Vegetarian and “Healthy” Diets Could Be More Harmful to the Environment | Hacker News Reader

Vegetarian and “Healthy” Diets Could Be More Harmful to the Environment

cmu.edu

2 pointsXzetaU84 comments

The linked article mentions the Colcom Foundation funded this research, along with the Carnegie Mellon University Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research.

Can anyone speak to whether the Colcom Foundation raises any concern, as a funding source? In a July 2010 report, "Greenwash: Nativists, Environmentalism & the Hypocrisy of Hate", the Southern Poverty Law Center writes, "The most important may be the Colcom Foundation, a $400-million-plus entity founded in 1996 by Cordelia Scaife May of the far-right Scaife family." https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/d6_legacy_file...

Color me cynical, but prefer due diligence, as opposed to consuming these naively.

When you consider that livestock produce methane and are fed high quality grain and beans among other vegetables the findings are very questionable.

There is an overwhelming consensus from multiple academic studies showing the opposite in terms of environmental impact. Considering that the amount of grain used to feed relatively few cattle could be feeding many more humans it is amazing.

It is true that there are very sustainable and very unsustainable agricultural practices in the growing of food... but that is a totally different thing from the findings of this study.

Must be a response to the UN + WHO noises recently.

The article talks about high water content vegetables, not high quality grain and beans. It does not seem so unlikely that foods that almost don't provide calories are more harmful when compared on a calorie basis.

(Of course on the other hand no one eats 25 pounds of lettuce and broccoli a day)

'....the researchers behind this new study say that’s a total mischaracterization of what they found. Rather, in terms of environmental impact, it turns out that not all foods in a particular food group are created equal, Michelle Tom and Paul Fischbeck of Carnegie Mellon University told The Huffington Post. “You can’t lump all vegetables together and say they’re good,” Fischbeck said.'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vegetarian-bad-for-envir...

Another person commented elsewhere: "This is THE WORST science ever. They did simple calorie comparisons (ex. 1 kilo of beef = 2300 calories, vs 6.7 kilos of broccoli), without taking into account the inputs needed to produce that kilo of beef. It takes anywhere from 5-7 kilos of grain to produce that 1 kilo of beef. And a kilo of corn has over 3500 calories! So over the cow's lifetime (while it produces copious amounts of methane) it has to eat over 17,000 calories per kilogram of meat it produces."

So, A)It's being grossly miscategorized, and B)It's bad science in the first place.

Perhaps we should be discussing how powerful people's cognitive dissonance is surrounding meat instead?

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