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Comment by LaurensBER | Hacker News Reader

All of the crises (energy crisis, COVID, etc) have been solved by adapting to the new reality. That usually takes times and makes things (temporarily) worse but I'm confident we can keep on doing that.

A lack of drinking water can be solved with desalination (which, today, is insanely cheap for drinking water, too expensive for agriculture though), we can improve the productivity of existing agriculture and switch from a meat based diet towards a more plant based diet, etc.

This will require adjustments but I don't see China (with a shrinking population) attacking Russia to maintain the price of steak.

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People really need to start thinking harder about plant based diets. I don't think most people know the numbers[0] in terms of how much habitable land is occupied by grazing and animal feed land.

I mean just think about it: you're putting food that grows mainly by direct energy from the sun (which is already a lossy process) and processing it through animals before eating it (in the form of that animal's meat). This is by definition an inefficient process, and we'd recover something approaching the entirety of the American continent of land by making this switch.

Obviously this is hard to accomplish given how deeply ingrained meat-eating culture is.

0: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture

Plant-based diets are a difficult sell for many reasons. I eat low carbs to control/reduce insulin resistance. Plant-based diets have a long-term negative effect on my health. If you don't have problems with insulin resistance, plant-based diets are a great way to maintain better health.

There are a few ways to reduce the impact of growing animals for food. One path is incorporating various practices like regenerative grazing and agrivoltaics into the food supply chain. Another path is to restrict all agricultural activities that drain aquifers. I suspect that those irrigation-dependent lands easily supported herds of buffalo, and returning those lands to animal raising, especially using regenerative grazing practices, would replenish the soil stripped of nutrients by modern agricultural practices.

How do plant based diets have long term negative effects on your health?

Plant based diets can be so varied, more than people understand.

It depends on your level of insulin resistance. For example, I can typically tolerate 25 g of carbohydrates in all forms in a meal if I want to keep my current level of insulin resistance stable. If I want insulin resistance to drop, I need to keep BG spikes to a minimum which means less than 25 g of carbs.

To keep insulin resistance at bay, you don't want your BG level to spike more than about 50 - 75 mg/dl 1 hour after your meal.

Intermittent fasting also helps bring down insulin resistance but depending on your families relation to snacking in the evening that can be a hard path to follow as well.

FWIW, I myself am not vegan and I would never push a diet that is unworkable or hard to fit in for someone with strict dietary constraints. I'm also sorry if you face judgement for your diet for that reason.

That said, I would say for the vast majority of people in the developed world who have access to plethora of plant based whole food options and who do not suffer from dietary restrictions for health reasons, massively cutting down on meat and dairy consumption would be good for both the health of those people and for the planet.

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