Red meat has a huge carbon footprint because cattle requires a large amount of land and water.

https://sph.tulane.edu/climate-and-food-environmental-impact-beef-consumption

Demand for steaks and burgers is the primary driver of Deforestation:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-beef-industry-fueling-amazon-rainforest-destruction-deforestation/

https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-06-02/almost-a-billion-trees-felled-to-feed-appetite-for-brazilian-beef

If you don’t have a car and rarely eat red meat, you are doing GREAT 🙌🙌 🙌

Sure, you can drink tap water instead of plastic water. You can switch to Tea. You can travel by train. You can use Linux instead of Windows AI’s crap. Those are great ideas. But, don’t drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.

  • JaceTheGamerDesigner@lemmy.caEnglish
    91·
    1 day ago

    We could really use a movement to get more people to try adding beans, peas, and tofu to their grocery list. I wasn’t able to stick to not eating meat, but sticking to eating less meat by adding alternatives to my grocery list turned out to be quite easy.

    • cows_are_underrated@feddit.org
      4·
      1 day ago

      I gonna be honest: Tofu is a completely underrated food. If done right it tastes absolutely fucking awesome. You can also put it onto bread and there are plenty of different flavoutlrs that you can easily buy in a supermarket.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 day ago

      The trick is to find the right message and tone for the moment. I also think change like this is necessarily incremental. It’s possible that with enough doom-and-gloom around a pending “market correcting event”, that helping everyone reduce grocery bills by eating vegetarian a few nights a week, would be the right message.

    • exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      2·
      1 day ago

      I eat a legume for pretty much every meal:

      • Peanut butter on regular rotation for convenience foods
      • Peas or beans or snap peas as a component in pasta dishes or salads
      • Blanched peas or green beans as a vegetable side when I’m eating dinner with a main and sides separate.
      • Edamame with Asianish noodle dishes, including instant ramen
      • Snow peas or snap peas as a component in stir fries
      • Beans in salads (things like kidney beans or black beans)
      • Lentils or beans in fast casual rice bowls of a Mediterranean influence
      • Some kind of lentil or chickpea dish with South Asian food.
      • Beans with Mexican food because duh
      • Dried beans with my braises (cassoulet, chili, other random assortments of ingredients in a braising pot/dutch oven), only you gotta be conscious of how dried beans don’t cook properly in acidic environments.

      I personally don’t care for tofu. I’ll eat it when it’s a component of a dish I happen to already be eating, but I rarely seek it out to be the star of the dish I order or make, with only a few exceptions.

      But adding legumes/pulses to your meals is an easy way to get more protein, including amino acids (like lysine) that aren’t present in traditional grains like wheat or rice. And they’re generally a good source of certain types of soluble fiber good for gut health. I’m also generally less hungry (and get full faster) when I’m eating plenty of fiber and protein, so legumes help with both of those.

      I eat a lot, so I still eat a decent amount of meat overall, but as a percentage of my 3500-calorie diet it’s probably smaller than the average Westerner.

    • Schmeckinger@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 day ago

      I managed to get off of meat by trying out good meat replacements before quitting. But I still consume a lot of cheese especially mozzarella.