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SaidAchmiz comments on Effective Altruism Through Advertising Vegetarianism? - Less Wrong
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Could you (very briefly) expand on this, or even just give a link with a reasonably accessible explanation? I am curious.
Well, considering the existence of healthy vegetarians, it seems clear that we evolved to be at least capable of surviving in a low-meat environment.
I don't have any sources or anything, and I'm pretty lazy, but I've been vegetarian since childhood, and never had any health problems as a result AFAICT.
I am entirely willing to take your word on this, but you know what they say about "anecdote" and declensions thereof. In this case specifically, one of the few things that seem to be reliably true about nutrition is that "people are different, and what works for some may fail or be outright disastrous for others".
In any case, Raemon seemed to be making a weaker claim than "vegetarianism has no serious health downsides". "Healthy portions of meat amount to far less than the 32 oz steak a day implied by some anti-vegetarian doomsayers" is something I'm completely willing to grant.
Fair enough.
Considering the existence of healthy vegetarians, it seems clear that we evolved to be at least capable of surviving in a low-meat environment supported by modern agriculture that produces large quantities of concentrated non-meat protein in the form of tofu, eggs, whey protein, beans, and the like. This may be a happy accident. Are there any vegetarian hunter-gatherer societies?
Wouldn't these be "gatherer societies" pretty much definitionally?
(Unless there are Triffids!)
Obligatory Far Side reference
I've been having a hell of a time finding trustworthy cites on this, possibly because there are so many groups with identity stakes in the matter -- obesity researchers and advocates, vegetarians, and paleo diet adherents all have somewhat conflicting interests in ancestral nutrition. That said, this survey paper describes relatively modern hunter-gatherer diets ranging from 1% vegetable (the Nunamiut of Alaska) to 74% vegetable (the Gwi of Africa), with a mean somewhere around one third; no entirely vegetarian hunter-gatherers are described. This one describes societies subsisting on up to 90% gathered food (I don't know whether or not this is synonymous with "vegetable"), but once again no exclusively vegetarian cultures and a mean around 30%.
I should mention by way of disclaimer that modern forager cultures tend to live in marginal environments and these numbers might not reflect the true ancestral proportions. And, of course, that this has no bearing either way on the ethical dimensions of the subject.
From the American Dietetic Association: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864
Interesting, thank you.
I'm having trouble finding... any kind of dietary information that isn't obviously politicized (in any direction) right now.
But basically, when people think of a "serving" of meat, they imagine a large hunk of steak, when in fact a serving is more like the size of a deck of cards. A healthy diet has enough things going on in it besides meat that removing meat shouldn't feel like it's gutting out your entire source of pleasure from food.
Ah. Yeah, I don't eat meat in huge chunks or anything. But meat sure is delicious, and comes in a bunch of different formats. Obviously removing meat would not totally turn my diet into a bleak, gray desert of bland gruel; I don't think anyone would claim that. But it would make it meaningfully less enjoyable, on the whole.