ha ha..nice. The next post asks how these amounts can actually power anything - like, what fridge uses as much electricity as a car?? By their math, the gas from a day would power a car maybe 5km. On a serious note, the article doesn't discuss how the backpack works...I see some tubes, is there surgery involved? That adds another few layers of impracticality to it all as well.
The cows have to live with tubes inserted in their intestines, and god knows where else. Don't worry though, the researchers assure the public that this vivisection is "painless" for the cows!
Methane added lasts about 8 years before leaving the atmosphere. CO2 lasts orders of magnitude longer. So, while it would produce a noticeable effect to cut the methane, at this point we're just replacing 2008's methane (maybe a little more, I know the number of cows has gone up post recession, but I don't know if it fell during the recession.)
"Methane is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2 on a 20 year time frame"
"Evaluating multicomponent climate change mitigation strategies requires knowledge of the diverse direct and indirect effects of emissions. Methane, ozone, and aerosols are linked through atmospheric chemistry so that emissions of a single pollutant can affect several species. We calculated atmospheric composition changes, historical radiative forcing, and forcing per unit of emission due to aerosol and tropospheric ozone precursor emissions in a coupled composition-climate model. We found that gas-aerosol interactions substantially alter the relative importance of the various emissions. In particular, methane emissions have a larger impact than that used in current carbon-trading schemes or in the Kyoto Protocol. Thus, assessments of multigas mitigation policies, as well as any separate efforts to mitigate warming from short-lived pollutants, should include gas-aerosol interactions."
From: The Journal Science: Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions
Drew T. Shindell*, Greg Faluvegi, Dorothy M. Koch, Gavin A. Schmidt, Nadine Unger, Susanne E. Bauer
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5953/716.figures-only
Right, because the healthiest looking people on the planet are the vegetarians . ..
Also pretty awesome that you just blamed the three things that pretty much kill anyone who dies from 'natural causes' and blamed it on cow meat. You know vegetarians die from those exact same things in pretty much the exact same numbers... RIGHT?
Nut job much?
The longest living group ever known are the traditional Okinawans, who are also primarily vegans.
You are correct however that It shouldn't surprise anyone that vegetarians would die from some of the same diseases as standard westerners. Vegetarians, in contast to vegans, get a significant portion of their calories from animal derived foods like dairy and eggs. Dairy and eggs are two of the worst offenders health-wise. They're extremely high in fat and cholesterol, thus leading to heart disease. They also lack the plant fiber that would have protected against cancer. In labs, the dairy protein casein acts like gasoline on a fire in fueling cancer growth. It's why almost all vegans are so for health reasons. They believe in science.
The backpack manages to capture and collect the gases emitted through the cow’s mouth or intestinal tract via a tube inserted through the cow’s skin (which the researchers claim is painless).
Translation: Vivisection is entirely painless. Animals love to live with tubes inserted into their skin, and those pathogens coating the wounds just add to their pleasureful experience. Trust us, we're industry-funded "researchers"!
What financial incentives could CARGILL possibly in having us believe that vivisection is painless? They're practically independent, right?
That's been pretty much disproved. The real culprits seem to be flour and sugar. Enjoy your vegetarian diet.
"Disproved"? If you don't believe in science, then perhaps the evidence isn't very strong. If you read newspapers and industry sponsored "scientific journalism", you might also think there are health benefits to eating meat. For everyone who does believe in science however, start your investigation here:
Diet Patterns and Mortality: Common Threads and Consistent Results
Marjorie L. McCullough
Epidemiology Research Program, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA
J. Nutr. June 1, 2014. vol. 144 no. 6 795-796
http://jn.nutrition.org/conten...
Below are a handful more studies (with lifestyle, age, location, and income adjustments included) that all suggest that meat/dairy is the primary cause of the major diseases we are discussing. Even when you adjust to include "junk-food vegans", you see that they come out ahead. It's not just processed foods that are to blame, although an increased consumption of processed foods is linked to elevated heart disease in all populations.
