Begging the question
Why do people still eat beef when we know it's terrible for Earth?
Submitted 6 months ago by 3volver@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Regalia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
I have a eating disorder so most vegetables make me retch, so I kind of don’t have a choice.
Also companies do way more emissions than I ever will, yet I’m asked to stop.
Drusas@kbin.run 6 months ago
I have food sensitivities which make it so that I can't eat most leafy greens, most legumes, mushrooms, large amounts of carbs....
I'd be on the toilet 24 hours a day if I went vegan.
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Meat yummy
then_three_more@lemmy.world 6 months ago
In my country at least beef consumption peaked around 2012 (theguardian.com/…/uk-meat-consumption-lowest-leve…)
I think post WW2 there was a drive towards the idea that we’d never need to go without. This combined with lifestyle changes (more people working longer hours) gave birth to the rise of fast convince foods and the mass growth of places like McDonalds and Burger King.
Why don’t people just stop? Ideas within society have a lot of momentum, they take a lot of energy to get started and a lot to turn or stop again.
nutsack@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Because they’re lazy and comfortable and stupid and they don’t give a shit about anything.
canadaduane@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I appreciate your question, but I think “we know” is problematic:
- who is “we”?
- how do we “know”?
- can some people know one thing while others know the opposite?
I’m not trolling, either, just asking questions from a philosophical point of view. I’ve changed my mind about several things I took very seriously and thought I was 100% right about. Could others be dealing with similar changing-mind-through-time processes? Could you?
3volver@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“We” are informed individuals who care about proven scientific facts.
“Know” is the fact that methane is a strong greenhouse gas.
No, when it comes to something factually proven time and time again. Anyone can “know” anything but that doesn’t mean they’re correct.
I’ve gone through many mind changing events in my life time, so has everyone else.
canadaduane@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
“We know better than you” has never been an effective way to change other peoples’ minds, in my experience.
Akareth@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Because:
- Ruminants like cows repair our depleating topsoil via regenerative farming (our current approach of using petroleum-based fertilisers is not sustainable)
- A single cow’s life can feed a human for 1 to 2 years, compared to the many incidentally killed animals (insects, rodents, frogs, birds, etc.) during the growing and harvesting of crops, plus the destruction of entire ecosystems to create the mono-crop farms in the first place
- Humans need to eat lots of fat to be physically and mentally healthy, and beef provides lots of fat (the low-fat high-carbohydrate diets recommended by various agencies — starting with the US’s department of agriculture in the late '70s via the food pyramid — are making us sick, with once-rare diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, and dementia now commonplace)
YaBoyMax@programming.dev 6 months ago
This is ignoring the fact that raising a cow for consumption requires ~10 times the amount of crops per calorie compared to just eating the crops directly. Also, I don’t think I’ve heard a single health expert recommended eating more beef - the universal understanding is that red meat consumption is generally a net negative in terms of overall health.
GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee 6 months ago
requires ~10 times the amount of crops per calorie compared to just eating the crops directly
Kind of, kind of not. If fed corn, yes. If pasture raised, no. Humans can’t eat grass. Cows convert grass into food.
psion1369@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Beef makes money. Just like cars, oil makes money.
p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Because we are carnivores and that’s how nature works?
chetradley@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The word you’re looking for is omnivores
p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Alrighty!
decivex@pawb.social 6 months ago
I’m not a vegetarian by any stretch but even I know there’s nothing natural about how the bio industry works.
kandoh@reddthat.com 6 months ago
Big money involved
FunnyUsername@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Cigarette smokers must really baffle you too
3volver@lemmy.world 6 months ago
No, they don’t. I used to smoke, nicotine is a fucking bitch of a drug, somehow I managed to quit using vaping and nicotine gum over 2 years. Beef is not an addictive chemical. You must never have experienced nicotine drug, what a naive ass comment to make.
FunnyUsername@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I smoked for 7 years Get over yourself lmfao
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
It’s nutritious. Instead of carefully observing some diet you can eat some beef and buckwheat or cabbage or beans, and you’re good.
That said, I eat meat so rarely that my relatives worry, mainly because it takes some time to cook if you boil it, and I’m lazy and unorganized, and frying it has the potential of, eh, leaving the kitchen for 5 minutes which turn out to be half an hour and returning for the smell.
Other than that people can’t care about every problem at once.
knightly@pawb.social 6 months ago
Because my partners are picky eaters and I literally cannot get them to even try vegetarian meals. If it doesn’t have beef, pork, or chicken then they won’t touch it. >_<
Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Its a cultural thing for my wife and her family. Pretty much every meal she learned to cook when she was a beef meal.
Leviathan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Dumb fucks who fall for propaganda on every platform.
Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’m a native whose culture have hunted and eaten meat for millennia, what propaganda were my ancient ancestors being shown?
Leviathan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What does what your ancestors did have to do with what we now know about modern factory farming? The question was about still eating beef despite what we know today, what does that have to do with your ancestors? Is your comment not the very definition of a strawman?
Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You haven’t made vegan food free yet. Make it free, people will naturally eat more of it. Solve hunger at the same time.
You do care about reducing beef consumption right? Well start here.