Post #1860513

2026-05-01 21:54 UTC

The process around meat is no less industrial either. Whole food plant-based diets come out ahead health wise of course, but the research comparing animal meats to beyond show beyond coming out ahead for health In terms of environmental effects, processing is not a major factor at all. It’s hardly a minor one either For most foods — and particularly the largest emitters — most GHG emissions result from land use change (shown in green) and from processes at the farm stage (brown). Farm-stage emissions include processes such as the application of fertilizers — both organic (“manure management”) and synthetic; and enteric fermentation (the production of methane in the stomachs of cattle). Combined, land use and farm-stage emissions account for more than 80% of the footprint for most foods. […] Not just transport, but all processes in the supply chain after the food left the farm – processing, transport, retail and packaging – mostly account for a small share of emissions. ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

Replies (1)

@ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 2026-05-01 22:43

No. She bases that information on LCA. LCAs are bullshit: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0743016724002511 Tldr; they are self reported, aggregate data globally and treats the whole globe uniformly, instead of looking at local qualities; and Beyond Meat conviviently for them does not provide even that data for it’s whole supply chain. That means for example that the total carbon footprint of beef of worst industrial farms is applied across all beef produce, even though industrial farms deliver only about 13% of beef worldwide. Generally I recommend the linked article, they explain why Beyond Meat and similar are just wasting your time at best, and is sinister capitalist trick at worst. Again, the way forward is: Whole food plant-based diets and interim is switching feedlot farming and similar to Furthermore, framing animals as unilaterally less efficient than plants assumes that neither animal production systems nor meat consumption habits can be pushed in more sustainable directions. However, abundant options to make animal-sourced foods more sustainable could be explored, including agro-pastoral, agro-silvo-pastoral (mixed crop-livestock-forest), and regenerative agriculture systems (Costa et al., 2018).

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