Yes

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Matt

Stop with the red meat man ! It's been proven it's essentially bad for you for so many reasons. The calorie argument is wrong. Get your cals elsewhere, just eat more pasta and beans if you need energy, not more red meat and chicken.

Vegetal protein when combined are complete too.

where is the proof that "red meat is essentially bad for you for so many reasons" ?

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Great.

Another goofy diet thread. And another opportunity for all the fanatics on one side of the isle or the other to come out of the woodwork and proselytize how their way is the ONE TRUE WAY.

the china study

It's a class 2 carcinogen (probably cancer causing agent). Mostly to do with it being cooked at high temperatures to produce polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heterocyclic aromatic amines. Both of these are known cancer causing agents, most notably colon cancer. The issue with colon cancer is that it's rarely detected early and has the 3rd highest mortality rate of any cancer.

Red meat is also broken down through putrification in the intestine. This produces amino acids like putrescine and cadaverine which have negative effects on the gut lining and increase inflammation which can lead to many chronic inflammation disorders as well as cancer.

That doesn't even cover the cholesterol and saturated fat arguments against red meat which are universally known.

The goal wasn't to create a "red meat is bad" thread. I was trying to get an opinion on the merits of a "universal diet" for the world as a whole and if a group of athletes believe that it is feasible in their lives.

I've read articles stating red meat is bad and I've read that it's good. To be fair, I don't really care. I enjoy the taste and I will continue to eat red meat. That not to say I eat high fat burgers/steaks every day, but I will say that on average I eat more than 1/4lb of red meat a week, and far more than 1 egg a week. It would be a dramatic change in my lifestyle and at best it would be a multi month acclimatization period to even begin to function highly on a reduced diet like this.

You keep on being a vegan, but don't push your lifestyle on the rest of us. I won't tell you to eat meat, deal?

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

This diet is promoted first as a way to reduce our carbon footprint while being in a better shape. It's fine that you like red meat, I like it too. Truth is it's burning our planet down, combined with over consumption of material goods, excess transport by plane etc...
The argument here is that you can get all the nutrient you need from plant. The only adaptation needed is in your cooking. Many plant base plate just taste very good and are certainly not hard to digest. Most of the time you'll feel lighter and more ready to exercise after such a meal. The main argument is not to eat one egg a month but that some aliment like red meat should not be in our daily routine. They should be reserved to special occasions if you like them.

Also I can't believe those who think its a Chinese conspiracy. Triathlete are outdoor people they should have a sensibility for the environment. Proof of climate change are everywhere, you want to leave sand to your children or what ? What will you tell to them ? Red meat was so good and taking that plane was so important for my self development ?

On a separate note to erbrown you look heavy for a triathlete, if you're not super tall which would explain your weight you might get a lot of performance by losing weight.

That may not have been your goal...but as you can see, it took about 3 posts to go exactly there. Those who feel that way, find it NECESSARY to shout it from the mountaintops every chance they get, and beat everyone else over the head with their particular club.

If I had a nickel every time I heard this.

I don't consider myself a vegan, but I eat a plant based diet. The amount of times I say something like, "oh no I don't eat dairy" and someone comes back, "Oh right, because you're a vegan" is astounding. It's a question I deal with on a nearly daily basis combined with "where do you get your protein".

Nobody gave a shit about my diet until I stopped eating animal products.

Conversely, in my 29 years of eating meat, I never once heard someone say, "dude you should be a vegan" and I never felt obligated to try a different diet.

I think you're also falsely assuming that people eat vegan diets because of lifestyle, morals or animal welfare. I can confidently say that of all the people i know that eat a similar diet to myself, not one of us gives a shit about animal welfare. I came from a place of open-mindedness and education. I made small incremental changes, testing along the way, and looking at the reasoning and biological mechanisms regarding "why" a plant based diet helps eliminate or delay the onset of most "western" diseases like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. On a personal note after 10 years of moderate/severe crohn's disease I have finally achieved remission, including mucosal healing of my gut lining, which can only be attributed to the increased fiber, short chain fatty acids and butyrate producing bacteria in my gut.

