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A Big Analysis Of Environmental Data Strengthens The Case For Plant-Based Diets

posted by mrpg on Thursday June 07 2018, @12:03AM   
from the cows-and-poultry-agree dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] Agricultural data from 38,700 farms plus details of processing and retailing in 119 countries show wide differences in environmental impacts — from greenhouse gas emissions to water used — even between producers of the same product, says environmental scientist Joseph Poore of the University of Oxford. The amount of climate-warming gases released in the making of a pint of beer, for example, can more than double under high-impact production scenarios. For dairy and beef cattle combined, high-impact providers released about 12 times as many greenhouse gases as low-impact producers, Poore and colleague Thomas Nemecek report in the June 1 Science.

[...] The greatest changes in the effect of a person’s diet on the planet, however, would still come from choosing certain kinds of food over others. On average, producing 100 grams of protein from beef leads to the release of 50 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions, which the researchers calculated as a carbon-dioxide equivalent. By comparison, 100 grams of protein from cheese releases 11 kg in production, from poultry 5.7 kg and from tofu 2 kg.

[...] Producing food overall accounts for 26 percent of global climate-warming emissions, and takes up about 43 percent of the land that’s not desert or covered in ice, the researchers found. Out of the total carbon footprint from food, 57 percent comes from field agriculture, livestock and farmed fish. Clearing land for agriculture accounts for 24 percent and transporting food accounts for another 6 percent.

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Original Submission

• Re:You Need To Eat Lots Of Shrooms (Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Thursday June 07 2018, @02:38AM

  by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Thursday June 07 2018, @02:38AM (#689691) Journal

  But the good news is that B12 is found in fungus. Try some brewer's yeast on your fried tofu for supper tonight; brewers yeast tastes really, really good.

  https://www.livestrong.com/article/453954-brewers-yeast-vitamin-b12/ [livestrong.com]

  Health stores offer brewer's yeast as a dietary supplement rich in B vitamins, even though only fortified brewer's yeast has vitamin B12.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritional_yeast [wikipedia.org]

  It is a significant source of some B-complex vitamins, and contains trace amounts of several other vitamins and minerals. Sometimes nutritional yeast is fortified with vitamin B12.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12 [wikipedia.org]

  The only organisms to produce vitamin B12 are certain bacteria, and archaea. Some of these bacteria are found in the soil around the grasses that ruminants eat; they are taken into the animal, proliferate, form part of their gut flora, and continue to produce vitamin B12.

  Most people in developed countries obtain enough vitamin B12 from consuming animal products including meat, milk, eggs, and fish.[5] Other staple foods are fortified by having the vitamin added to them. Vitamin B12 supplements are available in single agent or multivitamin tablets; and pharmaceutical preparations may be given by intramuscular injection.

  [...] Vitamin B12 is produced industrially via bacterial fermentation.

  How many times do I have to say it?

  --
  [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]

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