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Comment by oDot | Hacker News Reader

Diversification is indeed the best strategy, but please do not become vegetarian on a whim. Consider the health implications it involves.

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Another avenue is just being more conscious about the meat you eat. There's a difference between having meat-based products as a staple food (e.g. preprocessed meat, fast food / restaurant / take-out,...) and reducing which types of meat you eat, the frequency and where you buy meat products.

For instance, a local butcher shop might offer local products, and will be more expensive. But you can offset the expense by only having meat dishes on, say, Sunday. That's just one strategy. Another is to use the left-overs in a next meal.

Historically, meat was expensive, and not eaten daily. For intsance, in the UK, "sunday roast" was originally exactly that: a meal that was only eaten on Sunday after service. Sheppard's pie was then a dish made from the left-overs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_roast

There's more to it then that, but it's a good idea to be aware that historic eating habits do yield many good ideas on how to move away from modern day meat consumption patterns predicated by the abundance cheap meat.

And let’s not forget that cheap meat is possible only because of industrial-scale mistreatment of animals, the abuse of antibiotics, mass devastation of the natural world to grow feed for said animals, etc., etc.

We reap what we sow. We’re killing Earth’s biosphere, and soon enough our own species will face its doom.

But hey, let’s get another bucket of chicken and keep stuffing our faces with hamburgers.

Being flexible about types and cuts of meat can help with the cost also. At least at supermarkets in my area, a three or four-pound piece of pork shoulder might be buy-one-get-one-free, for about the same price as a pack of six chicken wings or a small strip steak.

One semi-major home repair completely overtakes any savings on food, of course.

What do you mean? While strict vegetarian might not be the best it seems there are still more health implications to account for when eating meat.

I am very much in the valley of despair on this manner, but for me individually (and food is indeed very individual), meat consumption leads to a much greater quality of life, with perceived health benefits.

I went fully carnivore and it lead to various health improvements. While I moved away from it due to my foodie tendencies, I currently do consume mainly animal products.

I plan on doing a vegan experiment as well, but I am just not getting convinced by the vegans I listen to, so I need to do more research. As it stands, I believe eating meat that grew naturally (e.g grass fed beef as compared factory farming) is more healthy and sustainable than veganism.

> I need to do more research

Where will you publish the study?

You were insinuating there are negative health consequences to vegetarianism without providing any scientific evidence.

I was saying that there could be negative effects, which is evidently true since I have experienced some.

People should check what's good for them instead of blindly following information they got by osmosis. Especially with regards to health.

Yeah you said so but we still don't know what those effects are and how your food supposedly caused them. Maybe there are different explanations for why you feel better now. I do agree that this can be very individual, but that is also the danger when people talk about their experience. You won't notice the long time consequences either, by definition.

That's only a problem if I advise people will go in a certain direction (which is what the original comment did). Instead I suggested people think about their decisions.

hundreds of millions of indians are vegetarians just fine, people who talk like this have usually read too many anti-vegetarian memes

Or are just aware of the individuality of food.

fear mongering about vegetarianism implies a distinct lack of food awareness

I forgot we all mustn't question the current narrative

Who are "we" and what is the "current narrative"? I'm afraid you'll have to elaborate, I'm a bit of a luddite.

If you'd like to discuss any problems with widespread vegetarianism in India, which again, includes hundreds of millions of people, then I'm happy to continue this discussion.

To be fair, vegetarianism isn't unhealthy (or necessarily healthy--you could still eat Oreos all day), but leaping into a rapid dietary change out of fear might be. Vegetarianism works in India because there's an established tradition of cooking varied foods that meet nutritional needs and are tasty. Stereotypical American vegetarianism is 1/3 rabbit-food, 1/3 gooey cheesy pasta, and 1/3 synthetic meat-substitutes.

My wife has health issues that mean many foods will cause her gastrointestinal pain or worse. Unfortunately many of the meat substitutes that vegans/vegetarians eat will hurt her.

Your wife is not the norm and it does not give us any general info about vegetarianism being supposedly unhealthy.

Logic check: grandparent's observation, if verified, disproves a universal claim that vegan/vegetarian is healthier.

This is general information.

Logic check... Get off your high horse mate. Nobody is claiming that the vegan/vegetarian diet is the best diet for absolutely everybody, that would be an absurd claim. Outliers can and will exist. Eg. You have people that get health issues from eating onions, it doesn't mean that onions aren't healthy lol.

Funny! I tried to structure my prior comment to you with the exact same "get off your high horse" content since you were aggressive in your prior comments to the grandparent commenter, but didn't want to broach site standards.

We appear to have come to the same conclusion, so I'll leave it at that. Best of luck out there.

Also, isn’t becoming a vegetarian somewhat the opposite of diversifying?

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