this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
118 points (96.8% liked)
Memes
45536 readers
395 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's not carbon neutral if you look at studies that account for more factors. For instance, here's an article with an interview of the researchers in the field talking about how there is no carbon-neutral beef
If we look at much more rigorous reviews on the carbon sequestration potential of "regenerative grazing" it's pretty slim. It cannot even sequester enough to counteract just grazing only production which only produces 1g protein/person/day
https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/reports/fcrn_gnc_report.pdf
And keep in mind that this doesn't scale very well due to the massive land it requires. Already clearing land for pastures is a large deforester. Trying to even scale to a quarter of beef demand would require using 100% of grassland which would put enormous pressure for further deforestation
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
Thanks for the thorough write up. Quite impressive for a meme sub :)
"And keep in mind that this doesn’t scale very well due to the massive land it requires. Already clearing land for pastures is a large deforester. Trying to even scale to a quarter of beef demand would require using 100% of grassland which would put enormous pressure for further deforestation."
Most deforestation is intended to produce land for crop farming. There is still a lot of agricultural land left that is ideal for grazing, and that cannot be used for growing crops. We may not be able to feed everyone in the world on meat, but we definitely can't do it with plant-based foods alone.
And apart from that issue, there is the matter of protein quality, which is complicated to assess. Most mentions of plant protein are referring to total nitrogen content ("crude protein"), but not all of that comes as amino acids, which is the only form in which nitrogen can be assimilated by the human body.
So mixing and balancing plant protein sources has to be done with a certain amount of skill and care, because if one of the essential amino acids in the mix is deficient, that limits the assimilability of the rest of them.
https://wwf.panda.org/discover/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/amazon/amazon_threats/unsustainable_cattle_ranching/
Plant-based food production uses less cropland
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
Complete proteins matter doesn't really matter all that much in practice. Things like soy are complete on their own, and things that are technically incomplete proteins like beans can be made complete with rather little like even rice. You don't need to be getting every amino acid in with every meal. If you eat the amino acids at some point in the day, you will be fine