Why do people eat food they know isn’t good for their health? Why do people continue to buy products from companies that have proven to only sell bad products or engage in scumbag practices?
They all have the same answer.
It turns out in 1961 the American heart Association took bribery money from procter and gamble, who owned and sold “healthier Crisco” cooking oils that weren’t high in saturated fat, like beef and other cooking oils were.
The AHA then claimed and pushed that saturated fats caused heart disease.
Problem is, something like 88% of every study done in the past 60 years has found little to no link between heart disease and saturated fats.
So beef, according to most studies, isn’t bad for you. The AHA was just crooked and on the take, being paid off to sell Crisco.
Now it is calorie dense and people tend to eat too much of it, but that seems to be a lot of things. Don’t eat too much or you get fat. But apparently, you don’t have to worry about saturated fats being bad for you.
someone else online summarized the genetics part as the following:
Mandelian randomisation studies show that LDL-c is causative in atherogenic plaques 1 and metabolic ward RCTs show that SFA intakes increase LDL-c, while the decrease in SFAs lead to lower total and LDL-c 2.
But yes, almost all nutrition science is a bit inconclusive because of genetic variation.
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Why do people drive when they know it’s bad for the planet
Because I live in America and there’s pretty much no public transportation.
Trust me, if I had a train, I’d fucking use that sucker. Travel into town for my weekly errands AND I don’t have to deal with people not using cruise control on a highway? SIGN ME THE FUCK. UP.
Why do people buy from Amazon/Walmart when they know it’s making their country poorer?
Why do poor people vote for millionares when they know they don’t care about the poor?
Some of us work multiple part time jobs to barely make it.
I’d probably stay in the basement if I didn’t need to pay my landed lord their monthly tribute.
buy some cheap sliver of land and park a bus on it. save up and find a better sliver of land and plan from there.
Is it capitalism?
Do you think people in non-capitalist societies only eat the healthiest of foods?
How about we shift to talking about portion control and be less all or nothing?
How about we don’t engage in reasonable, healthy discussion and instead throw shit?
Same reason we use electricity despite not being 100% green energy and thus being even worse for the earth?
If you actually wanna guilt this question then the fuck are you doing using your coal and gas powered electricity to do it?
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, because the capitalists have seen to it that you will never be permitted to make an ethical choice that would dare compete with what they expect you to choose.
Being a moralizing prick doesn’t send any message, what gets people to change is making that change easy, that’s why instead of being terminally online fuckwads, british vegangelists spread the good news by hosting free kitchens, volunteering to take people grocery shopping on their own pound, teaching vegan cooking classes, and all other sorts of actually addressing literally any of the actual concerns people have about going vegan instead of being a condescending snob about it.
The real question is, why should we try to not eat beef for the environment, when corporations make 90% of all pollution in the world.
Maybe focus on the 90% of the problem and not the individual people who but meat?
the beef industry wouldnt be razing down the amazon forest if no one was buying and eating it, would they?
No corporation pollutes except to produce goods or services for human consumption, or for other businesses that provide goods or services for human consumption.
Every gallon of gas burned is to power a vehicle to move you, or the goods you purchase.
Every natural gas line leads to a house, of a business that sells things to houses.
Theres no such thing as a corporation without consumers, we are where the buck is created, and where the buck stops.
Theres no such thing as a corporation without consumers, we are where the buck is created, and where the buck stops.
Absolutely correct, glad to have read your comment. People need to start realizing they play a role in what’s to come. It’s a terrible mentality to think we don’t all have our effect on the future.
There is no ethical consumption in capitalism.
Nah, you just don’t give a shit to believe you have any control over reality.
Ah, yes, the ol’ victim blame schtick. GTFO with that juvenile shit. This isn’t some timeless chicken/egg quandary, son.
The reason why the top polluters in the world are oil and gas companies is because you buy oil and gas directly to drive your car or heat your house, or you buy electricity generated by oil and gas. The metals in your vehicle? Mining companies pollution. The food on your plate? Agricultural companies polluting. Even the shirt on your back burned bunker fuel to get from Bangladesh to your house.