I get it though. If you're Canadian or American (or a lot of other nations) you live in a free country. Land of the free, glorious and free. Do what you want no matter what anyone says attitude. It's what makes North America awesome, Europe OK and Asia terrible. At some point, though, your tax dollars are feeding into the healthcare system and the trillions of dollars used to treat illnesses that are very preventable is astounding. As a citizen, I view it as my obligation to ensure that my individual value as a citizen is maximized and further to that point that my tax dollars are being spent responsibly. When reports like this come out and suggest that eating meat is better for the environment or better for individual health and I see comments like, "I wish vegans wouldn't be so pushy" it offends me as a citizen because it means that there are other citizens that are blatantly rejecting scientific data, are selfish enough to ignore it and are ignorant enough to dismiss it. The day when humans decide they no longer want to learn and be educated is the day we might as well just drop the meteor back on us and let another species have a kick at this ball.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk

All I can say is, that every time those beyond burgers go on sale, we stock up the freezer. It is so close to the taste and consistency of meat, that now I find it just as pleasing. I had already without trying stopped eating so much meat, this just adds another level. Now only when going out(to someones bar-b-q or restaurant) and some chicken and turkey once a week or so around the house. It has not been hard at all, actually not really thinking much about it.

But at times I get that feeling of a juicy cheeseburger, and then I have that beyond burger to satisfy that. Just doing my part for the planet...(-;

I'll say I don't eat a whole lot of meat compared to what most people eat I presume. Typically my family and I eat meat (usually chicken) for dinner. I eat a shitload of vegetables and fruit just because I like them better and don't get bloated or heavy feeling from them. I can notice a huge difference if I have had more meat in my diet than normal, especially on how it impacts my bowel system. Saying that, I'll wont turn meat away if its presented to me at a friends and most defintely will devour BBQ, but at home we maybe have red meat once in a while and its usually in the form of ground beef in a chilli or soup. Its just expensive as hell to eat steaks or anything else.

Also, I love eggs and dairy so whatever. I would consider myself more plant based either way.

As for the World Diet. I don't think its really suitable for an athlete or very active person. If you think about it, we are extremely selfish and wasteful in the grand scheme of things so that we can participate in sports. Think of all the water we use in the pools across the world just so we can swim our little laps or race. Fuck sending it to a drought ridden area for farming or for conservation. I want to swim goddamnit and then afterwards I want to eat a tabletop of food, take a shit, and then flush it down with more drinkable water!

I don't think the intent of this diet is for performance - more for sustainability. Which I appreciate.

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Use this link to save $5 off your USAT membership renewal:
https://membership.usatriathlon.org/...A2-BAD7-6137B629D9B7

I can't argue the with the losing weight, I just need to convince myself since I've spent a lot of years working to keep mass up for different athletic endeavors.

FWIW, i'm 6'3" and as a decathlete in college I would have done anything to get up to 195 but with the training load was unable to get above 185, but I couldn't get it done. It's been a couple of years since I've quit that and my weight has of course crept up a little bit. It's relatively easy for me to get down around 185 but it will certainly take some more thought/perseverance to get down closer to ~175 which is likely a better weight for endurance events.

Spreading false lies. Should we eradicate a species to protect us from climate change? Why is India so polluted yet they dont eat cow? Stop driving your car before telling me to stop eating meat

Ok I will replace red meat intake with french fries. But wait.. I will get the same problems you mentioned! But why, it's vegan !?. The problem is heat. Too much burns our skin. Too much alters the natural chemical formulation of our food. We do it because heat kills bacteria, etc. Heat is destructive...

I missed where I said french fries were an alternative to red meat.

I was just simply telling why red meat is considered a class 2a carcinogen by the world health organization. I didn't state any opinions or moral views in my post.

