Plant-based food: Difference between revisions

Took out the commented drafts of FAQs: Moved them to Talk:Plant-based food/Pending FAQs
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(Took out the commented drafts of FAQs: Moved them to Talk:Plant-based food/Pending FAQs)
 
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==FAQ==
==FAQ - Nutrition==
===="Can I really get all my nutrients without animal products?"====
Yes - [[Nutrition/Examples/Cheap plant-based|see example]].


===="But I thought that plant-based diets lack nutrients?"====
===="But I thought plant proteins were less digestible?"====
They [[Nutrition/Examples/Cheap plant-based|don't have to]].
Not if they're [[make plant proteins digestible|cooked properly]] and you have healthy [[gut flora]].
 
<!-- TODO: Add here "What about minerals? ..." from [[/Pending FAQ]] page -->
===="But aren't plant proteins less digestible?"====
Not if they're [[soups|cooked properly]] and you have healthy [[gut flora]].


===="But aren't plant-based burgers really processed?"====
===="But aren't plant-based burgers really processed?"====
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==FAQ - Ecology==
===="But I heard that grass-fed cows can be raised sustainably?"====
===="But I heard that grass-fed cows can be raised sustainably?"====
* '''Not''' if [[deforestation|forests are destroyed to make room for pasture]].
* '''Not''' if [[deforestation|forests are destroyed to make room for pasture]].
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==FAQ - Animals==
 
===="If everyone goes vegan, what would happen to the animals? What should farmers do with the animals?"====
===="If everyone goes vegan, what would happen to the animals? What should farmers do with the animals?"====
* Option 1: Keep them until they die of old age. {{x|Not very profitable, of course, but the right laws/incentives could overcome this.}}
* Option 1: Keep them until they die of old age. {{x|Not very profitable, of course, but the right laws/incentives could overcome this.}}
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This FAQ section will probably get longer over time.
This FAQ section will probably get longer over time.
{{talk|TODO: add faq "but i heard that plants have feelings too" - points to cover: 1. Regarding those studies showing that plants can "send signals in response to damage" - this is analogous to animal wound healing, not consciousness. 2. Nobody in their right mind would equate mowing the lawn with hurting a puppy, for example.}}
{{talk|TODO: add faq about honey. Some points to mention: 1. "but bees are needed for pollenation" - Pollinator bees produce as much honey as they need for themselves. When beekeepers harvest this honey, they have to replace it with some other sugar source (typically corn syrup based). If that's good enough for bees, it's good enough for humans (btw link to nutrition page about why empty calories can still be part of a healthy diet). 2. The aformented problem may be overcome by breeding bees specifically for honey production. But this makes them worse pollenators. You can't optimize for two things. Most honey comes from farms that don't provide pollenation services. Most pollenation service providers don't sell honey on any significant scale. 3. "but honey is antimicrobial" - so is any concentrated sugar source. Bacteria & molds don't grow because the ''water activity'' is too low. Slight acidity of honey helps too, which is easily recreatable with plant-based sweeteners. Btw compare the nutrition of honey, cane sugar, etc; in any case, the nutrients aren't very significant (but that's fine, as empty calories in moderation can still be part of a healthy diet). 4. In any case, if you want to eat honey, no one's stopping you. It's not a major part of status quo environmental degredation, compared to animal factory farming. (Although per calorie it's still not so great, and would be a lot worse if we tried to scale up the honey industry to match the sugar industry; would be worse than the sugar industry because it takes more land to grow crops to make the same amount of honey compared to sugar)}}
{{talk|TODO: add "but what about indiginous people" Indiginous people are less than 5% of the world's population. If they were the only ones eating meat, we wouldn't be in this environmental mess we're in. They Earth can sustain a few hundred million hunter-gatherers, but not 8 billion hunter-gatherers (animals would go extinct left right and center). To feed 8 billion people sustainably, we need plant agriculture. (this point comes up elsewhere as well, so maybe make this its own page?)}}
{{talk|TODO: add "but what about lions, tigers, wolves and other carnivores, should they eat meat?"}}
{{talk|TODO: add faq about "no ethical consumption under capitalism": teach the difference between boycotting companies (nearly futile) vs boycotting products (effective and necessary). show why. {{talk|btw, what about boycotting countries? could be relevant to some other pages such as the BDS movement}} }}
At the end of the day, people can survive '''and thrive''' without animal products, and it can be done [[cheap plant-based food|cheaply]] or [[expensive plant-based food|expensively]] or anything in between.
At the end of the day, people can survive '''and thrive''' without animal products, and it can be done [[cheap plant-based food|cheaply]] or [[expensive plant-based food|expensively]] or anything in between.


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==See also==
==See also==
* [[Alternatives to animal testing]]
* [[Animal welfare]]