If you think you aren’t directly responsible for corporate pollution, you’re a fucking moron.
We use oil and gas because it’s the option that has been made most available to us. This isn’t an individual problem. As long as the alternatives are prohibitively expensive for the average person, in terms of time, money, availability, etc, then we’re going to always have the bulk of people choosing the easiest option.
We all have so much to worry about each day, trying to fit biking to my job a 45 minute drive away just isn’t feasible. The options for changing that are either we go fuckin full on anarchy, burn the system down, and start anew, or slowly, systematically. Set an easily achievable baseline the average person can work to adopt, encourage it via subsidization and education, and give it time.
Oh yeah I’ll just stop driving my car in this world they manufactured to be unsustainable to travel in without a car.
If you think you can do ethical consumption by eating the avocados that fund latin american cartels to mutilate and rape the children of anyone who doesn’t just sit there and take their shit instead of some beef from a cow raised by some kid doing their 4H project, you’re the moron here.
I think your argument works if someone is stealing the beef.
If they are buying it then that is directly funding that “90%”.
The thing about individual action is that if it works, it all adds up. But if people all blame the corporations, individual action makes no dent in the over 50% of emissions that individuals help make; a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yes, over 50%. Politifact goes into detail about how most emission indeed comes from consumption instead of corporate production.
Your own source disputes what you say.
The original study did not include emissions from land use, land use change or forestry, or from sources such as landfills, agriculture and farming. It also did not include data on indirect emissions, which come from purchased energy such as heating and electricity, citing concerns about double-counting emissions attributable to corporations.
The study relied on data collected by the Carbon Majors Database, which focuses on greenhouse gas emissions data from the largest company-related sources. In other words, The data derives from records of carbon dioxide and methane emissions relating to fossil fuel (oil, gas and coal) and cement producers dating back to 1854. … t’s difficult to discern how much total global emissions can be attributed to the top 100 polluting corporations, but there are ways to get a ballpark idea.
If you use the total global emissions calculated by the Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, an average of around 60% of global emissions can be traced back to those 100 companies from 1990 to 2015.
The real issue is one of attribution. “Traced to” isn’t the same as “responsible for”. I have a hard time blaming Saudi Aramco for massive volume of oil consumption in the US. Yes the oil companies are eco terrorists too but the binary take is absurd.
Because corporations make things based on the demand of those individual people. They don’t exist in a vacuum. And they’re not going to change because someone on the internet rants about them. Their only incentive is profit
It’s a bit of both. We started out just liking beef, for all the reasons above - easy to grow, good bioavailability, tasty, etc. From there, we built our society up, became capitalists, and started really honing in on efficiency, because more efficiency is more money. Now cows are everywhere and beef is cheap.
Right now beef is pretty much the cheapest protein option readily available, and that I actually know how to prepare. Both of those come from the supply being huge, our culture being built around meat eating, it just kinda being the way we are.
This isn’t an individual problem to solve. No amount of vegans voting with their wallet is going to redirect the monumental ship that is our culture. We need subsidization on non-meat options, more ubiquitous supply, and more practice with the style of cuisine if we ever hope to make changes that stick.
Beef would be much more expensive if not for the huge subsidies, it’s artificially cheap. Maybe we just stop doing that and see how it goes.
Right. Part of my point. We have taken great efforts to make beef cheap, and to bolster the supply. With all of this effort, it really isn’t a surprise your average person is going to choose beef.
I’d propose slowly increasing subsidies to beef alternatives, and then once those are to the same level of affordableness and you’ve got some adoption, start cutting beef subsidies. Make the transition slow and painless, more people will stick to it.
I always hear people talking about how beef is so cheap and I wonder how that could be when it costs twice as much as pork in my grocery store. I never thought about subsidies in other countries.
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Corporation polluter the planet, therefore we should be allowed to torture animals. You got it boy
Because it’s a damn good source of creatine and protein. And it tastes good.
In other words, humans are assholes
Yeah but so are preachy vegetablists
Each to their own and all that
Yup. Each one of us, for some reason or another. Welcome to the club, asshole ❤️
Then so is half of mother nature. It least we usually kill our food before we eat it. We could do something like rip out their guts and unborn calves while they’re still alive and start chowing down on them like a hyena.
