this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2026
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beans, lentils, potatoes, rice, legumes ...
More protein, more health, more calories, lower price than meat
You're probably thinking about watery out of season vegetables like tomatoes and broccoli
it's how poor countries survive. Rich countries are fat and have cardiovascular problems
Poor countries eat meat. What you think poor countries are all eating vegetables all the time. They have fricken huge markets where they buy stuff daily. I believe India has the largest amounts of vegetarians. And that is 20% to 39% that is a lot of people but not the whole country.
Poor countries survive on rice and grains for most of their calories. Billions of people.
Didn't mean to imply that they are vegetarians.
Didn't know there was discussion about vegetarians.
let's do meal prep for a family of 6.
vegan meal:
$.48 - 1 cup rice - 205 calories
$1.14 - 3 large carrots - 90 calories
$.32 - 1/2 cup peas - 58 calories
$.48 - 1/2 cup lentils - 130 calories
food volume: 3 cups
total calories: 483
volume per serving: 1/2 cup
calories per serving: 80.5
total cost: $2.42
average meal:
$2.74 - 1 cup of Hamburger Helper - 140 calories
$7.23 - 1 pound of beef - 1152 calories
$.50 - 3 2/3 cup of milk - 390 calories
food volume: 3 cups
total calories: 1682
volume per serving: 1/2 cup
calories per serving: 280
total cost: $10.47
healthy mealtime caloric intake should be between 300-500 calories. both meals are still under the recommended calories, but only one of them dangerously so.
it would take 3 times the vegan meals volume in order to come close to what the average meal has. that's a whopping 1 1/2 cups of food per serving and still falls short of the 300 calorie minimum.
it's far easier to meet caloric intake using meat than with vegan diets.
a vegan meal may be cheaper and more nutritional, but Americans are working two or more jobs. meal prep is difficult when you're mentally and physically drained. when you're tired, broken, depressed, the last thing you want is food that doesn't make you feel good, satisfied, or comforted.
I think vegans often overlook the barriers to entry into a strictly vegan diet and are blinded by their own hubris. if this isn't true, then the vegan struggle to convert nonbelievers wouldn't be so difficult, would it?
Nice shifting of the goal post! At first it's too expensive, now it doesn't have the right density and takes too much time to prepare?
Apart from that, you already get most of your nutrition from plants: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/calorie-supply-by-food-group
This is not because people don't eat as much meat, but rather because meat is really inefficient in providing energy when it comes down to farm area.
Veganism might not solve all our problems, but it's an easy way of getting rid of a lot of environmental problems. Apart from the direct impacts, we could start regrowing the amazon forest instead of cutting it down even further https://ourworldindata.org/what-has-driven-deforestation-in-the-21st-century
I do agree, that it's - depending on where you live, the USA is really fucked up - not always easy to switch to being vegan, but it's definitely a societal problem, not a technical one.
the goalposts never moved. the volume it would take to equal the same caloric intake would be more expensive and impossible to consume.
ever tried to eat a whole cup of rice in one sitting? you'll throw up. if you're fortunate enough to eat three meals a day you'll be eating 3 cups of rice daily, and that's per person.
in a six person family that's 3 pounds of rice per meal! at $1.77 per 2 pound bag of rice. in a month the 6 person family would consume 90 pounds at $159 in rice alone. include all the other ingredients and it's costly.
Literally multiply your vegan recipe by four and suddenly you have more calories per serving than your meat recipe, and it's still fucking cheaper.
God, you're bad at math.
You're dumb everywhere aren't you
God damn, you're so butthurt about losing an argument in a different thread where you spent days pouting and whining about it without ever saying a single goddamn thing of substance, that you decided to track me down in a different thread to be butthurt and pout and whine again?
No, my comment above was correct. If you disagree, then show me where and why and I will show you why you're wrong again so we can spend the next three days babying you while you pout and whine about how someone had the audacity to disagree with you when you were wrong.
Lol you're not that important dumbass
Says someone who is going out of their way to try to neg and condescend me even though it's not working. You must be really torn up instead about how I refused to feed your inflated ego.
I feel sorry for anyone who lives in your commune, because you're probably a tyrant.
I'm not going out of my way at all, you're just stupid everywhere
You're a sad, stupid little troll and everyone observing knows it.
Point to where my math is wrong. You can't, because it wasn't. Now exit my burger hole.
I don't need to refer to your elementary school math skills to impugn your intelligence, the fact that you completely failed to address the entire second half of their comment is more than enough to justify calling you a dumbass
The rest of their comment doesn't matter because it's based on bad math.
1½ cups is not an absurdly large serving. And cooking vegetables is easier than cooking meat. It's less finicky, and usually doesn't need to reach a specific temperature. And you can cook it in large batches that last longer than meat does, simplifying meal prep by only doing it on the weekends.
Also, you're the first anti-vegan tankie I've ever met. Congratulations. I wonder what all your tankie friends will think when they find out you're defending carnists... 🤔
The rest of their comment doesn't contain any math dumbass
I'm not anti-vegan, I'm anti-moron. The vegans I know in real life aren't half as stupid as the ones on the Internet. Tbh I assume most of y'all are paid ag industry trolls deliberately misrepresenting veganism as a smear campaign.
I never said it contains math, I said it's based on bad math. Which it is. You're really not arguing in good faith, but I already knew you wouldn't.
And I already addressed the things you quoted, so who's ignoring second-halves of comments now?
You're jumping through a lot of hoops to try to defend a carnist argument which is wrong on a fundamental level.
Dude, look yourself in the mirror. Those "vegans on the internet" are mostly all tankie trolls just like you.
And I'm not even vegan. I'm just pointing out the flaws in GreenKnight's argument, because it's a flawed argument.
Oh but I am vegetarian, so I do know how easy it is to replace meat with veggies in ones diet, from a financial and logistical point of view. The hardest part is the emotional hurdle, the attachment to eating meat, the cravings. Which is no different from any other addiction.
If the argument was about those I would say "Yes, it's difficult to make the switch and I encourage people to do it slowly by gradually reducing their meat intake until they no longer miss it."
But that's not what the argument was about. They were trying to say it's cheaper and easier to buy meat at the store and cook it than it is to do with vegetables. Which is fundamentally incorrect.
Wordy+stupid+wrong
I tried to have an inteligent debate. But you desire to live in ignorance. Sad.
You really do have zero intelligent things to say, don't you...
You're bad at this
You continue to describe yourself. It's pathetic.
volume and meal prep is the problem now?
are you eating the pound of beef raw?
if you can't understand the problem after I literally spoonfed you, I can't help you.