I would, for example.
But substitution of similar will get you far. I've already dropped most beef from my shopping because it's too expensive except when on sale. So it's mostly chicken, eggs, and turkey, then pork, and then distant third beef.
Do something like phase out all direct and indirect subsidies for beef in particular and other meats in general and you'll see most people start to trend away from less efficient sources of protein.
I still think it will be an uphill and generational battle to replace our massive over-consumption of animal-based protein with plant-based protein--nevermind shifting to insect-based protein. At least on anything other than an individual scale.
I mean, unless there's an event sufficient that a government can enforce rations, which we haven't seen in 80 years.
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I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as a hedonist but I think on the whole its the most desirable state of human existence. Life is to be counted in many things, but a major one is meals and when people talk about shuffling their caloric budget around to include a wrap or something that seems already half dead to me.
I got the impression the plan in the OP was "this is literally the most you can have to be sustainable for everyone"
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Because yeah we "first world countries" waste a lot of damn food in the pursuit of what is largely superfluous.
I'm just not convinced that with our current regulations that any massive diet change won't end up with corps ratfucking the entire thing like they have with our current food.
The trick is to convince people that the frequency of those places in their diet can be diminished by pricing it appropriately for what it is doing ecologically.
I would spend 40-50 bucks on the meal I described above and treat it as conspicuous consumption every now and then; something to save up for from both a money and a health perspective.
Extra Value meals that exist due to subsidies and bad business practices need to die.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
You are correct. Demanding more than above is saying...
Someone else must have less
Someone else must starve
The diet above includes a 50% reduction in food waste to achieve those yields for everyone.
That feels backwards to me. This diet assumes away so many issues mentioned already in the thread (cultural, dietary restrictions born from religion or allergies, etc) - its just a non starter as a global solution.
You would do better selling me on population control as a salve alongside attacking cattle and corn subsidies which would in turn raise the price on a lot of the foodstuffs that are ecologically problematic and shift behavior towards different options, more often, without forbidding others... and that would do more to fix the issue than tilting at the windmill of this bland, sad one-size-fits-few diet.
Especially population control, if we are being extreme here.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
It is too late for population control to keep the population below 10 billion. It is the number we get WITH population control (mainly from educating women)
This is the average diet. Allergies can be easily addressed by exchanging, nuts for beans, milk for fish, fish for poultry and so on. So no issues there.
Cultural norms outside the USA are compatible with this diet. The cultural desire of the elites in a society is not, but most of humanity for most of their history has eaten a lot like this. A little bit of meat for taste, combined with a lot of grains and vegetables.
This diet is not bland, it lacks meat and dairy, important elements of many American dishes, but it contains garlic, peppers, onions, eggplant, corn, spices, herbs, etc. It contains citrus and fruit etc. If bland to you means "not a steak" then the future has bad news for you. You still can have beef once a week.
This is a hard truth.
Mainly because "it's my culture" is a pretty shitty reason to do anything but no matter how shitty a reason, it's very powerful.
This makes zero sense. Nuts and beans are fundamentally different nutritional profiles: One is dietary carbs, the other fat, and fill completely different roles. And fish vs milk, I am completely baffled on how those are interchangeable. The amount of milk you'd need to get the protein for a serving of fish is IMMENSE. Whatever a kilogram of milk is to equal 100 grams of fish, which throws everything out of whack. Now 3 people have to give up their entire daily dairy, according to logic you presented, for 1 person to get 35 grams of protein. And now you've got a vitamin D and calcium problem.
Fish for poultry is the only thing up there that's even remotely alike.
So yes, lots of issues just there alone. This thing falls apart the instant it's even mildly scrutinized. It almost feels like a way for people who already have a bias towards this kind of diet to determine what's best for everyone.
It's got nothing whatever to do with capitalism. It predates it and it be around after it.
Also, not directed at you but societies who have a diet compatible with the OP aren't choosing that instead of a western diet. They don't have a choice.
You can see this as cultures become richer they eat "worse".
It's got nothing to do with bland-ness, it's the amount "allowed".
See, the thing is that humanity is all about culture. You don't get to not address it, even if you don't like most cultures.
