210
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Skyraptor7@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

I heard something to do with Nitrogen and …cow farts(?) I am really unsure of this and would like to learn more.

Answer -

4 Parts

  • Ethical reason for consuming animals
  • Methane produced by cows are a harmful greenhouse gas which is contributing to our current climate crisis
  • Health Reasons - there is convincing evidence that processed meats cause cancer
  • it takes a lot more calories of plant food to produce the calories we would consume from the meat.

Details about the answers are in the comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 80 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The basic problem is that to get 1000 calories of beef, you need to feed the cow something like 10,000 calories. So growing a cow is actually growing an entire field of wheat/corn/etc., then feeding it to the cow, then eating the cow.

Farming all of those crops for the animals takes up a lot of land, consumes fresh water, produces wastes, and uses oil/gas (for farm equipment directly, or to produce things like nitrogen fertilizers) which produces co2. Cows also produce methane (that's the fart thing) which is a bad greenhouse gas.

You could just eat the wheat/corn/etc. directly (most of the time) and skip the meat step therefore saving a massive amount of environmental impact.

Meat sure is tasty though.

[-] goforliftoff@lemm.ee 30 points 1 year ago

I remember driving through Iowa and seeing vast fields of corn and learning that the majority of that corn was not even destined for human consumption. That kinda blew my mind.

[-] rog@lemmy.one 11 points 1 year ago

Luckily there is still enough left over to poison the population with high fructose corn syrup

[-] RIP_Cheems@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

If America was a food, it would be sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

[-] RIP_Cheems@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

You wanna know another fact? Not all corn can be consumed by humans. There is actually corn that can only be eaten by animals like cows.

[-] RIP_Cheems@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Plus is the fact that not all plants have the right amount of vitamins and minerals necessary to maintain the human body like meat does. Although it is possible, it does require research and monitoring to ensure that your getting all the nutrients you need. And yes, meat just tastes good.

[-] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

What kind of bullshit are you peddling?

If you're discussing complete proteins then all it takes is rice and beans. Not particularly difficult given that about half the world population survives on that without much meat.

[-] YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago

But growing a cow that eats the grasses makes it for I get the meat and the vegetables all at once and it tastes great /s

this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
210 points (88.9% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35800 readers
217 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS