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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

No, sorry. Cows and other ruminants have been part of the ecosystem for tens of millions of years. They're extremely good for the soil and for the environment and it turns out humans are highly evolved to eat meat. We invented fire and hunting tools for it hundreds of thousands of years ago. It's one of the most nutrient dense and healthy foods you can consume as long as you don't add a bunch of crap to it. Humanity wouldn't even exist without meat.

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The difference is, now, thanks to humans, there are 1.4 billion cows. And a lot of the cows are fed things like corn, which makes them produce a lot more methane than a more natural diet would. A million years ago, you wouldn't have anywhere near this many ruminants.

I think the solution is somewhere in between. There is a lot more cows today than there was 200 years ago. The negatives get compounded with CO2 and methane being released, plus the water and energy used to make beef over other meats or sources of protein is much higher. Though yes we did evolve to eat some meat. But the average American eats a lot of red meat and the average American has a less than healthy cholesterol level. So let's just eat less red meat. If we all cut down our red meat consumption by 50%, the environment would be much better off, we would be healthier, and we would still be able to get the nutrients we need from meat.

Cholesterol levels are utterly irrelevant in predicting 10 year mortality rate. Oxidized LDL and CAC score are the metrics to optimize for and indicate whether your lifestyle is successful.

It's funny you mention cows specifically, because I tend to think of beef as one of the less healthy meats compared to others. And I know there is a lot of criticism of beef production from environmentalists, but I am not too steeped in that literature.

A lot of Mexican dishes I most readily think of are more about pork and chicken than beef.

The factory farming way of producing beef is certainly not good for the environment and soil.

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