Some consumers may choose veganism, or a pescatarian diet, but meat, eggs and milk, offer crucial sources of much-needed nutrients which cannot easily be obtained from plant-based foods, a new report issued on Tuesday by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says.
Lmao. These fucking goobers.
Most of India has been vegetarian for thousands of years. If meat was “essential”, they’d be dead.
Even most meat-eaters only eat it 1-2 times a week, if that. Very few people, throughout history, have consumed meat at levels anywhere close to what is considered acceptable in the world today. And in India eggs are a part of the “non-vegetarian” diet too.
I guess it’s literally just milk and milk products that are keeping 1.4 billion people alive by a thread. Just chugging gallons of cartons a day to get the “essential” nutrients.
India is not the best example to use here, 1 in 2 women are deficient in iron and 1 in 3 kids experience stunted growth as a result of malnutrition. It is why they are trying to fortify lots of foods like other countries have done to fight malnutrition. Sure people are surviving, but I wouldn't call the current situation great.
That's the whole point of this article by the UN, to look at malnutrition in developing countries like India and the potential causes.
Yeah. No one is against fortification of food, here. India is suffering massively under its neoliberal government, which inherited the colonial-era policies of the British Raj. I can talk all day about the problems in India.
But there’s a reason I said “historically” and “thousands of years.” It was to show that you don’t need meat to live. People in India, before colonialism, lived just as well as people anywhere else without consuming huge amounts of meat.
The problems in India are not due to a lack of meat-consumption. It is due to colonialism and capitalism.
Before industrialisation but after the agricultural revolution people in general ate little meat.
Even hunter-gatherers mostly gathered, not hunted. Because hunting was risky but berries were not.
No human civilisation throughout history has ever consumed as much meat as modern Westerners, who now try to rationalise it by claiming its “essential”.
It’s not, and treating it as such, is already disastrous but is going to become catastrophic if pushed to countries like India and China (which you’re already succeeding at, so congrats I guess).
Hunter gatherers mostly gathered, we agree, and ate far less meat than modern westerners. It is still true that they at far more more meat than post-agricultural humans, which aren't a group that was a good model for diet.
I agree that meat consumption isn't necessary, and certainly not in quantity, but you will need additional supplementation. Without supplementation, a vegan diet is very difficult to make healthy. Your argument implied that wasn't true, which I took issue with.
As far as the increasing meat consumption in India and China, we both know that's not because they're convinced it's necessary for health, it's because people eat more meat as they get richer. Promoting alternatives is an active measure that their governments must take, and that will be unpopular to some degree.
i haven't taken a supplement since 2012 because i can't afford them
i just eat food that has the nutrients i need
Modern Western diet is so disastrous for health (and environment) but no one points that out when saying “a vegan diet is very difficult to make healthy. “
No, rice and beans, staple of billions of people for thousands of years, is less healthy than the current diet most westerners follow, apparently.
rice is weirdly expensive where i live, at least in bulk
so i just eat things that are cheap here most of the time
like carrots, peppers, pasta, tomatoes, so many beans, etc
I am so sorry. :meow-hug:
The staple diet between the agricultural and industrial revolution is not much healthier, if at all compared to the current western diet. You're making a reactionary argument that we did it in the past, therefore it is good.
The majority of people living in post-agricultural civilizations suffered some form of malnutrition. It was adequate in terms of calories, but micronutrient deficiency was very widespread.
My god. I’m not telling anyone to literally just eat rice and beans.
Fwiw I’ve been vegan for going on 4 years, vegetarian for almost a decade and the only supplement I’ve ever taken is b12. In theory I could just eat a bunch of seaweed/shiitake/nooch but I’m lazy so I take the b12.
I think there probably was a lot of malnutrition in India, as well as every other country, before the introduction of greater caloric and nutrient intake from modern farming. Yes humans can live without those but it significantly raises child and infant mortality, women's death rate, and generally unpleasant life. Meat and egg consumption did solve those problems to an extent, although it may not be sustainable. Regardless, I don't think we can just go back to that diet. A new one is needed.
I don't know about "thousands of years" as in Vedic India meat was definitely consumed and animal sacrifices were performed for religious ceremonies:
https://theconversation.com/hinduism-and-its-complicated-history-with-cows-and-people-who-eat-them-80586
Even in modern day India the number of pure vegetarians doesn't constitute the majority:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43581122
Yeah, despite what Hindutva folks say, the Vedic religion isn’t modern Hinduism. For that you have to see the Bhakti movement but that’s a different point.
Conducting research like this is always very hard, but those numbers are hilariously wrong. But I’m not interested in debating over vegetarianism in Indian.
To go back to the main point, such data, even if taken at face value, always ignores the fact that most meat-eating Indians only consume a meat-based dish once a week or once a month. That percentage is rising with the newer generations but it’s still very low.
So if that little meat consumption is what is considered “essential” then the goal should be to tell Americans and Europeans, who can’t go one meal with it, to eat less meat.
But instead what you see (in India, China etc.) is meat being used almost as a status symbol. It’s the worst excesses of capitalism, that is literally unsustainable for the world, but is being excused and rationalised under the guise of “essential nutrients.”
It’s bullshit.
So what are the numbers then? All the sources I see place it below 50%.
Did you even read the next line I wrote or just popped off?
Yeah I get it, you don't want to debate. I don't either, I just want to know what the numbers are. You said that what I cited was "hilariously wrong" but then left it at that. Help me out a little.
Most estimates put it at around 40% (declining in recent years) with around 10% of those also eating eggs. That is important because it is considered vegetarian elsewhere but not exactly so in India so if you want to accurate in your research and not just provide clickbait headlines for the BBC, you will have to look into stuff and see what people actually mean when they say they are vegetarian or not.
As I said, research like this is hard and you can choose to not trust the government if you wish, but then going by some US anthropologist quoted by the fucking BBC is completely bonkers. It’s literally better to just talk to any Indians you know and form estimates that way, while acknowledging that the kinds of Indians who get to emigrate are the richer sort who are more likely to consume meat.
And, again, the vast majority of people who consume meat don’t do so every meal, every day or anything close to that. Just eating it a few times a month is enough to be considered a regular meat-eater which I don’t have a problem with as a category, but for this topic of meat being essential for nutrition, is so fucking dishonest.
As for the Vedic stuff, you can already see the change form that period to modern day religo-cultural habits by the 4th century:
— Faxian, Chinese pilgrim to India (4th/5th century CE), A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms (translated by James Legge)
There was also an Indian economist in that study for what it's worth, which is why I thought it was at least somewhat credible. And like I said, based on other sources I've seen (you can find the references here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#Estimates_and_Statistics) it's still below 50%, like I said. I was just curious.
I think one interesting study I have not seen but would be extremely useful is how many meals does the average Indian consume without meat compared to other developing countries and to the West. That would go a long way towards helping people understand how much meat is “essential”.