And here we have the nail in the coffin for the pusher of this diet:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/...nd-campaign-13872067

WTF is that on her husbands side. I can't look at shit like that, i have some severe trypophobia going on

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Use this link to save $5 off your USAT membership renewal:
https://membership.usatriathlon.org/...A2-BAD7-6137B629D9B7

Now do this one: https://www.theguardian.com/...id-climate-breakdown

Or this one: http://www.fao.org/.../a0701e/a0701e00.HTM

Or this one: https://www.epa.gov/...e-gas-emissions-data

Or this one: https://www.scientificamerican.com/...ouse-gas-is-methane/

You have the right in 2019, pretty much no matter what your nationality is, to make your own decisions on whether you choose to adhere to these guidelines or not. But denying them or attempting to disprove them only shows your own ignorance regarding the subject.

Please go preach your pseudo science elsewhere. I gave an easy deal, and then you proceeded to actually do what Vegans normally do which is tell me I'm wrong and say your lifestyle is great. I'm happy for you. But like your sexual preference, your religious preference, etc...I don't want to know or be preached to.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

So you ignored my post reply to Ajaj191 that we should extinct our cattle population to fix this issue - in your view. Bison and Buffalo roamed these lands before we invaded and yet climate change was not an issue. Why can't you vegans give up your fossil fueled cars?

I'm not vegan but I'm striving to go veganish.

The cardiovascular risk decrease is a very real thing. A few of my friends who had both high cholesterol in their late 30s needing medication as well as fathers who had multiple heart attacks <age 65, went pure vegan for a 3month trial, and they dropped their cholesterol by massive amounts in a mere 3 months. Like 220+ to 90, I didn't even know it could go so low! They've kept it up as well, makes me feel like an undisciplined junkie in comparison.

I actually like the environmental issues and ethical ones as well. There's a reason the big meat corporations do everything possible to hide all sights and reports of how they run farms, as it's really unsettling. I'm not a treehugger or moralist, but I def feel something's wrong when the source of my food needs to be hidden from me at all costs due to the fears that it'll unsettle my psyche when i learn about chickens that are grown in the dark their whole lives in a <12 inch pen etc.

That all said, I still lapse into meat eating every week - my young kid hates my vegan food!

Sorry...just skipped it because it was so ridiculous. Do you really think we would just gas every animal overnight because the world went vegan?

It would obviously be a phase-out. Much like draft horses didn't over-run planet earth when we made the switch to cars.

Currently we artificially inseminate and forcefully breed animals to keep up with demand. As demand falls, so will the requirement to force breed the animals. That's not rocket science, it's supply and demand. https://www.sciencedirect.com/...ii/S0048969715303697

As for the your comment on India being a polluted nation, per capita they are actually relatively low, https://data.worldbank.org/...cator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC, https://www.carbonbrief.org/...rew-strongly-in-2017 , so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

And who says people that don't eat meat for environmental reasons don't choose to drive less or do other things to cut down on greenhouse gasses? Why is it an "either/or" proposition to you?

So much confirmation bias in your statements. Let's out right deny the pollution in India. Your EPA study show 2/3 pollution caused by fossi fuels. But hey let's focus on converting people to the religion of veganism. I like how people say they are "plant based" but easily have some religious vegan rhetoric to respond with.

Leaving aside the fact that back then, the human population was significantly smaller, and that smaller population wasn't burning fossil fuels at the rate we do now...

The cattle population is artificially high only because of the demand for meat and dairy. If we weren't using them for food, the population would only be a tiny fraction of what it is today, and if dietary preferences changed that population would drop in response...

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"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"

You mean this epa study? https://www.epa.gov/...e-gas-emissions-data

Glad you at least glanced at it but I think you need a lesson in comprehension. You said 2/3 is caused by fossil fuels, which is incorrect. 2/3 (65%) is caused by Carbon Dioxide. Some of this is fossil fuels but if you drill into carbon dioxide further you'll realize that only 34% of this 65% is caused by transportation. https://www.epa.gov/...gases#carbon-dioxide

Have a look at the other part of that graph, methane, which is 25 times worse than co2 https://www.epa.gov/...nhouse-gases#methane

Again, as I said to multiple commenters, including yourself. You can do what you want, it's a free country, but it's important to not just view the information that's presented, but properly analyze it. Just based on this comment you left it's clear that you have issues comprehending these figures either willfully or through lack of education. Regardless, your anti-education attitude and unwillingness to keep an open mind to evidence based research means that this conversation has hit a road block. If you would like to have a proper debate then perhaps this isn't the platform since you're unwilling to provide any logical or sourced counter points.

edit: Since I didn't specifically address the "india" issue. https://data.worldbank.org/...&name_desc=false

If the U.S dropped co2 emmissions to the equivelant to india it would mean a reduction of co2 emissions from 16.5 kt to 0.68 kt.

