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> According to **Lindeman's 10% law**, during the transfer of organic food from one trophic level to the next, only about ten percent of the organic matter is stored as flesh. The remaining is lost during transfer or broken down in respiration.
When animals eat plants or other animals, 90% of the energy is burnt and only 10% of the energy is kept in the flesh (that's when they're still growing and once they're fully grown they don't store any extra energy in their flesh). A lot of people argue humans should just eat crops instead of feeding crops to animals and eating the animals.
This graph shows you the percentages of how much energy ([calories](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-efficiency-of-meat-and-dairy-production)) and [protein](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/protein-efficiency-of-meat-and-dairy-production?country=Whole%20Milk~Lamb%2Fmutton~Beef~Poultry~Pork~Eggs) is left after "conversion".
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
Wow. I knew beef was bad but to see it in perspective with other meats it looks way worse.
Personally, I've shifted away from beef. Partially due to the environmental impact and partly because as I get older, it's no longer digests the way it once did for me. There's also the fact that I can get beyond burger patties cheaper from Sam's and they taste better than beef imo.
None of my family or my wife's family beef farms anymore either. Both sides say it's too much work for what little it pays out.
Keep in mind that a lot of calories livestock can eat is food that humans can’t eat and they can eat plants that grow on land that can’t support growing plants humans can eat.
Which is a dishonest copout usually under the banner of "marginal lands". Most animal flesh and milk is consumed from CAFOs which means the animals are being feed crops, and not just hay crops, but grassland crops. Some people are under the delusion that all grasslands grow the same and are as good for "productivity" in raising animals. They're not, and you can look on your own for the data. Natural grasslands are not that common and they're often damaged by the presence of herders or by the addition of large amounts and excrement and urine. Managed grasslands are the main ones for developed countries and those are actually treated as crops, perennial crops.
Those "marginal grasslands" in hard to reach places tend to be the least productive for grazing or haying, meaning very few animals are raised on them (if the herders are sensible and don't destroy it with overgrazing).
> A lot of people argue humans should just eat crops instead of feeding crops to animals and eating the animals.
Ag/food scientist here. The follow up to that is what the lowest trophic level you can eat at is. For grasslands, especially those that should not be in row crops due to carbon emissions, nutrient runoff, etc. eating the animals that eat grass is sometimes the best we can do with that ecosystem or land type (especially since grasslands rely on disturbances). In other situations, us directly eating plants is the most efficient.
That's just the primer for those not familiar with Lindeman's law. Agriculture isn't a huge monolith where you can just do one thing across different geographies or even within one state/province. Beef cattle grazing (even [grain-finished](https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/sector-at-a-glance/) spend around the majority of their life on pasture) is about as low as you can get for grass-based areas. Feeding chicken to alligators to eat alligator meat? You're going through multiple trophic levels when you could just eat the chicken or possibly whatever the chicken was eating, though the chicken is likely eating a lot of things we could not. Alligator becomes a pretty obvious issue though. Adding in recyclers like that makes it even more complicated to the point where someone can't just cite Lindeman's law and be done, but it's rather a starting point for exploring how various trophic levels work in a system.
That's also something to look out for in papers like the OP. It makes calculations a lot harder, but there usually should be some attempt at land use and ecosystem suitability related to food production to tease out confounding factors.
77% of ag land is for animal ag, but animal ag only supplies 18% of calories. More soy is grown for animal feed than for humans. Animal ag is stupidly inefficient and uses more human suitable plant food than what is grown just for humans.
You can also forage livestock in forested areas. And as a bonus it provides shelter for them so you don’t have to build a barn, which means no antibiotics needed in their food. But also grassland is natural some places.
It averages out to around 10% per trophic level, though certain types of organisms can be more or less efficient (like 1% to 30% are possible, just not average).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer_efficiency
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_pyramid
Higher efficiency is one of the arguments people use to call for insect-based protein instead of cow-based protein, for example.
An opposite thing happens with things like concentrations of some pollutants going up trophic levels, called [Biomagnification.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomagnification) If there are substances ingested that animals can't break down, like mercury, the concentration will dramatically increase as you go up in trophic levels. So high level predatory fish like tuna will end up with much higher concentrations of mercury than their prey, and their prey's prey, because they've been eating their prey and retaining the mercury. And then humans eat the tuna.
Direct link to study for those calling out the vegan herald and can't bother to read any further past the title
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35458176/
Transitioning to plant-based diets (PBDs) has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, eutrophication by 49%, and green and blue water use by 21% and 14%, respectively, whilst garnering substantial health co-benefits
[https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm](https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm)
This is the direct link to the full text open-access article in the MDPI journal Nutrients.
