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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.
nasty vegetarians try to take my precious.
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.
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.
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.
Those cow farts are pretty much just as man made (and damaging) as your car when you look at a typical cattle (or chicken or hog) farm and the amount of mechanization that goes into turning grain and other feed into the meat in your supermarket.
http://www.independent.co.uk/e...
But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.
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"?
Kind of like when wine sales are down, a scientific report is released about health benefits of occasional glass of wine.
mfwright@batnet.com
Is there a way to capture said cow fart methane and burn it for energy?
Not economically, though prototypes do exist. There is some effort to capture methane emissions from cow manure.
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?
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.
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.
You should probably wait. You're just showing your vegan friends you're too dumb to do basic logical reasoning. They are going to make fun of you.
Iceburg Lettuce is awesome for Tacos
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
They can eat all kinds of leftovers and industrial byproducts.
stop, you're making my mouth water.
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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should be celibated for their contribution to the world
That seems harsh!
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
When someone says, "Any fool can see
should be celibated for their contribution to the world
That seems harsh!
They didn't need the meat anyway.
Just another day in Paradise