Scrutable

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:36 pm**

Cost can be a useful proxy for “faff”, or “inputs required” or “inefficiency” and it would be interesting to compare the carbon / water footprint of, say, avacados vs something cheaper.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:42 pm**

plodder wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:36 pm Cost can be a useful proxy for “faff”, or “inputs required” or “inefficiency” and it would be interesting to compare the carbon / water footprint of, say, avacados vs something cheaper.

Did someone also link to this earlier in the thread or was it elsewhere? I can't seem to find it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714

Carbon though not water.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:09 pm**

mediocrity511 wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:49 pm
Woodchopper wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:17 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:03 am

I think this is an interesting philosophical question - as long as you include the supplements in your characterisation of the diet, sure.

All modern agriculture is totally dependent on a raft of synthetic external inputs at some stage in the game. I don't see how a B12 supplement is 'cheating' any more than the (dangerously overused) antibiotics to keep cattle productive in overcrowded conditions, for example.
I don't see how its meaningful to differentiate between taking supplements in pill form and, say, eating processed food.

That said, a diet that requires supplements may be less healthy in that people have to make more of a conscious effort to eat healthily. As some people are lazy they might end up with a vitamin deficiency. That applies to omnivores too, but Vitamin D aside, British omnivores eating junk food etc are unlikely to suffer from things like scurvy.

Mechanized farming is completely unnatural. To start with, fields often need to be irrigated, and livestock usually need to be provided with water by the farmer. An argument based upon 'naturalness' is basically a logical fallacy.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/heal ... 95686.html

Although we are currently seeing large rises in the number of people admitted to hospital with malnutrition related illnesses. Including a small number of cases of children with scurvy!

The article focuses upon Vitamin D deficiency, which I excluded as it’s partly due to lack of sunshine.

There were just 167 scurvy cases in the UK in 2019. The number has increased but in a country of 66 million it’s still extremely rare. Also the linked article suggests that part of the explanation is people choosing not to eat fruit and vegetables or others with serious illnesses which prevent digestion.

As far as I recall from previous discussions the vast majority of malnutrition cases in the UK are a consequence of other illnesses- for example Alzheimer’s patients being unable to feed themselves or to appetite being suppressed by cancer treatments.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:29 pm**

plodder wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:36 pm Cost can be a useful proxy for “faff”, or “inputs required” or “inefficiency” and it would be interesting to compare the carbon / water footprint of, say, avacados vs something cheaper.

Although it may be pretty difficult to use as a proxy for farm products, because of all the subsidies, market failures, variance of strength of price competition, etc. Milk, for example, is very pricing competitive, and I know there are issues with whether it's actually profitable for the farms (and I can't recall the specifics). Obviously that specific case is irrelevant to veganism though.

Certain vegetables are likely to be much more price competitive in supermarkets than others. As is certain forms of meat. Avocados, being seen as more "luxury" items, I suspect have less aggressive price competition than say potatoes or even bananas.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:40 pm**

Bird on a Fire wrote: Sat Jan 11, 2020 3:56 pm The recent Lancet report on future diets was really interesting and full of evidence about how transitioning to a plant-based diet would be beneficial from public health and sustainability perspectives.
https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/

What struck me looking at their ideal food plate is that it is much closer to a vegan meal than to a conventional one.

What strikes me is the relative sizes of the 'starchy vegetable', 'animal-sourced protein', and 'unsaturated plant oil' wedges; and indeed the relative sizes of the 'whole grain' and 'starchy vegetable' wedges. Whole-grain pasta better than potatoes shock!

Cooking using 2-3 times as much vegetable oil than meat (by weight or by volume), and about 3 times as much meat as potatoes would be 'interesting'. A very thinly sliced small potato, deep fried, with a sprinkle of bacon bits on top...(with a humongous side salad, of course).

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:32 pm**

Pucksoppet wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:40 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: Sat Jan 11, 2020 3:56 pm The recent Lancet report on future diets was really interesting and full of evidence about how transitioning to a plant-based diet would be beneficial from public health and sustainability perspectives.
https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/

What struck me looking at their ideal food plate is that it is much closer to a vegan meal than to a conventional one.

What strikes me is the relative sizes of the 'starchy vegetable', 'animal-sourced protein', and 'unsaturated plant oil' wedges; and indeed the relative sizes of the 'whole grain' and 'starchy vegetable' wedges. Whole-grain pasta better than potatoes shock!

Cooking using 2-3 times as much vegetable oil than meat (by weight or by volume), and about 3 times as much meat as potatoes would be 'interesting'. A very thinly sliced small potato, deep fried, with a sprinkle of bacon bits on top...(with a humongous side salad, of course).

