Cory Booker: ‘This Planet Simply Can’t Sustain’ People Eating Meat
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
He’s got a beef with meat.
Via Free Beacon:
Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) said the planet “can’t sustain” people eating meat, as the 2020 hopeful aims to become the first vegan president.
Booker told the vegan magazine VegNews earlier this month that he became vegan after coming to the realization that eating eggs “didn’t align with my spirit.”
While claiming he does not want to lecture Americans on their diets, Booker says Americans need to be nudged into fake cheese because the planet cannot sustain the “environmental impact” of the food industry.
“You see the planet earth moving towards what is the Standard American Diet,” Booker said. “We’ve seen this massive increase in consumption of meat produced by the industrial animal agriculture industry.”
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He just lost my vote
He never had mine to begin with.
I bet Spartacus wasn't anti-meat.
Cory has obviously not learned that "planet earth" has embraced the Mediterranean "diet", which advocates lean meats, fish, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts.
I've been thinking about trying that. I've been doing this keto thing along with fasting. It works, but man, do I miss bread and fruit.
IMO, the problem with diets that make you give up certain foods aren't geared toward a long-lasting lifestyle change. You'll lose weight, but if you go off the diet restrictions, you'll gain back the weight you lost.
That's why I put diet in quotes about Mediterranean style eating. You can have everything in moderation, lose weight, and keep it off. No special foods, no counting calories ... and it's heart-healthy.
Very good point. Really, if you avoid processed foods, empty carbs, and unhealthy fats, exactly as you said, you've made a lifestyle change that is easy to keep up. No white bread or white rice, only whole grains when you eat bread (in moderation). You do need fat - but stick to nuts and avocados, olive oil ... healthy fats. And avoid soda completely, whether diet or regular. Fruit juices are bad too due to the sugar content, and they don't have the fiber and other things that real fruit has.
I had a friend on some bastardized version of the Paleo diet who was convinced it was healthier for him to eat a pound of bacon than lima beans, because lima beans have carbs. I'm pretty sure the Paleos didn't have nitrites and didn't cure bacon (or drink tequila) .... and not all carbs are bad.
Cutting out eggs and Greek yogurt would not only make me very unhappy, it would make me unhealthier. I can understand vegetarians (although I couldn't be one), but I can't understand vegans.
I agree.
From what I understand, vegetarians' strictness varies. Some will eat products of animals as long as the animal isn't killed; others won't eat any animal products. Vegans seem to be an extreme beyond strict vegetarians.
Some people say that milk is bad from an ethical perspective; I don't know how true that is. Obviously a cow has to have given birth to give milk ...but is it really a horrible thing to artificially impregnate a cow once a year to keep her producing milk?
I've heard of lacto-ovo vegetarians who will eat dairy and eggs, but no other animal products.
Eggs - easy to get eggs from free range chickens.
How many vegetarians wear shoes or coats with leather in them?
Good comment.
I knew a vegan who fit that description. Even his coats and jackets were plastic. He wouldn't wear wool, because sheep were "hurt" when they were sheared.
I can see that it might frighten the sheep, but I wouldn't consider it hurting the sheep!
From an environmentally ethical context, I'd actually be far more concerned about the impact of plastics on the planet than whether a sheep was frightened while being sheared.
Running on veganism and Green New Deal ... yeah, Spartacus ... that's the ticket!
Well, Corey Booker has demonstrated that politicians and vegans aren't the brightest people on the planet. Crap like this is why people think climate change is a hoax.
Raising animals for food has a Net Zero carbon footprint. The animals are not being fed fossil fuels. Whether animals consume food plants or humans consume food plants doesn't matter. The carbon cycle is still balanced.
According to Booker's logic, everyone becoming vegan would increase the human contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Booker won't be able to blame cows for the fartpocalypse.
I don’t believe you.
If we allowed cattle to roam wild in vast herds and then hunted them for food (as did cavemen) would that produce less greenhouse gas? No, cattle are cattle and greenhouse gas emissions are part of their biology. But that hunter/gatherer method of obtaining meat would mean the greenhouse gas emissions would not be the result of a human activity. In that hunter/gatherer scenario the greenhouse gas emissions would be the result of 'natural variability'.
The UN article is stating (in an obtuse manner) that increasing the population of living things that emit CO2 as part of their biology will increase atmospheric concentrations of CO2. That means atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase as population size increases, atmospheric CO2 concentration is a feedback response to biological productivity of the planet. A balanced or Net Zero carbon cycle does not prevent increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2.
Human biology also results in emissions of CO2. And the human population is seven times larger today than it was in 1880. Claiming that human emissions have increased doesn't even require taking into account consumption of fossil fuels. Human emissions have increased exponentially as the human population has increased exponentially.
