(March 3, 2014 at 7:13 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Now, let's take dairy. How many cows kill per person of milk? Not even 1, I'd wager. There are fewer than 10 million milk cows in the US, and surely almost 100% of people drink milk. But even if we say only 50% drink milk, that's still 150 million milk-drinkers. Given a lifespan of just ONE year, that's still 1/15 of a single cow directly destroyed per person drinking milk.

Your maths is off. Every dairy cow has to produce offspring each year, and that offspring is either raised for Veal or for Beef or as a bull or as a dairy cow (the latter two will end up as mince). The average dairy cow is used for milk production for a total of 5-6 years.

0.5% of yanks are vegan. But of more importance, some 75% of adults worldwide are lactose intolerant. According to Wikipedia, 72.4% of Americans are Caucasian. But what surprised me is the fact that Whites in America are actually more intolerant than whites in Australia - and in fact more intolerant than Australians of all demographics combined!

Lactose intolerance is actually a deceptive term since its the default condition for humans and thus normal. What is actually abnormal is Lactose tolerance! So while I always thought that lactose intolerance was a relatively rare thing, seeing as I'm an Australian and only 1/20 are intolerant, overseas this isn't the case.

And here we go:



So 82% of Alaskans are intolerant, and for the lower states, 74% of Blacks, 53% of Hispanics, 87% of Indians and 13% of Whites. Guess the white race aint so pure after all!

So now we can calculate the numbers (from here).

Population of USA: 308.7 million.

0.5% (approx) are vegan so:

307,201,810 non-vegan population.

Alaska, population 731,449 total / 727,792 non-vegan. 82% intolerant = 131,002 that can eat dairy.

Mainland: 308,014,089 total population (approx). -0.5% vegan = 306,474,019.

White: 223,553,265
African American: 38,929,319
Native Americans or Alaska Native: 2,200,799
OTHER: 43,330,706

I'm going to assume that Indian in the graphic means Native American and not Indian, based on the fact that India's percentage is 30-70%.

So here are those that are actually lactose tolerant and are not vegan:

White: 193,518,881
African American: 10,071,015
Native Americans or Alaska Native (mainland): 284,673
OTHER (assumed 75% intolerant): 10,778,513
Alaska: 131,002

Total: 214,499,411 Lactose Tolerant Non-Vegan. About 69.5% of the population (FYI this means the map is coloured wrong!!).

We will assume that 98% of this group choose to eat dairy.

210,209,422 people.

Number of dairy cows in USA: 9,198,000. Of those, 1,672,363 are in their final year of milk production. Thus only those deaths can be counted. That's 125 people per dairy cow death, thus drinking milk/eating dairy contributes to 1/125th of a cow's death annually!

Ordinarily I'd then calculate the numbers for Australia, but I can't be bothered not without knowing exactly how much of our milk ends up overseas (and it's well more than half), here's a .

Check out this link:

http://www.perfecthumandiet.us/

While I strongly agree with the principles of a vegetarian diet, we need meat, specifically B12 and Creatine, and balanced amino acids like in egg whites, so long as you can make a factory to supply the nutrition to 600M to 6B souls, that is cool, otherwise we need to trim our population even more.

(March 9, 2014 at 5:38 am)rsb Wrote: While I strongly agree with the principles of a vegetarian diet

Which principles are those?

And we've already covered B12 to death.

The 'principles' of a vegan/ vegetarian diet are nothing more than religious dogma.

What "principles"? There are many reasons people choose not to eat animals.

As for "needing" meat... We obviously don't need meat, or vegetarians would all die prematurely. I've been veggie almost all my life, I don't think I've died or been ill from not eating meat yet, funnily enough.
Humans are omnivores, we can survive just fine with or without meat in our diets. Eat what the fuck you want.

(March 9, 2014 at 9:53 am)NoraBrimstone Wrote: Humans are omnivores, we can survive just fine with or without meat in our diets. Eat what the fuck you want.

No, we've already been over this, we do actually need meat, and without any meat products (no meat, dairy, fish or eggs) it becomes very difficult to get all of your nutritional requirements without taking dietary supplements and furthermore weight loss dieting on such a vegan diet is a really bad idea, again without taking supplements.

---

(March 9, 2014 at 8:55 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: The 'principles' of a vegan/ vegetarian diet are nothing more than religious dogma.

Not for everyone, I've known a couple of people who were vegetarian for health reasons. One was living overseas and didn't trust the local meat and I don't blame him. I've known a couple of people who were vegetarian for economic reasons.

(March 9, 2014 at 9:53 am)NoraBrimstone Wrote: What "principles"? There are many reasons people choose not to eat animals.

As for "needing" meat... We obviously don't need meat, or vegetarians would all die prematurely. I've been veggie almost all my life, I don't think I've died or been ill from not eating meat yet, funnily enough.
Humans are omnivores, we can survive just fine with or without meat in our diets. Eat what the fuck you want.

Long term vegetarians do not do well.

