Grains are not vegan debate

[Forests]

In my indroduction thread brimstoneSalad mentioned rice farming being main culprit of methane which is obviously bad for climate change. This is a very valid point but is not usually raised by vegans.

Most vegans I know all consume grains and the main vegan proponents on YouTube (Vegan Gains, Joey Carbstrong) all heavily promote grain consumption. The Vegan Society and every vegan website I have read all promote or sell grain products. I have never come across a vegan who does not consume grains.

There are a lot of negative environmental problems with grain farming and harvesting. There are also ethical considerations for example combine harvesters killing mice. This has even been raised in the animal rights literature but is rarely discussed.

Before citing negative evidence for grains I would like to read from users why they eat grains and what positive evidence for veganism do they believe grains offer?

[Red]

Not all grains are equal. Some like oats and wheat are fine. Whole wheat is often better.
I'm not sure how accurate this is, but it can help give an idea:

emissionsofgreains.png

I wouldn't go as far as saying that things like rice and potatoes aren't vegan, but they certainly aren't very good for the environment, especially compared to other crops. They generally don't have much nutrition either, so there usually isn't much reason to keep them in your diet, at least not as big staples. Unless of course, you have your own garden where you grow these, in which case, eat them to your heart's desire.

Speaking of gardens, I think if you are able, you should grow one. It reduces your footprint significantly, and enables you to eat more whole plants (which ideally should be the only things you eat).

There are also certain mock products made of these grains, like rice burgers and rice milk. While rice is bad for the environment, it is easily the lesser of the evils compared to beef burgers and cow's milk. If you're at a restaurant and the only mock meat they have is a rice burger, or the store you go to only sells rice milk as a plant milk (which is extremely unlikely), go for that then. I think that's the main reason why it isn't really brought up much (I really only discuss it with other vegans, since if I bring it up to meat-eater it might make veganism look a little crazy).

As a side note, oat milk has the lowest emissions out of almost any plant milk AFAIK, even though the nutrition is basically nil.

Having grains in your diet, especially whole grains is a good idea, since they provide a lot of nutrients, though it shouldn't be the main part of your diet. The main part of your diet should be beans and veggies.

Of course, if we just end the fear-mongering over GMOs and cut the red tape so as to develop these crops so that they are better for the environment (like with corn) then we wouldn't have to worry about it.

[Jebus]

@Forests It is not a question of whether grains are vegan (they clearly are). The question is how harmful they are to the environment. My guess is that this is another reason to eat brown rice; i.e, less processing involved. How much better I don't know. I'll leave that one for @brimstoneSalad and @Jamie in Chile.

[brimstoneSalad]

@Forests It is not a question of whether grains are vegan (they clearly are). The question is how harmful they are to the environment. My guess is that this is another reason to eat brown rice; i.e, less processing involved. How much better I don't know. I'll leave that one for @brimstoneSalad and @Jamie in Chile.

The issue of rice is the methane production, so brown vs. white doesn't make much if any difference aside from maybe brown rice filling you up faster.
There is something called highland rice, grown without flooding, and that would make a huge difference if you can find it/when it's available.
There's also some GMO rice that doesn't release starches into the water when it floods so massively reduces methane production.

This started when I mentioned potatoes as a staple may not be optimal, I shared this image in the other thread, and it gives a sense of scale here:



Potatoes and rice are the worst among the starch staples (potatoes because of storage, so they may hypothetically be pretty good when in season? @Jamie in Chile do you know if that's the case, or do they all end up being stored regardless?), but that doesn't mean they're bad in absolute terms when it comes to comparison with animal agriculture. It's just that maybe we should rely less on those than on better grains. The info red shared is useful as well, although you'll probably note greenhouse gas production is pretty well proportional to yield.

Reworking this to look at ecological impact per kg of protein and per 1,000 calories may be more revealing. @Red has some graphics skills, he might be able to do that. We should probably start making some of our own infographics because it could make conveying these ideas much easier.

