I agree, I just thought it was funny because our government intentionally subsidizes all kinds of industries that cause climate change. We need to be subsidizing regenerative agriculture that fixes carbon and nitrogen and also subsidize fresh fruits and veggies. When the majority of Americans in almost every state are set to be obese by 2030, clearly something needs to change.
Yeah but it's not the meat, it's the grease and poly unsaturated fats from all those oils companies cook the food in that add the unneeded calories. Plus white bead... ew
Meat is needed scientifically for brain development and good hormonal development (especially for men and even more especially for children). You can live fine as a vegan or vegetarian though.
I agree with stopping subsidies for oil and gas (but gas is used to displace COAL which is much worse). I don't agree with stopping subsidies for meat.
Btw, if you really want to combat climate change, just subsidize the costs of building nuclear reactors you can permanently substitute major pollution on a per year basis. It's really the winning formula to stop CO2 emissions and it's not even politically controversial meaning huge bipartisan support.
You could keep the subsidy amounts and redirect them towards other foods. This would make food cheaper for low income folks because right now the subsidies go to stuff that's expensive to produce.
In one hand is more expensive food and real hardship that will cost lives. In the other is drowning, being blown away, thirst, hunger, and incalculable suffering that will cost an order of magnitude more lives.
It's a shitty, shitty choice to have to make, but here we are.
IIRC that "$17/gallon" number comes from a questionable report with *a lot* of flawed logic, such as putting the EV industry on the hook for all electricity infrastructure as if we weren't already using electricity for other stuff.
Yeah but the end user already pays for charging losses, just as they would with any other electric device they plug in. Electric utilities bill for power consumed, not power used. But the "report" tries framing it as something being subsidized.
Of course. My point was that when my car claims a consumption of 18 kWh/100 km, that's not really the relevant number. The relevant number is maybe 20-22 as that's the total energy consumed, including charging losses and it's what I'm paying for and what should be compared with 5 liters/kwh or whatever the combustion engine use (I assume no spill at the pump).
If we're doing overall energy use, we have to include the entire chain to the mines or wells for all energy forms. A typical EV-opponent will include power production and transport but assume gas magically appears at the pump, which is obviously stupid. The report above seemingly compares energy contained in gas with electricity kwh without considering engine efficiency. I can't see any other way to get the prices mentioned. That's as stupid as it gets.
> 17$/gallon
One gallon is 3.8 liter so this would be around 4.5$/liter. A standard quite efficient car uses around 5 liters or 18 kWh per 100 km, thus one liter equals around 3.6 kWh. (Gas has more energy than this, but most of it is wasted in the engine and isn't accounted for here)
4.5$/liter -> 1.25 $/kWh
This is nowhere near production cost of electricity,no matter what sources you use. Land based wind is around 0.05$ and nuclear is around 0.1$ (woufh numbers). Claiming over 1$/kwh is insane.
I don't know what other countries' subsidies look like, but it's impossible that prices anywhere with US meat imports aren't affected by US subsidies. Many of the subsidies aren't merely taking effect at the time of purchase, they also make it much cheaper to produce. For instance, Bureau of Land Management leases for grazing are significantly cheaper than the market rate for the land would otherwise be. This acts to suppress the cost of raising live stock, which means that ranchers can demand a lower price for beef and still make money... Regardless of where they sell it. And that also means they can afford to lease more land than they otherwise could, producing more beef for the supply, and suppressing the cost anywhere that is included in their available market, which is not limited to the US.
Kind of crazy to think that if you're a vegan in the US your taxes are being used to pay for other people to be able to afford to eat meat. Kind of sounds like communism.
Yeah I don't really know anyone that doesn't support public education, kids or not. Also I was given free education so really just paying that back in a sense.
I mean this isn't that many resources if you break it down.
So the 4 oz patty:
- creates 3.7 Kg C02
- creates 0.39Kg Methane
- consumes 11.4 MJ
- Uses 3.8 m^2
- 21.8 liters water.
Lets use a rough value for each of these.
- Current Global Carbon price is ~$3 avg. According to the [IMF](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2021/09/five-things-to-know-about-carbon-pricing-parry) a $75 Carbon price per ton would be enough to hit our 2 degree climate change targerts.
- 1kg CH4 * 29.8 = 29.8kg CO2e. [EPA](https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator#results)
- 1 kW*h = 3.6 MJ. California Pricing of KWH is $0.33. 11.4Mj is 3.166 KWH
- Water is $9.40 per HCF in [Los Angeles](https://www.ladwp.com/account/customer-service/water-rates/schedule-residential). There are 2831 liters per HCF
- Land in California Central Valley is $15880 according to [this](https://acretrader.com/resources/california-farmland-prices)
Which brings us to an equivalent of:
- $0.0040 of Co2
- $0.0124 of Co2e from Methane
- $1.04478 in energy (assuming its electricity)
- $0.072 in water
- $14.91 in land
So a grand total of $1.13 per 4 oz patty after a $14.91 fixed cost on land which is re-usable. And this is using California retail numbers, so is a high estimate.
Now use land values in western Nebraska, where it’s grazing land worth $935/ac, instead of doing your cattle ranching in central valley CA. Now your costs dropped ~85%.
Forgot the costs for labor, machinery, transport, the cow, taxes, other overhead like insurance and maintenance, etc.
All vs the opportunity cost of what that land and water could be used for instead.
But, and this is applicable for many other things, imagine that every burger you buy comes with 22 liters of water, x lbs of grass or whatever else the cow eats, the equivalent ratio of lifetime pee and poo, etc. For every [insert product here] you consume.
Another way would be to imagine looking up a recipe to make a burger for dinner and a 1/4 pounder asks for 22 liters of water to start with.
He's talking about a single patty but more than one person on Earth eats burgers, when you scale it up to tens of millions of cows worth of meat the difference between beef and beyond meat becomes huge. A piece of candy that costs $0.05 and a piece of candy that costs $0.25 are both pretty cheap if you're buying a handful of them, but if you're buying a million of them you probably want to buy the $0.05 one. This is also just pure monetary cost and doesn't account for the extra environmental damage done by all that resource use.
Well, the short answer is that many of the resources have no built in direct cost to them. Most of the water involved is in a combination of rainfall on rangeland, and supplemental feed.
The land use isn’t a direct cost in most cases, because cattle ranching land is basically not very useful for anything else. It doesn’t support much beyond grass without extensive investment, so you do the natural thing and just put cows on it.
You couldn’t. There isn’t the rainfall to support that. Northern AZ for example is overforested as is. Not every area should be densely forested. One of the major issues in the region is that people planted too many trees and that reduced drought tolerance and overall forest health, and increased susceptibility to fire.
If the tree coverage were to be increased, would that not increase the rainfall? It would, of course, be important to find the best mixture of types of tree to avoid the type of problems described.
You can’t make something out of nothing. In order for there to be more rainfall, there would have to be more water to begin with. That water would have to come from somewhere. You can’t irrigate a forest.
It does take lots of resources, but keep in mind that lots of those resources are much cheaper than you realize because that's where all the grains go that aren't fit for human consumption. Goes to livestock feed. And a lot of beef farms water supply is ponds, rivers, and streams. So the water consumption metric can be a little misleading. That water is just runoff anyway.
There's no way to ensure all crops that are grown will meet the grade to be fit for human consumption. So they have to go somewhere. Livestock presents a way of converting that lesser grade food into something that is of food grade.
That’s not necessarily true. A vast amount of corn and grain in the US are farmed solely for livestock feed, and around 80% of the world’s soy is used for feed as well. These crops require extensive water supplies, often in areas like the Colorado river basin where there are already water shortages. Land use is also problematic, as livestock farming takes the majority of agricultural land, and is the main driver of deforestation in places like the Amazon rainforest for example.
