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Study Claims Lettuce Is "Three Times Worse Than Bacon" For GHG Emissions (cmu.edu)
davidshenba writes: Sticking to a vegetarian diet may not the best for environment — in fact, it might be harmful to it. According to new research from Carnegie Mellon University, following the USDA recommendations to consume more fruits, vegetables, dairy and seafood is more harmful to the environment because those foods have relatively high resource uses and greenhouse gas emissions per calorie. "There's a complex relationship between diet and the environment," Ph.D. student Michelle Tom said. "What is good for us health-wise isn't always what's best for the environment. That's important for public officials to know and for them to be cognizant of these tradeoffs as they develop or continue to develop dietary guidelines in the future." As you might suspect some find the study dubious at best.
Subject says it all. Editors, this is literally your job. Don't give equal time to obvious lunatics.
Truth and reality don't matter anymore; soundbytes and headlines and ever-decreasing "news cycles" do.
nasty vegetarians try to take my precious.
...and we all know the results to Sheldon. Emissions.
Because, you know, cows make photosynthesis.
The smell of bullshit is greater than the GHG...
Uhhhh... so, the pig eating the same food as we do, burning those calories as heat in terms of movement and etc. and then being turned into food... uses less energy than cutting out the whole "pig" part? CONSERVATION OF ENERGY MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT???!!
water can kill you, stop drinking water.
stupid story stupid headline.
Can't wait to send this to my vegan friends who switched to being veganese after watching some netflix documentaries...
The title is about lettuce, the article that "debunks it" says that vegetarians will not eat only lettuce. So the title is correct.
Best way to get you kids to eat vegetables.
Let's focus on truly man made emissions, you know shit coming out of cars, coal plants, etc and stop trying to figure out how much a cow farts or how much is generated by eating lettuce. What a waste of time and money. All of the cows and lettuce eating people on the planet pail in comparison to one coal plant.
Follow the money, folks, follow the money.
3 guesses as to who paid for this pile of pig poop.
Now, it's not always the case that the price of something corresponds to its resource use. But things that use a lot of resources tend to be more expensive. Food for thought.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The paper simply cites that on a per calorie basis many vegtables like lettuce, cucumbers, celery, etc are worse for the enviornment. It's actually obvious because these foods have no nutritional value with respect to calories, yet require water and other resources to bring to the table. The same paper states nutrition rich plant materials are actually better. The "debunking" article is just a knee jerking response and addresses "issues" that were never brought up in the paper. What we need to help fix this planet are people that run off of logic, not emotions.
Since lettuce has far more water than calories, that's not much of a surprise. You'd have to eat a mountain of lettuce to get the same caloric intake as a couple of rashers of bacon. But few people eat lettuce for the calories; vegetarians often get most of theirs from nuts, mushrooms & soy, for example - none of which appear to be covered in the study
eating a vegetarian diet could contribute to climate change
Sure, but less so than most diets involving meat (disclaimer: not a vegetarian). The study also includes dairy foods and even seafood, which seems odd for a vegetarian diet but maybe bolsters their desired conclusion (cheese in particular is pretty GHG-intensive). The result seems to be more useful for fuelling misleading media quotes like the above, than for making informed decisions.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It does not make much sense to compare various foods so long as we overeat like crazy and throw away half of the food we buy. Start by making sure everyone lives within walking distance of a supermarket. Then people don't have to buy gigantic portions on weekly trips and have half of it get spoiled. Said daily walking trips will also help you lose weight, and then you don't need as many calories to sustain the bulk of your body. AND less greenhouse emissions from driving.
Kind of like when wine sales are down, a scientific report is released about health benefits of occasional glass of wine.
mfwright@batnet.com
May not the best sentence structure.
How does this work if you only feed lettuce to the pigs?
You're probably not reading the real news.
If you want to eat your veggies and own land, grow your own. Local farmers markets also contain large amounts of inexpensive fruits and vegetables some of which are locally grown.
Think of how much acreage, water, and fertilizer is consumed to make iceberg lettuce. It conveys hardly any calories and simply gives you gas.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
In fact, IF you'd THINK about the amount of energy used in collection, transportation, and preparation of a vegetarian diet, and consider how much you have to eat to get the calories and nutrition you need to survive then consider the calorie density of BACON, it's quite plausible that the entire process of putting bacon in your belly requires the generation of less greenhouse gases per calorie than it takes to put lettuce inside you.
Because calorie wise, 4 oz of bacon is like 4 KG of lettuce. And the lettuce still has no protein in it.