But I'm still not sure why you said, "Why is India so polluted yet they dont eat cow?" when India is in fact one of the leaders in cattle livestock. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/rise-of-livestock-35670 , https://www.downtoearth.org.in/...e-of-livestock-35670 , https://www.globalmethane.org/...country.aspx?c=india , https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/...t/article9912925.ece

I don't know if it's a race for CO² but yeah i ditch a car, that i was using less than 4000 miles a year. I still share one with my wife but i do almost everything by bike. In fact the car is mainly used to go to triathlon. Also i ditched races abroad and travel that require a plane. I was planning on going to catch a slot in lanzarote but i'll keep racing in france/switzerland maybe spain. Many alternate interesting races to do, so life is good ! I can do some of them by train too. I think it's important to realize that life has so many enjoyable facet that don't require bursting the planet to pieces, and eating differently is part of it.

Point of India is, they don't eat cattle, yet methane still produced by them. Most of the pollution in India, caused by humans industrial/travel pollution. We need to off some humans before cows

This is similar to what I'm eating already with the following changes: fewer legumes, more nuts, more eggs. Otherwise very close. I haven't eaten meat since I was 7 and I got up to 230 lbs and 6'3" by college because I enjoyed weight lifting (with abs but not as lean as today). Did my first IM in 12:45with a 4:00 run at 220 lbs. As I've transitioned my focus from lifting to triathlon, I dropped my weight to 195 lbs and my IM PR to 9:45 with a 3:12 OTB run.

If you think 3000 calories is a lot, consider this: when I was maintaining 220 lbs and training for IM's, I was in the 5,500 calorie range. I don't track macros anymore, but I'd guess I consume about 4,000 now that I'm maintaining 195 lbs.

Meat is fine, especially in moderation, but certainly not needed. I think the idea that you need meat to be competitive, healthy, strong, smart, etc is just cultural. Made sense when the only two options were meat and potatoes, but no so much anymore.

I literally provided 4 sources that day why India's methane levels are so high because of livestock production. Your level of ignorance is astounding.

The fact you would rather kill humans instead of making minor changes to your lifestyle....is....interesting.

That is false. Took about 2 minutes of research to find out that's a myth. You know what rots in your gut? Plants.

Just one of many sites that debunk that claim: https://www.bowelcancerfoundation.org.nz/...at-rot-in-your-colon

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I mean, what do you consider "rot" in your gut.

All food will ferment in your gut with bacteria breaking it down and producing acids.

Foods high in plant fiber will produce short chain fatty acids like butyrate, propionate and acetate which help in healing your intestinal lining. That is fact, you can't deny that.

Meat will produce putrescine and cadaverine which are designed to break down meat and cause inflammation. That's also a fact.

Here are some actually scientific studies instead of position papers or blogs.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC3070119/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC2728689/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC5385025/

Are you sure it isn't flatulence from all the vegans there?