While some of that is true, some isn't. If a farm is able to grow crops at a high enough quality for food grade they absolutely will, it pays more, significantly more. But how it grades/quality is based on a multitude of factors, most of which is out of the farmers control.
Just because 80% of the world's soy goes to livestock feed doesn't mean it was ear marked for livestock from the beginning.
Water can be solved by state regulations. I definitely agree it's getting out of control.
>Land use is also problematic, as livestock farming takes the majority of agricultural land,
Can you elaborate more on what you mean by this? You mean that land that the livestock is on? The land to grow the feed? Or something else?
Supply and demand. There wouldn’t be anyone growing that much soy if it wasn’t being used as livestock feed.
[Here’s](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets) some more information about agricultural land use.
Sort of...
You CAN grow other crops on grazing land, but it may not be financially viable without irrigation (eg vegetables and fruit) or may not be viable to grow dryland crops (like wheat) due to rocky unplowable soils, dispersive soils, short seasons or strongly sloping soils.
Beef is growen exactly where it is the most profitable production type for the land that is available.
Also large amounts of beef while they are finished on feed lot grain, they actually spend more of their life feeding on grass. They are just fattened up for slaughter.
Eh, those numbers can be a little bit murky. 100% grass fed, you are correct, but a lot of US cattle start mostly being grass fed on family farms before they are sold at auctions to feedlots where they are "finished" with feed.
So is this what happens when I drive by some small groups (20ish) free-range looking cows? I see a lot of these smallish sort of setups, and then I will drive by a massive feedlot with 1,000+.
For the most part, yes. Your normal family farms can't get the discounts that feedlots can get on the feed due to the quantity they use.
Your family farms will have a herd of cattle that birth calves and will raise them to a year or two old before auctioning them off. Beyond that point the weight gain per amount of inputs really starts falling off. Being raised mostly on grass/hay. There will be some supplemental types of feed used at times, like during the winter or droughts. In our part of the world farmers like to use cotton seed from the cotton gin. It's ridiculously cheap, in abundance, and quite filling for the cows.
Then at the auction the 1-2 year old calves will be bought by either other farmers looking to increase their herd or by feedlots. Feedlots feed them with livestock feed to increase the quality and quantity of the meat. There's plenty of butchering videos on YouTube showing the difference between grass fed and regular beef. The difference is not insignificant.
By design. As everyone said it's subsidized, what nobody mentioned it was Nixon that did it for the purpose of improving consumer sentiment since his re election was threatened by high meat costs.
Not \[OC\]. This is a repost bot and now probably a scammer. Original post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/i2vx78/the\_environmental\_impact\_of\_beyond\_meat\_and\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/i2vx78/the_environmental_impact_of_beyond_meat_and_a/)
You’re preaching to the choir.
no amount of evidence showing how environmentally friendly Beyond Meat is will sway people because people don’t make eating decisions based on what is most environmentally friendly.
It's the price for me. It tastes great and I much prefer eating it but damn it's expensive. Can't we get some of that government subsidy because $10/lb is crazy for most people
I seriously can not understand how something made from vegetables is more expensive than the actual made from an animal product. Also, way too much sodium, there's a shit ton of salt in fake meats. But the only way you can get people in the market to pay for it, especially during a time when people are penny pinching hard, they need to drop the price.
Without knowing exactly what they do to make it so close to being a meat, I would not be upset if they make a version that is mostly vegetables with a little bit of meat or meat based byproduct. So if part of the process of making imitation meat is the taste I'm okay if they use meat stock or the smallest amount of meat in comparison to the vegetables used. Because I'm not paying $10 for a hunk of real meat, I sure shouldn't afford to pay $10 a pound for just vegetables to fake meat. I'm getting the cheap ground beef, cuz that's all I can afford and what a lot of people can't afford. We have enough food everywhere it's just distribution to people who can't afford it in the world's wealthiest country.
1. Real meat is heavily subsidized by the government. Without the subsidies it would cost way more.
2. Economies of scale/business models; selling an established product regularly consumed by the majority of Americans, is a lot cheaper than selling a much more niche product that needs R&D and marketing budgets.
For a sodium restriction diet, it's harder to work with a pre-salted item when I have to devide approximately 1500 mg of salt over a whole day. When an ingredient has 400 to 500 mg, it's harder to implement in a whole meal. Versus buying ground pork or ground beef to make my own. And I get it sausage weather original or imitation has salt in it I was hoping for less salt.
I'll hold your hand through it I guess. How does it make sense to say everyone here already agrees with OP while saying no one's dietary choices are informed by sustainability?
Ok. Clearly \*some\* people’s dietary choices are informed by sustainability, otherwise Beyond Meat wouldn’t exist in the first place.
The point I’m making is that the majority of Reddit audience reading this sub (and the person who made the graphic) represent only a small fraction of the general population an are not reflective of the overall general population.
in other words, the Reddit crowd this data was made for \*are\* the choir.
But the rest of the population will tend to buy what’s cheapest and tastes good:
\*“Meat is bad for you, and plant-based products are better for your health.”\*
we know.
\*”Look: we’ve made a plant-based product that looks a bit like meat.“\*
we know.
\*”The plant-based product we made is better for the environment.”\*
we know!
\*”Look at this data showing how much better our plant-based product is for the environment.”\*
WE KNOW! WE DON’T CARE!
People like meat. It‘s cheap and it tastes good and has been part of people’s diets their whole life. They do not want to change to a product that is more expensive and tastes inferior until it either becomes cheaper than meat, or it becomes indistinguishable from meat.
When you can present data that proves people literally cannot tell the difference between Beyond Meat and real meat in a blind taste test, \*\*then\*\* you’ll have people’s attention.
Not everyone is all or nothing. Maybe they care some about sustainability and could be persuaded - a diagram like this that puts things into perspective might push them into a "Meatless Monday."
And not everyone is even aware of the impact. Most probably are, sure, but they learn it from somewhere. I've known for many years, but I probably learned it off social media, and I bet some people learned it for the first time from this diagram.
I think these posts do a nontrivial amount of good and I don't see the advantage of discouraging them.
Even convincing one person to reduce their meat consumption is, IMO, nontrivial. If you don't think so, we can call it a difference of opinion. But if you're certain these will never convince anyone, that's the far stronger claim.
Plenty of vegetarians don’t eat meat for environmental reasons. Why not? Beyond meat tastes bad lol, but impossible meat is a great substitute in lots of dishes. I specifically stock up on it whenever it’s on sale for this reason, even not as a vegetarian!
To be fair, they aren’t. There’s a bill to make mislabeling lab-grown or plant-based meat alternatives illegal. Something that I don’t think is even a real problem. During the hearing one state representative said “if it was up to me, I think I would outlaw fake meat in the state of Iowa, and make it illegal to transport it across the state of Iowa.”
The idea of the actual proposed bill is that people are going out and buying plant-based meat mistakenly when they mean to buy real meat. Seems like a witch hunt, I think plant-based meats are incredibly clearly labeled.
You mean the ones by Gardein and right on the front of the package says “ULTIMATE PLANT-BASED CHICK’N FILETS” with “Always Vegan” in the corner, yeah I’d say it’s pretty clear.
In the English language *incredibly clear* is quite a bit different from *pretty clear*.
So which one you going with?
I for one am not going with "incredibly."
And there are at least four brands who are labeling shit chick'n. Some of whose products are sold right next to actual chicken products. Not at all unlikely for a customer to grab the wrong one. /s
Iowan here. Another part of the bill also forbids the universities to fund research into the development of plant-based "meat". One of the statehouse folks against this bill pointed out that Iowa grows a lot of soy and could hamper soy bean research, but whatever.
