I heard something to do with Nitrogen and …cow farts(?) I am really unsure of this and would like to learn more.

Answer -

4 Parts

  • Ethical reason for consuming animals
  • Methane produced by cows are a harmful greenhouse gas which is contributing to our current climate crisis
  • Health Reasons - there is convincing evidence that processed meats cause cancer
  • it takes a lot more calories of plant food to produce the calories we would consume from the meat.

Details about the answers are in the comments

  • Tywèle [she|her]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    1·
    1 year ago

    76% of soybeans world wide are used as animal feed as per your own source. I’m not sure what you are trying to argue with your original comment to me?

        • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          both of them are pretty light reads.

          if you prefer to live in ignorance I am not going to stop you.

        • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Although some of the crop is used directly, more than 80 percent of the crop is processed into soybean meal and oil through crushing.

          • Tywèle [she|her]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            1·
            1 year ago

            Thank you for quoting the relevant part.

            But I think you are interpreting this wrong. This doesn’t say that 80% of soybeans are pressed into oil at all. It says that 80% are processed into soybean meal (which gets fed to animals) and oil (which are mostly for human consumption). And with the data from ourworldindata it means that around 80%-13.2%=66.8% (very roughly) of soybeans are processed into soybean meals which is also very similar to the data ourworldindata provides:

            The majority (77%) of the world’s soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. 7% is fed directly to animals as soybeans, but the remainder is first processed into soybean ‘cake’.{ref}Soybean cake (sometimes referred to as soybean meal) is a high-protein feed made from the pressurisation, heat-treatment and extraction processing of soybeans. The oil is extracted from the soybeans to leave a protein-rich product.

            Emphasize mine.

            • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              soybean meal is the byproduct of pressing soybeans for oil. you can’t press soybeans for oil without getting the byproduct.

            • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              oh I see where you made a mistake. you didn’t account for the 4% at the bottom of the chart. and you don’t seem to understand that soy meal is the by-product of pressing soybeans for oil. That’s soybean is only about 20% oil. In order for 17% of all end uses of soybeans to be oil about 85% of all soybeans must be pressed for oil The byproduct of that process produces soy meal that soy meal makes up about 69% of the weight of the entire soybean crop. that by-product is what is fed to animals.

              • Tywèle [she|her]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                0·
                1 year ago

                How do you come to this conclusion? The data on ourworldindata is showing “the allocation of global soy production to its end uses by weight”. Which means the “Oil (13.2%)” is the percentage of the total weight of the global soy production that is processed into oil.

                you didn’t account for the 4% at the bottom of the chart.

                Of what chart?

                • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  the ourworldindata chart has another 4% of oil at the bottom. and i couldn’t have laid the math out any more clearly, so if you want to believe something that’s not true, go for it.

                  • Tywèle [she|her]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                    1·
                    1 year ago

                    I have seen your math but your math doesn’t make any sense since you are doing your math on the wrong assumptions. You assume that the ourworldindata chart shows that at the end 17% of the weight of the global soy productions ends up as oil but that’s not what this chart is showing.

                    What it’s actually showing is that for example if we produced 100kg of soy globally 13.2kg of of that produced soy is used to make oil. Which means that the actual weight of the oil is 2.64kg in this example (assuming it is correct that soybeans are 20% oil, and we extract it perfectly)

                    the ourworldindata chart has another 4% of oil at the bottom.

                    Are you talking about the Industry percentage? That’s not oil. But even so your math is still wrong as I’ve demonstrated in my example above.