I mean if you're absolutely wedded to the idea of translating that diet onto a standard meat heavy diet and making no adjustments. It seems a bit weird to assume the oil would go nowhere near the vegetables, instead of being used during cooking or in a dressing or sauce.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:46 pm**

Pucksoppet wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:40 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: Sat Jan 11, 2020 3:56 pm The recent Lancet report on future diets was really interesting and full of evidence about how transitioning to a plant-based diet would be beneficial from public health and sustainability perspectives.
https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/

What struck me looking at their ideal food plate is that it is much closer to a vegan meal than to a conventional one.

What strikes me is the relative sizes of the 'starchy vegetable', 'animal-sourced protein', and 'unsaturated plant oil' wedges; and indeed the relative sizes of the 'whole grain' and 'starchy vegetable' wedges. Whole-grain pasta better than potatoes shock!

Cooking using 2-3 times as much vegetable oil than meat (by weight or by volume), and about 3 times as much meat as potatoes would be 'interesting'. A very thinly sliced small potato, deep fried, with a sprinkle of bacon bits on top...(with a humongous side salad, of course).

Measuring by volume is an interesting choice for that plate. Although I don't know that any of choices there aren't interesting in some way.

You are allowed to have a pile of rice and a slice of bread alongside the slice of potato, as they are both part of the whole grains section. At least, I assume bread is there, as it's not anywhere else.

An occasional bacon sandwich seems fine as part of this diet.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:08 pm**

mediocrity511 wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:32 pm
Pucksoppet wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:40 pm Cooking using 2-3 times as much vegetable oil than meat (by weight or by volume), and about 3 times as much meat as potatoes would be 'interesting'. A very thinly sliced small potato, deep fried, with a sprinkle of bacon bits on top...(with a humongous side salad, of course).
I mean if you're absolutely wedded to the idea of translating that diet onto a standard meat heavy diet and making no adjustments. It seems a bit weird to assume the oil would go nowhere near the vegetables, instead of being used during cooking or in a dressing or sauce.

Well, I was trying to demonstrate that a favoured snack food (crisps) could be part of a well-balanced diet. Which would be welcome to some around here. Personally, I can take-em or leave them, and prefer taco-chips. Crisps have a way of infiltrating my gum-line that leave me needing to brush my teeth as soon as possible after eating them - taco chips don't.

What leaves me unhappy about that plate is the total lack of saturated fat. I thought current dietary consensus was that it wasn't as bad as first thought, and that it is definitely not as bad for you as trans- fats. Certain dishes simply taste better to me cooked in butter rather than olive oil (and the reverse is also true).

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:14 pm**

Dairy is on there, so butter can be part of that section

The plate is a bit confusing, as there's overlap between the categories - all of rice, legumes and wheat are under whole grain, but provide substantial plant based protein and starch.

And I have no idea what's wrong with white bread, which you could easily exclude from whole grains. As a substantial part of the world's staple diet includes it, not having a slot for it is pretty weird

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:21 pm**

So it is. Thanks.

To fit in with the plate, I'd have to reduce my dairy consumption considerably, and try and find a cooking oil that is polyunsaturated that doesn't taste like sunflower oil, which I can't stand (which is a shame). Maybe hemp or grape? If the polyunsaturation is what gives the distinctive mouth-feel and flavour, then I might be unhappy at any choice.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:45 pm**

Is this easier to work with?

: Page 10; rps20200113_234415.jpg (119.28 KiB) Viewed 5783 times

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:14 pm**

Kind of, but the Dairy item could be a bit confusing:

Dairy foods 250g/day (Range 0-500) 153 kcal/day
Whole Milk or equivalents

I would measure milk by volume, but given it is basically water, that's 250ml per day whole milk. It's actually easier to work on the kcal equivalent, as I can look on the milk carton, the yoghurt pot and the pack of butter or cheese and determine how many kcal/gram or kcal/ml they are.

If the issue with Dairy is the amount of saturated fat, then 'yoghurt' is a problem, as most of the stuff I can get hold of is either low-fat or fat-free with masses of added sugar, or sometimes artificial sweeteners. Your actual 'natural' yoghurt has vanished from supermarkets I have access to.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:26 pm**

Woodchopper wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:17 pm
Mechanized farming is completely unnatural. To start with, fields often need to be irrigated, and livestock usually need to be provided with water by the farmer. An argument based upon 'naturalness' is basically a logical fallacy.

