News Forum - Thai smog crisis prompts call for global shift to plant-based diets

[Thaiger]

Northern Thailand is grappling with a persistent smog problem, typically attributed to crop waste burning, deforestation for mushroom harvesting and vehicle emissions, prompting calls for a global shift to plant-based diets. However, an emerging consensus among scientists and environmental activists suggests a deeper, global solution is required to avert a climate disaster. The crux of … …

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[Fanta]

No. There’s a place for all God’s creatures, right next to the mashed potatoes and vegetables. 

[Akajack]

These so called scientist haven't left their desk in years. Maybe they should go and see what the people are doing in the hills. The smog is caused by them burning what the plant based diet comes in. 

[Pinetree]

On 4/1/2024 at 9:17 AM, Thaiger said:

However, an emerging consensus among scientists and environmental activists

So it must be bull sxxt. 

[LeReynard]

Crop waste  burning is caused by the growing of crops, and cannot be solved by a plant based diet. That said less meat would be much healthier. Hunter gatherers never consume animal products, to the degree that WIERD people do, and historically farmers safekeeping like one pig for thrmselves, so as to be economical with the carcass the whole year. Human bodies simply don't intake so much red meat  as people do today, in a traditional setting. We aren't built to consume so much of it.

[Pinetree]

56 minutes ago, LeReynard said:

Crop waste  burning is caused by the growing of crops, and cannot be solved by a plant based diet. That said less meat would be much healthier. Hunter gatherers never consume animal products, to the degree that WIERD people do, and historically farmers safekeeping like one pig for thrmselves, so as to be economical with the carcass the whole year. Human bodies simply don't intake so much red meat  as people do today, in a traditional setting. We aren't built to consume so much of it.

You are wrong there mate. 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/#:~:text=This means that from the,with the invention of agriculture.

[LeReynard]

1 hour ago, Pinetree said:

You are wrong there mate. 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/#:~:text=This means that from the,with the invention of agriculture.

Rubbish. Hunter gatherers diets include more animal proteins with the latitude - Tasmania, Arctic, Fuego. Relative to other apes, and to baboons, human hunter gatherers do consume significantly more animal proteins. But most of it is insects and lizards, small foraged rather than hunted items. Properly African by her gatherers are hypocarnivores - the word apologists use for omnivorous animals like raccoons, in which foods of vegetable origin dominate those of animal origin, by proportion of the dietary spectrum.

Don't forget that traditional hunter gatherers still survive, and their ecology has been studied in Africa, in places like the Andamans and the Phillipines. Though quite large prey may be taken by human hunter gatherers, only specialised groups conform to 'man the hunter', and it's an adaptation to life in cold climates, where animal fat is at a premium as a resource.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2741506

Mesolithic people such as Natufians made good use of grains from their natural environment, before some of those species became domesticated gradually - there was no Neolithic revolutipn, and it's hard to identify the exact origins of domestication in its hearths. It is true that societies reliant on extensive crop farming, over the Holocene, came to replace or marginalize both hunter gatherers, and those of their fellow food producers maintaining strict pastoral economies, into marginal environments unsuited to crop production.

 

 

[Pinetree]

1 hour ago, LeReynard said:

Rubbish. Hunter gatherers diets include more animal proteins with the latitude - Tasmania, Arctic, Fuego. Relative to other apes, and to baboons, human hunter gatherers do consume significantly more animal proteins. But most of it is insects and lizards, small foraged rather than hunted items. Properly African by her gatherers are hypocarnivores - the word apologists use for omnivorous animals like raccoons, in which foods of vegetable origin dominate those of animal origin, by proportion of the dietary spectrum.

Don't forget that traditional hunter gatherers still survive, and their ecology has been studied in Africa, in places like the Andamans and the Phillipines. Though quite large prey may be taken by human hunter gatherers, only specialised groups conform to 'man the hunter', and it's an adaptation to life in cold climates, where animal fat is at a premium as a resource.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2741506

Mesolithic people such as Natufians made good use of grains from their natural environment, before some of those species became domesticated gradually - there was no Neolithic revolutipn, and it's hard to identify the exact origins of domestication in its hearths. It is true that societies reliant on extensive crop farming, over the Holocene, came to replace or marginalize both hunter gatherers, and those of their fellow food producers maintaining strict pastoral economies, into marginal environments unsuited to crop production.

Yes, you must be right,  I'm sure that National Geographic have got it all wrong. 

[LeReynard]

17 minutes ago, LeReynard said:

Rubbish. Hunter gatherers diets include more animal proteins with the latitude - Tasmania, Arctic, Fuego. Relative to other apes, and to baboons, human hunter gatherers do consume significantly more animal proteins. But most of it is insects and lizards, small foraged rather than hunted items. Properly African by her gatherers are hypocarnivores - the word apologists use for omnivorous animals like raccoons, in which foods of vegetable origin dominate those of animal origin, by proportion of the dietary spectrum.

Don't forget that traditional hunter gatherers still survive, and their ecology has been studied in Africa, in places like the Andamans and the Phillipines. Though quite large prey may be taken by human hunter gatherers, only specialised groups conform to 'man the hunter', and it's an adaptation to life in cold climates, where animal fat is at a premium as a resource.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2741506

Mesolithic people such as Natufians made good use of grains from their natural environment, before some of those species became domesticated gradually - there was no Neolithic revolutipn, and it's hard to identify the exact origins of domestication in its hearths. It is true that societies reliant on extensive crop farming, over the Holocene, came to replace or marginalize both hunter gatherers, and those of their fellow food producers maintaining strict pastoral economies, into marginal environments unsuited to crop production.

 

It's worth bearing in mind that in the well studied Kalahari, a full third of the hunter gatherer diet is composed of one wild species, the mogongo nut alone, to the extreme that this one plant species is roughly equal in importance, as a proportion of the total local diet, to all consumed foods of animal origins when combined. For other hunter gatherer groups around the world, the important plant species will be different, but subsistence depends on no more than a few species out of those available. For instance, wild millet grains are the most important plant in some regions of Australia. I think this fact puts things a little into context.

 

[ChrisS]

Burning the remnants of crop based food is a big part of what is causing the smog so how the Hell is growing more crops and therefore more burning going to help.

[Pinetree]

10 hours ago, ChrisS said:

Burning the remnants of crop based food is a big part of what is causing the smog so how the Hell is growing more crops and therefore more burning going to help.

A deathly silence from our plant guru ! 

[SnapDragon]

Must learn from nature. Work with it. Not fight against it. not destroy it.

Nature can be viscous, devastating, and frightening, but never ugly. Only humans make things ugly in nature's world.