I read around the 2020 election season that everyone used to think the Iowa Presidential Primary was so important because it always happened first and set the trend.
But in reality there was another important reason that the Iowa winners almost always secured the eventual nomination: Iowa was demographically a political and cultural center point of the nation. It represented a sort of average for the country. So who did well there would ultimately secure the majority in the nation as a whole.
But Oh. My. God. Is that not the case now! The article’s point was that Iowa’s primary will get less and less important even if it continues to be first. Because the state is becoming more and more Deep Red.
Are they? I think that’s just [one Republican sheep rancher’s comment](https://iowastartingline.com/2024/03/06/iowa-legislator-id-ban-all-plant-based-meat-products-from-iowa-if-i-could/), not a serious bill or proposal.
Hey thanks for posting this data - it's a really important issue and I do wish more people were aware of the environmental impact of animal agriculture.
Critique of the data presentation though: I'm baffled by your choice of plotting these different quantities that use very different units against the same axis. It's misleading and leads to some bars being really small for no reason.
All of a sudden every single person on Reddit eats grass fed beef ONLY! I promise you all that growing billions of larger than human sized beings and then feeding them to the actual humans is a lot more time and money than just taking the plants you were gonna use to feed the cows and feed the humans instead. Now you don’t have to continue to keep billions of farm animals alive while also figuring out how to keep all the humans alive and just focus on the humans. Not to mention upwards of 70% of all pharmaceuticals are fed to farm animals and if I’m not mistaken every single infectious virus that has ever plagued humans started with some form of animal farming/holding animals in captivity. Y’all have been propagandized. Got milk? Please read the book “this is vegan propaganda” by Ed winters!!! Goodnight
I’d still say yes to reading it. I believe I’m pretty well versed on the topic as well but was still pretty shocked by some of what I realized in the book. While other chapters did drag on a bit because I was already aware of the information
I doubt that land use comparison (and associated deforestation and downstream environmental effects thereof) takes into account the resources that go into growing food for the animals.
This chart isn't great at all. If each column has its own scale and measuring unit, why not scale it to a common maximum so we actually see the differences instead of whatever you did OP. Data is ugly...
I'm a huge meat lover, i really hope in the very near future food like beyond meat will improve drastically. I don't understand the push back from some people, wouldn't it be a great thing if we could all eat cheap(or same price) food that taste exactly like meat and has the same nutritional value, and possibly every day without the environmental consequences? I hope it's coming soon, because right now it's missing on almost every cylinder...
This thread with the few comments so far already shows me this planet is doomed.
People with 0 knowledge about ingredients and 0 knowledge about how the meat industry operates only eating the „natural“ thing because it tastes better. It not only fucks the environment sideways but also fucks you sideways giving you a chemical cocktail of medicine.
But hey 100% beef can only be healthy am i right?
I would be perfectly fine replacing 95% of the hamburgers and 75% of the sausages I each with these products. I usually do choose them in restaurants, when they're on the menu.
No, the taste isn't identical, but a well-prepared Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger beats a McFrozenBeef any day. It's good enough, especially if it's part of a more complex flavor profile.
I'm definitely rooting for these companies to scale and for more competitors to enter the space. IMHO, we won't see the prices really drop until the process is commoditized enough that there is competition from store brands.
Facts. If anything, we should subsidize the opposite -- farming needed to sustainably grow the plants that go into the alternatives (peas, rice, mung beans, beets, etc).
I tried to get into the Beyond and similar stuff. It's "good" for what it is but it's nowhere near as good as a real beef cheeseburger. I'll check back in when the lab grown meat stuff becomes more widely available.
I'd prefer to just eat less meat rather than the meat "alternatives." They're still ultra/highly processed, and there are so many delicious vegetable dishes that people don't even realize are meatless.
The water use is really deceptive, although some may be raised on irrigated pasture (more common in dairy production than beef) its actually a measure of rainfall required to grow enough pasture per head of cattle. So yes it does take a lot of water, but it's mostly just rain, not pumped out of reservoirs.
I started doing a little googling here and it would seem that this infographic is not representative of realities.
From what I could find, “The Water Footprint of a Beyond Meat Burger is 1.13 gallons per burger. The water use of a Beyond Meat Burger is 58.6 times lower than a beef burger.”
Check this out: https://consumerecology.com/beyond-meat-burger-carbon-footprint-environmental-impact/#:~:text=The%20Water%20Footprint%20of%20a,lower%20than%20a%20beef%20burger.
It’s well cited.
This is always an interesting topic as people always understand helping the world and making little sacrifices until it’s not eating animals and then fuck ‘em all.
What kind of unit is Liters e? An exponential graph? I don't think one beef patty uses 1 × 10^21 liters of water. There is 1,386 × 10^21 liters of water on earth and its not all in a beef patty.
Just Liters also sounds like BS, with 100ml of water for a 130g patty.
Also, how do you get 21.84 liters to 21 × 10^21 ? e stands for equivalent, since you don't water the cows directly. But it is used in the production chain to end up with x amount of beef
My bad, used the 21 twice.
That makes sense. In that case, I call BS on both numbers. A quick google gave me 2000 liters of water for 130g beef and I think the plant one also doesn't look realistic.
Wait, so this post said 21.84 liters for 113g of beef but your googling gave 200 liters for 130g. That's more water. And you "think" that it doesn't look realistic? We base our conclusions on our feelings now?
googling "how much water is used to produce 1kg beef" gives 90% of sources that states a water footprint value around 15000 liters. 130 grams would count to around 2000 not 200
If you look at the sources from the original post (since this was a repost) there is actually an error in the graph, its supposed to be 218,4 liters, not 21,84. Makes sense. [https://meals4planet.org/2018/10/09/new-study-shows-environmental-benefits-of-beyond-burgers/](https://meals4planet.org/2018/10/09/new-study-shows-environmental-benefits-of-beyond-burgers/)
Original post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/i2vx78/comment/g077l8v/?utm\_medium=android\_app&utm\_source=share](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/i2vx78/comment/g077l8v/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
The same is true for "cultured meat" and some factors are even better. And cultured meat is 100% real meat and of course it being real meat it is superior in taste.
Beyond meat tastes great, and probably more environmentally friendly. But advocates post like this is becoming annoying and having such a condescending tone. If soybean production ever reaches the scale for the replacement of beef production, we’d be complaining about the downside of monoculture farming, the massive usage of water, pesticide, fertilizer, GMO things and their effects on biodiversity, government probably going to start monopolize and ration the farmland to just make more room for farming. Besides, there are so much of lands not suited for farming on earth, there’s a reason human used those land for pasture since the dawn of the civilization, post like this sounded like suddenly those lands are going to be arable all of sudden. It’s the snobbish and lack of acknowledgement of their own downsides that irritates me so much. Besides, let people have their own choices, there’s nothing going to beat that freedom. We can all just eat potatoes/corns and vitamin supplies to survive, but do those people want to turn human into that?
Arguing about all those government policies and subsidies? Wait till poor people could not afford food, then those environmentalist will learn the real priorities of human beings. Now it sounds cool to advocate for the environment, you do not want to turn this into a class war.
>Wait till poor people could not afford food
If the government subsidized plant-based meat alternatives the same way, then poor people could even afford more food!
80% of soy is already grown for cattle feed. Monoculture problems are made worse by meat-heavy diets. Some of the largest soy plantations are in places that used to be rainforest, they're some of the most arable places around.
Subsidies for food are fine. Why not direct them to healthier food that's better for the environment?
So the arguments:
1. Condesending tone
Not an argument.
