Vegans and vegetarians can move along and enjoy their day. You're cool already, and off the hook.
Cows are ruminants. That's a group of animals that are specially adapted to eat nutritionally-useless grasses. That's their whole deal. If you're living in a pastoral or premodern farming society then that's great because you can't eat grass and you can eat cows, so it's free food. But instead you live in a society (insert meme) where we grow food specifically for cows then ship it to cows. Again, the animal that's specialized in eating things that have no nutritional value, so we're going out of our way to grow plants with no nutritional value, and then ship enough of it around to feed an animal anyway.
What does that mean? It means by whatever metric you choose, cow meat is worse than half as efficient as other common sources of animal protein.
Feed conversion ratios. Enough feed to make a pound of beef is enough to make 2.5 pounds of pork or 5 pounds of chicken.
CO2 per calorie. 1000 calories of beef costs 13.8 kg of CO2. 1000 calories of pork costs 4.45kg CO2. 1000 calories of chicken costs 3.37kg CO2. Also note lamb topping the charts, which will be a running theme. (Also an extra reason not to use broccoli as your primary calorie source, if eating 13 pounds of broccoli a day wasn't a good enough reason on its own.)
Land use per year per calorie. How much land did that 1000 calories take? You'll need 119 square meters for beef, 7.26 square meters for pork, or 6.61 square meters for chicken. Note lamb topping the chart again. (Also apparently prawns can be farmed super dense, that's something interesting that I didn't know.)
Why do sheep show up so high on some of these charts? Because they're also ruminants. Don't eat sheep either.
If it's that easy, why don't more people do it? And it's not a matter of people simply not caring about animals -- plenty of Americans view their pets as having the same value as humans, and are squeamish about hurting animals (even ones they don't like).
I'd suggest that in a culture where eating meat is ubiquitous, it's harder to shift away from animal products than you make it out to be. It requires re-evaluating all of your consumer choices, dealing with the social dynamic of both mainstream folks ridiculing you and (some) people ostensibly on your side being obnoxious (witness a vegan saying "fuck vegetarians"), figuring out how you handle food at social events (ever met someone who's insulted if you don't try their dish?), writing off a lot of convenient food options, etc. And that's if you're living alone. What if your household has other people who buy groceries and make meals, and they're not on the same page?
Exactly, it is very hard to see beyond the cognitive dissonance and realize that you're being cruel to some animals while claiming to love them.
I only said that because I thought this place was a bit more informed on the matter, forgot I'm not in r/vegancirclejerk. Obviously I wouldn't say that to vegetarians because I've witnessed them go vegan with simply just having some simple well-mannered talk.
Either way I've gotten to a point where I cannot value human relations more than animal lives. If I am going to refuse you're plate filled with animal parts, I am not going to be apologetic about it. I am not sorry for not eating animals.
It's not this as much as cultural and social pressures making it difficult to give up animal products. When X is ingrained in almost everyone's personal lives, it's hard to give up X. This isn't a comment on whether you should or shouldn't give up X; I'm only saying that it's not as easy as "well just don't do it anymore."
Probably the best approach, yeah.
Nothing wrong with that.