from Hacker News

'On a vegan planet, Britain could feed 200M people’

by chunkyslink on 5/13/22, 7:07 AM with 65 comments

  • by throwaway22032 on 5/13/22, 9:00 AM

    If I spent 1/8 of what I earn, eight of me could live on my salary. It's functionally achievable, people live in my country on that amount. But I don't like that, so I spend a bit more.

    There is no sense in reducing the entire human experience to the lowest common denominator one in order to fit more people on the planet. If that's in your plans, you have a literal fight on your hands.

  • by vintermann on 5/13/22, 8:49 AM

    If sustainability is more important, eating at least fish too is bound to be better. There's no way leaving 71% of the surface of the planet off-limits for nutrients isn't going to increase pressure on the other 29%.

    And yes, much fishing and aquaculture is presently unsustainable, but that can be said about agriculture too. It's not nearly an adequate argument for abandoning it entirely.

    The argument for full veganism has to be that animals are people. Sustainability arguments won't cut it. If animals aren't people, you never get to full veganism, and if animals are people the sustainability argument is redundant anyway.

  • by uptime on 5/13/22, 12:16 PM

    I do think that vegan diets are a good goal and industry will catch up. It will come down to comfort, not avarice. Vegan diets lower inflammatories and increase meaningful longevity. Joints hurt less over time, lots of expensive cardio issues go away. Tom Brady of NFL fame eats that way specifically for injury recovery properties etc. and no one would call him a treehugger.

    I don’t think I’ll ever be pure vegan but I’ll see how far I can get. Except for cheese as noted elsewhere, most meals are not lacking anything in terms of taste or satiation.

  • by fdsfdsfdsu on 5/13/22, 8:34 AM

    According to the linked paper, the UK would require 3 million hectares to provide sufficient calories (assuming everyone ate nothing but barley stew). It also points out that, at least in 1975, that's more or less what happened - the UK grew enough barely in that year, using 3.6m hectares, to "feed" its population (at least, in terms of calories needed).

    So - it's already true! We grow all the barley we need to sustain ourselves, and the rest is given over to other produce that provides the other nutrients we need, as well as some luxury. Yay vegan sustainability!

  • by 0dayz on 5/13/22, 9:17 AM

    I don't think at the end of the day that the issue is the sustainablility of meat that will be its downfall (with the exception of greed, as you can see already with the big shots in the meat industry trying to lobby away lab grown meat / TLM products even though they barely exist).

    Instead it's the very wasteful food culture especially the west has, let's take steak as an example, for the around 5 steaks a family of 3 will eat you could easily make a stew for 4 with only 3 of those steaks.

  • by vegan_wgat on 5/13/22, 8:43 AM

    Throwaway for obvious reasons.

    What's the current academic consensus on nutritional deficiencies of vegan / lacto-vegeterian diet?

    I grew up on a lacto-vegeterian diet in India. I can't shake off the feeling that I would've had a better physique and growth if I had access to non-vegetarian food during my youth.

  • by nikolay on 5/13/22, 9:47 AM

    It's important to differentiate between "surviving" and "thriving"!

  • by Normille on 5/13/22, 7:17 AM

    ...and the wind could generate electricity for a similar number.

    Conversation might be a bit limited though. The need to tell everyone you meet, within 5 minutes of meeting them, that you're a vegan would be removed.