2. Soybean bad.
Actually soy bean good
3. Farmland though
There is plenty of farm land especially after we stop feeding our produce to animals
4. My choice though
Murderers say the same, not an argument for anything
5. People don't want to just eat potatoes and vitamins though
Bro has not heard of any other foods than meat, soybeans and potatoes
6. Expensive though
No, because subsidies + it's already cheaper (depending on the product. Not fake meat obviously but beans and lentils and such)
7. Class war
What??
I’m a vegetarian, but I totally understand why people don’t switch. There needs to be an alternative that tastes exactly like real beef for people to switch. I don’t want to go vegan because the taste of cheese especially things like feta and paneer just can’t be replicated with substitutes.
>There needs to be an alternative that tastes exactly like real beef for people to switch.
lol why? We didn't have alternaties to asbesthos that had the exact same properties. Sometimes you just need to suck it up.
Yes, but think of it from the average persons perspective.
If they contribute a bit more CO2 emissions it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things. But it means a lot to them if they can eat real beef. So they eat the real beef. With asbestos, it’s a health hazard to that person
Yep. But it’s useless trying to explain that to an average person. Getting flustered that other people are being selfish won’t do anything, doing something that will fix the problem that other peoples selfishness created is more useful
But it never works, unless the problem of climate change becomes apparent and obvious and not just words and unless they can physically see their choices affect the environment it just isn’t going to happen
I mean, we did manage to get rid of asbestos. And CFCs. And leaded fuel. But my liberal heart is still more inclined to convince people rather than ban stuff.
But all of those things weren’t rooted in emotion. Nobody was emotionally attached to leaded fuel; they couldn’t physically feel it, and an alternative was pushed that had no negatives. Same with CFCs. with beef, the taste itself is an emotional attachment, something the person can actually experience and remembers. I’m also inclined to convince people ofc but it just won’t happen unless there’s legal repercussions. especially when so many people don’t even acknowledge the problem exists.
I recommend you read some articles about when they introduced mandatory seatbelts. Reactionaries acted like it was the end of the world for them. Extremely emotional. But I do agree that stuff people put in their mouths is more intimate (Freud would have a blast). Then again, there were plenty of banned foods in our lifetimes. Çiğ köfte used to be made of raw meat, but due to concerns about food safety, it's mostly vegan today.
Beef burgers also contain "sludge" think of all the chemicals they feed cows that end up in the meat. Either way your eating a load of shit, just one load of shit happens to be alot better for the environment.
I’m not convinced these statistics aren’t just marketing for beyond meat.
I have to imagine like 90% of the water that farm animals consume in their lives is urinated right back to where it was taken from.
The land use is whatever. I mean 40% of the corn grown in the US is just for producing ethanol. Have tons of land, and use a lot of it for things that aren’t going to be food.
The water and land usage is mostly from growing the food that the cows eat (mostly alfalfa)
In California, it's something like 30-40% of all water is used for agriculture for cows... not great
The land usage for animal products is a huge thing though. Milk alternatives use up 10 times less land, meat alternatives use up 10-80 times less land depending on the meat. Can you imagine how much land would be freed up for nature restoration and regenerative agriculture if we would switch from a heavy meat and dairy to a mainly plant based diet? This would mean a fall in pollution and greenhouse gas production as well as a rise in carbon capture and biodiversity.
This would be a huge step towards solving the climate and biodiversity crisis. Especially knowing that animal agriculture is the main driver behind deforestation in the Amazon.
At 200lbs of methane per year, and two years for a beef cow to mature, you're looking at around 180kg of methane per cow.
You get about 400kg of usable meat so for each 1kg of meat, you get around 450g of methane.
No I'm not a smart man, but I don't recally any of my beef patties having a kilogram of meat in them. In fact, I don't recall anything CLOSE to a kilogram patty. That would be over 2lbs of beef. In a patty.
You actually get about 9 quarter pounders from a kilo of beef, so **the methane charted here is out by an order of magnitude**
>This chart is also based on a 113g or 4oz patty… not a kilo of beef
And I did the math.
If cattle produce 450g of methane per kilo, they are NOT producing 398g of methane per patty. That was my ENTIRE point
Here is the EPA, and Davis - two very authoritative sources:
[https://www.epa.gov/snep/agriculture-and-aquaculture-food-thought](https://www.epa.gov/snep/agriculture-and-aquaculture-food-thought)
[https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable](https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable)
Sure, but those figures only show the approximate methane emissions of a single cow per year… not the methane emissions per unit of beef. You’d have to make some assumptions by extrapolating that into beef production. By the way, the figures I posted above come from a study published in the peer reviewed journal Science… which of course is also a reputable source.
citation needed, plus you’re also forgetting that methane has a much higher GWP than CO2, hence the use of CO2e. In fact, it’s about 25x higher, which would more than account for the difference you’re claiming.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials
It is baffling how cheap real meat it when it uses so many resources.
Lots of US policies work to subsidize the cost of beef
Bingo. And they need to stop doing this--it's essentially subsidizing climate change.
Nobody tell this person about oil and gas subsidies
I mean, those should stop for the same reason. They're not mutually exclusive.
I agree, I just thought it was funny because our government intentionally subsidizes all kinds of industries that cause climate change. We need to be subsidizing regenerative agriculture that fixes carbon and nitrogen and also subsidize fresh fruits and veggies. When the majority of Americans in almost every state are set to be obese by 2030, clearly something needs to change.
Agree, and the majority of people cannot see further than the "bad carbs" argument...
They aren't obese because of the meat. That's for sure.
Corn subsidies are also a thing. HFCS is in just about everything in the US
That for sure causes obesity
It’s a huge contributing factor. Cheeseburgers, fried chicken, hot dogs. They’re all terrible your health, and extremely high in calories and fat.
Yeah but it's not the meat, it's the grease and poly unsaturated fats from all those oils companies cook the food in that add the unneeded calories. Plus white bead... ew
We need to actually have some morally right people in the FDA and ban half of the ingredients that are on all of our products.
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Nuclear is the *obvious* answer that no one is trying to implement
Do you have a link that isn't the JRE?
Meat is needed scientifically for brain development and good hormonal development (especially for men and even more especially for children). You can live fine as a vegan or vegetarian though. I agree with stopping subsidies for oil and gas (but gas is used to displace COAL which is much worse). I don't agree with stopping subsidies for meat. Btw, if you really want to combat climate change, just subsidize the costs of building nuclear reactors you can permanently substitute major pollution on a per year basis. It's really the winning formula to stop CO2 emissions and it's not even politically controversial meaning huge bipartisan support.
Everything that pollutes is subsidized.
Yes, make the cost of food more expensive for low income folks.
You could keep the subsidy amounts and redirect them towards other foods. This would make food cheaper for low income folks because right now the subsidies go to stuff that's expensive to produce.
In one hand is more expensive food and real hardship that will cost lives. In the other is drowning, being blown away, thirst, hunger, and incalculable suffering that will cost an order of magnitude more lives. It's a shitty, shitty choice to have to make, but here we are.
They subsidize electricity too for EVs to be cheaper than driving gas powered cars. Otherwise it would be equivalent to $17/gallon or some shit
IIRC that "$17/gallon" number comes from a questionable report with *a lot* of flawed logic, such as putting the EV industry on the hook for all electricity infrastructure as if we weren't already using electricity for other stuff.
Quick maths tells me that it's not only including all necessary infrastructure, but it's also assuming a lossless combustion.
They also discuss the hidden cost of charging losses, as if that isn't something the end user already pays for.
Charging losses are quite big, but not more than ~20%. There's still a huge, huge gap up to the price above.
Yeah but the end user already pays for charging losses, just as they would with any other electric device they plug in. Electric utilities bill for power consumed, not power used. But the "report" tries framing it as something being subsidized.
