Most of the meat I eat is sheep and goat's meat. I assume that by "eat plants directly" you mean I should eat the plants eaten by sheep and goats myself.
What plants should I eat that are eaten by sheep and goats?
This doesn't really fly unfortunately. Eat vegan/vegetarian and you will have a minimal impact, that is what you see/hear everywhere. But in the meanwhile these new vegan/vegetarian companies are a huge cause of the deforestation of the Amazon [1]. The amount of vegan/vegetarian food necessary to actually get the same amount of nutrients are on a different planet and simple math shows that it wouldn't even work if we used the entire planet. What I'm getting at is that is that it isn't all black and white and what we need is something sustainable that works and that it isn't really an easily solved problem.
> Eat vegan/vegetarian and you will have a minimal impact
This is mostly true. You could maybe have a "mostly rice + meat once a month diet" that has less impact than a vegan diet rich in Impossible/Beyond meat and avocados. But apart from comparisons of "outliers" this statement true.
> But in the meanwhile these new vegan/vegetarian companies are a huge cause of the deforestation of the Amazon [1]
Might be so, but nothing close to what is needed for real beef. They say some forest is cut for soy, so soy is bad, and vegans (plant eaters) eat soy, so vegans are bad. Well, beef was a cow, and cows eat by far most of the soy on this planet. So "fake meat" is not compared to the alternative "meat" (they just point out something unsustainable about fake meat in isolation). Just an example: to produce one beef meat burger patty enough water is used that one could shower for 3 months 24/7. When it comes to "impact" (as you call it) it does not get much worse than red meat.
A big fallacy in your argument is that all vegans would eat massive amounts of "new vegan/vegetarian company" products: they dont. We (yes im vegan) eat a lot of lentils, soy (tofu/tempeh), sweat potatoes, veggies, etc. As a group we are MUCH less impact for for the environment, simply because it is so inefficient to feed plants to animals only to have a less shelf stable product (meat), and lots of waste (bones, feathers, some organs, consciousness of sentient beings, etc).
Please be vegan while we bring this wasteful industry to its knees. It's time.
I eat meat but I'm Greek and the food I was brought up on and eat still is about 80% plant-based (basically, it's naturally vegetarian or vegan [1] but we just call it ... food), not least because we cook with olive oil rather than butter or animal fats. So your description of your diet, "lots of lentils, soy, sweet potatoes, veggies" etc is pretty much a description of mine, minus the soy. Most of my diet is pasta, rice, potatoes (way too much starch) beans, lentils, and vegetables of all kinds, particularly peppers, aubergines, zucchini and tomatoes; and I eat lots of mushrooms (which are not traditional). I use up maybe 5 litres of olive oil every one month and a half or so (more in the summer, for salads). Greeks consider a navy bean soup with tomatoes, carrots and celery our "national dish".
I eat lots of dairy, particularly yogurt, mainly from sheep and goats (when I'm in Greece where it's available) and cheese. I eat meat maybe once or twice a week and eggs about the same.
Most of the meat I eat is from sheep and goats also (Greece doesn't grow much beef and about 80% of our dairy is made from sheep and goat's milk).
I think all of what you say above is targeted to people who grew up and live in another part of the world than myself, a part of the world where the word for "meat" means "food" [2], where a "meal" is commonly understood to include meat, and where "meat" is commonly understood to mean "beef". I think this because I see in your comment (although this is in response to the OP) that you are talking about how soy is used to feed cows for beef.
The inefficiency you point out, of "feed(ing) plants to animals" pertains to beef, not sheep, goat, or pig meat. The latter are meats of animals that eat plants (and, er, other things, when it comes to pigs [3]) that cannot be eaten by humans. For instance, the vast majority of sheep and goat's meat production in Greece is from animals that graze freely in the spring and summer and are fed hey in the winter. When grazing freely, their diet consists of wild grasses [4] that are inedible to humans.
To be perfectly honest I don't know how sheep and goats are raised in other parts of the world, but my understanding is that they mostly graze freely also, although there are different races of sheep and goats in different countries, for example Greek ones are mostly raised for their milk and meat and not for their wool (which is not normally used).
What I'm trying to say is that, personally, as a Greek person, I feel that you and others should learn to restrict the scope of your advise to "please be vegan", and generally of your advise to change dietary habbits to harm the environment less, to the people from those places in the world that are really causing the problem with industrial beef production and over-consumption. Your indiscriminate encouragement to "please be vegan" sounds to my Greek self as unfair and unnecessary, and ill-informed to boot.
Think for a second please, how unfair it sounds to hear your plea to "go vegan" for the environment when I have eaten most of my life a diet that by all intents and purposes is "plant-based" (i.e. not exlusively, but predominantly made of plant matter) and where most of the meat comes from free-grazing animals and produces less than half of the greenhouse gas emissions of beef [5]. The environmental destruction that you are rightly concerned about is caused by the dietary excesses of others, but _I_ have to forego the little meat I eat to save the environment that those others are destroying with their overconsumption? Like I say, this is blatantly and infuriatingly unfair.
[4] Happy to dig into my refs to list species - but Greece has an amazing biodiversity that includes a vast richess of different grasses, which in fact comes out in our sheep and goat's meat and dairy products. When I eat sheep's meat in the UK, where I stay most of the time, it feels to me bland and tasteless. And don't let me start on the dairy.
I hear you (I was a vegetarian for over 12 years), but I don't think there's a simple solution to the problem. The reality is that most of the new "good" companies are just as bad as the old ones they're replacing.
I was vegetarian "for the animals" for 12 years as well! But I found that I was a hypocrite towards milk cows and their families and to egg laying hens and their families. So I went vegan.
I found that vegetarian is a weird cultural diet that does not have clear lines, and veganism is a well defined ethical stance (i also dont go to zoos and dont take leather etc.)
No animal will ever be caged up of mistreated "for me". And that feels quite reassuring.
You mention companies again. Please think of it in more basic terms: it's not all about more/higher tech. In case of food I like low text stuff: lentils, tempeh, sweat potato, greens and lots of fruits.
I'm afraid this is classical FUD. (some cases of this have been proven). The truth is so obvious and bad for profits in some sector that they want us to doubt it.
If the answer is yes, I think the far more important question is how do we stop destroying it. That's where the little "nitpicking" details start to matter.
An even greater conspiracy at work here is one the filmmakers are complicit in: teaching Americans to express their moral outlook through consumer choices. You would have thought they would have learned by now that swearing off fish (or meat, or processed foods) was a meaningless gesture that lets people sleep at night without having to reckon with the fact that even in a "democracy" the average person has zero power to make their voice heard on these issues.
The film also mentioned that governments are subsidizing the industrial fishing industry. That's an obvious angle of attack that goes beyond consumer choices.
I agree with you. There is some mention in the film about regulation and how there would need to be dramatic changes in policy and enforcement but this definitely seemed to be minimised compared with the "eat less fish" recommendation.
However, I think it's really difficult for them to send a message of what we should do for political change. What would they say? It's not like voting has ever caused the kind of substantial, rapid change that is now necessary. Pointing the finger at political parties would have probably hurt their ability to publish the film to get the message out. And they can't go and suggest sabotage of the fishing industry or rioting/revolution, even if those would be the most effective.
In the mean while: just eat plants directly.