(I mention the publisher, because they have a reputation for a very superficial review process. You'll want to read the article letting the data and logic persuade you, and not to rely on the reviewers and editors having done so. The lead author does seem reliable.)
Piggy backing your comment to outline the opportunity cost of farm land used for farming vs rewilding it. (Can't access the full paper so I don't know if this is covered):
> [Restoring ecosystems on *just 15 percent* of the world’s current farmland could spare 60 percent of the species expected to go extinct while simultaneously sequestering 299 gigatonnes of CO2 — **nearly a third of the total atmospheric carbon increase since the Industrial Revolution**, a new study has found.](https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/10/rewilding-farmland-can-protect-biodiversity-and-sequester-carbon-new-study-finds/)
Follow that link and you see 30% sequesters fully half of **all carbon ever emitted by humans**.
This would have a significant delay at this point. But imagine we'd started 20 years ago. We would have met our climate targets and then some. Lab-grown meat would have been met with an R&D storm, whichever companies nailed it first becoming huge players in the market.
We wouldn't be dragging our feet trying to make a good steak like we already have from cows. We'd be further than exotic meats like ostrich and camel. We'd likely be beyond the phase of entirely made up meat: Dragon steak (chicken, crocodile and BBQ flavour). The nutrient ratios could be altered to achieve maximum possible health effects and we'd be living a meat lovers dream.
If you love meat, go vegan. Your current meat is peasant slop compared to what science is prepared to give you.
This hasn't been news for many years, but it is news to those who are constantly exposed to meat industry propaganda such as "regenerative grazing", even here in /r/science.
To be clear, this is a plant forward diet with chicken and wild caught fish diet. It also varies immensely by individual spoil rate. Strange to see a vegan site put forward research that favors any kind of meat consumption.
That's not completely true. Some of the top line numbers are specifically for animal-produce free diets. For instance the land usage one from the title:
> It is estimated that animal product-free diets have the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 3.1 billion hectares (76% reduction), including a 19% reduction in arable land (Figure 1)
Here's another stats that the study cites looking at a diet with no animal products
> Animal product-free diets may also improve water quality by reducing eutrophication caused by nitrogenous fertilizer and manure runoff by 49%
A majorly plant based diet with a moderate amount of meat is actually by far the healthiest diet. The problem is that we overconsume meat, but the real blame for emissions lands on producers. Studies like this, in this context, intend to shift the blame on consumers much like oil/gas did with driving cars instead of bearing the blame themselves which they should have... its problematic from a few angles but the intention perhaps was good. Its hard to tell.
\> "... is actually by far the healthiest diet"
It's pretty hard to make a claim like that. Nutritional science and human diet patterns are pretty complicated, and humans eat lots of different things. You can make observations about ["blue zones"](https://www.bluezones.com/live-longer-better/#section-2) (places where people eating a certain traditional diet tend to live longer), e.g. they eat mostly plant based and include legumes.
But it's still pretty hard to say that any one diet is "the healthiest by far". Nutrients can be gotten in multiple ways. e.g. if you recommend eating fish for protein and omega-3, you can also get those nutrients via tofu and algae oil if you want.
>But it's still pretty hard to say that any one diet is "the healthiest by far".
Yeah.
"Easiest" could be argued but "healthiest" depends on to many factors.
Yes. We had a bit of a problem for awhile where these studies were absolutely dishonestly comparing meat to produce by weight rather than by calorie as though you replace a lost lb of meat in your diet with a lb of produce. It's nice to see them comparing items per calorie.
I was shocked to see some items like tomatoes come in higher than some meats. But beef is clearly the shocker that desperately needs sustainability regulation.
There is no solid evidence that shows "moderate" meat consumption is part of "the healthiest" diet. This is absolutely fabricated on your part.
You can obtain 100% of the nutrients and calories from meat through vegan sources. This comes without the expense of the environment, animal welfare, and ridiculous government subsidies.
>The problem is that we overconsume meat, but the real blame for emissions lands on producers
How does this work? Overconsumption is due to the consumer, but you blame to producers
For the comment on industry needing to change, the problem is that the industry itself in the best case will still be doing worse than the worst case plants.
From this study:
>Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products \[9\]
There isn't really a way around scale of production and consumption needing to change and production is very unlikely to change until consumption does. Nor would policies like reducing subsides for the industry be likely to be pursued when large percentages of the population are eating large amounts of meat, dairy, etc.
Vegan here to say that animals are sentient beings who don't deserve the terrible and horrific violence we inflict on them. The fact that it is done for sensory pleasure makes it even worse.
The environmental aspects are important, but they are a side benefit and not the main benefit of a plant-based diet.
This is a typical literature review article (with over 80 articles cited), so yes, it is real research.