So, to sum up then, you used the term putrefaction (that's the correct spelling) purely as a scare tactic to imply that meat was literally rotting in your gut, whereas plants were not. Also, I'll note that the 3 articles you linked appear to be all about butyrate, and don't support your position about putrefying meat in the gut (I will admit to skimming the articles, but couldn't find any mention of putrescine or cadaverine in them). Oh, cool thing I learned while doing a bit of research on this...assuming you're a dude...you make cadaverine. It's in your semen.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

The third article touches on meat and microbiome but briefly. I think meat, putrefication and its effect on the microbiome is infantile research, like most microbiome research, and it's a tertiary issue when compared to cholesterol, saturated fat and carcinogenic compounds but it's still an issue.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22121108

https://www.frontiersin.org/...micb.2017.02166/full

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/...ll/10.1111/apt.13456

I also don't really trust any studies pre-2006 regarding the microbiome since they're just analyzing metabolites and not the actual bacteria species...since the lab techniques to do such research didn't exist until then. Newer studies can specifically look at not just the metabolites but the actual bacteria makeup of the colon which is a lot more interesting, like this one which shows you can actually reverse the genetic phenotype of ulcerative colitis by changing the microbiome:

https://www.nature.com/...s/s41467-018-07859-7

Best thing I’ve read about diet in a long time! Thank you!

Probably a good idea if we all eat less meat in this country, and on the animal extinction thing, well anyone see how most of these meat animals are treated? I mean, it is not as if they are living the life of Riley, and then one day just dont wake up. Probably one of the bigger factors in me not eating as much, seeing those videos of how the cows are actually treated, and then killed, well it is enough to lose ones appetite.

Now of course there are exceptions, so dont come and tell me about them, I live next door to one of them. But even the so called free range cattle is kind of a misnomer. Free to range, but among a million others in a very small range..And what was it about free range chickens, they had to have an open window and could see outside??

Not to mention - going vegan/plant-based might just turn you into one heck of an athlete: Carl Lewis, Serena Williams, Dave Scott (vegan or vegetarian while winning Kona 6 times), Scott Jurek, strongest man in the world Patrick Baboumian, and Matt Russell. Forgot to mention the guy who broke the record at Kona last year - He's vegetarian (https://www.cnn.com/...-spt-intl/index.html)

and if you want to hang with Beyonce, don't show up to her place with hacked up dead animals - she vegan too :) :) :)

Dave Scott (vegan or vegetarian while winning Kona 6 times)//

I cant comment on the others you posted up, didn't know them personally. But Dave Scott was never really a vegetarian, he ate fish, and I believe some chicken. And to listen to him now, I think he mostly only eats meat, fat, the keto diet. Says it was a mistake the way he ate as an athlete in his youth, so there is that to add to all of this. Said he would have gone even faster had he known what he knows now...

hahaha - So I guess his 6 wins were a mistake too??

hahaha - So I guess his 6 wins were a mistake too??//

No, not a mistake, just harder than they should have been, and slower!!! (-;


And on the flip side, Mark Allen used to eat a lot of meat back then, so guess he was performing to potential... I haven't talked to Mark recently, but interesting to see what his diet has evolved into, maybe Dave and he just flipped 180's and exchanged!!!

well gee, let me google some sources that have no mention of cow methane as pollution source but rather human based burnings:

https://www.vox.com/...els-air-delhi-health

http://www.urbanemissions.info/...olluting-delhis-air/

https://www.hindustantimes.com/...OzEZxxvdcatDD3N.html


now i stand on my soap box and call you an uneducated biased imbecile etc let-me-get-some-big-words-from-thesaurus-to-chalk-up-my-psuedo-intellect-like-you

This guy you mention, is not on the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/...ld%27s_Strongest_Man

also the list you provided, athletes mentioned have been out done by omnivores

You're confusing pollutants with greenhouse gasses. They don't equate. Close though.

One egg a week???

I eat 10-12 a week.

So, no, this diet is not for me :).

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Thank goodness our OG ancestors didn't share your opinion / life-view. Otherwise, we'd still be swinging from trees.

It's a fact that the consumption of meat led to increased brain-size which put humans on the top step of the podium in the Evolution Games. (Read "Born to Run..." for the science)

Additionally, since this is ST and performance / endurance are pretty central to most of our lives, watch "Eat. Race. Win". Team Orica ate A LOT of red meat during the 2017 tour (and put Yates in White).

You can say 'stop the planet, I want to get off' but save your moralizing for the Lavender room.