M L McCullough. Diet patterns and mortality: common threads and consistent results. J Nutr. 2014 Jun;144(6):795-6.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24717365
M A Martinez-Gonzalez, A Sanchez-Tainta, D Corella, J Salas-Salvado, E Ros, F Aros, E Gomez-Gracia, M Fiol, R M Lamuela-Raventos, H Schroder, J Lapetra, L Serra-Majem, X Pinto, V Ruiz-Gutierrez, Ramon Estruch for the PREDIMED Group. A provegetarian food pattern and reduction in total mortality in the Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea (PREDIMED) study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 May 28;100(Supplement 1):320S-328S.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24871477
J Reedy, S M Krebs-Smith, P E Miller, A D Liese, L L Kahle, Y Park, A F Subar. Higher diet quality is associated with decreased risk of all-cause, cardiovascular disease, and cancer mortality among older adults. J Nutr. 2014 Jun;144(6):881-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24572039
G E Fraser, D J Shavlik. Ten years of life: Is it a matter of choice? Arch Intern Med. 2001 Jul 9;161(13):1645-52.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11434797
Thousands of peer-reviewed papers based on the large-scale studies below support the treating of lifestyle diseases by reducing or eliminating animal product consumption, paired with an increased consumption of whole plant-based foods. These are clinically valid paths to eliminating the diseases, which are most often more effective than prescription drugs, which are geared toward relieving symptoms (e.g. statins) but not the underlying causes of disease.
Large scale, long-term studies:
PREDIMED Studies: http://www.predimed.es/publica... The Adventist Health Studies: https://publichealth.llu.edu/a... The China Studies: https://scholar.google.com/sch... The Nurses Health Study: http://www.nurseshealthstudy.o... The EPIC Study: http://epic.iarc.fr/
When humans stop eating meat and switch to whole-food plant based diets, the rates of all leading causes of death (obesity, cancer, heart disease, and pretty diseases of inflammation) drop. To anyone with a scientific mind, modern nutritional-science's data should pretty much indict animal based foods as the direct cause of obesity, along with the consumption of heavily processed foods. It's no wonder that the nations with the highest meat consumption have the highest rates of lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc.
On the other hand . . . good old Jacob Bronowski taught us the eating meat was a very important step in the Ascent of Man. Meat is a more concentrated form of protein, and freed up time to work on other stuff, besides food collection in the stone ages.
That is a pretty outdated view in paleoanthropology. It's up there with "Man the Hunter" and "Meat Made us Human". To spare you the mountain of scientific articles, books, and studies on paleonutrition conducted by archaeologists (not those insane popular "paleo" journalistic writers), here is a Scientific American article explaining how your ancient "man" most likely arose from the ability to cook food and consume starches: "Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians"http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancestors-were-nearly-all-vegetarians/
You only need to look at any studies of ancient fiber consumption (derived from coprolite data) to arrive at the conclusion that our ancestors (recent and in the deep past) ate a shit-load of plants. Something like 10 times what the average westerner would eat on average.
There certainly are a lot of interesting citations regarding animal agriculture:
"Methane is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2 on a 20 year time frame" The Journal Science: Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions
Drew T. Shindell*, Greg Faluvegi, Dorothy M. Koch, Gavin A. Schmidt, Nadine Unger, Susanne E. Bauer
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5953/716.figures-only ”Growing feed crops for livestock consumes 56% of water in the US.” ”55% of water consumed in the US is by private homes. 55% of water consumed in the US is for animal agriculture.” Jacobson, Michael F. “More and Cleaner Water.” In Six Arguments for a Greener Diet: How a More Plant-based Diet Could save Your Health and the Environment. Washington, DC: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 2006.
http://www.cspinet.org/EatingGreen/pdf/arguments4.pdf Livestock covers 45% of the earth’s total land. Thornton, Phillip, Mario Herrero, and Polly Ericksen. “Livestock and Climate Change.” Livestock Exchange, no. 3 (2011).
https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/handle/10568/10601/IssueBrief3.pdf ”Livestock is responsible for 65% of all human-related emissions of nitrous oxide –a greenhouse gas with 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, and which stays in the atmosphere for 150 years” United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm ”Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.” Worldwatch Institute
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294 ”1/3 of the planet is desertified, with livestock as the leading driver.” UN, "Desertification, Drought Affect One Third of Planet, World’s Poorest People, Second Committee Told as It Continues Debate on Sustainable Development".
http://www.un.org/press/en/2012/gaef3352.doc.htm ”A farm with 2,500 dairy cows produces the same amount of waste as a city of 411,000 people.” “Risk Assessment Evaluation for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Office of Research and Development. 2004.
http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=901V0100.txt ”130 times more animal waste than human waste is produced in the US – 1.4 billion tons from the meat industry annually. 5 tons of animal waste is produced per person in the US.” Animal agriculture: waste management practices. United States General Accounting Office.
