Fair enough that the guy has been able to do a lot of other problematic others things
Was more so intended as hyperbole given a lot of the stuff he’s done lately with the bizarre inverted food pyramid, taking part of dairy promotion campaigns, promoting of raw milk (which has a ton more health risks, but is cheaper for the industry to produce), attempts to paint beef tallow as somehow healthy, claiming to “end the war on saturate fat”, etc.
Uh the UK supreme court also prohibited Oatly from even using “post-milk generation” as a slogan. It’s 100% dairy industry pressure because they hate competition rather than because they actually care about labeling
There’s so much interesting history with plant-milks! For the west, almond milk has an especially long history. Here’s an article about how there was a whole sensation around it in medieval Europe
Outside the west, soy milk has a very long history too.
A tofu broth (doufujiang) c. 1365 was used during the Mongol Yuan.[1][2] As doujiang, this drink remains a common watery form of soy milk in China, usually prepared from fresh soybeans. The compendium of Materia Medica, which was completed in 1578, also has an evaluation of soymilk. Its use increased during the Qing dynasty, apparently due to the discovery that gently heating doujiang for at least 90 minutes hydrolyzed or helped to break down its undesirable raffinose and stachyose, oligosaccharides, which can cause flatulence and digestive pain among lactose-intolerant adults.[14][15] By the 18th century, it was common enough that street vendors were hawking it;[16] in the 19th, it was also common to take a cup to tofu shops to get hot, fresh doujiang for breakfast. It was already often paired with youtiao, which was dipped into it.[17]
Yep! It grew popular in medieval Europe periods during lent, but it ended up going far beyond that
But the sheer number of recipes from the Middle Ages that use almond milk, particularly those that combine it with (decidedly un-Lenten) meat, makes it clear that chefs came to regard it as a staple instead of just an alternative ingredient. Almonds turn up everywhere; in the first extant German cookbook, Das Buch von Guter Spise, dating to around 1350, almost a quarter of the recipes call for it.
[…]
Almond milk appeared in more overtly sweet dishes, too. A strawberry pudding could be made by soaking strawberries in wine, then grinding the mixture together with almond milk, sugar, and an assortment of spices, before boiling it all to thicken it.
[…]
Describing the diet of a pair of priests in 15th century Dorset in her book Food in Medieval Times, Professor Melitta Weiss Adamson, of the University of Western Ontario, writes that “almond milk must have played a significant role in their diet judging from the quantities of almonds bought.” She calls the late Medieval world’s appetite for almond milk not just a “love,” but an “addiction.”
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/almond-milk-obsession-origins-middle-ages
Not only that, but even in 1755, plant milks were already in the dictionary
- Emulsion made by contusion of seeds. Pistachoes, so they be good and not musty, joined with almonds in almond milk, or made into a milk of themselves, like unto almond milk, are an excellent nourisher.
Next thing I know you’re going to tell me peanut butter comes from peanuts!?
Others in captivity, for instance: Chimps Are No Chumps: Give Them An Oven, They’ll Learn To Cook
In Germany, it’s limited to more like 800 watts (and I think some other safety regulations). As I understand it, it’s generally worked without this being much of an issue despite millions of plug in solar installs (primarily for balcony solar)
Moltbook is an internet forum designed exclusively for artificial intelligence agents
Ich habe viele Fragen
It’s still more chickens who still very much suffer a lot, just a little less in one specific way. It is not accurate at all to say that they don’t suffer while they are alive along with suffering while being killed. It potentially worsens a lot of issue by increasing numbers. From the earlier article
Our results indicate that, if raised in CAFOs, a shift to slower-growing Rangers may increase crowding and related welfare concerns including increased footpad dermatitis [7], jostling, conflicts and potentially infection risk [14], and thus may translate to a decrease in aggregate welfare at scale. A shift to individual better-welfare chicken breeds aims to lessen bone, heart and disease issues in present Ross birds, but even in non-CAFO production systems, slower-growing breeds may still experience other negative welfare conditions such as emotional and physical stress, disease, predation, injury and premature mortality, as well as distressing transport and slaughter practices
I am mixed about this. On the one hand fast-growing birds have tons of health issues and help to make the production cheaper which allows the industry to stay larger. On the other hand if consumption and production levels stays constant, the total number of chickens killed will increase. Slower growing chickens have lower slaughter weights which means you need more of them. From a study looking at the US:
Maintaining this level of consumption entirely with a slower-growing breed would require a 44.6%–86.8% larger population of chickens and a 19.2%–27.2% higher annual slaughter rate, relative to the current demographics of primarily ‘Ross 308’ chickens that are slaughtered at a rate of 9.25 billion per year.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.210478#d1e265
Not the person you originally replied to, but eating plants directly would at least be a sort of harm reduction in that case. It takes a lot more plants to raise non-human animals than to just use plants directly. This is also a big part of why the environmental impact is so high for meat, dairy, etc.