[Red]

Reworking this to look at ecological impact per kg of protein and per 1,000 calories may be more revealing. @Red has some graphics skills, he might be able to do that. We should probably start making some of our own infographics because it could make conveying these ideas much easier.

Wait what are we doing exactly? I haven't much graphic design stuff in a long time (drawing tablet broke limmyTears) so I'm not sure how much I'd remember how to do.

Also looking at that graph, it seems to have 2% Milk specifically, is there much difference between that and say whole milk?

[brimstoneSalad]

Also looking at that graph, it seems to have 2% Milk specifically, is there much difference between that and say whole milk?

Shouldn't be, but almost nobody drinks whole milk anymore.

[Forests]

Thanks for the graph.

There is also another here



Link https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visual ... each-food/

I think we would all be in agreement if we are talking about the greenhouse gas impact animal foods are the worst and also rice does not look good. I will be busy at work the next few days but I will respond in detail to this thread after.

Root vegetables and nuts look very good!

[brimstoneSalad]

Thanks for the graph.

There is also another here

That's a good graph, I like how they broke down land use change. That makes a lot of sense for nuts.

I suspect grouping potatoes with all other root vegetables and looking at the global average is hiding the greenhouse effect of storage for potatoes in affluent western countries. It looks very different on the two graphs.
Outliers like that should probably be covered separately.

Ideally we'd be able to figure those out and make more useful graphs in terms of calories, and in terms of essential fatty acids and amino acids. Per kilogram of food is unfortunately one of the least useful measurements, but it's fortunately easy to convert that with known nutritional data.

It'd be good to add in other common oil crops too if the data on that can be derived, like canola oil and coconut, which are very popular.

[Red]

Wow, I didn't know nuts were carbon negative. Is that for nuts in general? I assume some nuts are better than others (also the nuts where you scoop them instead of buying in a container is better still).

[Jamie in Chile]

I can help mostly on the climate change aspects. The book How Bad Are Bananas by Mike Berners Lee was updated for 2020 and is probably the best overall source. Note the book is probably only about 20%-30% about food since it covers all personal carbon footprints and is quite UK focused but still worth buying.

In simple terms the worst foods are all animal products, in the middle you have rice, and below that you have all other plant based foods. I have seen the two graphs above, but I have also seen numerous other similar estimates over the years and it rings true. If plant foods are air freighted or grown out of season in heated greenhouses they can be bad but otherwise they rarely are.

Rice is high because of methane leaking out of the fields, excessive fertilizer being applied, and because unless you like in Asia the rice may be transported a long distance. For this reason, I have not myself prepared rice or chosen a rice dish in a restaurant for some years. I do eat sushi because the amount of rice seems quite small and I do eat rice when my wife is cooking and prepares it for me. Much lower carbon rice is certainly achievable with very careful use of fertilizer and also lower methane production, but this is theoretical at this point.

I am surprised to see potatoes being worse than rice in one link posted by Brimstone Salad. By most estimates, potatoes come out quite low. According to Mike Berners Lee, the majority of the potato footprint is in boiling it at home. (This is unusual since for most foods the majority is the food production.) If you have an electric cooker and either home solar or a country with green electricity, it would certainly be a low carbon food. But if you are boiling it under gas with the lid off for hours, it's bad. But in generally, potatoes are more good than bad because the actual production is so low carbon.

The most important things you can do to cut your carbon foodprint are no animal products, reduced food wastage, and reduced rice.

If you are really keen you can look at getting renewable electricity to your home and cooking with electricity rather than gas, reduced packaging, buying in-season (to reduce transportation) and growing your own food.

The reason growing your own food isn't in the top list is because in practice you will probably only manage to grow a small portion of your food.

Apart from rice and the above comments, it's not really a good use of time worrying about potatoes vs bread or apples vs oranges. You'd be better off looking at how to convince someone else to give up meat, to replace the gas boiler in your house, how to get rid of your petrol/diesel car, how to cut your flights to zero after the pandemic. Or even other things such as protesting/voting/direction action that go beyond your personal carbon footprint.