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1999/rc99205.pdf
You could read for months, or just watch Cowspiracy.
We all know the backpack idea is bullshit, but at least it is raising some serious discussion about the scale of pollution due to industrial agriculture. The only solution is to cut back on meat consumption, but Cargill won't be issuing that in a press release any time soon.
EPA "Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions"
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#agriculture
Although the article doesn't dare mention it, it is true that every single lifestyle disease of the developing world (cancer, atherosclerosis, stroke, etc) has the consumption of animal protein and fat at their heart. It's a dark secret that is finally getting some attention after a century of large-scale nutritional studies. Remind anyone of the tobacco industry?
That's a nice, happy, clean cow out in pasture too in the article. The exact opposite of what people are actually eating. It's a muddy, grassless horror show out there, and I can't imagine how it would look with a thousand sickly cows wearing festering, manure-soaked backpacks permanently attached to their bodies.
But then, Cargill doesn't want you to stop eating meat. Just trust that they are working on a solution to the environmental catastrophe that is animal agriculture. If you've read anything at all about Cargill, you'll know that they are NOT to be trusted. The article seems to omit their dark history of political corruption and prosecution of small family farmers however.
9 gallons per day is a low estimate that the industry promotes, but you have to consider that for every pound of beef produced, it takes between 6-20 lbs of feed. What number you choose depends on if you trust what the industry says versus their actual purchasing records. The U.N. estimates that a cow drinks 30 gallons per day and consumes about 90lbs of feed per day. Cornell estimates US livestock yearly fresh water usage at 66 trillion gallons, while the USGS estimates 34 trillion gallons. Regardless of which statistics you follow, beef production is entirely inefficient, and requires the use of irrigation and natural fresh water to produce all of that feed. Estimates for beef water usage vary quite widely from 442 gallons-per-pound at the low end (the industry's own number) to 8,000 gallons per pound. A conservative estimate is considered to be 2,500 gallons per pound.
References:
Report: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/40117/icode/
Report: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell
https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/352/pimentel_report_04-1.pdf
Oxford Journals. "Water Resources: Agricultural and Environmental Issues"
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/54/10/909.full
The World's Water. "Water Content of Things"
http://www2.worldwater.org/data20082009/Table19.pdf
Journal of Animal Science. "Estimation of the water requirement for beef production in the United States."
https://www.animalsciencepublications.org/publications/jas/abstracts/71/4/818?search-result=1
Robbins, John. “2,500 Gallons, All Wet?” EarthSave
http://www.earthsave.org/environment/water.htm
Meateater’s Guide to Climate Change & Health.” Environmental Working Group.
http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/interactive-graphic/water/
“Water Footprint Assessment.” University of Twente, the Netherlands.
http://www.waterfootprint.org/
Oppenlander, Richard A. Food Choice and Sustainability: Why Buying Local, Eating Less Meat, and Taking Baby Steps Won’t Work.
Print, 2013
Insightful question. If somehow it was found out that eating only tofurkey demonstrably added 10 years to a person's lifespan, I'd opt for eating what I do now, and gladly give up those years. Especially since those years are added to the old age part of life.
What if they could show that avoiding animal products would not only extend your life, but would significantly improve your quality of life as well? Like not getting colon, liver, lung, or prostate cancer? That usually changes people's perspective, especially after seeing a family member or two go through the experience.
Also, I'm a vegan don't know of any other vegans who stay on fake meat for more than a year or so as they transition. I completely agree with you though, that stuff is nasty.
Watch this video by Dr Peter Attia on Vimeo who talks about how our Dietary Guidelines are what they are. I know.. it's long, but it's really interesting. He has some really deep info on his website about how our diet and fat affects our cholesterol. Another fun fact - high cholesterol isn't bad. Another fun fact - half of all people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol.