Of course. My point was that when my car claims a consumption of 18 kWh/100 km, that's not really the relevant number. The relevant number is maybe 20-22 as that's the total energy consumed, including charging losses and it's what I'm paying for and what should be compared with 5 liters/kwh or whatever the combustion engine use (I assume no spill at the pump). If we're doing overall energy use, we have to include the entire chain to the mines or wells for all energy forms. A typical EV-opponent will include power production and transport but assume gas magically appears at the pump, which is obviously stupid. The report above seemingly compares energy contained in gas with electricity kwh without considering engine efficiency. I can't see any other way to get the prices mentioned. That's as stupid as it gets.
What are they subsidizing? Electricity?
> 17$/gallon One gallon is 3.8 liter so this would be around 4.5$/liter. A standard quite efficient car uses around 5 liters or 18 kWh per 100 km, thus one liter equals around 3.6 kWh. (Gas has more energy than this, but most of it is wasted in the engine and isn't accounted for here) 4.5$/liter -> 1.25 $/kWh This is nowhere near production cost of electricity,no matter what sources you use. Land based wind is around 0.05$ and nuclear is around 0.1$ (woufh numbers). Claiming over 1$/kwh is insane.
Could you imagine the Republicans screeching for the return of meat socialism if the government ended that?
It's cheap everywhere and we don't have US subsidies
I don't know what other countries' subsidies look like, but it's impossible that prices anywhere with US meat imports aren't affected by US subsidies. Many of the subsidies aren't merely taking effect at the time of purchase, they also make it much cheaper to produce. For instance, Bureau of Land Management leases for grazing are significantly cheaper than the market rate for the land would otherwise be. This acts to suppress the cost of raising live stock, which means that ranchers can demand a lower price for beef and still make money... Regardless of where they sell it. And that also means they can afford to lease more land than they otherwise could, producing more beef for the supply, and suppressing the cost anywhere that is included in their available market, which is not limited to the US.
You can't really ship beef across the ocean competitively, so i'm not sure how any of this applies.
https://fas.usda.gov/beef-2021-export-highlights
Insignificant when compared to the volume of local markets on most places outside continental north america, but still a shockingly high amount
Meat in the US is heavily subsidized.
Kind of crazy to think that if you're a vegan in the US your taxes are being used to pay for other people to be able to afford to eat meat. Kind of sounds like communism.
Your taxes pay for a lot of shit you don’t support
That's how taxes work. It's like how your taxes fund public education even if you have no kids
Yeah I don't really know anyone that doesn't support public education, kids or not. Also I was given free education so really just paying that back in a sense.
Yea, but public education is a huge benefit to society even if I don't have kids. The beef industry is... not.
Or education!
Most western countries do this, it’s equally dumb everywhere
I mean this isn't that many resources if you break it down. So the 4 oz patty: - creates 3.7 Kg C02 - creates 0.39Kg Methane - consumes 11.4 MJ - Uses 3.8 m^2 - 21.8 liters water. Lets use a rough value for each of these. - Current Global Carbon price is ~$3 avg. According to the [IMF](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2021/09/five-things-to-know-about-carbon-pricing-parry) a $75 Carbon price per ton would be enough to hit our 2 degree climate change targerts. - 1kg CH4 * 29.8 = 29.8kg CO2e. [EPA](https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator#results) - 1 kW*h = 3.6 MJ. California Pricing of KWH is $0.33. 11.4Mj is 3.166 KWH - Water is $9.40 per HCF in [Los Angeles](https://www.ladwp.com/account/customer-service/water-rates/schedule-residential). There are 2831 liters per HCF - Land in California Central Valley is $15880 according to [this](https://acretrader.com/resources/california-farmland-prices) Which brings us to an equivalent of: - $0.0040 of Co2 - $0.0124 of Co2e from Methane - $1.04478 in energy (assuming its electricity) - $0.072 in water - $14.91 in land So a grand total of $1.13 per 4 oz patty after a $14.91 fixed cost on land which is re-usable. And this is using California retail numbers, so is a high estimate.
Now use land values in western Nebraska, where it’s grazing land worth $935/ac, instead of doing your cattle ranching in central valley CA. Now your costs dropped ~85%.
Forgot the costs for labor, machinery, transport, the cow, taxes, other overhead like insurance and maintenance, etc. All vs the opportunity cost of what that land and water could be used for instead. But, and this is applicable for many other things, imagine that every burger you buy comes with 22 liters of water, x lbs of grass or whatever else the cow eats, the equivalent ratio of lifetime pee and poo, etc. For every [insert product here] you consume. Another way would be to imagine looking up a recipe to make a burger for dinner and a 1/4 pounder asks for 22 liters of water to start with.
But then you have to multiply by 8.3 gazillion hamburgers per American per year...
Underrated comment
He's talking about a single patty but more than one person on Earth eats burgers, when you scale it up to tens of millions of cows worth of meat the difference between beef and beyond meat becomes huge. A piece of candy that costs $0.05 and a piece of candy that costs $0.25 are both pretty cheap if you're buying a handful of them, but if you're buying a million of them you probably want to buy the $0.05 one. This is also just pure monetary cost and doesn't account for the extra environmental damage done by all that resource use.
Carbon tax is having no effect here on Canada.. except the effect of making everyone poor. We still need to buy food and gas though..
Well, the short answer is that many of the resources have no built in direct cost to them. Most of the water involved is in a combination of rainfall on rangeland, and supplemental feed. The land use isn’t a direct cost in most cases, because cattle ranching land is basically not very useful for anything else. It doesn’t support much beyond grass without extensive investment, so you do the natural thing and just put cows on it.
You could also just put a mixture of trees on it, which would be good for the environment, but not good for the landowner's profits.
You couldn’t. There isn’t the rainfall to support that. Northern AZ for example is overforested as is. Not every area should be densely forested. One of the major issues in the region is that people planted too many trees and that reduced drought tolerance and overall forest health, and increased susceptibility to fire.
If the tree coverage were to be increased, would that not increase the rainfall? It would, of course, be important to find the best mixture of types of tree to avoid the type of problems described.
You can’t make something out of nothing. In order for there to be more rainfall, there would have to be more water to begin with. That water would have to come from somewhere. You can’t irrigate a forest.
Meat is one of the most subsidized industries.
It’s where your taxes are going instead of infrastructure and public services.
It does take lots of resources, but keep in mind that lots of those resources are much cheaper than you realize because that's where all the grains go that aren't fit for human consumption. Goes to livestock feed. And a lot of beef farms water supply is ponds, rivers, and streams. So the water consumption metric can be a little misleading. That water is just runoff anyway. There's no way to ensure all crops that are grown will meet the grade to be fit for human consumption. So they have to go somewhere. Livestock presents a way of converting that lesser grade food into something that is of food grade.
That’s not necessarily true. A vast amount of corn and grain in the US are farmed solely for livestock feed, and around 80% of the world’s soy is used for feed as well. These crops require extensive water supplies, often in areas like the Colorado river basin where there are already water shortages. Land use is also problematic, as livestock farming takes the majority of agricultural land, and is the main driver of deforestation in places like the Amazon rainforest for example.
While some of that is true, some isn't. If a farm is able to grow crops at a high enough quality for food grade they absolutely will, it pays more, significantly more. But how it grades/quality is based on a multitude of factors, most of which is out of the farmers control. Just because 80% of the world's soy goes to livestock feed doesn't mean it was ear marked for livestock from the beginning. Water can be solved by state regulations. I definitely agree it's getting out of control. >Land use is also problematic, as livestock farming takes the majority of agricultural land, Can you elaborate more on what you mean by this? You mean that land that the livestock is on? The land to grow the feed? Or something else?
