Why driving a Prius is really not enough

"Why driving a Prius is really not enough" - great question / food for thought

There are a lot of additional things we can all do to preserve / save the planet. I compost ... have done it for a long time (not in my Prius :lol: ) and REDUCE; REuse; Recycle (in that order).... etc.

However, I do love my meat and enjoy eating it other than one day a week when I turn vegeterian for diet choice. I agree with the comment on the need for more environmentally friendly farming ... I think we can blame globalization and the continual drive for lowest cost for the current state. If only in the computation of "cost" we included the kind of damage we caused to the environment we may change our ways ...

 

I was unaware being from a foriegn country that drivers of Hummers are all Vegan. Thankyou for that information.

Sorry I'm reviving an old thread.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rae Vynn @ Jul 18 2007, 12:36 PM) [snapback]481004[/snapback]</div>

I'd become a vegetarian but there are only 4 vegetables I like

 

I know I'm not totally naive, nor am I totally the most informed person on the planet. As far as ecological problems go and the rush to "fix" them, neither of them, as was Rome, "built in a day". It's not going to magically be fixed as the marketers would have one believe. "buy a hybrid and save the planet". Right. Wouldn't everyone doing a small part add up to a larger impact? Doesn't being part of the mass that believes they/we are doing the right thing actually help bring new, cleaner, more efficient technology to the forefront and make it more mainstream and thereby more affordable to a wider consumer audience?

Maybe I just wish for the things I try to do to help more than they will. So call me naive. I'm recycling. I'm buying local goods and services. I'm doing what I can in my way. I'm going to keep trying.

 

Seems that if you get your calories from meat, walking somewhere is more harmful to the environment that driving there. See this article online.

 

If God didn't want us to eat meat, why did he make the animals taste so good?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rae Vynn @ Jul 22 2007, 06:25 PM) [snapback]483306[/snapback]</div>

Yes, I know the ocean supply is being drained. That is why balance is so improtant. Remove beef and ocean depletion accelerates.

 

I find that being vegan is about the same level of sacrifice as driving a Prius instead of a conventional car. The primary issue is one of efficiency. The Prius uses about half of the gasoline to do the same job as a similar conventional car. Eating plant matter exclusively, instead of eating animals that eat plants, has been described as about 15 times more efficient.

You can eat corn directly, or you could feed 15 times as much corn to a pig and then eat the pig. The nutrition delivered to you is the same.

Of course you need to eat more variety than just corn, but the same is true of meat. My reply to those who say "where do you get your protein?" is "where do you get your fiber?". The answers are that adequate protein is easily obtained from plants, and meat is totally deficient in fiber.

I came to veganism as an attempt to improve my health. It hasn't totally overcome 40+ years of eating meat, but it has been a major improvement. One thing that I've learned is that nutrition is a very individual process. My personal metabolism has a very limited ability to process the amino acid methionine, a major component of meat. I suspect that Eskimos have a very high capacity for processing methionine (the other ones died off long ago). The dairy products that are held in such high esteem in the US are not tolerated by 90% of people of Asian ancestry. Check out how many dairy products are used by Chinese restaurants (none).

As for the flavor of meat, why are all those sauces used? If you put BBQ sauce on anything, it tastes like BBQ sauce. The basic component of hot dogs is irrelevant to the flavor. It's all in the spices, salt, sugar, MSG, etc. I fed some vegan hot dogs to some kids recently, and they never noticed that the basic product was soy instead of beef.

Consumption of meat has historically been associated with having achieved high social class. Rich people consumed lots of meat, while poor folk consumed rice and beans. Consuming meat means that you've arrived. Except that now even poor people consume large quantities of meat. The new upper class consumes organic food, rather than the hamburger and processed cheese served at fast food outlets.

I rather doubt that processed vegan food is anywhere near 15 times as efficient as processed meat based food. But at least it doesn't involve destroying the Amazon forests for cattle production. And fewer cattle mean less methane, a worse gas than CO2 in terms of global warming.