Ha ha can you imagine if the vegans get into government and enact a law that says we can only eat meat if we kill it ourselves, so we all just start doing this like fuckin deranged hyenas 😂
What a loaded question.
Outside of the fact that a single cows life provides about 900 meals for humans, and the scraps left over make boots that last for a decade and also feed our cats and dogs. Plus, it’s delicious.
Yeah so, the amount of meals is correct. But that’s about it. I mean, I can’t say about the taste, to each their own, but one kg of cow meat needs two dozen kg of grain.
That’s about as inefficient as it gets.
As for the leather, the industry doesn’t like products that last a decade, so it isn’t actually using the leather in such a way. Industrial leather boots last a year tops.
Finally, pet food is made out of discarded cuts of meat, the uglies, etc. But also lots of cereals, and vegetables.
So we could really afford eating less meat. It isn’t good for anything. Not for us, not for the other species (certainly not for the cows, that get often half assed butchered in a hasty way because of quotas and profit), and absolutely not for the ecosystem.
But I guess the taste is all that matters.
Industrial leather boots last a year tops.
With respect, you’re buying awful boots.
If we had the same size, I could be wearing my grandfather’s steeltoes that are probably a solid 40 years old. People really underestimate how long good footwear lasts when you take care of it.
I can make hey dude’s last 9 months. If OP can’t make the cheapest leather boots last more than a year, they are using them wrong, or they should buy high end boots for whatever they’re doing.
Seriously. I bought some dirt cheap full grain leather biker boots 3 years ago; I have given them exactly 0 care, abused the snot our of them daily, and they are still holding up strong. These weren’t even boots meant for working and they still survived trudging through the various slops of all 4 minnesotan seasons for 3 years.
As long as you are buying actual leather and not “genuine leather” then whatever you buy should easily last several years even if not cared for. Well cared for leather goods can last decades.
So, OK, I’m willing to learn: please show me good brands then.
They need to resist to mud (thick mud, the kind with a ton of suction that will keep your soles when you try and move), seawater, rocks and sand, and pretty dense vegetation.
They also need to have steel toe caps, good soles (vibram or equivalent if possible) that don’t slip, and that aren’t too hard (wet stone is enough of a female dog as it is), and to go higher than my ankle.
The best brand I tried so far was caterpillar, but they lasted only 3 years. That’s a far cry from “a decade or more”.
Cows are not all fed on grain. A lot of cows are ranched on land that would not be suitable for growing grain crops.
Whatever their food is, 1kg of beef requires 24kg of grain’s worth of energy. This is something they teach in high-school biology now. The higher the food chain, the more energy is lost. Stopping such production would be pretty beneficial to the environment, but whether we should is a complicated question.
But as I pointed out, many cattle are ranched on land that cannot grow grain. They can’t grow the sorts of crops that humans eat, only the sorts of crops that cattle eat. If cattle weren’t being ranched on those lands they wouldn’t be producing edible grain instead, or any other food that humans could eat. So the inefficiency is moot when it comes to the amount of nutrition produced, removing the cattle from that land would simply reduce the total amount of food we have available.
Sure, if you remove the cattle then wild animals could come in to replace them, but we should make sure that’s not going to result in starvation and poverty if we do that. Many areas of the world have subsistence ranching by the locals.
And of course the land couldn’t be used for anything else… like natural ecosystems.
Just because land exists doesn’t mean it needs to be pillaged to feed our desires.
Most ranchland is, in fact, a “natural ecosystem.” They just send cattle out to graze on it.
The point I’m making here is about food efficiency, though, not about land use.
Are we just going to ignore the millions of acres of vast grasslands that supported like 50 million buffalo in the US 200 year ago? Healthy grassland ecosystems and ruminants are a thing.
Exactly. Nah, we just gotta have man made monoculture everywhere, or a desert, right? So that, in the end, it just amounts to deserts anyway. Yay. 😶
Interesting. However, a search says that feeding all the grass (or whatever) to cattle takes that food away from existing ecosystems in dry areas and potentially allow exotic weeds to take over land. So we probably don’t want this to expand to the point where we intrude on dry ecosystems.