It takes 1800 gallons of water to grow the food cows eat to produce one pound of meat. Plus what the cows drink. How many gallons of water does it take to grow a pound of lettuce?
EVERYTHING you do is bad, if not for you, it's for the planet.
You're ignoring the debunker's point, which is that meat-eaters don't just eat bacon, and vegetarians don't just eat lettuce.
In order to compare the environmental effects of diets, you need to do a full inventory of the foods in them, not just a comparison of two items.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Right - but only if by "debunked" you mean "a vegetarian blogger who's clearly very interested in maintaining the moral high ground doesn't like what it says".
tho I'm not sure whom is universally hated more, vegans or Trump. That's a real toss-up.
I agree lets start will all the brown people.
There is a huge amount of land that hasn't been agriculturalized yet. We still can make enough food. I agree we don't really "need" to have as many people as we have but I think we are more than able to produce for them. The problem is growing land and population density doesn't always align very well. People want to live in cities but we need rural to grow the food. Etc. Things get complicated really quick.
The world would be better with fewer people.
Volunteers?
Thought not. There's your problem.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Simple logical thought would debunk the whole theory of this train of thought. Animals require plants to live. If you're getting farmed food, you're getting second hand plants. There's an extra step that requires all the processing of the first. FFS most corn goes to animal feed. Stop and think before you type. Eating animals, regardless of the ethical implications, only provides more in terms of calories density. In every other way eating less meat increases your positive affect on the environment. This is such a trivially stupid thing to debunk I'm ashamed I live on a planet with people so stupid that I have to point this out.
Stupid story, who says vegetarians eat lettuce anyway, it is just crispy flavoured water.
We have forgotten that the most important part of eating is calories. A healthy person will survive a lot longer without any other nutrient than without calories.
You don't need rural to grow food.
http://www.verticalfarm.com/
The degree of processing required to feed true herbivores is highly variable. Some of them can survive entirely on their own without any human intervention. Much of the American interior was once covered with them.
On the other hand, Humans are very poor at exploiting plant material. Most of what is grown to feed humans can't even be digested by a person. That's not even getting into the waste associated with plant production at all levels of the supply chain.
On the other hand, Pigs in particular are omnivores that put us to shame. They can eat all kinds of leftovers and industrial byproducts. They tolerate modern high density industrial farming much better than chickens or cows.
You're not nearly as smart as you think you are. You're just a smug clueless idiot with a political agenda.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You're ignoring the debunker's point, which is that meat-eaters don't just eat bacon...
I would, if my wife would let me.
I, for one, am willing to accept this study's results at face value.
#DeleteChrome
when CMU isn't busy deanonymizing tor hidden services, they're publishing nonsense studies. that place is the lamest thing about pittsburgh.
That Archie Debunker, always after the Meatheads!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Bacon is even better for the environment than the study suggests, because you getting a heart attack will cut your carbon emissions to zero.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
They ignore the real villain: Water causes FAR MORE CO2 emissions per calorie than bacon. It is so large that we can't even quantify it.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
For instance, lentils provide more calories per hectare than wheat. I consider them to be a super food.
I doubt slate outpaces sciencedaily for factual content.
They can eat all kinds of leftovers and industrial byproducts.
stop, you're making my mouth water.
But seriously, we couldn't feed more than a small fraction of the Earth's population that way. Also, free range pork (as you appear to be advocating for) can have trichinosis, so I wouldn't eat eat if I were you.
You're ignoring that the study does just that, moron.
I couldn't read the actual study because it's paywalled but even if the growing of lettuce takes more work and energy and water.
Lettuce by it's definition while growing absorbs carbon from air.
While animals release carbon in air when breathing. And what about methane?
Was it considered in the study? It's a 20 times more potent GHG.
You're ignoring the debunker's point, which is that meat-eaters don't just eat bacon...
I would, if my wife would let me.
I, for one, am willing to accept this study's results at face value.
I'm going to go and cook some bacon right now. Nice and wobbly. I blame slashdot.
It's good that it's mostly saturated fat, and so it won't promote cholesterol oxidation leading to heart disease and cancer, but will help lower my LDL and increase my HDL, unlike lettuce. Don't listen to the vegetarians. They're scientifically naive.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
This is especially true if people use a bacon based diet. The more the better. As we already know that such diet will kill you soon, it reduces the population and therefore the source of resource wasting.
If you doubt that then you might also doubt the calorie based metric. What a bunch of loonies.
