by Viv Forbes, with help from our editors
Wandering recently through an arcade popular with the green smoothie set, I saw a sign boasting: “Plant Based Meat”.
Someone should advise those nutritional dunderheads that all real meat is plant-based. Real beef and lamb are built from live plants like grasses, lucerne and mulga, plus salt, minerals and clay; the best chicken is built mostly on seeds and shoots of wheat, corn and grasses plus a few worms, insects and gizzard-grit; and when I was a kid our bacon was built by porkers from pollard, whey and vegetable scraps.
Cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, deer, bison, rabbits, turkeys and kangaroos have a long history of providing meat for our ancestral hunters and farmers. In tough times the gatherers and gardeners collected and cultivated survival foods like wild onions, seasonal fruit, cabbages, tubers and grass seeds. But there was always a celebratory feast when the hunters returned with high-nutrition meat.
Fake “meat” is usually made from denatured soy beans, peas and wheat, all grown using diesel fuel for cultivation, planting, harvesting and transport – a huge carbon footprint. Then they add meat glue, binders and fillers to hold it together, and artificial flavouring and colouring to make it look and taste right. It is not natural, not green, and less healthy than the worst feed-lot meat.
Sustainable plant-based meat is made when cattle, sheep, goats, camels, deer and pigs graze natural free-range pasture which gathers solar energy via their green-leaf solar collectors. These grazing animals harvest plant biomass without using diesel and they also spread valuable plant fertiliser onto the ground and into the air.
Real meat is greener and healthier than any fake “meat” manufactured by green alchemists.
Viv Forbes has tertiary qualifications in Chemistry, Physics, Geology and Maths. He and his wife have spent a lifetime learning how to raise healthy cattle and sheep from perennial natural pastures.
Interesting Reading:
Do We Really Need Fake Meat:
https://theconsciousfarmer.com.au/do-we-really-need-fake-meat/
All Sheep are Green:
http://www.damaras.com/newsletters/200805.pdf
The Battle for our Livestock:
https://clexit.net/2016/11/04/grasslands/
Another point to consider is that ruminant animals actually add nutritional value to the low quality feeds that they consume.
It is a fallacy that there is a simple equation of energy loss from converting plant biomass to animal biomass that is used to justify vegetarianism on economic/environmental grounds.
Ruminants consume plant biomass that has very low energy density. Such feeds are useless for human consumption. Yet, through the process of rumination, livestock convert it to high quality, energy dense protein that provides a very efficient source of food for humans.
Green delusions that veganism will save the planet are comparable to the madness of relying on wind and solar to meet demand for electricity. They both place their hopes on low quality, low density inputs while expecting impossibly high quality output. They both require the acquisition of vast areas of productive land, destroying ecosystems in the process, and can only produce minuscule, unreliable outputs at extremely high costs.
Meat protein should always make up a proportion of human food staples, both on economic as well as environmental grounds.
Congratulations on this excellent article.
A meat meal is, pardon the mixed metaphor, a low hanging fruit for the hungry human. Animals concentrate nutrients and calories in one place. They can all be found in one ambulant body.
The Green ideologues see it differently and quote slanted selected research sources reporting that vegetarian farming is more efficient. These compare energy balance of blessed European-style farming with winter feedlots. They don’t compare cattle or sheep grazing in Australian brigalow bush country with eking a living by farming on bare rocks. I don’t believe that anyone would doubt that humans have evolved to be omnivores. Why put all your eggs in one fruit basket?
I have never understood why people who profess to hate eating meat have to manufacture a product that they call ‘meat’ and they want it to taste like meat.
In order to feed eight billion vegans we will need small, mobile, autonomous factories that can efficiently turn human inedible plant matter into human edible protein. These factories will need to be environmentally friendly regarding waste products, not requiring of outside energy sources and it would sure help if they were self-replicating.
This, of course, isn’t going to happen. However, if we replace ‘vegan’ with ‘omnivore’ in that first sentence, then it can happen and does. It’s called ‘livestock agriculture’ and without it eight billion is way too many to feed.
Of course, many vegans will say that there’s too many people in the World already and they may well be right. They don’t volunteer to be the ones to go, of course, and nor should they. However, their solution of lower population is hardly achievable in any rapid way without such sort of unthinkable possibilities.
Great article, and comments.
I would add that the word ‘denatured’ sounds innocuous until one looks up what it means:
‘Destroy the characteristic properties of (a protein or other biological macromolecule) by heat, acidity, or other effect which disrupts its molecular conformation.
Experimentally, urea and guanidinium chloride are widely used as denaturant agents, but it is still not clear by which molecular mechanism they denature proteins.’
After you, dear vegans.
Well said as usual.
Q. How do you tell a Vegan?
A. You don’t have to, they’ll tell you.
Here is my take on it.
– Fair cow –
Some of us are so contrarian
Who eat only vegetarian.
We could evolve just like a cow
Eating tasteless grass-like chow.
But our molars were designed
To chew meat, which is refined
Grassy stuff, turned into steak …
Better for your teeth than cake.