Billions of trees every year get cut down to make space for cattle pastures, now tell me how destroying entire ecosystems that have been there for potentially thousands of years is worth some particular meat.
And billions of acres of pasture could never support trees
Inefficient?
Cows eat grains that humans can’t digest, or if they can, it takes energy to transform them to something human can eat.
we use some of the most fertile lands in the midwest that could be used to grow literally anything else to grow vast amounts of soy and corn for cows.
And in those specific cases, sure, you could do more efficiently by getting rid of the cattle.
The point I’m making is that there’s plenty of cattle raised in places that aren’t like that.
Imagine how many people you could feed if we would just eat what we fed the animals!
Ah yes, good old hay … delicious!
We can’t live on hay and corn. Cows need several stomachs to do it.
Also, getting enough protein and creatine and other vitamins as a vegan is a hell of a lot of work and doesn’t taste as good.
Humans are animals, and the type of animals we are is omnivores. Not herbivores.
It’s delicious, therefore we should torture it and eat it. People are the worst.
There’s no need to “torture” cattle to get meat from them. Indeed, meat from animals that are experiencing stressful conditions tastes worse. Not to mention simply having lower productivity. A farm with happy cows is going to be more profitable than one with stressed ones, all else being equal.
Guess you didn’t get to grow up watching the discovery Channel before all their shows were about crab fishing and animal rescue. Would you rather I go rip a gazelle apart and start eating it’s insides while it keeps trying to stand up with only two front legs?
Where I live the beef is local and cheap. I’m not able to obtain enough protein without meat, as confirmed by a doctor and a nutritionist when I tried to go vegetarian. With food costs so high it’s cheaper to buy cow than anything else, but when I have the money I opt for fish or turkey. I looked into hunting but it’s prohibitively expensive for me with permits, tags, guns, licenses, days off and transportation. I tried fishing for myself as well, but whenever I get time to do it, there are warnings about eating fish in the area. When there aren’t I never catch anything big enough to legally be allowed to keep. I’d like to get chickens if/when local government ever lifts the bylaws preventing it.
I’m not able to obtain enough protein without meat
How does that work? Isn’t egg white pure protein? Surely eating a pile of boiled eggs would give you the same amount of protein as a steak, not counting stuff like cheese and legumes.
Oh gee I didn’t try eggs or dairy in the months I felt like shit after going veggie, and neither the doctor nor nutritionist suggested that either. You solved all my dietary needs and I can give up meat now after years of trying to figure out the most sustainable diet I can manage.
Sorry, I was trying to ask a genuine question, I didn’t mean to come across in a negative way.
I’d still be very interested in the answer.
Sorry about that, it’s the internet. I’m not a doctor, but it was explained to me that proteins from different sources are not all the same and, while I can process protein from a variety of foods, I don’t do it as efficiently as with muscle proteins. The nutritionist I spoke to - who was a vegan and a vegan activist - said people like me need about 1-2 chicken breasts per week. It’s not uncommon, a lot of people who try to go veggie and can’t hack it just go back to meat without trying to figure out why they felt sick and tired. Other people have said it’s genetic based on your ancestors, but I haven’t seen a lot of evidence to support that. Other sources point to evidence you can alter the way your body processes things by following specific diet plans, but I’m not prepared to feel that shitty again to figure it out.
Thanks, hadn’t heard about that before.
I’d advise you proof read future questions then. Your initial question came across as very dismissive and condescending.
Thanks, I’ll try to be mindful of that! English isn’t my first language, so there is surely some nuance to be learned.
Egg and dairy allergies are among the most common food allergies, so I’d guess that something like that might be the issue?
I and others are over here with soy, egg and gluten allergies that restrict pretty heavily what I can eat. But go off since you have it all figured out, king.
This rage bait question could be reworded as…
Why do people consume <anything> when we know it’s bad for the earth.
I think it’s valid that he chose the #1 food source problem to talk about first. Once we fix that, let’s discuss #2.