The article "debunking" it also claims moral high ground for it's author. Not ironically, the author actually claims that. The author actually uses the argument that she is right because she is better than other people.
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Presumably these should now be outlawed. N.
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All salads come with crumbled bacon on them. Even to the point of replacing the spam.
That should even things out.
So I can sympathise with the sentiment. It doesn't make pig rearing eco friendly but pigs are quite hardy animals and they're omnivorous so their diet can be feed made from some common crop like barley plus whatever seasonal foods are grown locally such as beet, apples, acorns etc. They'll even eat bugs and earthworms that they root for.
I'm sure governments could formulate a tax on meat and veg that shifted consumer demand onto locally grown, seasonal produce but whether they have the balls to do it is another matter.
Top 10 Reasons Why It's Green to Go Veggie
https://www.downtoearth.org/go-veggie/environment/top-10-reasons
I don't know *anyone* claiming to be able to survive on lettuce or cucumbers. I may know some people claiming to be able to survive on air and water only, but they are loonies.
Subject says it all. Editors, this is literally your job. Don't give equal time to obvious lunatics.
Posting a link to an opposing viewpoint shows that the topic is contentious, not debunked. If it's contentious it's not eliminated from discussion.
On top of that, the linked contentious viewpoint is a "Slate editorial assistant", the website being Slate this makes sense...however her level of knowledge is perhaps not sufficient to immediately 'debunk' a report by Carnegie Mellon people who, at the very least, actually educated in the subject matter.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
There are a good portion of vegetarians who are just dicks about it. Who actually claim that their shit doesn't stink. That by being a vegetarian they are doing what is best for their body, the world, and should be celibated for their contribution to the world by not eating some foods.
These are a vocal minority the same as with religious zealots, technology fanboys, partisan political junkies...
But still they are annoying and to show that their lifestyle isn't that much better then others helps put them down a peg.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
should be celibated for their contribution to the world
That seems harsh!
The problem is that they are counting greenhouse gas by quantity rather than by contribution. By contribution to global warming, since methane has a shorter half life, 5% is agriculture, 5% is animal farming, and 10 to 11% is transportation. Industry , heating, electricity are way above that.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"greenhouse gas emissions per calorie"
Well duh.
60 calories in a slice of bacon vs. 60 calories per metric fuck-ton of lettuce.
As the denominator (calories) approaches zero, the function tends quickly upward.
Show me a long-term vegetarian, and I'll show you someone who never wants to see lettuce again.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
WTF is this suposed to be??!? Some half-assed attempt to blurr the real issue? The new epitome of the Chewbacca defense? Seriously?
Who the fuck cares about some marginal greenhouse gas per calorie consumed ratio when meat 'production' is proven to have an abysmal eco-balance-sheet over all??
Water polution, megacorp-driven livestock food monoculture, pathogens, the meat-industry driven anti-biotics disaster, etc.
Water polution with meat production alone is actually close to that of a chemical plant.
The truth is, no matter how you spin it, the eco-balance of meat production is abysmal. Period.
Letuce is a filler - you don't eat it for calories. Calories per weight wise letuce is a serious underperformer.
That's what potatoes or plant proteins are for. Or meat, if you prefer.
More and more people are cutting back their meat consumption and vegan is the new vegetarian. Because our planet is going to hell and meat and its production has become dangerous for your health.
Bottom line:
This article is meat industry propaganda non-sense and beyond pointless for any reasonable debate on the real issues of mass-meat production.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Not all meat is industrially farmed. I get my beef from a local far that raises perhaps one cattle per acre of land, and it's not any more expensive than the industrially-raised, hormone-ridden, disease-prone crap from the grocery store.
The majority of the population lives in urban centers (as I imagine you do as well given your obvious ignorance to what goes on outside of a concrete jungle). In fact, the whole reason industrial meat farming even exists is because of urban population centers.
So, why don't we address the root cause of this problem by disbanding our urban population centers? You city hipsters are the real cause of global warming with your concrete jungles and huge market for industrially-farmed everything.
it's means it is
And I want a BLT.
When did this place turn into clickbait garbage? "This thing that is totally true!" "Summary: Likely isn't true." The definition of clickbait garbage.
Back in the day... most of the year, you couldn't get fresh lettuce of ANY kind in much of the US except at very high prices. All those nice leafy ones wilt and turn brown amazingly fast when transported by 19th century technology. Iceberg, with its very tight head, could be packed in ice and shipped long distances by train and still look halfway decent across the country.