Peter Attia is an aggressive spokesperson for the meat industry whose primary means of persuasion is personally attacking other researchers. He exclusively fails to cite non-industry sponsored peer-reviewed scientific literature, and instead uses the tobacco-industry model of raising doubt to avoid the mountains of evidence and specific critiques that contradict his sales pitch. He's not a publishing scientists of any repute, and not someone you want to take health advice from. If your doctor wants you on a statin, it's time to start eating healthier because you have atherosclerosis. Yes, the industry is wrong to solely treat symptoms, but it is up to individuals to eat healthier. And the healthiest diet is one low in saturated fats and high in whole plant-based foods (including those starches you avoid).
Low carb diet fads sell a lot of books, and kill a lot of healthy people.
This research doesn't really come as a surprise to anyone studying medical nutrition, but it is interesting to see the hostile reaction that it incites in the comments. There is a lot of pouncing on the qualifiers that peer reviewers require, for example, they can't conclusively link the 10 years of missing white matter to decreased brain performance because it is simply beyond the scope of this particular study.
Obviously this doesn't mean there is no correlation, it just means that this further step (defining the direct correlation between brain scan data to patient observations and testing) was not part of this research study. Even if you did make that step, how would you define mental acuity 1:1 between patients when each participant has a vastly different educational background? That is a massive undertaking which would require a test group large enough that lifestyle and income adjusted participants could be compared.
Hence, they can't state that missing brain matter in these particular cases is linked to poor mental cognition because it wasn't within the scope of their research. Regardless, you certainly don't want to have your brain's condition reflecting 10 years of premature shrinkage under any circumstances.
For once I actually support something that FB is doing. I'm still zero steps closer to ever joining FB, but it would be nice if this kind of filtering could come to other sites. Maybe here?
It's really a double-edged sword. The main critiques of FF has been memory leaks and performance (compared to Chrome usually). The biggest hit in performance is almost always due to inefficient add-ons and extensions. Signing add-ons gives Mozilla their first chance to deliver a multi-process, memory efficient browser.
Also, if you look at normal people's FF installs, they're often full of malicious extensions and toolbars. This is Mozilla striking back at malware/adware parasite companies by neutering their ability to attach to the browser altogether.
Now when I install a fresh FF it will be one less thing to do in about:config...
Disable Firefox Hello loop.enabled = false
Disable Pocket browser.pocket.enabled = false
Disable One-Click Search Bar (no longer working)
browser.search.showOneOffButtons = false
Enable Firefox Tracking Protection privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true
Disable Tab Animations browser.tabs.animate = false
Disable Search in Url Bar browser.urlbar.unifiedcomplete = false
How It Works TrackMeNot runs in Firefox and Chrome as a low-priority background process that periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and Bing. It hides users' actual search trails in a cloud of 'ghost' queries, significantly increasing the difficulty of aggregating such data into accurate or identifying user profiles...To better simulate user behavior TrackMeNot uses a dynamic query mechanism to 'evolve' each client (uniquely) over time, parsing the results of its searches for 'logical' future query terms with which to replace those already used.
When I first started using TrackMeNot, once every few months Google would ask me to answer a captcha (bot detection). I haven't had that happen for at least a year now, so they must have fixed it along the way.
Yes, DuckDuckGo is definitely the best solution. But if you're stuck making occasional Google searches or using gmail, it's nice to have TrackMeNot running.
Ah, I see. I didn't realize it worked that way. Thanks for the clarification. I have uBlock Origin, so should I just disable FF's tracking protection after enabling the filters?
Slashdot Mirror
”55% of water consumed in the US is by private homes. 55% of water consumed in the US is for animal agriculture.”
So 110% of water is consumed?
Good catch. It should read "5% of water is consumed in the US by private homes."
ha ha..nice. The next post asks how these amounts can actually power anything - like, what fridge uses as much electricity as a car?? By their math, the gas from a day would power a car maybe 5km. On a serious note, the article doesn't discuss how the backpack works...I see some tubes, is there surgery involved? That adds another few layers of impracticality to it all as well.