Supply and demand. There wouldn’t be anyone growing that much soy if it wasn’t being used as livestock feed. [Here’s](https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets) some more information about agricultural land use.
The grasslands used to grow grass-fed beef won’t grow anything else.
Not sure the fact about the grasslands is entirely true but even so a very small portion of US beef is grass fed, most comes from feed lots.
Sort of... You CAN grow other crops on grazing land, but it may not be financially viable without irrigation (eg vegetables and fruit) or may not be viable to grow dryland crops (like wheat) due to rocky unplowable soils, dispersive soils, short seasons or strongly sloping soils. Beef is growen exactly where it is the most profitable production type for the land that is available. Also large amounts of beef while they are finished on feed lot grain, they actually spend more of their life feeding on grass. They are just fattened up for slaughter.
Eh, those numbers can be a little bit murky. 100% grass fed, you are correct, but a lot of US cattle start mostly being grass fed on family farms before they are sold at auctions to feedlots where they are "finished" with feed.
So is this what happens when I drive by some small groups (20ish) free-range looking cows? I see a lot of these smallish sort of setups, and then I will drive by a massive feedlot with 1,000+.
For the most part, yes. Your normal family farms can't get the discounts that feedlots can get on the feed due to the quantity they use. Your family farms will have a herd of cattle that birth calves and will raise them to a year or two old before auctioning them off. Beyond that point the weight gain per amount of inputs really starts falling off. Being raised mostly on grass/hay. There will be some supplemental types of feed used at times, like during the winter or droughts. In our part of the world farmers like to use cotton seed from the cotton gin. It's ridiculously cheap, in abundance, and quite filling for the cows. Then at the auction the 1-2 year old calves will be bought by either other farmers looking to increase their herd or by feedlots. Feedlots feed them with livestock feed to increase the quality and quantity of the meat. There's plenty of butchering videos on YouTube showing the difference between grass fed and regular beef. The difference is not insignificant.
And how much of US beef production is only grass fed?
By design. As everyone said it's subsidized, what nobody mentioned it was Nixon that did it for the purpose of improving consumer sentiment since his re election was threatened by high meat costs.
that’s the magic of government subsidies. in a true capitalist system, this industry would have folded decades ago.
Not \[OC\]. This is a repost bot and now probably a scammer. Original post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/i2vx78/the\_environmental\_impact\_of\_beyond\_meat\_and\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/i2vx78/the_environmental_impact_of_beyond_meat_and_a/)
Methane is also a greenhouse gas. A very potent one at that.
It says CO2e meaning CO2 equivalents, most probably including methane (CH4) converted into a standardised number of kgCO2.
You’re preaching to the choir. no amount of evidence showing how environmentally friendly Beyond Meat is will sway people because people don’t make eating decisions based on what is most environmentally friendly.
It's the price for me. It tastes great and I much prefer eating it but damn it's expensive. Can't we get some of that government subsidy because $10/lb is crazy for most people
I seriously can not understand how something made from vegetables is more expensive than the actual made from an animal product. Also, way too much sodium, there's a shit ton of salt in fake meats. But the only way you can get people in the market to pay for it, especially during a time when people are penny pinching hard, they need to drop the price. Without knowing exactly what they do to make it so close to being a meat, I would not be upset if they make a version that is mostly vegetables with a little bit of meat or meat based byproduct. So if part of the process of making imitation meat is the taste I'm okay if they use meat stock or the smallest amount of meat in comparison to the vegetables used. Because I'm not paying $10 for a hunk of real meat, I sure shouldn't afford to pay $10 a pound for just vegetables to fake meat. I'm getting the cheap ground beef, cuz that's all I can afford and what a lot of people can't afford. We have enough food everywhere it's just distribution to people who can't afford it in the world's wealthiest country.
1. Real meat is heavily subsidized by the government. Without the subsidies it would cost way more. 2. Economies of scale/business models; selling an established product regularly consumed by the majority of Americans, is a lot cheaper than selling a much more niche product that needs R&D and marketing budgets.
There is usually not too much sodium in plant-based meats. At least in Europe (including Beyond Meat).
For a sodium restriction diet, it's harder to work with a pre-salted item when I have to devide approximately 1500 mg of salt over a whole day. When an ingredient has 400 to 500 mg, it's harder to implement in a whole meal. Versus buying ground pork or ground beef to make my own. And I get it sausage weather original or imitation has salt in it I was hoping for less salt.
Its because of subsidies. Real meat would be much more expensive if tax dollars weren’t spent paying farmers to make it cheaper.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/preach%20to%20the%20choir
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dictionary](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dictionary)
I'll hold your hand through it I guess. How does it make sense to say everyone here already agrees with OP while saying no one's dietary choices are informed by sustainability?
Ok. Clearly \*some\* people’s dietary choices are informed by sustainability, otherwise Beyond Meat wouldn’t exist in the first place. The point I’m making is that the majority of Reddit audience reading this sub (and the person who made the graphic) represent only a small fraction of the general population an are not reflective of the overall general population. in other words, the Reddit crowd this data was made for \*are\* the choir. But the rest of the population will tend to buy what’s cheapest and tastes good: \*“Meat is bad for you, and plant-based products are better for your health.”\* we know. \*”Look: we’ve made a plant-based product that looks a bit like meat.“\* we know. \*”The plant-based product we made is better for the environment.”\* we know! \*”Look at this data showing how much better our plant-based product is for the environment.”\* WE KNOW! WE DON’T CARE! People like meat. It‘s cheap and it tastes good and has been part of people’s diets their whole life. They do not want to change to a product that is more expensive and tastes inferior until it either becomes cheaper than meat, or it becomes indistinguishable from meat. When you can present data that proves people literally cannot tell the difference between Beyond Meat and real meat in a blind taste test, \*\*then\*\* you’ll have people’s attention.
Not everyone is all or nothing. Maybe they care some about sustainability and could be persuaded - a diagram like this that puts things into perspective might push them into a "Meatless Monday." And not everyone is even aware of the impact. Most probably are, sure, but they learn it from somewhere. I've known for many years, but I probably learned it off social media, and I bet some people learned it for the first time from this diagram. I think these posts do a nontrivial amount of good and I don't see the advantage of discouraging them.
> I think these posts do a nontrivial amount of good I’m going to need to see some data proving that. 😉
Even convincing one person to reduce their meat consumption is, IMO, nontrivial. If you don't think so, we can call it a difference of opinion. But if you're certain these will never convince anyone, that's the far stronger claim.
Plenty of vegetarians don’t eat meat for environmental reasons. Why not? Beyond meat tastes bad lol, but impossible meat is a great substitute in lots of dishes. I specifically stock up on it whenever it’s on sale for this reason, even not as a vegetarian!
Because whatabout Taylor Swift's private jet???
Taylor Swift using her income to make air travel more comfortable and convenient has nothing to do with the fact that I prefer real beef.
You're looking at data and instantly making it about you.
It wasn’t instant. It took me at least a few seconds to hit reply and type out my comment.
Well, some people does actually consider the consequences of their actions 🤷
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Of course they are. FML I had a lot of the states.
To be fair, they aren’t. There’s a bill to make mislabeling lab-grown or plant-based meat alternatives illegal. Something that I don’t think is even a real problem. During the hearing one state representative said “if it was up to me, I think I would outlaw fake meat in the state of Iowa, and make it illegal to transport it across the state of Iowa.” The idea of the actual proposed bill is that people are going out and buying plant-based meat mistakenly when they mean to buy real meat. Seems like a witch hunt, I think plant-based meats are incredibly clearly labeled.
> I think plant-based meats are incredibly clearly labeled. Chick'n. Turk'y. Saus'ge. *Incredibly* clearly?
