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Comment by Der_Einzige | Hacker News Reader

Significant amounts of the third world are already eating de-facto vegetarian or vegan diets. Many for religious reasons (i.e. in India where the vast majority of people either eat no meat or only chicken/fish), and many others for financial reasons.

Strict vegan diets would objectively massively help reduce climate change.

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Religious and too poor to eat meat.

Not exactly selling the idea of “strict vegan diet” to a bunch of people with enough cash for meat and incisors in their jaws.

You got any examples of cultures en mass with “strict vegan diets” because lentils taste delicious?

> The consumption of meat is more common among lower-income groups. Nearly nine out of ten people belonging to the poorest 20% of India's population eat meat, compared to about seven out of ten among the wealthiest 20%.[4]

> Religion also plays a role in dietary habits. Nearly all of the Muslim (99%), Christian (99%) and Buddhists/neo-Buddhist (97%) populations eat meat. Among Hindus, a little over three-quarters consume meat, while Jains and Sikhs have the highest share of vegetarians. Only one-quarter of Jains and half of Sikhs have ever eaten meat.

https://www.dataforindia.com/meat-consumption/

Buddhists don't eat meat for religious reasons.

And lentils do taste very good yes. In Spain they make a really nice lentil broth. Though the traditional version has meat in it, it can easily do without. It's just that in Spain meat goes into everything:)

why does it matter why they eat vegan? they just demonstrate that its feasable.

Because the incentive is what drives change. You're not going to convince America or Western Europe to live strict vegan lifestyles if they are adverse to it. Further, as the poor people grow wealthier, they begin to eat more meat unless they have a religious reason (I.e. an incentive) to do so.

Converting to a vegan diet alone won't stop human driven climate change. Therefore, the prospect of climate change won't be enough to convince people to give up meat en masse. That drum has been banged on enough for long enough for that to be obvious.

It's not even just America or Western Europe. As soon as I saw the OP about switching to total veganism, my first thought was about e.g. the Arabian Peninsula where meat is central to every meal, and indeed going without meat is seen as the behavior of adherents of foreign religions. Anyone familiar with that part of the world knows that any fad of societal veganism would take decades to arise, longer than the time we have to tackle climate change.

That is not true, most people in India don’t eat meat because they are too poor to afford it and hence malnourishment.

Punjab and Rajasthan have the highest proportion of vegetarians and also rank on the top of male/female height charts.

Admittedly it's not fully vegan but still.

Indians have long recognized the virtues of a vegetarian diet: both the moral imperative & it's health benefits. That's something everyone should be able to admire.

> in India where the vast majority of people either eat no meat or only chicken/fish

That is such a misleading comment. ~80% of people in India consume meat. That "or" is doing some incredibly amounts of borderline lying.

https://www.dataforindia.com/meat-consumption/

They consume far less meat and the specific types are the uniquely least polluting types

Chicken/Fish produce an order of magnitude or in some cases two orders of magnitude less pollution than cows do.

Trying to gaslight me on this topic even though I'm right on the part that matters. the "or" stands in for the context of the fact that Chicken/fish are an order of magnitude healthier for the planet, and frankly, for individuals.

> Chicken/Fish produce an order of magnitude or in some cases two orders of magnitude less pollution than cows do.

Cows are not for eating, they are holy animals in India, more like pets. I hope you are not advocating eating dogs in west!

> They consume far less meat and the specific types are the uniquely least polluting types

Your claim was that 3rd world countries like India "are already eating de-facto vegetarian or vegan diets" which is incorrect. Moving goalposts

> Chicken/Fish produce an order of magnitude or in some cases two orders of magnitude less pollution than cows do.

Cool, irrelevant because the vast majority in India are neither vegetarian or vegan.

> Trying to gaslight me on this topic even though I'm right on the part that matters

This is called "being incorrect but trying to move goalposts"

Not remotely what gaslighting means

Veganism would be more popular if vegans weren't so insufferable.

the suffering of the animals being killed for your tastebuds outweighs your suffering of the "vegan-high-horse".

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