A vegan diet would result in humans emitting more methane, too. That is the biology of digesting plants to extract nutrients from a cellulose matrix. Humans have the same sorts of bacteria in their guts to digest plants as do cattle. And human guts are less efficient for digesting plants, that's why humans cook plants to break down the cellulose matrix and allow for easier extraction of nutrients. Cattle can eat cellulose rich plants like grass and thrive while humans would starve on the same diet; human guts cannot digest grass as efficiently. That's why humans eat cattle. The meat adds a source of nutrients to the diet that humans cannot obtain from the plants.
Corey Booker has glommed onto climate change to prosthelytize for the vegan religion. And, as with most religions, that hasn't been based on facts or science. Humans are not biologically designed to extract nutrients from plants in an efficient manner. That's why humans consume the meat of animals who are better adapted to extracting nutrients from plants.
This is why women's farts smell worse than men's, according to a recent study. It's because women tend to eat more salads.
I seem to recall reading that when humans started eating meat, that's when our brains started growing and developing more. I can't remember if it is currently accepted theory or not, though.
Yes, I've seen that, too. But the studies suggest that human brain development is linked to increased amounts of animal fat in the diet.
Keep in mind that most of the early stone tools had sharp edges that were needed for butchering animals. I am not aware of any examples of mortar and pestles to process plants among the examples of early tool development. Even mundane items like sewing needles were used fashion animal hides into clothing. Why is the earliest art about animals?
The history of human development kinda suggests that cavemen knew more about food, nutrition, and human biology than do vegans. The obvious joke would be that the average Neanderthal was smarter than Corey Booker but that would be too unkind, wouldn't it?
Eh. not so much. Cows fart out a lot of methane, and there are a lot of them. Furthermore we don't do anything to reduce it in the atmoshpere... so on that point the vegans are actually right. Of course the only solution is a mass, worldwide slaughter of beef where we don't actually get to enjoy it.
Make fun of Cory Booker at your own risk, as there are those that might consider it as Neo-fascist swift boaters targeting Booker .. however, this should provide supporting evidence that he is an idiot ...
More seriously, I kinda hope Booker swings back to the middle a little. I don't agree with him on a lot, but he's likable when he's not being too full of himself. He could do well in a couple years if he can manage to keep from sounding like a lunatic.
Like telling people to go vegan? I am a liberal by any standards, but if he is serious about that vegan shit he can fuck off.
Yeah. Maybe this is a fundamental problem with the system. To get your party's nomination these days, you need to be as extreme and goofy as possible. He's a liberal, of course, but he doesn't really have much of a leftist wackadoodle history. He could have very broad appeal if he can avoid sounding like the guy who wants to police our dinner tables.
The problem is the primaries. These days only the most hardcore ideologues play a part. Normal people have jobs, have lives, have actual real things to do. But then you have these pricks, who apparently have money, and all the time in the world going to these rallies, participating in these primaries etc and ultimately have a large influence on the election. Because it is only these people with no lives from the start, all we get is 2 candidates that we cant stand.
whats he gonna run on? tofu in every pot?
When I am grilling my steak this weekend I'll remember who wants try to take that away
This almost read as satire.
Booker, trying to lock in that .05% of the population.
Winning strategy there.
Personally, I would be thrilled if we made huge advances in the science of cultured meat, and were able to eventually eliminate the slaughter of farm animals. We could stop breeding cows altogether.
Corey Booker, you might as well retire now. You are a complete idiot. Small family farms cannot make a profit and cannot support the entire food industry. They just do not have the capacity. Large family farms, on the other hand, can do so. But, the vast majority of time, farm classification is based only on size not how a farm is managed. My family's farm went from a partnership between my mom and dad milking only 60 head twice a day in 1979 to an LLC between my mom, dad, brother, and sister milking over 1000 head constantly in 2008. Right now, the farm is being run by my sister for the most part as my brother is laid up for at least 2 weeks and possibly up to 6 weeks due to an injury. My mom is mostly retired from the farm and my dad passed away in 2010. I was never brought into the LLC due to being in Oregon at the time they formed it.
At the time we started farming, there were more than 20 farms in a 1 mile radius from us. Now, there are about 3 farms that I know that are still active in that same 1 mile radius. Some of them are rented out to my family and the rest are slowly becoming housing developments and some of those housing developments are on land we used to rent. Over time, we acquired the sister farm to our farm and a couple other farms as well. You see, when we first started it was rented from someone else. Then, my dad purchased it, while the original owner kept the other farm (which was crop and beef), while ours was dairy.
And he just destroyed his election chances. Fuck you Corey, I am actually about to start grilling some steaks.