[arghwhat]

Yes, some land is not suitable for agriculture. No, this does mean that having cattle is a neutral usage as each cattle requires agriculture to feed for 3-4 years before they are slaughtered.

Yes, cattle emissions are largely from the food. No, this is not just grass that was already there and would decompose anyway - the majority of agricultural production is to feed cattle and would not be necessary without (the efficiency of raising an animal for years to get a few steaks is horrible), and even if fed naturally it significantly increases the rate of plant turnover.

Yes, meat protein is a great source of nutrition. No, it is not magically better than equivalent vegetarian nutrition. Both have diets ranging from super healthy to obesity inducing. Being carnivorous or vegetarian is itself not a significant health factor - chips and crisps are often vegan, and Big Macs contain meat.

[AmericanChopper]

> Yes, meat protein is a great source of nutrition. No, it is not magically better than equivalent vegetarian nutrition.

It’s not magic, but the protein from animal sources is just scientifically better than protein from plant sources. If you want to compare the nutritional benefits of different protein sources you need to account for how bioavailable they are. Some plant sources aren’t bad, but none are as good as animal sources, and some of the them aren’t very good at all.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905294/

[arghwhat]

Quoting your linked paper:

> Vegetable proteins, when combined to provide for all of the essential amino acids, provide an excellent source for protein considering that they will likely result in a reduction in the intake of saturated fat and cholesterol.

> [..] When the more accurate PDCAAS scale is used, soy protein was reported to be equivalent to animal protein with a score of 1.0, the highest possible rating (Hasler, 2002).

> Soy is a complete protein with a high concentration of BCAA’s.

So not only does the paper say that soy protein is a "complete" protein like beef, it scores soy higher than beef in Table 1 (which only gets a score of 0.92!), and states that it has associated health benefits (several mentioned throughout the paper).

Whey also scores a 1.0 for the curious, suggesting we do not have to eat the cow to get its protein.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the paper studies protein uptake efficiency and coverage ("quality") in the context of elite athletes and their very high protein requirements that range from difficult to dangerous to maintain (the paper mentions concerns of cardiovascular issues and bone loss risk when using beef protein for example). These concerns do not apply to those without extreme dietary needs.

Even if you cannot eat soy, the concerns of coverage or quality of individual protein sources are largely irrelevant when combined with a varied diet that contains more than one source - arguably a requirement to discussing dietary health, and suggested by the paper as a solution.

So while the reference to the paper is good, it is important to read it - thoroughly - in its intended context.

[hansvm]

Complete protein or not, you can get your sulfur-containing amino acids 32oz of tofu or 6oz of turkey (less of both if you're smaller), and other vegan sources are significantly worse, so a properly varied diet has higher demands. It's not impossible, but it's not as easy as just replacing all your animal proteins with equivalent masses of plant proteins either.

[AmericanChopper]

You could revise your claim that vegetable proteins are just as good as animal sourced proteins, to the far more specific claim that soy proteins being as good as animal proteins if you like. Because soy is the only plant source that is comparable in quality to animal sourced proteins (which is why the majority of vegan protein supplements are soy-based).

Even then, if you were to get all or a majority of your protein requirements from soy, then that's a lot of soy. You'd have to eat 1-2 pounds or more of boiled soy beans per day. Which aside from being a very atypical diet, would also be above the level of isoflavone consumption that has been studied to be safe (incidentally, consuming large quantities of whey protein also has some unpleasant side-effects in most people, like extreme flatulence, constipation and the associated discomfort).

Implementing a highly restrictive diet, that eliminates entire food groups that you've evolved to rely on, is unsurprisingly complicated. It also unsurprisingly puts you at risk of deficiencies in the nutrients that your new diet is deficient in. Which is why vegans are unsurprisingly at an increased risk of negative health outcomes associated with those deficiencies.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00330...

Your claim that vegetable protein is just as good as animal protein is honestly just misinformation, as well as being dangerous health advice. You can eat a healthy vegan diet if you put the effort into planning it properly, which anybody following your erroneous advice would not be doing.

[arghwhat]

No, my claim that vegetable are a good source of high quality protein in general - and not just soy - is taken straight from your paper. You are cherry-picking data and ignoring the most basic dietary advice to support your pro-beef argument at this point. Not only that, you are adding completely bogus claims such as to the amount of food required from sources you find inferior: A steak contains roughly 25 grams of protein per 100 gram. Boiled soy contains 17 grams of protein, while dry roasted soy contains 40 grams of protein per 100 gram - almost double that of beef. Someone weighing 80kg would need eat 240 grams of steak, 352 grams of boiled soy, or just 150 grams of dry roasted soy! Not only are the numbers similar, but they are beat by soy yet again.

And yet again, basic dietary advice is that you should eat varied. Suggesting that you should cover your entire nutritional requirements from a single source - steak, soy or anything else - or in a single serving is objectively bad advice.

As a proud carnivore who has difficulty finding comfort in vegetarian diets, I find this sort of backwards justification for our environmental load highly disappointing. Eating meat is one thing - as a steak lover, I would be a hypocrite to fault you for that - but trying to make it sound like a necessity or a sensible choice is just... Wrong.

[HelloMcFly]

That paper would suggest to me that perhaps eggs are as animal as we need to get. I agree with your specific point here, but it feels like a small thing when considering the overall societal and environmental cost of animal protein (esp. beef, pork, lamb).

[AmericanChopper]

If you tried to get all your calories from eating eggs, your diet would have too much fat and not enough carbs. In reality you need a balanced and varied diet, and the world couldn’t support 7 billion people all deciding to get their protein intake from one specific food item anyway. Animal products are simply better at providing the protein you need. You _can_ get all of it from plant based sources (I’m not sure whether it would be theoretically possible for all humans to adopt such a diet), but it’s more difficult. Meaning if you want to meet your nutritional requirements without having a big calorie excess, you have to plan your diet very carefully, and implement a highly restrictive program. If you want to do that without eating highly processed foods such as soy protein isolate (which is a popular dietary restriction), then you’re going to have an even harder time.

[pg_1234]

"not enough carbs" is the easiest problem to solve (just add wheat/rice/potato etc.) ... in fact the normal problem is too much carbs.

[AmericanChopper]

That depends on whether you care about eating too many calories. If your average person got all their protein from eggs, they’d eat too much fat, way too much saturated fat, and have very few calories left to get in all of their other nutritional needs.

Incidentally, that’s why it is possible to eat a healthy plant based diet if you’re very active. If you burn 2000 active calories a day, then it matters less if you’re eating nutritionally inefficient food, because you can make up for it in volume.

[HelloMcFly]

I'm not arguing for some sort of protein gruel or standard diet; my comment wasn't advocating for "only eggs", just reacting to what you share.

I am stating that it seems inarguable to me that the benefits of meaningfully reducing or even eliminating animal consumption far outweigh the negatives (note: I'm not a vegetarian). The concerns about protein completeness are real, but they have to stand in the sunlight of the full picture, and when viewed that way it doesn't appear to be some unsolveable riddle.

So I'm not arguing the point, I'm arguing against the implicit takeaway that comments like yours can appear to make: that meaningfully reducing or eliminating animals from our diets isn't a goal worth pursuing.

[specialist]

Yup.

My SO and I reverted to omnivore for health reasons. Basically Dr Wahls' "Minding You Mitochondria" thesis. Still eat a lot of rice and beans. But now make sure to get a minimum amount of meat too.

I'm so eager for vat grown protein. But only if it has the same macronutrients as real meat.