Comments by "oolong2" (@oolong2) on "Should Uncle Sam Make You Eat Your Vegetables?" video.

  1. You can get meat from sustainable sources and some plants actually have a higher carbon foot print than animals.   I like the conversation about sustainability and health, but I don't like the junk science around making generic statements around a  "plant base diet".  Let's not forget that sugar and white flour are "plant based" and there are plenty of essential nutrients that come from animal sources.
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  2.  @sandray7609  I don't know what study you're referring to, but most of the ones I've seen almost always focus on non-grass fed beef and dairy. They hardly every look at other meat sources like rabbits that are highly sustainable and have a low carbon footprint. The US has about as many cows as there used to be buffalos roaming wild on this land. The major change was industrialization, fossil fuels, and lack of sustainability which goes all the way up the food chain. Lettuce consumes A LOT of fossil fuels just to produce. So to talk about emissions in an unsustainable process is like putting a smaller hole in a sinking boat.
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  3.  @sandray7609  Animals that we eat don't eat the same plants that we eat at least not naturally. All the land and grass that cows would use naturally can offset their carbon footprint, it can actually offset the carbon of the entire farm. Again, it's not like this country wasn't full of millions of large animals that produced methane in the past. It also has numerous other benefits for soil health. It would be more expensive and burgers would no longer be cheap, but it would far better for the planet, our health, and the cows if they were raised in an actual sustainable manner. A lot of meats aren't "conventional" (insects, deer, many other small animals, etc.). However we've created entire industries around specific kinds of animals and plants since those industries are profitable. Even when we go to plant based foods they largely try to mimic meats (burgers, turkey, bacon, etc.) that we're already accustomed to. Instead of adapting our diets to a natural ecosystem we decided to industrialize everything to suit what we wanted instead. Many Native American societies learned how to coexist with the environment, we haven't. Keep in mind that you cannot grow most plants that we eat without animals, there is a balance there. The only reason we can is because we rely on fossil fuels in the form of petrochemicals for fertilizers and pesticides to replace what would happen naturally.
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