Of late, advances in refrigeration and, more importantly, the ability to transport veggies immersed in a gas that does not contain oxygen (e.g. Nitrogen or CO2) has made it possible to ship leafy, fragile lettuce at reasonable cost.
To paraphrase the article:
"O M G! Somebody claims that my diet is bad for the environment. That cant be true. I get that you omnivores are sick of being criticized for your unhealthy and evil ways. I know that because I heard about all these studies, so this study must be a load of crap. I mean who eats only salad, vegetarians obviously eat soy."
... when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
That is all.
Thermo-dynamics teaches 100% efficiently doesn't exist.
Animals live by eating plants or eating plant-eating animals.
Plants live by absorbing sun-rays and nutrients from soil, rain.
Therefore, humans eating animals are less efficient then humans eating plants, due to necessary losses associated with every intermediate step.
( Humans absorbing sun-rays directly would be the most efficient posse, but as of yet there have been many such attempts with few, if any survivors. The idea is considered extremely dangerous or outright suicidal. Some claims exist of catholic mystics surviving for decades, by partaking in nothing but the daily eucharistic wafer and wine, e.g. Theresa Neumann von Konnersreuth. There are also reports of hindi yogi being investigated by NASA for long-duration space travel hints, including one wiseman going on for 183 days in a lab without any food intake. )
When someone says, "Any fool can see
The conclusion of this article is absolutely ludicrous. Animals have to eat so much food in order to grow to harvesting size, and they are farting off GHG their entire lives to boot. Also look at the amount of water required to produce a calorie of vegetation vs a calorie of meat; huge differences there too.
The author actually uses the argument that she is right because she is better than other people.
What? No she doesn't. She mentioned she was vegetarian in the interest of full disclosure and left it there.
Everything is bad for you (or the environment). It just depends on who you ask (or listen to).
Because the "debunking" is from a Slate blog (Slate not being known for its high standards of journalism, nor its deep and thorough understanding of science) and the original study is, at least, peer-reviewed? That's not to say it's automatically right - as we know, peer review fails at an alarming rate - but showing the original research and someone else's rebuttal gives people sources they can use to become better informed. Better to show it - and rebuttals - than to not publish it at all.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Or soybeans?
Unfortunately, the righteous vegetarian who likely called you out also happened to have the evidence, charts, and fancy infographics on their side—not to mention the moral high ground. (Disclaimer: I am a vegetarian.)
So basically she claims that (A) vegetarians have the moral high ground, (B) she is a vegetarian.
Therefore she indirectly claims that she has the moral high ground.
You can disagree with me but I would like to point out that people with username "mwvdlee" are always correct (disclosure; my username is "mwvdlee").
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should be celibated for their contribution to the world
That seems harsh!
They didn't need the meat anyway.
Just another day in Paradise
How is it debunked? Vegetarians want to turn us all into gigantic pussies, weak, sickly, and ineffectual; what could be more evil than that? Face the truth: Humans are omnivores and our health will suffer without delicious, nutritious meat. Especially some occasional bacon.. but I digress. Have you ever noticed how most strict vegetarians are puny, weak, have strange chronic health problems, and their brains don't seem to work correctly? That's because they're malnourished. Did you know that if a pediatrician discovers that someone is raising children as vegetarian, they'll report them for child abuse, since childrens bodies (and brains especially) won't develop properly without the nutrition from meat? Finally, meat is delicious; why would you deny yourself the simple pleasure of delicious food that is also highly nutritious and beneficial (especially bacon)? Vegetarians are just pretentious snobs anyway, driving around in their Priuses, acting like they're superior to everyone else. They're not. So do yourself a favor and eat some delicious, nutritious meat today. You'll thank me -- and yourself -- for it later.
Introduce your wife to gammon. It's like bacon but with texture.
Lettuce is way too bland anyway. Fresh spinach makes a better "lettuce" than lettuce.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Well it seems to me that Hitler was a vegetarian...
Ever since I heard some retards suggestion that beef should be taxed because "Cows fart GHGs", I realized how people love to use global warming to justify attacking lifestyles they don't approve of. Now while I generally follow the rule of letting individuals be individuals I tend to avoid this, but in hearing the conversation, I could help but think that very fat they were holding onto "Cows fart GHGs" could be flip to suggest that beef should be subsidized, because for each cow I eat that cow isn't farting anymore. And then I thought about this other inconvenient truth, vegetarians fart way more than meat eaters. So they should be taxed for the GHGs they fart.