The cows have to live with tubes inserted in their intestines, and god knows where else. Don't worry though, the researchers assure the public that this vivisection is "painless" for the cows!
Methane added lasts about 8 years before leaving the atmosphere. CO2 lasts orders of magnitude longer. So, while it would produce a noticeable effect to cut the methane, at this point we're just replacing 2008's methane (maybe a little more, I know the number of cows has gone up post recession, but I don't know if it fell during the recession.)
"Methane is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2 on a 20 year time frame"
"Evaluating multicomponent climate change mitigation strategies requires knowledge of the diverse direct and indirect effects of emissions. Methane, ozone, and aerosols are linked through atmospheric chemistry so that emissions of a single pollutant can affect several species. We calculated atmospheric composition changes, historical radiative forcing, and forcing per unit of emission due to aerosol and tropospheric ozone precursor emissions in a coupled composition-climate model. We found that gas-aerosol interactions substantially alter the relative importance of the various emissions. In particular, methane emissions have a larger impact than that used in current carbon-trading schemes or in the Kyoto Protocol. Thus, assessments of multigas mitigation policies, as well as any separate efforts to mitigate warming from short-lived pollutants, should include gas-aerosol interactions."
From: The Journal Science: Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions
Drew T. Shindell*, Greg Faluvegi, Dorothy M. Koch, Gavin A. Schmidt, Nadine Unger, Susanne E. Bauer
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5953/716.figures-only
Right, because the healthiest looking people on the planet are the vegetarians . . .
Also pretty awesome that you just blamed the three things that pretty much kill anyone who dies from 'natural causes' and blamed it on cow meat. You know vegetarians die from those exact same things in pretty much the exact same numbers ... RIGHT?
Nut job much?
The longest living group ever known are the traditional Okinawans, who are also primarily vegans.
You are correct however that It shouldn't surprise anyone that vegetarians would die from some of the same diseases as standard westerners. Vegetarians, in contast to vegans, get a significant portion of their calories from animal derived foods like dairy and eggs. Dairy and eggs are two of the worst offenders health-wise. They're extremely high in fat and cholesterol, thus leading to heart disease. They also lack the plant fiber that would have protected against cancer. In labs, the dairy protein casein acts like gasoline on a fire in fueling cancer growth. It's why almost all vegans are so for health reasons. They believe in science.
The backpack manages to capture and collect the gases emitted through the cow’s mouth or intestinal tract via a tube inserted through the cow’s skin (which the researchers claim is painless).
Translation: Vivisection is entirely painless. Animals love to live with tubes inserted into their skin, and those pathogens coating the wounds just add to their pleasureful experience. Trust us, we're industry-funded "researchers"!
What financial incentives could CARGILL possibly in having us believe that vivisection is painless? They're practically independent, right?
That's been pretty much disproved. The real culprits seem to be flour and sugar. Enjoy your vegetarian diet.
"Disproved"? If you don't believe in science, then perhaps the evidence isn't very strong. If you read newspapers and industry sponsored "scientific journalism", you might also think there are health benefits to eating meat. For everyone who does believe in science however, start your investigation here:
Diet Patterns and Mortality: Common Threads and Consistent Results Marjorie L. McCullough Epidemiology Research Program, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA J. Nutr. June 1, 2014. vol. 144 no. 6 795-796 http://jn.nutrition.org/conten...
Below are a handful more studies (with lifestyle, age, location, and income adjustments included) that all suggest that meat/dairy is the primary cause of the major diseases we are discussing. Even when you adjust to include "junk-food vegans", you see that they come out ahead. It's not just processed foods that are to blame, although an increased consumption of processed foods is linked to elevated heart disease in all populations.