Jock McPoet 9 Aug 2009
Extract from The Versed Writing of Jock McPoet – the best is yet to come
You have to admire the communication skills of Aussies to provide STRAIGHTWORWARD, INTELLIGIBLE, COMPREHENSIVE, UNCOMPLICATED, COHERENT, PELLUCID, UNAMBIGIOUS, UNEQUIVAL, AND DIRECT explanations for confused greenies that MEAT is plant based, ‘organic’ (the popular buzz word among the woke democrats), and ALL NATURAL FOOD.
Viv thanks for this most enlightening communication.
Unlike the greenie ‘plant meat’ which is produced in a chemical factory with the same kind of processing equipment that is used to produce pet food, real meat is a natural product.
Viv are there any greenie restaurants down under that serve pet food for the greenies? I see one advantage eating greenie pet food, you do not have to use a tooth pick to remove that last little taste of a delicious fillet mignon.
Viv you have exposed that GREENIES are envious of RUMINENTS.
The woke society of today have mastered sex change operations. I wonder if they are working on TRANS-RUMENATION surgery. Surely if they have mastered gender change, adding a RUMEN in addition to their regular stomach should be a minor modification. Inside the rumen, special bacteria and protozoa secrete the necessary enzymes to break down the various forms of cellulose for digestion and absorption. The new TRANSRUMINENTS then will be able to digest the same plant food (grasses and hay) as cattle, goats, and sheep, etc. As you already know ruminents have to regurgitate there high fiber diet to grind it up small enough to pass through the reticulum chamber into the rumen chamber. Fortunately, unlike transgeners where even the clothing gives no clue about their sex preference, when you see a GREENIE TRANSRUMINENT sitting around chewing its CUD, you will know positively that GREENIE has had TRANS-RUMENATION surgery.
Wayne
Contrary to what the climate crisis cult crowd are pushing, REAL MEAT already comes from the goodness of nature, no chemicals or trash that might make fake meat taste like it. I grew up eating real red meat that fed on grass, chopped barley and oat seeds in sunny Southern Saskatchewan. Today I live in the glorious foothills of the Rocky Mountains of the province next door in Alberta, where cattle ranching is a huge industry and where grazing cattle feed on lush green grass, cool river or spring water and loll in the sunshine. Only grass and grain fed beef reaches Canadian tables unless the environmentalists have convinced some of those people that “disgusting plant based meat” must be eaten? Those deluded fools have been completely mislead. Wake up people!!
FARM ANIMALS ARE CARBON SINKS
In my opinion, as an agricultural scientist, farm animals that are the sources of our food are incorrectly, and unfairly, targeted as a major source of, so called, “greenhouse gasses”, in particular carbon dioxide and methane.
I believe that this is not the case and that agricultural practices in general and livestock production in particular are net carbon sinks and should be celebrated for that, rather than being targeted by global warming activists.
My belief centres round a basic law of physics – the Law of Conservation of Mass – which states that “mass can neither be created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction”.
In agricultural terms this means that an animal cannot produce more than it eats!
Agricultural herbivores – beef and milk cattle and sheep – feed mainly on grass, hay or grains. All these materials grow and gain their structure from the process known as photosynthesis, which converts carbon dioxide from the air and water and other nutrients from the soil into cellulose, starches and sugars. All plants are carbon life forms as are all animals and almost every other living thing on this planet.
All the carbon in every cell in cattle and sheep comes from carbon dioxide in the air – there is no other source.
The food ingested by the animals is used for a range of biological functions.
– Some is used to produce the meat or milk that eventually makes its way to market – the carbon in the meat or milk is trapped there until it is consumed in one form or another – this is carbon that does not get back to the atmosphere from the animals themselves.
– Some is used to form hide and wool. The carbon in those materials is trapped forever as they are used for clothing or furnishing.
– Some is used for developing bone structure and again the carbon is trapped there. The bones from slaughtered beasts may be used to make blood and bone meal to be returned to the soil as fertiliser.
– Some is expelled as urine or faeces and returns to the soil.
– Some is used to produce the energy required for survival and normal bodily functions. During this process carbon dioxide and some methane is produced and is expelled during respiration and flatulence. This portion is the only portion containing carbon that is returned to the atmosphere,
In brief, agricultural livestock consume considerable amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, through their vegetable food sources, but only release a portion of that back to the atmosphere. Thus they are carbon (dioxide) sinks and do not add carbon dioxide to the environment.
It would be fair to say that our farmers, through their husbandry in growing crops and raising animals for human consumption, are “fixing” carbon dioxide in grass and crops and putting it to good use for the benefit of mankind and should be supported and encouraged to continue without being unfairly targeted as “climate polluters”.
Well said, a good post.
Good common sense once more from Viv Forbes. And here’s US professor who backs up this common sense:
https://notrickszone.com/2020/12/15/uc-davis-prof-dismisses-climate-doom-by-livestock-cows-lead-to-greater-food-yield-carbon-sequestration/
Although the nutrition panel for plant based “meat” may look similar in composition to real meat, they are very different in many other aspects. See: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93100-3