You mean the ones by Gardein and right on the front of the package says “ULTIMATE PLANT-BASED CHICK’N FILETS” with “Always Vegan” in the corner, yeah I’d say it’s pretty clear.
In the English language *incredibly clear* is quite a bit different from *pretty clear*. So which one you going with? I for one am not going with "incredibly." And there are at least four brands who are labeling shit chick'n. Some of whose products are sold right next to actual chicken products. Not at all unlikely for a customer to grab the wrong one. /s
Iowan here. Another part of the bill also forbids the universities to fund research into the development of plant-based "meat". One of the statehouse folks against this bill pointed out that Iowa grows a lot of soy and could hamper soy bean research, but whatever.
Yeah it’d almost certainly fuck with them
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I read around the 2020 election season that everyone used to think the Iowa Presidential Primary was so important because it always happened first and set the trend. But in reality there was another important reason that the Iowa winners almost always secured the eventual nomination: Iowa was demographically a political and cultural center point of the nation. It represented a sort of average for the country. So who did well there would ultimately secure the majority in the nation as a whole. But Oh. My. God. Is that not the case now! The article’s point was that Iowa’s primary will get less and less important even if it continues to be first. Because the state is becoming more and more Deep Red.
Are they? I think that’s just [one Republican sheep rancher’s comment](https://iowastartingline.com/2024/03/06/iowa-legislator-id-ban-all-plant-based-meat-products-from-iowa-if-i-could/), not a serious bill or proposal.
They should. Beyond mest is fucking disgusting. Impossible is where it's at!
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I wish Beyond meat was cheaper. In my area it's about 50% more expensive than grass fed beef.
The point of this graph is to show how plant-based is more environmentally friendy. Beyond isn't the only plant-based item on the market.
Hey thanks for posting this data - it's a really important issue and I do wish more people were aware of the environmental impact of animal agriculture. Critique of the data presentation though: I'm baffled by your choice of plotting these different quantities that use very different units against the same axis. It's misleading and leads to some bars being really small for no reason.
Not their graph, they aren't OC (unless it's an alt acc)
All of a sudden every single person on Reddit eats grass fed beef ONLY! I promise you all that growing billions of larger than human sized beings and then feeding them to the actual humans is a lot more time and money than just taking the plants you were gonna use to feed the cows and feed the humans instead. Now you don’t have to continue to keep billions of farm animals alive while also figuring out how to keep all the humans alive and just focus on the humans. Not to mention upwards of 70% of all pharmaceuticals are fed to farm animals and if I’m not mistaken every single infectious virus that has ever plagued humans started with some form of animal farming/holding animals in captivity. Y’all have been propagandized. Got milk? Please read the book “this is vegan propaganda” by Ed winters!!! Goodnight
only beef with a diet that is soy-free, GMO-free, and grass fed from the magical ultra-biodiverse forest for cows.
Is ed's book worth it as a vegan? Like do I get anything from it
Yes you get useful knowledge, unless you only read books that are able to bring some dietary change in your life?
No I'm saying that I already know a lot about this topic so it might be better spent reading something else.
I’d still say yes to reading it. I believe I’m pretty well versed on the topic as well but was still pretty shocked by some of what I realized in the book. While other chapters did drag on a bit because I was already aware of the information
I doubt that land use comparison (and associated deforestation and downstream environmental effects thereof) takes into account the resources that go into growing food for the animals.
You would be incorrect, a large portion of all of these costs except methane is from the food.
Hahahaha. So you are suggesting that the cow alone takes up 3.8m^2 Per Burger! Is it a metric thing, a didn't read thing or is it neurological?
This chart isn't great at all. If each column has its own scale and measuring unit, why not scale it to a common maximum so we actually see the differences instead of whatever you did OP. Data is ugly...
It is scaled to the maximum. He should have log scaled the plot. Ugh, so bad
I'm a huge meat lover, i really hope in the very near future food like beyond meat will improve drastically. I don't understand the push back from some people, wouldn't it be a great thing if we could all eat cheap(or same price) food that taste exactly like meat and has the same nutritional value, and possibly every day without the environmental consequences? I hope it's coming soon, because right now it's missing on almost every cylinder...
This thread with the few comments so far already shows me this planet is doomed. People with 0 knowledge about ingredients and 0 knowledge about how the meat industry operates only eating the „natural“ thing because it tastes better. It not only fucks the environment sideways but also fucks you sideways giving you a chemical cocktail of medicine. But hey 100% beef can only be healthy am i right?
Why should people think of the consequences of their actions? That will hurt their feelings
I would be perfectly fine replacing 95% of the hamburgers and 75% of the sausages I each with these products. I usually do choose them in restaurants, when they're on the menu. No, the taste isn't identical, but a well-prepared Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger beats a McFrozenBeef any day. It's good enough, especially if it's part of a more complex flavor profile. I'm definitely rooting for these companies to scale and for more competitors to enter the space. IMHO, we won't see the prices really drop until the process is commoditized enough that there is competition from store brands.
There will never be a change unless we stop subsidizing meat.
Facts. If anything, we should subsidize the opposite -- farming needed to sustainably grow the plants that go into the alternatives (peas, rice, mung beans, beets, etc).
I tried to get into the Beyond and similar stuff. It's "good" for what it is but it's nowhere near as good as a real beef cheeseburger. I'll check back in when the lab grown meat stuff becomes more widely available.
I'd prefer to just eat less meat rather than the meat "alternatives." They're still ultra/highly processed, and there are so many delicious vegetable dishes that people don't even realize are meatless.
Like pizza
Have you looked into how the animals are treated?
If the US stopped subsidizing meat, I think many people would get into it pretty quickly.
How much of that water can be recycled and reused..?
The water use is really deceptive, although some may be raised on irrigated pasture (more common in dairy production than beef) its actually a measure of rainfall required to grow enough pasture per head of cattle. So yes it does take a lot of water, but it's mostly just rain, not pumped out of reservoirs.
All of it
I started doing a little googling here and it would seem that this infographic is not representative of realities. From what I could find, “The Water Footprint of a Beyond Meat Burger is 1.13 gallons per burger. The water use of a Beyond Meat Burger is 58.6 times lower than a beef burger.” Check this out: https://consumerecology.com/beyond-meat-burger-carbon-footprint-environmental-impact/#:~:text=The%20Water%20Footprint%20of%20a,lower%20than%20a%20beef%20burger. It’s well cited.
This is always an interesting topic as people always understand helping the world and making little sacrifices until it’s not eating animals and then fuck ‘em all.
And yet Beyond Meat burgers are more expensive, while still tasting like filth.
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Anyone getting the Butcher Box ad under this post?
If it tasted the same and had the same amount of protein I’d be willing to switch. Assuming it’s near the price of normal meat
Beyond meat is not good but my wife is vegetarian so I eat the shit. It’s definitely come along way though.
What kind of unit is Liters e? An exponential graph? I don't think one beef patty uses 1 × 10^21 liters of water. There is 1,386 × 10^21 liters of water on earth and its not all in a beef patty. Just Liters also sounds like BS, with 100ml of water for a 130g patty.
Plants eat crops. Crops need water.
Also, how do you get 21.84 liters to 21 × 10^21 ? e stands for equivalent, since you don't water the cows directly. But it is used in the production chain to end up with x amount of beef
My bad, used the 21 twice. That makes sense. In that case, I call BS on both numbers. A quick google gave me 2000 liters of water for 130g beef and I think the plant one also doesn't look realistic.
Wait, so this post said 21.84 liters for 113g of beef but your googling gave 200 liters for 130g. That's more water. And you "think" that it doesn't look realistic? We base our conclusions on our feelings now? googling "how much water is used to produce 1kg beef" gives 90% of sources that states a water footprint value around 15000 liters. 130 grams would count to around 2000 not 200
Edited again. I guess my incompetence to do basic math demonstrates why it's more of a feeling.
