a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by realusername
realusername  ·  2544 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Full Debate - Animals Should Be Off The Menu?

    In what way, more efficient?

Basically ? energy, people are against drastic changes to their life style, to get them to buy man-made meat-like substance it will need to be cheaper.

Which will reduce damage to our poor plant.

    From pizza stuff and chocolate, respectively. Not as mind-blowing as one would expect. However...

I've seen, I thought you talked about something much crazier, like turning lead to gold.

    Then share your secret

I mostly eat types of beans (or is it fabaceae in English ?), with while rice and buckwheat, combined with seeds such as sesame. The rest is the seasons fruits and vegetables that I can cheaply buy in the market.

I have basil and some other nice stuff which I grew on the edge of the window, because they cost too much to buy and I really like them.

It costs between 100 to 200 NIS a month to live like that, which is 24.5 - 49 USD according to google. As I assume you are not from Israel, the minimum wadge for full time job is 1370.4 USD. So it's about 4% from a month of work on minimum wadge.

To cook the beans I set them in water for 24-36 hours before hand and cook them over gas, which I bought a yearly supply of for 41$ but that is not available everywhere, I can do that because there is no gas pipes around here.

On the other hand the rent is really high :(





snoodog  ·  2544 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You live on 50$ a month? Wow crazy in the us that would buy you rice and beans that's it. Chicken here is super cheap, I paid 1.39 a lb the other day. For comparison red potatos are 99c carrots are also right around 1-2$. There really aren't any fresh vegetables except russet potatoes and onions that cost less per lb than chicken. There may be a million varieties of vegies out there but the grocery stores don't stock all that's many, the poorer areas are especially bad. My grocery store is well stocked I can even get more exotic things like radicchio endives and artichoke but in the store near the low income housing... nada. Carrot onion lettuce broccoli and maybe one or 2 other things a lot of it looks pretty wilted plenty of chicken and pork thought.

Anyway optimizing food for calories/impact is kind of a foolish errand unless you are trying to survive in outer space. Food is so much more than calories and nutrients, it's social, its pleasureable its cultural. Telling people to stop eating meat to save the environment is like telling them to stop making art and going to church because it's wasteful and serves no purpose.

realusername  ·  2541 days ago  ·  link  ·  

What is the minimal hourly salary ? I sounds expensive, I'm not sure about local chicken prices, but looking at stores web-sites it seems to be much higher.

Do you live far from agricultural areas ?

It sounds very depressing, I'm currently living in a poor city to save money on rent, and I can walk to a market twice a week in buy as much vegetables as I can carry.

I'm not trying to get perfect optimization, but meat is really bad for the environment and screws up poorer people as it leads to rising food prices.

You can make fun vegan food for social events, cookies, cakes, pizza, casseroles, salads, all can be made vegan.

When I had much more free time I had the hobby of bring vegan cookies and cakes to social events I attended, trying to make them better then the none-vegan food other people showed up with (then to share the recipe when people asked).

user-inactivated  ·  2544 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The way you eat seems very limited to me. Are you satisfied with such a narrow window of foods?

I'm not an expert, but it also sounds like you're missing some of the important vitamins - namely, B12. Have you consulted a dietician on the matter?

realusername  ·  2544 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Why limited ? there are many types of fruits and vegetables, seeds and beans. The number of combinations is huge, there are more meals I can make then meals I can't make.

At first, when I started to change my life-style it was hard, but as I relearned to cook I found out that I can make more variations of food then I need to never be bored from my food.

I'm doing yearly blood checks due to a medical conditions, and everything but B12 is good, so I'm taking B12 pills that you put under your tongue. The B12 issue my not be related, my close family is not vegan, not even one of them, and some of them are lacking B12 too. Not everyone can get enough B12 out of foods.

What I found funny, is that people used ask about my iron and how I'm not anemic, my iron was so high on my last blood test that it was on the highest healthy value according the graph my doctor handed to me.

After working out weekly for that past few years people stopped asking if I'm anemic or if I get enough protein.

The only big issue is that you need to drink more water (or you will fart, a lot), which means I'm going to the toilet more.

user-inactivated  ·  2544 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Why limited ? there are many types of fruits and vegetables, seeds and beans.

Perhaps it is for you. We don't have that much choice in Russia, especially in the winter. I guess I was projecting.

realusername  ·  2541 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oh, sorry, that makes sense, Israel has a better to grew food in, from the little I know about Russian weather.