True but I never said anything about supplementation being unnatural.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:32 pm**

The best thing about veganism is that it appears to make Piers Morgan apoplectic. I reckon Harry and Meghan should start a business selling vegan steak substitute. I reckon Morgan's head would explode live on air.

Posted: **Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:56 pm**

JQH wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:34 am Can a diet which requires taking supplements actually be regarded as healthy?

AIUI it mainly requires supplemental B vitamins because our food is so clean now. Humans living in the tropics in pre-modern conditions probably ate their fruit and tubers with enough soil & dung microbes on them to get a reasonable amount of B12.

Although I'm not aware of any pre-Modern human population that ate no animal products at all. Even vegetarian buddhist monks in China ate eggs I think. Even Jain priests who cover their mouths with cloth and brush the path in front of them to avoid accidentally killing tiny insects will steal eat dairy products.

Pre-modern Humans living in temperate or colder climates pretty much all ate significant quantities of meat, even Tibetan buddhist monks mostly eat meat because of the cold climate (the Dali Lama only became vegetarian in recent years and he lives in a a tropical climate in exile in India).

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 6:50 am**

Fishnut wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:46 pm
Woodchopper wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:18 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:59 am Purely anecdotally, but the most expensive things in our shopping basket are always meat (for my wife), cheese (for us both) and wine (mainly for me, tbh). Vegetables and pulses are really really cheap by comparison.

I don't think stuff like avocados are essential. There are plenty of much cheaper ways of getting plant oils in your diet.
Yes, but you live where the vegetables I eat at this time of year are grown. They're more expensive here.

It would be interesting to compare calories per Euro for different foods in different places.
I haven't looked at calories per Euro but I did find this site that compares prices around the world. They have a list of products here. I had a look at some staples - onions, tomatoes, bananas and apples. I was surprised that onions were more expensive in France than the rest of western europe (excluding Switzerland). Clearly my stereotypes about the French spending their days cycling around with garlands of onions are outdated! Norway and Switzerland have higher food prices than surrounding countries.

I don't know how frequently prices get updated - it seems to be user-contributed data - so I don't know if it's possible to track prices over the year.

As an aside, when I lived in the Falkland Islands fruit and vegetables were the most expensive part of my shopping. Lamb and mutton was pretty cheap as it was locally sourced, and fish was free (perks of working in the Fisheries Department!) but apart from a very small proportion that was grown in a market garden, everything was shipped in from Chile. If there were delays then the shelves could get incredibly bare.

Thanks, that’s interesting. Switzerland and Norway have higher prices due to imports duties and geography making food production less efficient.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 10:24 am**

Pucksoppet wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:14 pm Kind of, but the Dairy item could be a bit confusing:

Dairy foods 250g/day (Range 0-500) 153 kcal/day
Whole Milk or equivalents

I would measure milk by volume, but given it is basically water, that's 250ml per day whole milk. It's actually easier to work on the kcal equivalent, as I can look on the milk carton, the yoghurt pot and the pack of butter or cheese and determine how many kcal/gram or kcal/ml they are.

If the issue with Dairy is the amount of saturated fat, then 'yoghurt' is a problem, as most of the stuff I can get hold of is either low-fat or fat-free with masses of added sugar, or sometimes artificial sweeteners. Your actual 'natural' yoghurt has vanished from supermarkets I have access to.

If you can get Greek (not "Greek style") yogurt or Skyr, those work. Fage Total 0% is my preferred one but supermarkets have started doing their own brands.

But yes, it's confusing. I have a slight issue with beans and nuts being in the protein section next to the meat, when beans are generally more carb than protein and nuts are generally more fat that protein. (They are, of course, healthy sources of those macros, which you do need, but you will have a hard time getting the right balance of calories from each macro.)

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 10:50 am**

Fishnut wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:46 pm As an aside, when I lived in the Falkland Islands fruit and vegetables were the most expensive part of my shopping. Lamb and mutton was pretty cheap as it was locally sourced, and fish was free (perks of working in the Fisheries Department!) but apart from a very small proportion that was grown in a market garden, everything was shipped in from Chile. If there were delays then the shelves could get incredibly bare.