 

I have been recently having kidney issues hence the low protein diet (basically no meat since my veg and other foods give me almost too much protein). I am usually a very high metabolism person. I run at least 3.5 miles a day (sometimes with a 35 lb vest on) and do other exercises for PT. I so I am not sure if this is part of the problem since my calorie intake has also dropped to stay within the protein limits. However, I have noticed a significant loss of energy. The days I do eat meat (and pay for it later that night) I find I have more energy to get through the day.

I concur with what some others have said that there should be moderation. Meat is a part of our diet however going to a steak place to eat a 32 oz steak is a bit excessive.

BTW, Chinese restaurants do use dairy - eggs and milk. It ain't a Chinese restaurant if they do not serve tapioca pudding and do not forget the eggs we use for the noodles, soups, fried rice, etc. But yes I am Asian and seem to be afflicted with being lactose intolerant. I think your estimate of 90% is a bit high. Only about 10% of my relatives (that I know of 100+) are also lactose intolerant.

 

I love steak i had a very delicious 16 oz steak last night man that was tasty

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(N_IL_Priusfan @ Aug 8 2007, 07:11 AM) [snapback]492335[/snapback]</div>

Fear not. I am a vegetarian and have been for over 20 years. I rarely eat what you're calling vegetables. I am more of a grainitarian, legumeitarian, and cheeseitarian. I don't really like vegetables. (Like you, I have a few exceptions there, but I don't even eat those all that often.)

As for the "cheeseitarian" bit, I have not made the leap to vegan, and the consequent increase in personal energy efficiency, carbon emission reductions, and water efficiency. Maybe someday. Does someone have numbers for the approximate energy and water penalty for milk production, as compared to beef production?

In any case, not eating meat or fish puts me way ahead of you Prius-driving but meat-eating alleged environmentalists. Hah! B)

And yes, I agree that even if us Westerners ate, say, a third of the meat we do now (which should be plenty), that would be a huge step forward.

Some folk wonder why meat tastes so good if we're not supposed to eat it. Well, consider the possibility that it's an acquired taste (like beer). Before I became a vegetarian, I was a devout beefitarian for my first 25 years (with a little potatoarianism and pepsicolaarianism thrown in). About six months after becoming a vegetarian, something interesting happened. Someone next to me was served a steak. I said, "Hey, I don't know if you should eat that -- it smells like it went bad." Turns out I was the only one who thought that. Everyone else concluded it was fine. Since then most beef smells rotten to me even if it's perfectly consumable.

Since most of us were fed beef before we could even talk, perhaps we acquired the taste. It might not be so natural to like beef after all.

My last comment is that the root of all this is not meat eating. It's overpopulation of the planet. Everyone likes to invoke their god-given or Darwin-given right to eat meat just like their ancestors. And hey, what about all those other animals that eat meat so why shouldn't we?

The difference is that there wasn't 6.6 billion humans out there hunting food (that wouldn't work anyway, which is why we have industrial farming). None of the other meat-eating animals out there can hold a candle to us in terms of the sheer magnitude of our energy and fresh water needs. We're different now just because of how many of us there are. We should probably start to act different if we'd like to maintain this level of still-growing population.

So being a vegetarian or vegan is simply one of many eventually necessary stop-gap measures to permit continued human population growth. However sooner or later we'll have to stop growing.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Jul 18 2007, 01:41 PM) [snapback]481067[/snapback]</div>

Wow.

Seriously...

Wow.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(GreenJohnny @ Aug 12 2007, 09:04 PM) [snapback]494508[/snapback]</div>

That's just burritos. Normal modus operandi - posts intended to shock. I think the refried beans make gas, or something.

 

"Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians - except for the occasional mountain lion steak."

Ted Nugent

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(madler @ Aug 12 2007, 08:16 PM) [snapback]494493[/snapback]</div>

I found some numbers.

Livestock Production: Energy Inputs and the Environment

One interesting result is that while milk is about four times as efficient as beef with respect to protein out per energy in, chicken meat is about three times as efficient as milk! So there's a huge difference between being a beefitarian and a pollotarian, and it's possible for a vegetarian with heavy dairy consumption to be less efficient than a chicken eater (who never eats beef).

