[turtlesdown]

>My brother and I are 3-4 inches taller than my dad, because we grew up on a meat and dairy rich American diet, versus the rice and lentil-based diet my dad grew up with in his village in Bangladesh.

No, your dad is likely shorter due to basic malnutrition. Malnutrition is caused by lack of appropriate macro and micro nutrients, irrespective of their source. Studies have shown that properly nourished vegetarians, vegans and meat eaters grow to the same height.

As for what to tell Bangladeshi's, maybe try "Bangladesh’s population at risk of sea level rise is predicted to grow to 27 million by 2050" http://icccad.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/IPCC-Briefing-f...

[rayiner]

Studies show that children who don't drink animal milk are shorter: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/milk-children-height-1.414983...; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15981182; https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/80/4/1088/4690374

Also, "properly nourished" is a weasel phrase here. You see the exact same phenomenon among the U.S.-raised kids of Bangladeshis/Indians/Pakistanis from very comfortable families. The kids are way taller than parents who did not suffer any malnourishment back home. Just because it is theoretically possible to construct a vegan diet that results in the same growth as a diet including meat and dairy doesn't mean it's easy to do so with the kinds of foods readily available in the developing world.

[turtlesdown]

First, you originally claimed meat as a factor (apparently still after an edit). Second, a vegetarian can eat dairy products. Finally, the only working link above is pretty much worthless (122 participants who were asked questions, measured, and checked again in 3 years) as it does not capture final adult height.

>Also, "properly nourished" is a weasel phrase here.

For sure, just like debating about meat consumption and pivoting to just dairy consumption as proof...

[rayiner]

You need to remove the semi-colons from the link above. Three different studies showing that milk consumption results in taller children.

As to your second point--the issue under debate here is not meat consumption, but rather the CO2 emissions of animal agriculture. So we're talking about telling Bangladeshis to be vegans, not merely vegetarians.

[Dylan16807]

https://data-wrapper.s3.amazonaws.com/vpwr6/3/index.html https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/a/10177

Huh, these numbers really disagree in a couple places.

Nevertheless it seems like the most important way to minimize CO2 is to focus on grains, and that milk, eggs, poultry, pork, and fish aren't all that bad compared to the average vegetable.

And milk's easy to budget for, two cups a day is only 10% of a kid's calories.

[cageface]

Taller is not necessarily healthier. Cows milk is designed to bring a cow to adult size in one year. It has a very different composition than human milk. There is a lot of evidence that feeding that kind of rocket fuel for growth to humans has some serious downsides. Drinking milk in teenage years, for example, raises the risk of prostate cancer by 300% later in life.

[rayiner]

> Taller is not necessarily healthier.

It is, however, closely linked to status, especially in the developing world. Telling Bangladeshis they shouldn’t eat meat because Westerners blew the global CO2 budget is... problematic.

[otterley]

Do you have a citation to a peer-reviewed study for this claim?

[cageface]

Here’s a recent review of science we have on the issue.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25527754

[otterley]

Where's the 300% number? Unfortunately, I don't have access to the text. In the abstract, they're only claiming "positive association."

[cageface]

I don’t have the source for the 300 figure at hand now. I’ll try to find it again. Here’s a video review with links to sources that goes a lot deeper into the issues.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/dairy-and-cancer/