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Beef produces 85 kg CO2e per kg of food. Tofu produces 2.9 kg CO2e per kg of food.
(ourworldindata.org)
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
289 points (92.6% liked)
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Beef and tofu and not nutritionally equivalent.
Did I have some sort of a stroke or something? Am I hallucinating graphs that don't exist? Is OPs chart only showing tofu as an alternative and I just imagined the dozen or so other foods on the list that can be mixed and matched to build a nutritious meal with a significantly lower carbon footprint than beef?
Someone please send help, because all of these beef shills have me convinced that there are only two foods and we must all choose just one in the great food war
I think GP is suggesting that, for a better picture, you also need to include stuff like the CO2 emissions from the vitamins you'll need to eat to balance the nutritional deficit. Given how bad meat is for the environment, it wouldn't surprise me that the total balance is still way worse for meat.
Somehow I feel the need to clarify I'm not shilling for beef, but extra vitamins is something that my vegetarian SO constantly has to be keep in mind.
Way to be a dick about someone pointing out a bad comparison. I bet your mom is proud of you.
If you prepare a meal with tofu (or any combination of foods) instead of beef you need to substitute nutrients by adding a lot more weight, which add CO2e to the equation. Comparing by CO2/kcal would give a more appropriate comparison. Tofu is still far more CO2 efficient taking that into account, I know because I made that comparison myself after not finding any sources for it. But if Tofu was 20kg CO2/kg it would be worse than beef, even though posts like this would suggest it wasnt.
Everyone knows Tofu is more environmentally friendly than beef and we should start using the appropriate data to show it instead of exaggerating and giving deniers the chance to dismiss it.
I like beef
Cool. I like rainforests, a stable climate, and my health. But I guess we each have our own priorities.
I'd trade all the beef for not having to wonder if the planet is going to take a dump right when I'm getting old and am less able to handle it.
The answer isn't to change the ancestral diet of an entire species (everyone going vegan is simply not going to happen, even less likely than degrowth), it's to degrow into numbers that are sustainable for the planet (i.e. eliminate the exploitative economic systems that drive this population growth).
Sadly, what's almost certainly gonna happen is neither of our choices because we're going to continue our population explosion AND eat meat until famine or something like that wipes our unsustainable societies.
So you're saying it's easier to get an entire population to dramatically reduce their rates of procreation than to give up some of the meat in their diets? Not sure I buy it
Yep, not only procreation but consumption and waste as well, and actually both have evidence of them happening.
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/09/995172945/u-s-birthrate-drops-to-lowest-level-in-four-decades
https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/28/auf-wiedersehen-schnitzel-meat-consumption-hits-record-low-in-germany
What I'm really saying, is that if a solution depends on everybody becoming a good person and doing the right things forever into the future, it's a non-starter. How are you going to ensure nobody eats meat? Gonna have global enforcement? What's the punishment? Humans are hard-wired to crave meat, that isn't going away and telling people not to eat meat is akin to telling people not to have sex.
Instead, if the economic system and the culture changes then the motivation to do certain things changes. Maybe our culture changes so that getting married and having kids is no longer the expected route and you don't become the weird aunt/uncle for doing so, happening already. Maybe flexitarianism becomes more popular and reduces damage and cruelty from animal agriculture without expecting radical shifts in ancestral diets?
I'm not sure how old you are, I'm nearly 50 and trans and I've seen massive cultural change and that's really the key to changing the world. For example, I'm a trans woman, when I transitioned 20 years ago it was viewed as absolutely bonkers by everyone around me, and that was in California. I lost most of my family and friends and had no right to employment or housing. Now, it's common and though there are outspoken right wingers, liberals are like "oh, you want to be girl, sure, also the state protects your right to employment and housing".
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1713820115#ref-2
This one isn’t exactly about GHGs but I is crazy to think that we could feed a whole other US population by changing what we eat.
Good call, we should fortify tofu with fluoride to help out!
One's a food. The other I think is plastic.
FYI: the packaging is not edible.