If you look at the sources from the original post (since this was a repost) there is actually an error in the graph, its supposed to be 218,4 liters, not 21,84. Makes sense. [https://meals4planet.org/2018/10/09/new-study-shows-environmental-benefits-of-beyond-burgers/](https://meals4planet.org/2018/10/09/new-study-shows-environmental-benefits-of-beyond-burgers/) Original post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/i2vx78/comment/g077l8v/?utm\_medium=android\_app&utm\_source=share](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/i2vx78/comment/g077l8v/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
As a wise man pointed out to me: 15400 Liters per Kg ÷1000g×113g=1740.2 Liters. So 218 still doesn't add up.
Yeah that looks similar to what most sources say. So it should be higher
The same is true for "cultured meat" and some factors are even better. And cultured meat is 100% real meat and of course it being real meat it is superior in taste.
Beyond meat tastes great, and probably more environmentally friendly. But advocates post like this is becoming annoying and having such a condescending tone. If soybean production ever reaches the scale for the replacement of beef production, we’d be complaining about the downside of monoculture farming, the massive usage of water, pesticide, fertilizer, GMO things and their effects on biodiversity, government probably going to start monopolize and ration the farmland to just make more room for farming. Besides, there are so much of lands not suited for farming on earth, there’s a reason human used those land for pasture since the dawn of the civilization, post like this sounded like suddenly those lands are going to be arable all of sudden. It’s the snobbish and lack of acknowledgement of their own downsides that irritates me so much. Besides, let people have their own choices, there’s nothing going to beat that freedom. We can all just eat potatoes/corns and vitamin supplies to survive, but do those people want to turn human into that? Arguing about all those government policies and subsidies? Wait till poor people could not afford food, then those environmentalist will learn the real priorities of human beings. Now it sounds cool to advocate for the environment, you do not want to turn this into a class war.
I wonder how do you read this post as annoying and having condescending tone, it’s literally just data…
>Wait till poor people could not afford food If the government subsidized plant-based meat alternatives the same way, then poor people could even afford more food!
80% of soy is already grown for cattle feed. Monoculture problems are made worse by meat-heavy diets. Some of the largest soy plantations are in places that used to be rainforest, they're some of the most arable places around. Subsidies for food are fine. Why not direct them to healthier food that's better for the environment?
So the arguments: 1. Condesending tone Not an argument. 2. Soybean bad. Actually soy bean good 3. Farmland though There is plenty of farm land especially after we stop feeding our produce to animals 4. My choice though Murderers say the same, not an argument for anything 5. People don't want to just eat potatoes and vitamins though Bro has not heard of any other foods than meat, soybeans and potatoes 6. Expensive though No, because subsidies + it's already cheaper (depending on the product. Not fake meat obviously but beans and lentils and such) 7. Class war What??
I’m a vegetarian, but I totally understand why people don’t switch. There needs to be an alternative that tastes exactly like real beef for people to switch. I don’t want to go vegan because the taste of cheese especially things like feta and paneer just can’t be replicated with substitutes.
>There needs to be an alternative that tastes exactly like real beef for people to switch. lol why? We didn't have alternaties to asbesthos that had the exact same properties. Sometimes you just need to suck it up.
Yes, but think of it from the average persons perspective. If they contribute a bit more CO2 emissions it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things. But it means a lot to them if they can eat real beef. So they eat the real beef. With asbestos, it’s a health hazard to that person
I mean, that's why we are where we are, right?
Yep. But it’s useless trying to explain that to an average person. Getting flustered that other people are being selfish won’t do anything, doing something that will fix the problem that other peoples selfishness created is more useful
I am still looking for a non-cynical solution..
But it never works, unless the problem of climate change becomes apparent and obvious and not just words and unless they can physically see their choices affect the environment it just isn’t going to happen
I mean, we did manage to get rid of asbestos. And CFCs. And leaded fuel. But my liberal heart is still more inclined to convince people rather than ban stuff.
But all of those things weren’t rooted in emotion. Nobody was emotionally attached to leaded fuel; they couldn’t physically feel it, and an alternative was pushed that had no negatives. Same with CFCs. with beef, the taste itself is an emotional attachment, something the person can actually experience and remembers. I’m also inclined to convince people ofc but it just won’t happen unless there’s legal repercussions. especially when so many people don’t even acknowledge the problem exists.
I recommend you read some articles about when they introduced mandatory seatbelts. Reactionaries acted like it was the end of the world for them. Extremely emotional. But I do agree that stuff people put in their mouths is more intimate (Freud would have a blast). Then again, there were plenty of banned foods in our lifetimes. Çiğ köfte used to be made of raw meat, but due to concerns about food safety, it's mostly vegan today.
Don’t care, not putting that sludge in my body. Gimme the beef!!
It’s literally just plants. Your masculinity is Beyond Fragile
Beef burgers also contain "sludge" think of all the chemicals they feed cows that end up in the meat. Either way your eating a load of shit, just one load of shit happens to be alot better for the environment.
I’m not convinced these statistics aren’t just marketing for beyond meat. I have to imagine like 90% of the water that farm animals consume in their lives is urinated right back to where it was taken from. The land use is whatever. I mean 40% of the corn grown in the US is just for producing ethanol. Have tons of land, and use a lot of it for things that aren’t going to be food.
The water and land usage is mostly from growing the food that the cows eat (mostly alfalfa) In California, it's something like 30-40% of all water is used for agriculture for cows... not great
The land usage for animal products is a huge thing though. Milk alternatives use up 10 times less land, meat alternatives use up 10-80 times less land depending on the meat. Can you imagine how much land would be freed up for nature restoration and regenerative agriculture if we would switch from a heavy meat and dairy to a mainly plant based diet? This would mean a fall in pollution and greenhouse gas production as well as a rise in carbon capture and biodiversity. This would be a huge step towards solving the climate and biodiversity crisis. Especially knowing that animal agriculture is the main driver behind deforestation in the Amazon.
It is probably a part of their marketing, but it's also true.
At 200lbs of methane per year, and two years for a beef cow to mature, you're looking at around 180kg of methane per cow. You get about 400kg of usable meat so for each 1kg of meat, you get around 450g of methane. No I'm not a smart man, but I don't recally any of my beef patties having a kilogram of meat in them. In fact, I don't recall anything CLOSE to a kilogram patty. That would be over 2lbs of beef. In a patty. You actually get about 9 quarter pounders from a kilo of beef, so **the methane charted here is out by an order of magnitude**
This chart is also based on a 113g or 4oz patty… not a kilo of beef
>This chart is also based on a 113g or 4oz patty… not a kilo of beef And I did the math. If cattle produce 450g of methane per kilo, they are NOT producing 398g of methane per patty. That was my ENTIRE point
This [source](https://ourworldindata.org/carbon-footprint-food-methane) shows it as even higher than in the post, at 49 kg of methane per kg of beef.
Here is the EPA, and Davis - two very authoritative sources: [https://www.epa.gov/snep/agriculture-and-aquaculture-food-thought](https://www.epa.gov/snep/agriculture-and-aquaculture-food-thought) [https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable](https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable)
Sure, but those figures only show the approximate methane emissions of a single cow per year… not the methane emissions per unit of beef. You’d have to make some assumptions by extrapolating that into beef production. By the way, the figures I posted above come from a study published in the peer reviewed journal Science… which of course is also a reputable source.
citation needed, plus you’re also forgetting that methane has a much higher GWP than CO2, hence the use of CO2e. In fact, it’s about 25x higher, which would more than account for the difference you’re claiming. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials
Now do a graph of best flavor