Just cutting on the red meat make a huge difference for greenhouse gases so if you think meat is super important for your performance and your performance is more important than anything else then go on eat meat. Just not red meat. Also I bet orica ate almost no red meat because for performance it is really not that interesting. Chicken is good. Eat chicken it's also 5 time less impacting than cow. But really there were enough top vegan athlete to think one can perform in endurance sport with a plant based well thought alimentation. Sure they get beaten at some point. Even Schumacher was defeated in the end .

I think the people that want to be vegan/vegetarian should do so and all the best to them.

Then there will be more meat for the rest of us.

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You know I like meat, I just think it s more important to live sustainably or what is the point to have children ? What will be our legacy ? By ignoring the fact we are compromising the future for everyone not just us.

No, it just means he won in spite of his diet (at the time), not because of it.

The truly gifted genetic elites can get away with doing lots of things in a sub-optimal way and still succeed. It doesn't mean that everything they do should be applied to us mere mortals.

Serena has stated that being a vegan didn't work for her after she had a child.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

just do like me, eat insects. the solution to all problems
you should try insect burgers

Unless you're growing everything yourself, you're not really living sustainably.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Some interesting stuff regarding boxing and nutrition :
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/18/vegan-boxers-diet-bryant-jennings?CMP=fb_gu
A coach that says meat is great for the athlete state that the problem with a vegan is that he "drag carbohydrate with protein" because most plant rich in protein bring carbohydrates. But for the triathlete i don't see the problem, we need the carbs anyway so why bother ? Also most of the time they have a very low IG so it's all benefit. If you plan your meal with the correct amount of protein and other nutrients, i don't see any downside.
Personaly i'm not vegan just "flexitarian", just trying to eat less meat and no red meat. I started about 2 years ago and had my best triathlon season in 6 really active year in the sport by a long shot. I'm certainly not attributing it exclusively or even at all to nutrition but i least i can say it did not hurt my performance.

About sustainablity you're thinking in absolute. I think just trying to be less of a burden for future generations is already a good start.

another problem is people like to particularly target red meat of cattle. lets say 1 cow feeds 100 people, for its 1000lb size. you get ride of the beef, and substitute 1000lb lamb to feed 100 people. the. you have supposedly doubled methane emissions then.

https://static.ewg.org/...n_house_proteins.jpg

How about something 'healthy' like salmon? Still high on the emissions list there. The real target here should be big agriculture methods. Not a particular animal, because junk crops like rape seed, soy, palm wreak havoc on the environment too.

I don't know for lamb but there are studies to compare different meat by 100gr and red meat really fare bad. 100gr is above 20kg co2 equivalent when chicken is around 4 and blue fish around 3. So yes red is worse even if a cow feed a lot of people.
Salmon is certainly not a good solution because human growth salmon destroy ecosystem and wild ones can't be overfished. But there are other fishstock that are healthy if you are into fish. Some blue fish remain healthily abundant.
Also it is obviously much more efficient to eat plant than to eat meat that ate plant. You lose at least a factor 10 in the conversion. Definitely everything is not equal. And we don't have to "disappear". Sure there was bisons before and there is room for cows and humans. We should just show some restraint in our consumption.

My problems with this diet:

1. Beans have a high % of carbs w/ the protein
2. Most non-meat sources of protein are incomplete proteins
3. The best non-meat protein sources are very high in calories (seeds)
4. Fish - most sources say you pretty much not eat more than one piece a month... Or year (swordfish) because of Mercury.

I eat mostly veggies... Tons of veggies and eggs, but I love my meat & will not be giving it up anytime soon. However, I do love ground turkey as a substitute for beef.

Eat lots of red meat for many years, have a colonoscopy and then you'll understand.

Denise Minger has a really good (and old) critique of 'The China Study'. I don't know that the entirety of the study shows what we think it shows.

https://deniseminger.com/the-china-study/

"Food" for thought.

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Brandon Marsh - Website | @BrandonMarshTX | RokaSports | 1stEndurance | ATC Bikeshop |

Two questions.
1. What's a false lie? Is that the truth?
2. What species are you referring to being eradicated? I seem to have missed where this is mentioned or implied.