PS - Global Warming isn't real.
You're a bacon bigot!
No it's not "debunked" It SHOULD be though, or at the very least add a caveat that it is not *growing greens* that is "bad" for the environment .. the very thought that the natural environment is bad for the environmment is absurd on the face of it. Were that so the planet would have commited hari kari eons ago. No, it is *modern FARMING practices* that are bad for the environment
This is irrelevant information. Science needs to stop implying that we can figure out how to squeeze planetary resources for billions of humans. No dietary policies, healthy or not, can fix that fact that there are too many humans walking the earth. It has led to insane and cruel farming practices - to say nothing of general starvation. I pity every other species on this planet stuck here with rapacious big-brained humans who ought to know better!
If you do that, you'll probably find that vegetarians and non-vegetarians eat similarly in many ways [citation needed], so comparing the parts of their diets that are different is legitimate.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This is just one more example of a stupid study trying to be "socially relevant" by welding itself to the global warming meme (now changed to "climate change" because the warming stopped 18+ years ago). Dr Brown of Duke has a great explanation here (along with his post on /. about why the models are doomed to fail):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/real-science-debates-are-not-rare/
Yes even with this year's big el-nino (one of the top 3 since 1950) we are still in an 18+ year flatline for global temperatures. THERE HAS BEEN NO STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT GLOBAL WARMING FOR 18+ YEARS. As measured by the UAH and RSS global temperature measuring projects.
So the question for everyone who thinks that CO2 controls the climate is "How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit your theory is wrong?". 20 years? 30? Never?
Both of the satellite datasets (RSS, UAH) show no warming for over 18 years. In that time CO2 has risen 8-10%.
Why do I use the 2 satellite measurements?
First they have the greatest coverage. RSS goes from 82.5N to 82.5 S and UAH, 85N to 85S.
Second they are the least adjusted. Unlike NOAA which makes completely unjustified adjustments by raising good data (ARGO bouy temps) to match what they themselves admit is bad, corrupted data (ship engine intake temps).
Lastly they are run by 2 scientists with good credentials (Dr Mears & Dr Spencer respectively) and despite looking at what is almost the same data come to different conclusions. Dr Mears thinks CO2 does control the climate and Dr Spencer does not. I like that. Not only does it keep them honest it makes me think and read both sides to see why they are so different in their conclusions despite almost identical data. So far I side with the position of Dr Spencer.
Here are 2 predictions. First I predict that CO2 will continue to increase because China and other countries don't care about CO2. They don't even care about real pollutants much less CO2. Second I predict it will get colder over the next 20-30 years. Why?
The PDO is in its negative phase, the AMO has peaked and is on the way down and the sun is in its quietest phase in hundreds of years. So we have a great opportunity to do real science. If CO2 does control the climate then we should get warmer despite all those factors. If it doesn't then expect it to get much colder over the next several decades. So far the evidence of science is that CO2 does NOT control the climate.
So what does this mean for the future of the BLT sandwich?
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Global markets and the transportation of said goods between counties are destroying the planet, not diet. Beef is the worst polluter in the food world. However, if we eat locally raised food and ban for example, China processed seafood here in the states we would lower green house gasses.
It's "harakiri", you insensitive clod. Harry Carey was an actor. Besides, you should really be using the term "Seppuku".
I only eat vegetarians.
So the all bean diet isn't worthy of consideration because I may just gas out the atmosphere? What about Mexico? Think of the children? Those poor stinky children!
Finally. Someone says lettuce is what it is: Garbage. It's not a diet food, it's not anything, It's a waste of arable land that could produce life giving calories for the world. Thank you.
Cows are not the problem and lettuce is not the fix.
The confusion is from focusing on animal and vegetable foods when the problem is the way they are produced and brought to market. The industrial food system is extremely fuel intensive and uses the worst possible methods for raising both vegetables and animals.
Cows and lettuce are not the issue.
Eliminating industrial mega-growers and replacing them with SMALLER, educated local growers would be a great solution. ADM, Monsanto, Cargill, et al just need to be OK with profiting somewhere else.
Therein lies our real problem. The mega farms will figure out a way to pump methane from a feed lot before they do away with the problem - the feed lot system itself. They'll figure out a way for lettuce to withstand even more toxic chemical inputs before they do away with destructive growing practices that mandate those inputs.
The biggest thing anyone can do to change the world (even if you only consider fuel use) is to grow one's own food - at home. Whether it's animal or vegetable. Even if you can only grow one thing.
Permaculture
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