As an aside, did you enjoy the Falklands?
Me sister has done a couple of "six month" stints there, and would certainly go back, notwithstanding the extreme bleakness

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 10:55 am**

Gentleman Jim wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 10:50 am
Fishnut wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:46 pm As an aside, when I lived in the Falkland Islands fruit and vegetables were the most expensive part of my shopping. Lamb and mutton was pretty cheap as it was locally sourced, and fish was free (perks of working in the Fisheries Department!) but apart from a very small proportion that was grown in a market garden, everything was shipped in from Chile. If there were delays then the shelves could get incredibly bare.
As an aside, did you enjoy the Falklands?
Me sister has done a couple of "six month" stints there, and would certainly go back, notwithstanding the extreme bleakness

I really did, though I think I enjoyed the work more in retrospect than at the time - I worked on fishing vessels as an observer and would be out at sea for a few, very monotonous, weeks at a time. The brain is incredibly good at forgetting all the boredom and remembering just the highlights. The wildlife was incredible and getting to go and sit with the penguins during our lunch hour, or watching a right whale swim around our boat for the best part of an hour, were memories I'll always cherish.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 11:28 am**

dyqik wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:14 pm And I have no idea what's wrong with white bread, which you could easily exclude from whole grains. As a substantial part of the world's staple diet includes it, not having a slot for it is pretty weird

The point of the exercise was to identify an optimum diet in line with sustainable development goals, not to describe current diets.

IMO it's weird to take something like wheat or rice and then throw away the most nutritious parts of it.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 12:12 pm**

Bird on a Fire wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 11:28 am
dyqik wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:14 pm And I have no idea what's wrong with white bread, which you could easily exclude from whole grains. As a substantial part of the world's staple diet includes it, not having a slot for it is pretty weird
The point of the exercise was to identify an optimum diet in line with sustainable development goals, not to describe current diets.

IMO it's weird to take something like wheat or rice and then throw away the most nutritious parts of it.

I don't think all bran sifted from flour is thrown away as such, although it does go to some maybe less useful places (bokashi starter) as well as food (bran flakes). I guess a Google for quantitative numbers for where it goes is in order.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 4:16 pm**

dyqik wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 12:12 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 11:28 am
dyqik wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:14 pm And I have no idea what's wrong with white bread, which you could easily exclude from whole grains. As a substantial part of the world's staple diet includes it, not having a slot for it is pretty weird
The point of the exercise was to identify an optimum diet in line with sustainable development goals, not to describe current diets.

IMO it's weird to take something like wheat or rice and then throw away the most nutritious parts of it.
I don't think all bran sifted from flour is thrown away as such, although it does go to some maybe less useful places (bokashi starter) as well as food (bran flakes). I guess a Google for quantitative numbers for where it goes is in order.

Some googling around suggests that wheat bran is largely not thrown away, but it isn't as valuable or used as widely as it could be. It's not so easy to find out quantitatively where bran goes, but this paper offers an overview of places it goes to in its intro.

Science Direct results for the milling industry and the wikipedia article on bran suggests that it often does get added in to human foods. A big chunk seems to go to animal feedstock. There's also active projects to develop processes for fermenting and processing wheat bran into plant based protein and oil sources (e.g. via valorization), and it's also used in lactic acid production, among many other processes.

Posted: **Tue Jan 14, 2020 5:04 pm**

I used to be able to buy wheat bran very cheaply, to add to my morning oats. Then I couldn't anymore, but I found a more expensive fancy organic wheat bran source. Then I couldn't get that anymore so I now add supermarket own-brand bran sticks to my oats. A week or two ago even those disappeared from the supermarket but then they came back.

Yeah I'm old. Get off my lawn.

Posted: **Thu Jan 16, 2020 4:56 pm**

Aitch wrote: Fri Jan 03, 2020 5:54 pm According to this morning's i, there are about 600,000 of them, that's about 1% of the population.

Not sure how relevant that is...

Bump from the start of the thread... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/arti ... -help.html (*** WARNING: DAILY MAIL ***) claims that the number of vegans in the UK has gone from 540,000 to 3.5 million since 2016. No source is provided for the claim, but I do wonder whether Gregg's would be doing all this R&D for 1% of the population.

Posted: **Thu Jan 16, 2020 6:40 pm**

sTeamTraen wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 4:56 pm
Aitch wrote: Fri Jan 03, 2020 5:54 pm According to this morning's i, there are about 600,000 of them, that's about 1% of the population.

Not sure how relevant that is...
Bump from the start of the thread... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/arti ... -help.html (*** WARNING: DAILY MAIL ***) claims that the number of vegans in the UK has gone from 540,000 to 3.5 million since 2016. No source is provided for the claim, but I do wonder whether Gregg's would be doing all this R&D for 1% of the population.

Ah but the money isn't in targeting pure vegans. Something like 3/4 of households have consciously reduced their red meat intake. More and more people are becoming "flexitarians" who will happily choose plant based products when they have decent options available.

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