Henry Firth - BOSH! How to Live Vegan

We’ve been talking a lot about meat, but we shouldn’t ignore our sea-dwelling friends either.

Half of all marine lifehas been lost in the last 40 years[51] and 87%of fish populations are fully or over-exploited.[52]

We’ve already killed 90%of big ocean predatory fish,[53]and it’s been predicted that our world will run outof saltwater fish by 2048.[54]

Increasing sea temperatures have destroyed coral reefs and all coral reefs are projected to be lost by 2050.[55]

Fishing is also a grossly inefficient way of eating; for every 1lbof fish caught, up to 5lbof unintended marine species are caught and discarded as by-kill.[56]

There’s another thing to consider when thinking about the sustainability of our current diets. Our nutritional needs are going to evolve over the next few decades with the human population expected to reach more than 9 billion by 2050 – a third higher than it is today.[57]

So what’s the answer? Meat? No. Increasing annual meat production is a bad idea, however we do it. All approaches will use more land, create more deforestation, more climate change, more loss of biodiversity.[58] Feeding grain to livestock increases demand for grain and drives up prices, making it harder for the world’s poor to feed themselves. If all grain were fed to humans, we could feed an extra 3.5 billion people.[59]

As Oxford University’s Joseph Poore explains, fossil fuels represent about 61%of today’s emissions.

Some estimates say as much as 40%of historic global warming is caused by forest clearance that was undertaken to make way for animal agriculture.

Currently, 25,000species are threatened with extinction because of agriculture. Freeing up the land given over to animal farming will take some of this pressure off the global biodiversity crisis.

It will also reduce our nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, and will reduce acid rain by about a third.

A plant-based diet will reduce the amount of water we need to produce our food by 25%.[60]

Yes, there are exciting developments in lab-grown meats and these could herald cheaper, less cruel forms of meat production. Many people are also big advocates of insect protein, although the morality of farming and killing gazillions of insects is still not in line with our moral standpoint. And both are still mildly processed, lab-made foodstuffs.

What about soy then? Soy is a great source of protein for those on a plant-based diet, although it is also the main cause of rainforest deforestation, which is being torn down to provide land to support it. This is an argument often used by anti-vegans, but let’s remember that while around 70% of the world’s soy is fed directly to livestock, only 6% is turned into human food.[61] (See over the page for more on soy.)

In short, moving to a more plant-based diet is better for the planet and will reduce emissions. It will free up more land, which can then be rewilded and start to draw down carbon and solve our biodiversity crisis. And all the grain and soy which is currently fed to animals can be used to help feed the poorest nations. And the water which is not used for rearing those animals can be used for irrigating crops.

Of course, we appreciate that it is all far more complicated than that. There are good farms and bad farms. And conditions and practices differ all across the world. We all know people who keep chickens as egg-laying pets, and we can’t really compare them with a 1,000-strong battery farm where chickens never see the light of day.

There are bad ways to farm vegetables too, and we’re not advocating a move to more monocrops.

Depending on who you are, you might see soy as either a wonderful health food or a risky ingredient to be avoided. And as far as the planet is concerned, there are differing opinions about how soy for humans is affecting the health of the planet. Some see it as the cure-all for our planet’s woes, and some see it as the cause of rainforest deforestation. Let’s delve into them both.

Soy is, on balance, a health food.

Some people, as part of some research from the 90s, formed the opinion that soy could be bad for your hormonal health. They drew inferences from the fact that soy contains oestrogen-like compounds and speculated that it could mess with the hormonal balance of both women and men in different ways. These studies have largely been disproven now, and recent research shows that moderate consumption of soy foods can actually have some benefits.[62] Even a correlational relationship is not maintained, so largely we know this is not the case.

On the other hand, soy is a very powerful and healthy plant-based protein. It’s a complete protein, containing all the nine essential amino acids we need in our diets (see here for more on these). And it’s a good source of omega-3 fats, iron, zinc and calcium.

Soy fields are a cause of rainforest deforestation, but this soy is grown for animal feed.

Significant amounts of the Amazonian rainforest are being destroyed every day, and these trees are crucial to our planet’s survival. They are the lungs of our planet, and their loss is a significant factor in contributing to climate change.

A large amount of the rainforest deforestation occurs to make way for large, monocrop soy fields. This has been used regularly to illustrate that vegans’ choice of soy milk is poor. But that’s not the full story!

Eighty per cent of the soy that is grown in the Amazon (the soy for which the rainforests are being destroyed) is fed to animals, [63] and indeed up to 90% of the rainforest’s total deforestation is for animal agriculture.[64] But as we’ve seen, only 6% of the soy produced globally is consumed by humans.[65] So, while it is true that the megafields of soy are causing mass destruction of the rainforest, it’s the animal agriculture industry that is causing it and utilising the soy.

Also, when comparing the environmental impact that soy has on the planet versus an animal-based protein like beef, you should take into consideration all the soy the animal has consumed as part of its lifecycle. When framed like this it seems silly to compare the two. Rearing an animal is a much less efficient way to get protein, with only a fraction of the energy that is fed to the animal as plants being available to humans as meat. (See here According to researcher Joseph Poore, from Oxford University, about 55% of the world’s land is farmed, and 80–85% of this is used to raise animals.[48] If as much of the land currently set aside for grazing animals regrows as trees, it will help remove carbon from the atmosphere – it is estimated there could be a reduction in greenhouse gases by as much as 30–50%. In addition, more than a billion extra tons of food crops could go to humans if we stopped feeding them to animals. [49] So not only is a plant-based diet better for the planet in terms of the processes involved in rearing animals, but it can free up land for animals to live naturally again, and trees can grow in those spaces, which can then start to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. This is still the best approach for getting carbon out of the atmosphere – known as rewilding. It involves restoring natural forests, mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass beds. These natural habitats are the best way researchers have identified of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And it would solve both climate breakdown and the extinction of species at the same time.[50] Of course, we’re not suggesting it’s as simple as everyone, worldwide, stopping eating meat and redistributing the grain set aside to feed animals to hungry people while we all start planting trees. At the global level we need to consider the complexities of politics, the mechanisms of food distribution and the realities of farmers’ livelihoods. And at the local level we need to consider things like soil health, crop cycling and animal habitats. We’re not claiming there’s some kind of magic solution, but the answer lies in this direction. These facts go to show how inefficient our current main choice of protein is, and why it’s literally chewing up the Earth’s resources. ).