I haven’t read the report yet, but I feel like we are getting too caught up in the details. Just as a start, vegetarians and vegans exist. So clearly it’s possible to reduce meat consumption and still be healthy.
That includes professional athletes by the way. So it’s not just low activity people who are vegetarians.
I would say that the point is to drive the average towards those numbers. What it isn’t, is a prescribed diet that everyone must follow exactly.
And honestly it’s probably not that hard to drive people closer. Cut subsidies for things like sugar, dairy, beef. Put some additional regulations on environmentally damaging practices (commercial beef farming for example). Regulate or tax waste more heavily.
You could make huge gains with small economic nudges.
Yes, absolutely it's possible to reduce meat consumption. But that's not the only thing this proposed diet is trying to accomplish.
Also I would be curious how many professional athletes who have publicly switched to and endorsed a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle engaged in an entirely vegetarian or vegan diet during their peak periods of development and how many likely used or currently use PEDs.
And I'd like to point out again that the beef industry isn't an economically insignificant industry, so there's going to be damage there to not just the national economy but also local economies. While one may not care about that or actively think the beef industry should be burnt to the ground, from a policy perspective this isn't something that can just be ignored.
I agree with all of that, but...
The OP has continually stated that it's this diet or nothing and that's the perspective I'm taking that line of discussion.
I am all for reduction in sugar as a first step, including notifications that HFCS is being used (not that I think HFCS is necessarily even worse for you than sugar, it's that it's used in everything) but I feel like it's going to take a lot of time to switch this. These are massive industries made up of millions of people probably in the US by itself, and derailing everything immediately will cause yet another crisis that has barely been touched on.
A lot of places depend on their local agriculture. I live in a farm-heavy state, which gives me the benefit of low-cost, low-carbon food everywhere because most of the grocers here carry local produce almost exclusively. You'd send this entire region into a tailspin (Again, which would have knock on effects for other industries in these areas, not to mention devestating the local economies and governments and everything that goes into keeping those aloft) unless it is done properly. I can't imagine it's much different elsewhere.
So yeah, it does kind of feel like people completely disconnected from this are making blind decisions based on spherical cows in a vacuum.
I have not said anything of the sort. I am quoting and discussing a well researched academic study which talks about the amount of food the planet can produce, and how much we all get if you divide that by 10 billion. Do you have your own study you would like to discuss?
The only realistic criticism is that they have clearly removed eggs and dairy from the budget to increase meat, and I think eggs and dairy are more useful than meat. I've seen no evidence that the planet can produce more food than this. This is an enormous amount of food, it's just divided amongst 30% more people.
I don't really like the balance of the diet. I already supplement my protein with whey because I am seldom in the mood for meat and I don't really like buying a bunch of out of season fruit.
In my efforts to give this thing a go, I'm definitely going to be substituting some things. Definitely more fish and eggs, no red meat or chicken. I'll probably also not stop my hobby of baking bread and pies and giving them away at work.
Certain regions of the world grow almost anything in huge quantities others can't grow anything. This whole thing is very science'y and that's not an insult or something but it definitely misses the mark on messaging and nuance (which most things like this do).
So do we take it literally? Do we use it as a goal that will probably change in 4-5 years?
The only reason I'm willing to give it a shot is peak boredom and a little curiosity. Agriculture doesn't even make it sustainable right now as best I can figure. I'm wondering what my prep time and such will look like, and how bored I'll get with the food.
I don't mind lentils, but they need to be cooked in a stock/broth of some kind, even if it's vegetable... same with beans. Which probably invalidates the entire thing! Oh well.
Apparently it uses up tons of water and land to produce the feed (soybean mostly?)
I could probably reduce it by half but I am not sure how to replace such a cheap, versatile and easily available resource
edit: Cricket flour seems amazing but I don't really cook much so I have no idea how to switch, no one in my area sell food products like that
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At first, I was thinking it was going to suck, but grains, beans, nuts, vegetables, fruit and dairy still leaves you with a massive choice of food possibilities (also high calorie and high protein stuff). I discovered I really enjoy Indian cooking and try to replicate it at home. They make magic happen with lentils, moong beans and whatnot. If you have skilled chefs, pretty much anything can be absolutely delicious. I'm down for some well-prepared cricket.
Could not eg. some commercially succesful chain restaurant and some key recipes that go viral in popularity cause incremental shifts in dietary behaviour? No one's going to stop eating what they like for some abstract long term goal, but slowly popularizing great food in line with that goal seems doable.
I've gone through a big diet change myself semi-recently. Mostly for health reasons. My blood pressure, resting heart rate, triglycerides, ldl, and weight have all dropped and my hdl has gone up, so it's been amazing.
The two things I count nearly obsessively are carbs and sugar so I don't go over that daily limit of 30-50gs of either. I've also nearly wiped out red meat from my diet and have a lot of nuts, veggies, and healthy fats like olive oil. I've found quite a lot of food like this so missing the grains and sugars and red meat was easy to wave off.
This diet proposed would put me back on the higher carb path, which on the days I've faltered have been bad days for me.
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The big issues outside of the too much beef being consumed come down to shitty toxic culture pushing people into unsustainable diets. Cooking isn't exactly as quick and easy as people make it out to be and often times the most time consuming parts of cooking are the parts that aren't usually considered cooking (prep, cleanup & procuring ingredients). When you have a bunch of asshole suites insisting that you should be happy with pay that barely gets you buy, while also having most of your time consumed by shitty work hours, well that leaves you at the mercy of what's available in restaurants that you can afford to frequent. Last I checked, most of the affordable options tend to be meat heavy and place an emphasis on beef based dishes. From personal experience, if I don't want leftovers because I can get them refrigerated in a timely manner, my only real options tend to be mostly burger joints. Hell, most of the typical fast food in the US tends to be pretty devoid of vegetables. Your typical Chinese food restaurant tends to be a better option (not the garbage that is Panda Express) since even if they are a bit meat heavy, they also tend to include vegetables (well a few dishes have zero vegetables and it various based on restaurant), but again my experience is that most have servings larger than what I can eat in a single meal (usually 2 meals for me), so getting the leftovers refrigerated is a must. There's also the issue where current work culture in the US really interferes with getting appropriate exercise. In short, current use work culture tends to force people go with settling for meat heavy meals, that are often beef based, while also not maintaining a proper weight (IMO, you'd see a noticeable down tick in US meat consumption if you drastically cut the number of people that considered obese).
Really the first big step would probably be doing some serious pushback against the shitty entitlement that most employers have, where they expect everyone to give up their lives, so they can get another shitty yacht. Bit easier to sell people on charging up their diet if they had the time and money, to forgo having to stop at a burger joint daily. Even if you can't convince them to change up their diet, perhaps being less stressed by their job and being able to exercise, results in them eating less. Then from there, try introduce the idea of bug sourced protein into their diets, while also encourage them to branch out into other protein sources that aren't beef (and to a lesser extend, if they eat seafood, to pick up more sustainable options like tilapia & catfish, while eating less or no tuna and salmon).
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Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
But beef beats lamb in terms of raw volume.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Zapprr Bars might be out of lentils and ants but who cares if they taste good.
Partially. The preparation wasn't bad on any individual evening as long as I did as much as possible on days off - cut vegetables, soak legumes, make a soup for lazy days. I lost interest after about 3 1/2 weeks because cooking several different items every night for dinner after 10+ hours at work has so very much cleanup.
I think for my life I'd have to learn a lot of single skillet recipes or really enjoy stews/soups way more than I do. I found myself skipping breakfast and just having soup or beans for lunch. Which after a while isn't that appealing.
I suspect that if you learned to eat like that growing up, it wouldn't bother you at all. I actually work with a guy from Jamaica who is vegan and grew up without refrigeration and we were talking about it and his diet has always been very close to the recommendations.
I'll probably keep trying to improve my diet but I don't think I'll be able to strictly adhere to the recommendations. I like baking sourdough bread and making pizza from scratch on weekends.
The fiber increase did make for some enormous poops though. That was fun.
Edit: I ate minimal meat before, so that didn't change. One piece of chicken every 2-3 weeks, no pork and one steak in the last 2 years.