Extremely common but childish response.
Anyone with information or even just a discussion, that doesn't sit well with your preferences is labelled as a pusher trying to interfere with your life and dismissed by pretending there's an equivalence between your choice and theirs.
That argument doesn't hold water.

I agree with you on the " The real target here should be big agriculture methods" and I'm glad you see it as an issue. You must also concede that since 95% of livestock is farmed in only 5% of farms that it's a major issue since these CAFOS require immense amounts of soy, corn and wheat to feed animals and because of their close proximity also require heavy doses of antibiotics (80% of antibiotics in the world are used in animal agriculture both for disease prevention and to increase animal growth)

So let's analyze the chain here on why there are "big agriculture methods". Meat intake has grown massively over the last 70-80 years which means we've created these CAFOS and factory farming methods which concentrate feeding and animal production. https://www.theguardian.com/...evastate-environment , http://science.sciencemag.org/...nt/361/6399/eaam5324

Because of that, (and also because of farm subsidies) production of soy is now going mostly to animal feed. Because animal feed is so such a predominant crop we destroy rainforests (which also has a negative effect on greenhouse gasses) so we can grow more.

So if we address the conditions of the animals and their environmental impact and give each animal enough space to be grass fed, impregnate naturally and provide enough space for disease prevention, it would only then hold true that the price for meat would rise and it would therefore be a prohibitive factor for consumption. When this happens the demand for soy/wheat/corn crops as animal feed would also drop and we can instead grow things like other beans and lentils to compensate as well as eliminate the use of chemical fertilizers (that's another ball game) and implement crop rotations which would aid in sustainability.

So, to address the "big agriculture methods", the first step is addressing meat consumption. And the first step in addressing meat consumption starts in your home. Corporations only have these practices in place because of the demands for their product and if demand falls, suddenly these practices are no longer profitable because the economy of scale just isn't there.

If you're going to eat meat, go find your local farmer, talk to him, build a relationship, pay him market value, find out what feed the animal eats. When I made an effort 3 years ago to eat more sustainably talking to farmers was something I really had joy in. Eventually I didn't see a need to keep consuming their meat products, but I still buy from them for their root vegetables because it makes a lot more sense than buying them from California or Florida.

As true as that often is, are you going to claim that people on this thread are not trying to push people into veganism?

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The point is, ladies and gentleman, that speed, for lack of a better word, is good. Speed is right, Speed works. Speed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

No, I'm saying that's missing the point. Whether or not there are proponents of a belief/idea/action pushing you to adopt it does not change the validity or otherwise of said belief/idea/action.
It's not a valid argument to say you do your thing and leave me alone to do mine when one or other has a significant effect on others. These are subjects that effect everyone, so to suggest everyone should mind their own business is ridiculous and comes across as ignorant and utterly selfish.

Sure we are trying to push people on some form of more sustainable eating, we're just worried for our common future and the future of our children. If we care about what others are eating or doing it's because there is only one planet and it is shared !
We can get a much smaller footprint through veganism, vegetarianism or flexitarianism, just less (much less) red meat is already a dramatic improvement. What is very strange for a non anglo-saxon reading some people there is how clear cut are all opinions. You're either a pure vegan (insect burger at worse !) or a big cattle eater, at least through the lens of some posters.
If we want to share an enjoyable planet with future generations we have to make more sustainable choices which does not necessarily mean living in full autonomy eating only beans.
We should just look at the big picture. Whats is producing 80% of our greenhouse emissions ? Can we live a fine life while replacing those thing/product/activities with enjoyable alternatives ?
It's a triathlon forum so performance should be addressed. I would certainly not sacrifice the planet for my amateur triathlon performance but having, read, studied, and experimented i don't think you really have to make any compromise on performance regarding eating.
All variety of protein can be covered by plant no problem, just mix cereal and bean and you're not that far from great. Also chicken and egg really are pretty efficient from a climate perspective. Some supplement can be good. There are so many solutions !
If one is very cautious a blood test is always a good idea, vegan or not to check if any supplement or change in a diet is needed.