1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
Pockets of progress can still exist within broader repression. Based on your profile, I’m going to guess you’re from the US? If you want some hope:
US Senate Passes Bill Giving Children the Right to Plant-Based Milks in Public School Lunches and this ended up getting signed into law 9 days ago. It also overturned an 80 year old provision that prohibited plant-milks from being offered without special request from doctor/parent in K-12 school lunches. (Which I never would have thought would get overturned now of all times)
Clean energy is still booming in the U.S. despite Trump’s best efforts. Renewables still are going into place because they are just the cheapest option, and the Trump admin has had a lot of their attempts to target renewables paused in court for now. Not that it’s not impacting it at all (it obviously is), but that it isn’t enough to stop progress entirely
NYC Set To Cut All Processed Meat In Schools, Hospitals, And Care Centers and is going to replace them with whole plant-based foods
I can keep going. There is a lot of focus in both traditional and social media about the bad news and very little about good news. But there are people trying and when people try you always have the chance to win
Don’t stop trying
And this is going on during a (one day) state wide general strike in Minnesota
Protests in Minnesota have been going on constantly every day in multiple places, the media is just hardly reporting on it. They are not small either. People have also formed entire network to monitor ICE and make sure that people can respond fast anywhere they go
Voting can stop you from going backwards, but voting alone is not enough. It will not fix the mess we are in by itself. It’s vote and take action not vote or take action. There is absolutely not time to wait for elections. Voting is important, but it has to be done with other action or the country will not survive
Minnesota is also in the middle of general strike today as well. Statewide, for the first time in almost 100 years. Economic power matter, and people are starting to use their leverage there in a real meaningful way
If you’re from England, it’s worth noting that today is also a one-day state-wide general strike in Minnesota. Which is a first for the mainland US in like 80 years. General strikes are generally unheard of to most Americans* with unions being much weaker in the US than they are in most of Europe. It’s pretty significant for a general strike to be occurring over anything anywhere in the United States
* There was a 1998 Puerto Rico general strike, but most Americans aren’t aware of that. The last major American general strike was in 1946
Not all agriculture is equal, animal products are uniquely inefficient
Transitioning to plant-based diets (PBDs) has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, eutrophication by 49%, and green and blue water use by 21% and 14%, respectively, whilst garnering substantial health co-benefits
[…]
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
This does does not reflect how people ate then. Evidence is growing to suggest that the per-agricultural humans ate mostly plants. It’s just been harder to see until recently because bones and such are easier to spot. For instance here’s one study
Our results unequivocally demonstrate a substantial plant-based component in the diets of these hunter-gatherers. This distinct dietary pattern challenges the prevailing notion of high reliance on animal proteins among pre-agricultural human groups
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02382-z
Eating the current level of meat, dairy, etc. in the west is rather new even within the last hundred years. This new food pyramid is an acceleration of a very recent trend that has had poor health consequences
The author added the entire text in the alt text if you click on the image and then the
...to see the full thing. Can easily copy and paste from that or read it there instead