• usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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    1 year ago

    The % that’s edible is not as relevant as the fact that it still takes much more human-edible feed

    1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

    Synthetic fertilizer usage is greatly reduced by eating plants directly even compared to the best-case use of animal manure

    Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528

    • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      The % that’s edible is not as relevant as the fact that it still takes much more human-edible feed

      Not really. Definitely not if you consider the nutritional quality of the meat. And that’s beef, the worst example. (Feed to meat conversion from 6x to 25x, the higher number generally for free-range). Chickens are only x2 in ideal situations (closer to 5x when free-range since their calorie intake is not as well-managed). And from a health viewpoint, 100kcal of chicken is a better-balanced calorie than 200kcal of feed

      But that is before accounting for the fact that about 165 of those feed kcals are inedible, meaning you’re trading around 35 edible kcals of corn for 100 edible kcals of chicken. Would you agree from a purely health and efficiency point of view (leaving out ethics), that 35 edible calories of a “non-nutritional grain” for 100 edible calories of a protein superfood is a pretty fair trade?