M L McCullough. Diet patterns and mortality: common threads and consistent results. J Nutr. 2014 Jun;144(6):795-6.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24717365
M A Martinez-Gonzalez, A Sanchez-Tainta, D Corella, J Salas-Salvado, E Ros, F Aros, E Gomez-Gracia, M Fiol, R M Lamuela-Raventos, H Schroder, J Lapetra, L Serra-Majem, X Pinto, V Ruiz-Gutierrez, Ramon Estruch for the PREDIMED Group. A provegetarian food pattern and reduction in total mortality in the Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea (PREDIMED) study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 May 28;100(Supplement 1):320S-328S.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24871477
J Reedy, S M Krebs-Smith, P E Miller, A D Liese, L L Kahle, Y Park, A F Subar. Higher diet quality is associated with decreased risk of all-cause, cardiovascular disease, and cancer mortality among older adults. J Nutr. 2014 Jun;144(6):881-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24572039
G E Fraser, D J Shavlik. Ten years of life: Is it a matter of choice? Arch Intern Med. 2001 Jul 9;161(13):1645-52.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11434797
Thousands of peer-reviewed papers based on the large-scale studies below support the treating of lifestyle diseases by reducing or eliminating animal product consumption, paired with an increased consumption of whole plant-based foods. These are clinically valid paths to eliminating the diseases, which are most often more effective than prescription drugs, which are geared toward relieving symptoms (e.g. statins) but not the underlying causes of disease.
Large scale, long-term studies:
PREDIMED Studies: http://www.predimed.es/publica...
The Adventist Health Studies: https://publichealth.llu.edu/a...
The China Studies: https://scholar.google.com/sch...
The Nurses Health Study: http://www.nurseshealthstudy.o...
The EPIC Study: http://epic.iarc.fr/
When humans stop eating meat and switch to whole-food plant based diets, the rates of all leading causes of death (obesity, cancer, heart disease, and pretty diseases of inflammation) drop. To anyone with a scientific mind, modern nutritional-science's data should pretty much indict animal based foods as the direct cause of obesity, along with the consumption of heavily processed foods. It's no wonder that the nations with the highest meat consumption have the highest rates of lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc.
A
I hope the start selling the backpacks. I have a couple of colleagues in my lab who could power a small town.
You might want to read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
On the other hand . . . good old Jacob Bronowski taught us the eating meat was a very important step in the Ascent of Man. Meat is a more concentrated form of protein, and freed up time to work on other stuff, besides food collection in the stone ages.
That is a pretty outdated view in paleoanthropology. It's up there with "Man the Hunter" and "Meat Made us Human". To spare you the mountain of scientific articles, books, and studies on paleonutrition conducted by archaeologists (not those insane popular "paleo" journalistic writers), here is a Scientific American article explaining how your ancient "man" most likely arose from the ability to cook food and consume starches:
"Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians" http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancestors-were-nearly-all-vegetarians/
You only need to look at any studies of ancient fiber consumption (derived from coprolite data) to arrive at the conclusion that our ancestors (recent and in the deep past) ate a shit-load of plants. Something like 10 times what the average westerner would eat on average.
There certainly are a lot of interesting citations regarding animal agriculture:
"Methane is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2 on a 20 year time frame"
The Journal Science: Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions
Drew T. Shindell*, Greg Faluvegi, Dorothy M. Koch, Gavin A. Schmidt, Nadine Unger, Susanne E. Bauer
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5953/716.figures-only
”Growing feed crops for livestock consumes 56% of water in the US.”
”55% of water consumed in the US is by private homes. 55% of water consumed in the US is for animal agriculture.”
Jacobson, Michael F. “More and Cleaner Water.” In Six Arguments for a Greener Diet: How a More Plant-based Diet Could save Your Health and the Environment. Washington, DC: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 2006.
http://www.cspinet.org/EatingGreen/pdf/arguments4.pdf
Livestock covers 45% of the earth’s total land.
Thornton, Phillip, Mario Herrero, and Polly Ericksen. “Livestock and Climate Change.” Livestock Exchange, no. 3 (2011).
https://cgspace.cgiar.org/bitstream/handle/10568/10601/IssueBrief3.pdf
”Livestock is responsible for 65% of all human-related emissions of nitrous oxide –a greenhouse gas with 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, and which stays in the atmosphere for 150 years”
United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
”Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.”
Worldwatch Institute
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294
”1/3 of the planet is desertified, with livestock as the leading driver.”
UN, "Desertification, Drought Affect One Third of Planet, World’s Poorest People, Second Committee Told as It Continues Debate on Sustainable Development".
http://www.un.org/press/en/2012/gaef3352.doc.htm
”A farm with 2,500 dairy cows produces the same amount of waste as a city of 411,000 people.”
