Keto dieters are irresponsible stewards of the planet - says Harvard nutrition 'expert'

#41

You make a good point about which animals’ lives are we going to take and how humanely. I wasn’t actually thinking of the animal rights issue - nobody likes the idea of killing animals without reason. It’s funny how some animals seem more sacred than others, though. I know lots of vegetarians who are sometimes pescetarian because the idea of killing fish just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal compared to killing a cow, for example. Weird!

#42

I’m curious, too, where vegetables get their nutrients from? I mean…we kind of assume they make them, right? But wouldn’t some of those nutrients come from the soil, which ostensibly is fertilized by animals?

(Ron) #43

I didn’t read all the posts on this thread so I apologize if this has been addressed.
I am curious about this -
“cow manure is a major part of that equation, as it releases large amounts of climate-changing nitrous oxide and methane into the air.”

“Diets that are rich in plant-based food emit lower greenhouse-gas emissions”

What do you suppose these people think cows eat? As far as I know , cows consume a plant based diet. :confused:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #44

Plants assemble cellulose and other starches by absorbing water from the soil and taking in carbon dioxide from the air. The minerals and other nutrients they contain have to come from the soil. There is a magnesium atom at the center of every chlorophyll molecule, for example, and if the soil is depleted of magnesium, the plants cannot thrive. Not to mention the fact that our whole oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle requires enough animals to produce carbon dioxide for the plants, so they can vent oxygen into the atmosphere for the animals to breathe so they can . . .

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #45

That line about cow manure is nothing but . . . cow manure. The extraction, refining, and combustion of fossil fuels accounts for 33% of methane emissions. Other human sources account for a further 4%. The methane emissions of cattle are about 27% of methane emissions. Other natural sources account for the remainder of methane emissions (around 35%). Since the grasslands would all die without ruminants to graze them, killing off all the cattle, buffaloes, bison, etc., would cause a massive release of carbon that is currently sequestered. I doubt that’s really the way we want to go. The dust storms of the 1930’s in the American Southwest after the bison had mostly been exterminated were a terrible experience.

(Edith) #46

I’m currently reading “The Vegetarian Myth” which discusses at lot of what we are discussing in this thread. Unfortunately, the author diverges from the topic every so often and writes a little too impassioned for me, but much of the information about how destructive modern farming is to the environment has been really eye opening for me. I am definitely going to be making some changes to some of the things I do and buy as a result.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #47

This is well worth a listen:

#48

YES!!!

Ruminants also help restore land that’s been microbially destroyed - just by wandering through and plonking it with dung. Takes much longer to restore than the marginalized grasslands though.

#49

That sounds like compassionate, humane practice to me!

I learned about the industrial slaughtering terror-based adrenaline and general cruelty by large slaughtering facility herders a long time ago, but the animal stewardship angle is rarely mentioned in food discourse.

The largescale slaughtering has been changing, thanks in large part to Temple Grandin’s work (I believe all of some intl burger chains’ meat comes from animals now slaughtered in the Grandin way) - but I think it still has a very long way to go to get as humane & sane & sustainable as you describe your smallscale farming practices to be. Godspeed!

Before I eat meat or any animal products I take a breath and close my eyes and aspire to get in the gratitude zone to visualize the eyes of the living creatures, and thank them and all their mothers, and ask for their forgiveness for harvesting their life or their milk/eggs - and welcome them to live on in me for the highest good. I also really appreciated how Nina Teicholz wrote about the ethical reality and spiritual dimension in the one page appendix in her scholarly tome The Big Fat Surpsie.

(Shelly) #50

I get that… but we eat way less than folks on “normal” diet. Heck, many of us eat only one or two meals a day and many folks fast frequently. There’s plenty of keto eaters that are vegetarian even.

(Jane) #51

Exactly. Kinda my point about people going back to eating like they did in the 1940’s. Simple foods, saturated fats, not eating constantly and no snacking. That alone would cut down on the environmental impact. Throw in fasting and it reduces it even further.

#52

I’m sick of folks (Harvard) or otherwise with simplistic opinions, that understand NOTHING about agriculture, don’t know the difference between ‘arable land’ (croppable) and ‘agricultural land’ which includes range and less-dense forest (that will support animals but not crops), have NO understanding of how the broad acre mono crops they live on are destroying soil and are utterly dependent on fossil fuel derived fertilisers and … Good intentions are not enough, people. Saving the fluffy bunnies is not enough. Learn something about the subject before you judge meat eaters. And fundamentally, there are. Too. Many. People.