The vegans will of course always win the energy efficiency game.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(madler @ Aug 16 2007, 03:48 PM) [snapback]497167[/snapback]</div>

I am somewhat skeptical. How many vegans could maintain a healthy existence in a temperate climate.

Veganism or vegetarianism seems to me to have cultural roots in tropical climates which can provide a wide variety of fresh fruit and vegetables year round.

If everyone in temperate climates became a vegan what, if any, impact would there be for transportation or preservation energy requirements?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Suburban600 @ Aug 17 2007, 07:17 AM) [snapback]497780[/snapback]</div>

Much of our food is already transported with preservation over long distances, be it vegetable or meat. So you might think that part of an energy efficient strategy would be to eat only foods that are more local to you. However since transportation is so effective and cheap, that's a second order effect. Even corn, which is very efficiently produced, and so transportation would be a larger fraction, still shows less than 2% of its energy investment in transportation:

Energy inputs and costs of corn production per hectare in the United States

The first order effect would be to eat foods with energy efficient production. If it turns out that the energy efficient foods all have to be transported far, then that will still be an energy win. Since the fraction of energy and money that goes into transportation is so small, I would guess that even when all the means of transportation are paying for their carbon emissions, there would be little to no shift to more local foods due to cost increases.

Even if I supposed that the transportation was a first order effect, most of my grain, legumes, and vegetables don't come from the tropics anyway. (Considering the stuff I buy, the only one I can think of is bananas.) It would be interesting to plot for a given location, how far various foods you buy are transported to get to you. You would probably find that it's much more random than you think, with little correlation of distance to the food category (meat, vegetable, grain, etc.).

In any case, the transportation is not a first order effect. If your metric is carbon emissions, in general you'll be much better off transporting a food with low carbon emission production over long distances, than eating local food with high carbon emission production.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(madler @ Aug 17 2007, 02:03 PM) [snapback]497923[/snapback]</div>

Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

One metric certainly is carbon emmissions. I think we would agree that, for the time being, relatively inexpensive oil is the key to our efficient transportation system...a critical element of our economy.

I was attempting to couch the argument in terms of volume required for transport. A useful measure might be protein per gram. A higher ratio would reduce transportation requirements hence a reduction in carbon emmissions or pollution in general.

Doing some quick calculations based on data from http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/ I concluded that (standing by for math corrections! ) Soy meal has a protein content of .449%, corn meal .081% and roasted chicken .289%. Therefore from a transportation volume perspective soy protein is most efficient and corn is least.

An additional metric might be availability. I should have defined my comment in terms of growing season. Looking at USDA hardiness zones one will find quite restrictive growing seasons in Minneapolis, Chicago or New York.

So, my conclusion is that one is dependent upon an efficient transportation to provide a balanced diet of fresh fruit, fresh vegetables to accompany soy proteins and other legumes. In contrast, if one desired to live "off the transportation net" consumption of some quantity of meat would likely be required to find the the . 66 to .8 (different numbers from different sources) grams of protein per kilogram of weigt required for sustenance. Since the vast majority of us will not live off of the transportation net (this is Prius Chat after all) moving toward a vegetable source for protein seems to be a reasonable course of action.

There is another issue to factor when thinking about diet...the USDA tables also talked about waste...I believe it was 36% for a roasted chicken. Consider the waste from the slaughter of animals if you are concerned about your environmental footprint. That waste should also be factored into the real protein content of a roast chicken.

For those omnivores out there, I hope you have participated in the killing and processing of an animal. I have and will continue to do so. That act of taking an animal's life to sustain our own is part of the human experience. It is not pleasant. If you are not willing to participate in the slaughter of an animal why do you eat meat?

In my opinion we've moved too far from the chicken's head. As a society we have lost our appreciation for what our animal friends have given us. A farmer who eats a winter meal of roast chicken harvested from his flock has a different perspective than a person dining on the same but "harvested" from the meat counter at the local supermarket.

Perhaps we omnivores would not be so cavalier about our consumption of meat if we all had to participate in the slaughter and processing of the animals we consume.

 

Mix it up I say.

Meat, fish chicken vegetables, eat em all.
In Australia it's normal for cows n bulls to eat grass not grain. Yes I know cows fart but they do that if you don't eat them even more.