“Risk Assessment Evaluation for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Office of Research and Development. 2004.
http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=901V0100.txt
”130 times more animal waste than human waste is produced in the US – 1.4 billion tons from the meat industry annually. 5 tons of animal waste is produced per person in the US.”
Animal agriculture: waste management practices. United States General Accounting Office.
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1999/rc99205.pdf
You could read for months, or just watch Cowspiracy.
We all know the backpack idea is bullshit, but at least it is raising some serious discussion about the scale of pollution due to industrial agriculture. The only solution is to cut back on meat consumption, but Cargill won't be issuing that in a press release any time soon.
EPA "Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions"
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#agriculture
Although the article doesn't dare mention it, it is true that every single lifestyle disease of the developing world (cancer, atherosclerosis, stroke, etc) has the consumption of animal protein and fat at their heart. It's a dark secret that is finally getting some attention after a century of large-scale nutritional studies. Remind anyone of the tobacco industry?
That's a nice, happy, clean cow out in pasture too in the article. The exact opposite of what people are actually eating. It's a muddy, grassless horror show out there, and I can't imagine how it would look with a thousand sickly cows wearing festering, manure-soaked backpacks permanently attached to their bodies.
But then, Cargill doesn't want you to stop eating meat. Just trust that they are working on a solution to the environmental catastrophe that is animal agriculture. If you've read anything at all about Cargill, you'll know that they are NOT to be trusted. The article seems to omit their dark history of political corruption and prosecution of small family farmers however.
9 gallons per day is a low estimate that the industry promotes, but you have to consider that for every pound of beef produced, it takes between 6-20 lbs of feed. What number you choose depends on if you trust what the industry says versus their actual purchasing records. The U.N. estimates that a cow drinks 30 gallons per day and consumes about 90lbs of feed per day. Cornell estimates US livestock yearly fresh water usage at 66 trillion gallons, while the USGS estimates 34 trillion gallons. Regardless of which statistics you follow, beef production is entirely inefficient, and requires the use of irrigation and natural fresh water to produce all of that feed. Estimates for beef water usage vary quite widely from 442 gallons-per-pound at the low end (the industry's own number) to 8,000 gallons per pound. A conservative estimate is considered to be 2,500 gallons per pound.
References:
Report: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/40117/icode/
Report: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell
https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/352/pimentel_report_04-1.pdf
Report: USGS Water-Use Fact Sheet.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3098/
Oxford Journals. "Water Resources: Agricultural and Environmental Issues"
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/54/10/909.full
The World's Water. "Water Content of Things"
http://www2.worldwater.org/data20082009/Table19.pdf
Journal of Animal Science. "Estimation of the water requirement for beef production in the United States."
https://www.animalsciencepublications.org/publications/jas/abstracts/71/4/818?search-result=1
Robbins, John. “2,500 Gallons, All Wet?” EarthSave
http://www.earthsave.org/environment/water.htm
Meateater’s Guide to Climate Change & Health.” Environmental Working Group.
http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/interactive-graphic/water/
“Water Footprint Assessment.” University of Twente, the Netherlands.
http://www.waterfootprint.org/
Oppenlander, Richard A. Food Choice and Sustainability: Why Buying Local, Eating Less Meat, and Taking Baby Steps Won’t Work.
Print, 2013
Quick Question - Do you eat Seitan? I wish I knew about it when I tried vegetarianism.
Yes, but I generally eat more tempeh. Great stuff once you learn a few ways to prepare it.
Insightful question. If somehow it was found out that eating only tofurkey demonstrably added 10 years to a person's lifespan, I'd opt for eating what I do now, and gladly give up those years. Especially since those years are added to the old age part of life.
What if they could show that avoiding animal products would not only extend your life, but would significantly improve your quality of life as well? Like not getting colon, liver, lung, or prostate cancer? That usually changes people's perspective, especially after seeing a family member or two go through the experience.
Also, I'm a vegan don't know of any other vegans who stay on fake meat for more than a year or so as they transition. I completely agree with you though, that stuff is nasty.