Not everybody agrees that beef is bad for you and the environment. We were talking about human health, it’s hard to find a more of bioavailable source of nutrition than animal protein and fat
While I acknowledge the concept of a “carbon footprint” is complete BS, beef production does have a very high impact on climate change. Just want to point out that fact. I still eat it from time to time though. Yes, beef is high in protein and tasty.
As an aside, I believe as environmentalists, we shouldn’t shame people for doing the “wrong” things IMHO as even the best of us still contribute to the problem in some way. Everyone has their own reasons for doing what they do, and shame doesn’t often change minds. Personally, I try to take my own small steps, but I’m not prepared to live like a hermit. I do try to eat meat less often, and I volunteer a considerable amount of time to lobby for more climate friendly policies. This course of action is what works well for me.
The average human has much more of a negative effect on the environment than a cow. So, shouldn’t the question be why we tolerate so many people?
You beat me to it.
How would not tolerating look like? Let’s start with you as an example, maybe your loved ones too. And maybe look at the horrors of a one child policy in China before we start following that idea again.
Maybe start with people like you who take things on the Internet too seriously
Don’t ya just love when scumbags try to make ecofascism woke?
Go back to being a terrible dad Ra’as AlGhoul.
It tastes good and I’m a carnivore.
omnivore, but i agree
Cow yummy
This has got to be a troll, right?
We have a vegan infestation unfortunately.
I’m not a vegan. I’m glad you’re butthurt enough to comment.
Oh, aren’t you cute? So sassy.
I couldn’t care less what you are. I don’t care what you eat. I don’t care if you’re a boy or a girl. I do however, acknowledge that you are a judgmental asshole with nothing to offer but criticism. You are a net negative to any conversation you take part in.
You seem like a very pleasant person.
Humans can be weird about these facts or simply indifferent to the known effect that raising these animals for meat has on the environment. Additionally, I think the antagonistic message of a few vocal vegans triggered a powerful foolishness in the heads of certain people who are prone to acting hedonistically upon being told not to do something. A combination of apathy, chasing profits, taste for beef, and spite which fuels the industrialized beef production business. Another issue is that most of us simply won’t be around to experience the consequences of the unchecked corporations responsible for this willful harm the meat industry is causing Earth’s climate and surrounding environment. I believe in moderation, eating as little of all the meats as possible (those industries have a big impact on the environment). As an American, I see a weird pride that certain people have about eating as much meat as possible; loudly shunning and making fun of those who have either a mostly plant-based, vegetarian, or vegan diet. It’s such a selfish outlook that happens in societies that focus on the individual over the many.
Another issue is that most of us simply won’t be around to experience the consequences
I think most people middle-aged or younger will experience the consequences (in fact, we already are with the increased frequency of severe weather events) it’s just that those consequences will get worse over time.
The youngest of people certainly will be I could have worded this thought better, but I didn’t. Severe weather is certainly a consequence as well as increased extremes in temperature which are currently happening. Everyone already feels the impact of irresponsible environmental decisions made by the oil industry and industrial agriculture/animal husbandry. Millennials, Gen X and Gen Z will be around to experience the worsening of conditions on Earth. I do genuinely believe that people don’t consider the fact that they aren’t going to experience the climate outcomes based on irresponsible decisions. However, based on the current growing political instability of the USA; I wonder if people are beginning to feel a desire to indulge as they don’t know if they’ll come out unscathed from the blowup which is bound to happen at some point. A bad outlook to have in a way as that will only magnify future issues, however, humans aren’t always rational! 🤪
Because it tastes great and it’s today, and not tomorrow.
Each individual is facing the following choice in life:
- sacrifice to save the planet, and fail
- or not
People want to immediately jump to “if everyone would just …”
Nobody is looking at an “everyone does X” button. People only have their “I do X” button available.
So that is literally the answer to your question. Very few people would sacrifice the civilization to eat a cheeseburger. But nobody has that choice or that power in their hands. Their choice is eat the cheeseburger or not, and the survival of civilization stays rigidly the same between those two choices.
