Oddbean

The fact that the carnivore diet is being pushed so heavily on Nostr is concerning to me personally. From what I understand there is simply not enough surface area to grow the food needed to feed the livestock necessary for the entire planet to be pure carnivores. I'm sure many people have had great success being a carnivore, I wonder how much of that health improvement is actually related to switching away from processed foods however. I advocate for a diet based largely on unprocessed food. Within that category I would think a healthy ratio would be something like: 15% meat (beef/chicken), 20% animal products (dairy/eggs), 50% (20/30) Fruit and vegetables (fresh greens, roots, whole seeds, legumes, nuts), 15% carbs (primarily whole grain, fresh ground, homemade bread. As well as brown rice grown in Asia or California). I'm not a nutritionist, and honestly who really knows, but from what I've looked at those who follow keto/carnivore diets tend to die younger than those who follow primarily plant based unprocessed food diets and eat generally less calories than the average person. I know I feel great after drinking a "dirty juice" (Google it) blended in my Vitamix than I do after a steak. Good luck on your journey to find the best diet for your system! We all want to be healthy, but we also need to be considerate of food with more sustainable land and water usage.

you have never been out in the country if you think there isn't plenty of space not only that, it's not only cows, which need damper conditions, sheep tolerate drier and colder conditions and goats can eat well without a lot of grass, and they do well, as do sheep, on more hilly terrain and what most of the land of agriculture is doing now is producing low protein and fat quality seed crops like sunflower, rapeseed, wheat and barley, and in many cases, fed to animals in dirty cramped feedlots for absolutely no reason when the animals would do better directly on that ground where the seeds are being grown, plus, they aren't seed eaters, they are grass eaters, seeds make the meat quality lower, not only that they don't let the animals mature, there is way too much veal and lamb and not enough beef and mutton these animals are bred from animals that live naturally on grasslands and the grassland environment is nurtured by their presence industrial genetically modified pesticide and herbicide seed based foods are promoted by agricultural/biotech industries and have been promoted heavily since the 60s, creating whole memes and propaganda about veganism, which really isn't about eating vegetables it's about eating THEIR seed crops and chemically processed seed proteins and starches and the whole real purpose is to make a lot of money causing people to live shorter lifespans and get diabetes and die of cancer, because that's what high carb diets do to most humans, something like 2/3 of the human population is NOT ADAPTED to a high carb diet

you also probably don't know that the majority of the human race is fed by goats, their meat and milk, outside of your polluted, demoralized city environments the cows are only the majority of production in english speaking countries, basically, and a bit of western europe, and that's because it's damp, flat old ground that suits raising them, or sparse, huge areas like the midwest of USA and australia where they can run the cows on really big areas of relatively infertile land

Fair point that it's the methods used to grow the meat that is likely more unsustainable than meat itself. I'm sure if carnivore diets really are more beneficial to human health we'll find ways to meet that demand more efficiently. I'm curious what is your view on insects as an alternative and more efficient source of protein? Many non-western countries eat insects regularly, and from what I understand they're the most efficient form of animal proteins available.

first of all, chitin is not a protein, it's a sugar polymer, with some amino acids in its structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitin > Chitin (C8H13O5N)n (/ˈkaɪtɪn/ KY-tin) is a long-chain polymer of N-acetylglucosamine, an amide derivative of glucose. secondly, insects have all kinds of parasites that are unfamiliar and potentially dangerous to humans thirdly, it is impossible to eliminate their elimination organs and this is just disgusting, frankly, think of what it's like eating prawns or shrimp that haven't been gutted properly *shudder* - and this is why the bible repeatedly says do not eat anything that crawls or flies the most efficient type of protein as far as i'm concerned is goat, it is lean, but fat enough to not leave you short on fats, the animal itself can and does eat almost anything green, they even famously will nibble on some paper and cardboard if they see it, its hide is perfect for most purposes except heavy protection (most leather gloves are made of it), and the fibre-producing goats make very comfortable soft clothing, less abrasive than sheep, its milk is quite high in fat but this varies by the breed, they can live in conditions from deserts to alpine and taiga environments, with the right kind of breed and are easier to herd than sheep in fact, goat is the primary red meat consumed by the largest number of people on the planet, and their dairy products, milk and yoghurt, the most common forms of dairy consumed per capita cows have more uncommon requirements for their raising, and need a big range if the land is low fertility like tundra or prairie or scrubland, they primarily eat grass, and don't really browse much on anything else having said that, their fat is a higher quality and quantity in the meat... but also, the most common kind of dairy cow produces a harsh protein that is difficult for a lot of people to digest, whereas goat and sheep milk is better, though jersey (red) cow milk is also good from a health and evolutionary perspective, humans have been herding sheep, goats and cattle since maybe at least 15000 years and a great number of human haplogroups are adapted to it, as well as drinking the milks, as some 40,000 years ago a new mutation appeared in our genetics where the lactose digestion genes stopped turning off, which happens in most other mammals prior to sexual maturity (for humans this is about 8 years old) almost every part of these animals is useful if not highly nutritious any "science" that praises insects as food is bullshit fake science to sell yet another industrial production process for food that actually will just kill people in the long term

This is a valid concern. But, we’ve done the calculations, and if you converted all of the land that is wasted, monocropping, soy bean, corn, rice, oats. You would have enough grazing land to feed the entire world.

Humans have evolved eating mainly meat over millions of years enabling our brains to grow in size as we developed more efficient ways on hunting large beasts. Fruit, vegetables and grains becoming a major part of our diet only for the last 13k years or so. Our brain size peaked then and has decreased in size since. To get back to larger scale regenerative animal farming, we would have to make considerable changes. But if the demand is there and the steady but slow rate of adoption continues, capitalism and free markets will increase supply over time. Hopefully at the expense of massive areas of agriculture where they poison the land and kill billions of sentient animals in order to grow grains and vegetables.