Watch this video by Dr Peter Attia on Vimeo who talks about how our Dietary Guidelines are what they are. I know.. it's long, but it's really interesting. He has some really deep info on his website about how our diet and fat affects our cholesterol. Another fun fact - high cholesterol isn't bad. Another fun fact - half of all people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol.
Peter Attia is an aggressive spokesperson for the meat industry whose primary means of persuasion is personally attacking other researchers. He exclusively fails to cite non-industry sponsored peer-reviewed scientific literature, and instead uses the tobacco-industry model of raising doubt to avoid the mountains of evidence and specific critiques that contradict his sales pitch. He's not a publishing scientists of any repute, and not someone you want to take health advice from. If your doctor wants you on a statin, it's time to start eating healthier because you have atherosclerosis. Yes, the industry is wrong to solely treat symptoms, but it is up to individuals to eat healthier. And the healthiest diet is one low in saturated fats and high in whole plant-based foods (including those starches you avoid).
Low carb diet fads sell a lot of books, and kill a lot of healthy people.
This research doesn't really come as a surprise to anyone studying medical nutrition, but it is interesting to see the hostile reaction that it incites in the comments. There is a lot of pouncing on the qualifiers that peer reviewers require, for example, they can't conclusively link the 10 years of missing white matter to decreased brain performance because it is simply beyond the scope of this particular study.
Obviously this doesn't mean there is no correlation, it just means that this further step (defining the direct correlation between brain scan data to patient observations and testing) was not part of this research study. Even if you did make that step, how would you define mental acuity 1:1 between patients when each participant has a vastly different educational background? That is a massive undertaking which would require a test group large enough that lifestyle and income adjusted participants could be compared.
Hence, they can't state that missing brain matter in these particular cases is linked to poor mental cognition because it wasn't within the scope of their research. Regardless, you certainly don't want to have your brain's condition reflecting 10 years of premature shrinkage under any circumstances.
For once I actually support something that FB is doing. I'm still zero steps closer to ever joining FB, but it would be nice if this kind of filtering could come to other sites. Maybe here?
I'm not so sure that an extinguished gut microbiome is going to help their immune systems fight viruses.
Microbiota regulates immune defense against respiratory tract influenza A virus infection
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/13/5354.short
It's really a double-edged sword. The main critiques of FF has been memory leaks and performance (compared to Chrome usually). The biggest hit in performance is almost always due to inefficient add-ons and extensions. Signing add-ons gives Mozilla their first chance to deliver a multi-process, memory efficient browser.
Also, if you look at normal people's FF installs, they're often full of malicious extensions and toolbars. This is Mozilla striking back at malware/adware parasite companies by neutering their ability to attach to the browser altogether.
Now when I install a fresh FF it will be one less thing to do in about:config...
Disable Firefox Hello
loop.enabled = false
Disable Pocket
browser.pocket.enabled = false
Disable One-Click Search Bar (no longer working)
browser.search.showOneOffButtons = false
Enable Firefox Tracking Protection
privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true
Disable Tab Animations
browser.tabs.animate = false
Disable Search in Url Bar
browser.urlbar.unifiedcomplete = false
The source is on github: https://github.com/vtoubiana/TrackMeNot
How It Works
TrackMeNot runs in Firefox and Chrome as a low-priority background process that periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and Bing. It hides users' actual search trails in a cloud of 'ghost' queries, significantly increasing the difficulty of aggregating such data into accurate or identifying user profiles...To better simulate user behavior TrackMeNot uses a dynamic query mechanism to 'evolve' each client (uniquely) over time, parsing the results of its searches for 'logical' future query terms with which to replace those already used.
More info at: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/trackmen...
It doesn't stop tracking at all, rather it adds a continuous flow of useless search results to your profile, thus obscuring your footprint.
When I first started using TrackMeNot, once every few months Google would ask me to answer a captcha (bot detection). I haven't had that happen for at least a year now, so they must have fixed it along the way.
Yes, DuckDuckGo is definitely the best solution. But if you're stuck making occasional Google searches or using gmail, it's nice to have TrackMeNot running.
Ah, I see. I didn't realize it worked that way. Thanks for the clarification. I have uBlock Origin, so should I just disable FF's tracking protection after enabling the filters?