[quote="Azdgari"]For a long time, eating meat was an essential part of a diet necessary to stay alive and pass on genes. That is no longer the case, as you can have a perfectly healthy diet without meat, so our biology couldn't care less about whether we eat meat or not.[/quote]
That's what people say, but the fact that it's not what the overwhelming majority of people do suggests something else. You can have a perfectly healthy diet without meat, but unless you're careful, you are at risk of malnutrition. And, for the most part, that's equally true for any diet. The simplest and surest way to ensure you're getting enough nutrients from your food is to eat a variety of foods.
[quote]I'd be interested to see your sources about the energy/resource efficiency on a per calorie/per unit of meaningful nutritional content basis. A cursory google revealed lots of conflicting results, but I confess I didn't spend the time to come to a conclusion for myself. Gem had some interesting points earlier on in the topic too.[/quote]
The results are mixed depending on where you look and how you evaluate it, but as an example of something I found, there's
this.
[quote]No, it is not the #1 factor. However, 10% of a huge problem does not qualify as 'very very small' in my opinion. Drug costs are less than 10% of US health spending, but that doesn't mean their cost isn't a massive issue.[/quote]
That 10% is actually 9%, and it's for the entire agriculture industry--meaning it's caused by a little more than just the methane from cow farts.
[quote]Besides, unless I'm mistaken, the effects it would have more broadly (i.e. through feedback systems such as increasing temperatures temperatures, leading to a higher concentration of water vapor) are likely to extend beyond that decade, no?[/quote]
That much is true, and the feedback loop caused by all greenhouse gases is what makes the problem as scary as it is if you start to think about it.
[quote]While meat isn't unhealthy, "We've always done it" and "Our ancestors thousands of years ago did it" don't do much for me. Our ancestors thousands of years ago lived to the ripe ages of what, 30? I can name an awful lot of bad habits we can justify if the criteria is "Ancient humans did this too."[/quote]
The average age of death of a person in ancient times was much younger, yes. However, that is because infant and child mortality was very high. Chances are, if you could survive to the age of 18, your life expectancy would be roughly the same as we would expect today.
I don't say this as an appeal to tradition. I say this because I see humans as being little more than machines, which evolved to survive and reproduce. Since the dawn of civilization, our technology has exploded--but we really are animals ourselves underneath it all. Evolution is a very slow process, and so we are not very well suited to life in a modern society.
If our evolution kept up with our pace of technology, we would have bodies that could tolerate sitting still for prolonged periods of time, we would be able to hold up to the intense g-forces of vehicle crashes, and we would be more resistant to psychological stresses like depression and suicide.
We live very unnatural lives, and that's probably part of the reason why--despite having most or all of our basic needs met in a 1st world society--we're all just so unhappy most of the time. Our biology tells us we're really not supposed to live like this.
[quote]Problems can coexist, and shying away from problems because "there's a bigger fish" seems counterproductive. Yes, there are ethnic cleansings taking place in Myanmar, but that doesn't mean your local soup kitchen should close its doors. Similarly, I the fact that there are bad labor conditions in Vietnam and Taiwan shouldn't prevent someone from taking simple steps to improve the sustainability of their diet. The way I see it, simply changing our consumption preferences (assuming price/geographic accessibility, granted), we can incentivize a relatively painless market transition towards more sustainable meats.[/quote]
Fair point.