Frankly you could say that I am 70% vegetarian. That is to say that my diet consists of 70% vegetable matter, and the other 30% is taken up with dairy, meat, and eggs.

We do "need" heme-Iron, I personally am unable to process metallic/ vegetative iron. It frankly makes me violently ill and one step away from hospital. I do not think that I am unique to this situation.

So....

Eat what your body demands you to eat. BUT look at what you are eating and have a care as to WHERE this food is coming from.

Anything other than the above is religious dogma. No vegetarian has 'saved' any animal, nor have they stopped any 'live animal trade' (it is currently expanding here in Oz to the SE Asian markets) so really it is no better than say xtianity as a personal 'idealism' BUT IF your body seems to do well on such a diet...GO FOR IT!

(March 9, 2014 at 10:07 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: Long term vegetarians do not do well.

What do you mean by "Long term"? I last ate meat in December 1991 and I'm doing well. Paul McCartney has been veggie since 1972 and he's doing pretty well for an old man. In fact, on average, vegetarians live 7 years longer than non-vegetarians.

If you want to eat meat, eat meat. There's nothing wrong with that. Just don't pretend there's something wrong with people who choose to eat differently to you when there isn't, because it makes you look a bit like a twat.

(March 9, 2014 at 5:14 am)Aractus Wrote:

(March 3, 2014 at 7:13 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Now, let's take dairy. How many cows kill per person of milk? Not even 1, I'd wager. There are fewer than 10 million milk cows in the US, and surely almost 100% of people drink milk. But even if we say only 50% drink milk, that's still 150 million milk-drinkers. Given a lifespan of just ONE year, that's still 1/15 of a single cow directly destroyed per person drinking milk.

Your maths is off.

Yes, that's right. I was trying to look for the most animal-killy skew on it, to show that 500-1000 is an unreasonably high figure no matter how generous you are with the calculations.

However, including milk-calves in the kill count only makes sense if those calves aren't part of the normal meat-consumption circle: i.e. if there were no cows being used for milk, would there be fewer calves brought into the world? I doubt it-- we don't drink pig milk, but reproduction is limited only by demand.

Great job on your post, though. Graphs and numbers = win.

---

(March 9, 2014 at 10:07 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: We do "need" heme-Iron, I personally am unable to process metallic/ vegetative iron. It frankly makes me violently ill and one step away from hospital.

You are allergic to raisins, spinach and broccoli? That's harsh! Surely, you have a medical condition, since 100% of people I've ever met can eat all of those foods without getting sick-- did your physician tell you what your horrible condition is called?

OR you are introducing anecdotal evidence into a moral argument, because while you want to maintain the argument that meat-eating is a dietary necessity, the actual numbers on the health of vegetarians are outstanding.

Quote:Anything other than the above is religious dogma. No vegetarian has 'saved' any animal, nor have they stopped any 'live animal trade' (it is currently expanding here in Oz to the SE Asian markets) so really it is no better than say xtianity as a personal 'idealism'

This really is enrico-level reasoning. It's like saying that no moral person has 'saved' any girl from rape, because rape levels are increasing somewhere. Should I shout at you for being a religious idealist because you don't want to contribute directly to the number of girls being raped?

Obviously not. No matter what anyone else does, and whether the number of people engaging in an activity that harms others goes up or down, each individual's actions represent a vote on how the species behaves as a whole. And in the end, this is what morality really is-- each person's vote on how people should behave.

(March 9, 2014 at 6:31 pm)bennyboy Wrote: However, including milk-calves in the kill count only makes sense if those calves aren't part of the normal meat-consumption circle: i.e. if there were no cows being used for milk, would there be fewer calves brought into the world? I doubt it-- we don't drink pig milk, but reproduction is limited only by demand.

That's why I didn't count them, I mentioned them only in passing because the way hardcore vegans count animal deaths is that that will count all calves, meaning they're not counting the death of the animal twice. Same with leather and fur. Same with mince. So let's take mince into account.

The average cow in the USA over its life produces:

48,936 litres of milk
294 kg of mince
Plus of course leather

The average hamburger beef patty, as on a Big Mac, is 45g (and a big mac has two). So we'll say the average serving size for mince is 125g. Now here's the thing, most of us eat other meats much more than mince - steaks, chicken, fish, pork, etc. So I'm going to estimate that the average meat-eating person would only have one serving of mince per week, and this would total 6.76 kg per year. So 294kg of mince is enough meat to feed 45 people per year.

We know already from my previous calculations that the 48,936 litres of milk is enough for 125 people for a year - 1.07 litres per person per day (that sounds about right).

Thus, if you're a vegetarian and you eat dairy then you play a 1 in 170 part. So if you managed to live for 170 years your vegetarian diet would have eventually cost the life of one single dairy cow.

The reason why I'm not considering leather is that it's too difficult to calculate, leather is not consumed it's a durable item and a leather jacket or a leather chair could last you many decades, leather shoes and boots also last for a number of years, so it's a very efficient product that lasts way longer than a single year.

Quote:Great job on your post, though. Graphs and numbers = win.

Thanks!