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  • 32 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
Cake day: January 3rd, 2026
  • ThirdConsul@lemmy.ziptoClimate@slrpnk.net•Plant-Based Mince Now 29% Cheaper Than Beef at Tesco as Meat Prices Climb
    1·
    21 days ago

    I will look at the US for an example By species, we estimate that 70.4% of cows

    Cool. As the authors of the study I linked wrote, with sources, global stat is <13%.

    Example: dairy, 1 liter of milk requires - depending on the method and location -between 19L of freshwater (section 5.2) to almost 3000L, median 196. In USA it starts at ~700L.

    99.8% of turkeys, 98.2% of chickens raised for eggs, and over 99.9% of chickens raised for meat are

    Interestingly average poultry requires less land than average pulses. And there’s this gem from section 5.2 (again, the linked document has further sources) further explaining why LCA or applying US averages globally is wrong.

    As another example, that the lowest 10 percentile footprint dairy farms have lower greenhouse gas equivalent emissions than the 90th percentile soy, nut, and oat farm

    Using 100% of the land, which would create huge deforestation pressures

    Same study, point 4.1.

    which I significantly doubt given the history of those kinds of methods over promising and under delivering

    5.1 and 5.3 why Beyond Meat and similar are over promising and under delivering, with already established examples that show that the substitutes did not decrease meat/dairy consumptions but added to the total consumption.

    EDIT: It’s also worth noting that a lot of people that start on things like beyond and impossible end up eventually switching to much more whole plant-based foods in the end anyways.

    Citation needed.

    I think this is my last post in the thread (and I guess yours too, we seem to exhaust the topic between us).

    To sum it up:

    • we agree on whole plant based diet being the goal

    • we disagree on the interim diet and how to encourage and enable the transition from current meat-based diets

  • ThirdConsul@lemmy.ziptoClimate@slrpnk.net•Plant-Based Mince Now 29% Cheaper Than Beef at Tesco as Meat Prices Climb
    11·
    22 days ago

    No.

    She bases that information on LCA. LCAs are bullshit:

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016724002511

    Tldr; they are self reported, aggregate data globally and treats the whole globe uniformly, instead of looking at local qualities; and Beyond Meat conviviently for them does not provide even that data for it’s whole supply chain. That means for example that the total carbon footprint of beef of worst industrial farms is applied across all beef produce, even though industrial farms deliver only about 13% of beef worldwide.

    Generally I recommend the linked article, they explain why Beyond Meat and similar are just wasting your time at best, or sinister capitalist trick at worst.

    Again, the way forward is:

    Whole food plant-based diets

    and interim is switching feedlot farming and similar to

    Furthermore, framing animals as unilaterally less efficient than plants assumes that neither animal production systems nor meat consumption habits can be pushed in more sustainable directions. However, abundant options to make animal-sourced foods more sustainable could be explored, including agro-pastoral, agro-silvo-pastoral (mixed crop-livestock-forest), and regenerative agriculture systems (Costa et al., 2018).

  • ThirdConsul@lemmy.ziptoClimate@slrpnk.net•Plant-Based Mince Now 29% Cheaper Than Beef at Tesco as Meat Prices Climb
    65·
    22 days ago

    I mean beyond meat production process is famously industrial and complex; there’s even South Park episode on it where Cartman agrees to eat it because it’s the same unhealthy factory made slop that he’s used to.

    Now, for the beyond meat oil use. They apparently dropped refined coconut and canola oil in favour of avocado oil. And oh boy, avocado oil production is almost as bad as if Nestle owned all of it, but at least it should be healthier than coconut/canola mix, right? And then most avocado oil is fraudulent soybean/sunflower/other mixes.

    And then there’s also avocado oil deforestation/water use etc.

    My points are:

    • Beyond Meat is slop; let’s not switch processed cold cuts for a sludge.

    • you’re better off (health-wise and climate wise) making different bean patties (chop 'em, freeze 'em, shape 'em, cook 'em) and lowering your red meat intake than switching to beyond meat.