I will never become a vegetarian

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I realised that talking about vegetarianism or vegan has the converse effect of making me want to specifically eat meat for dinner. To revel in it!

I don't want to restrict my diet. I've had difficulties with eating. I've spent years learning to eat everything! Why would I restrict myself artificially?

But this is where you error, since a person who eats large ruminants, and vegetables accounts for less death than someone whose diet is solely plant based. What's delusion and fantasy is that you think any form of food production doesn't involve death. Then on top of that you're sanctimonious and supercilious about it because you don't realize how disconnected and oblivious you are. Now you're just a simple minded joke.

Plus misinformed vegan cliches aren't a substitution for actual nutritional knowledge. Veganism is NOT an optimal diet. It is much more difficult to get fat soluble vitamins, long chained omega 3's and B12 on a vegan diet. Plus heme iron and many other minerals are more accessible from animal products. If humans were solely meant to eat vegetables and fruits, we'd convert beta carotene to vitamin A more efficiently as well as ALA to DHA and K1 to K2. Humans don't do any of these conversions very well. We also can't digest recalcitrant polysaccharides. Human colons are too short.

Did you actually read the IARC summary? It was based solely on epidemiology studies. They purposely excluded animal studies and RCT's. For the strongest ASSOCIATION for collorectal cancer, they used a total of 7 studies (out of 800 reviewed in their meta-analysis) and came up with an ABSOLUTE ASSOCIATION of an 1% increase in eating red meat. So in other words assuming the associations weren't caused by a myriad of other confounding factors, the evidence is still very weak. (Do you even know the difference between relative risk and absolute risk?)

And no beta carotene doesn't convert "just fine." Many people about 50% of the world's population don't convert beta carotene at all, plus to make the conversion fat in one's diets is necessary. Beta-carotene is a retinal pre-cursor. It breaks down to retinal. You're more likely going to get toxicity from fortifications and supplements rather than whole foods. Heme iron is more readily accessible than non-heme, so like with amino acids and other minerals, it is a question of nutrient density. Same is true with DHA from animal products rather than eating micro algae, again nutrient density. Who normally eats micro-algae? And no, since we're hindgut fermenters the B12 (as well as the K2) human bodies manufacture in small amounts isn't accessible in sufficient quantities to meet human needs. (For K2, enjoy your natto. I tried eating it, and it wasn't palatable). Humans lost these capabilities because human evolved getting B12 and K2 from external sources (grass fed meats and then later dairy) that the homo genus has been eating for 1.8 million years.

Sure now you can supplement DHA, B12, K2 and other vitamins but like I wrote, a vegan diet is NOT an optimal diet. I didn't say it was impossible...though many vegans don't supplement properly. (Fairly most omnivores eat like shit too). Not to mention there are issues with supplements for instance a lot of the B12 is GMO because it's a lot cheaper to manufacture that way..

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http://www.jswconline.org/content/71/2/156.full.pdf

Ruminants and grasslands co-evolved. Here's peer reviewed research from this year noting how cattle can be used to reduce GHG's

You don't support small farms? You prefer large industrial agricultural corporate farms instead? Is that seriously your retort?

Regardless, science evolves and changes, so if you knew the slightest bit about soil science, which you obviously don't, animals, in particular ruminants in grassland ecosystems, are ESSENTIAL for ecosystems to function. Why? Because they help build healthy soils through dispersal of organic matter (manure) that's full of microbes that further increase soil microbial activity. Soils are ecosystems with billions of organisms. Tilling for crops destroys these microbial communities. SO AGAIN, you're just another person (assume vegan) who doesn't know what the f'k he's writing about. But then again the reductive science , which you seem to love, looks at parts rather than the whole and thus doesn't see the entire picture.

Oh, industrial ag crops go to a myriad of uses with a lot of co-products (bio-fuels, ethanol, seed oils, alcohol) and bye products (lecithin,HFCS, SPI, etc), not just feed. So your Guardian link repeats more fallacies, but is sort of besides the point anyway, since I advocate for regenerative systems not industrial ones.

(Btw the research I posted was largely fund by an oil company...the "beef industry" doesn't support extensive systems because too many vested interests in the feedlot system like meat packers, Big Pharma, and agro-chemicals...so your tinfoil hat is on a little too tight again).


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The French study may be found here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800912000043

The beef, broccoli, tomatoes, and chicken numbers may be found here: http://www.ewg.org/meateatersg... but you have to convert them from kg emissions/kg food to kg emissions/calorie. I used google's numbers (and they cite the USDA as the source) which gave: tomatoes 180 cal/kg, broccoli 340 cal/kg, chicken 2190 cal/kg, and beef 3320 cal/kg. That makes chicken 2.79 kg CO2-e emissions per 1000 calories, beef 8.13, broccoli 5.88, and tomatoes 6.11.