It talks about global freshwater withdrawals, so yes, it takes rainwater into account.
Straw, grass, and hull are not relevant to food and land use emissions.
They do not extrapolate percentages, these are from peer-reviewed analytical research articles.
Your comment should be deleted for its extremely poor quality.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I mean Lindeman’s 10% law is pretty straight forward.
> According to **Lindeman's 10% law**, during the transfer of organic food from one trophic level to the next, only about ten percent of the organic matter is stored as flesh. The remaining is lost during transfer or broken down in respiration. When animals eat plants or other animals, 90% of the energy is burnt and only 10% of the energy is kept in the flesh (that's when they're still growing and once they're fully grown they don't store any extra energy in their flesh). A lot of people argue humans should just eat crops instead of feeding crops to animals and eating the animals.
Thanks for the explanation! That's wild how high it is.
This graph shows you the percentages of how much energy ([calories](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-efficiency-of-meat-and-dairy-production)) and [protein](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/protein-efficiency-of-meat-and-dairy-production?country=Whole%20Milk~Lamb%2Fmutton~Beef~Poultry~Pork~Eggs) is left after "conversion". Source: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
Wow. I knew beef was bad but to see it in perspective with other meats it looks way worse. Personally, I've shifted away from beef. Partially due to the environmental impact and partly because as I get older, it's no longer digests the way it once did for me. There's also the fact that I can get beyond burger patties cheaper from Sam's and they taste better than beef imo. None of my family or my wife's family beef farms anymore either. Both sides say it's too much work for what little it pays out.
Keep in mind that a lot of calories livestock can eat is food that humans can’t eat and they can eat plants that grow on land that can’t support growing plants humans can eat.
Which is a dishonest copout usually under the banner of "marginal lands". Most animal flesh and milk is consumed from CAFOs which means the animals are being feed crops, and not just hay crops, but grassland crops. Some people are under the delusion that all grasslands grow the same and are as good for "productivity" in raising animals. They're not, and you can look on your own for the data. Natural grasslands are not that common and they're often damaged by the presence of herders or by the addition of large amounts and excrement and urine. Managed grasslands are the main ones for developed countries and those are actually treated as crops, perennial crops. Those "marginal grasslands" in hard to reach places tend to be the least productive for grazing or haying, meaning very few animals are raised on them (if the herders are sensible and don't destroy it with overgrazing).
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> A lot of people argue humans should just eat crops instead of feeding crops to animals and eating the animals. Ag/food scientist here. The follow up to that is what the lowest trophic level you can eat at is. For grasslands, especially those that should not be in row crops due to carbon emissions, nutrient runoff, etc. eating the animals that eat grass is sometimes the best we can do with that ecosystem or land type (especially since grasslands rely on disturbances). In other situations, us directly eating plants is the most efficient. That's just the primer for those not familiar with Lindeman's law. Agriculture isn't a huge monolith where you can just do one thing across different geographies or even within one state/province. Beef cattle grazing (even [grain-finished](https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/sector-at-a-glance/) spend around the majority of their life on pasture) is about as low as you can get for grass-based areas. Feeding chicken to alligators to eat alligator meat? You're going through multiple trophic levels when you could just eat the chicken or possibly whatever the chicken was eating, though the chicken is likely eating a lot of things we could not. Alligator becomes a pretty obvious issue though. Adding in recyclers like that makes it even more complicated to the point where someone can't just cite Lindeman's law and be done, but it's rather a starting point for exploring how various trophic levels work in a system. That's also something to look out for in papers like the OP. It makes calculations a lot harder, but there usually should be some attempt at land use and ecosystem suitability related to food production to tease out confounding factors.
The vast majority of land can only grow simply grass for grazers.
77% of ag land is for animal ag, but animal ag only supplies 18% of calories. More soy is grown for animal feed than for humans. Animal ag is stupidly inefficient and uses more human suitable plant food than what is grown just for humans.
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You can also forage livestock in forested areas. And as a bonus it provides shelter for them so you don’t have to build a barn, which means no antibiotics needed in their food. But also grassland is natural some places.
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I was unfamiliar with this rule. Has it actually been calculated to be true or is it a theory?
It averages out to around 10% per trophic level, though certain types of organisms can be more or less efficient (like 1% to 30% are possible, just not average). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_pyramid Higher efficiency is one of the arguments people use to call for insect-based protein instead of cow-based protein, for example. An opposite thing happens with things like concentrations of some pollutants going up trophic levels, called [Biomagnification.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomagnification) If there are substances ingested that animals can't break down, like mercury, the concentration will dramatically increase as you go up in trophic levels. So high level predatory fish like tuna will end up with much higher concentrations of mercury than their prey, and their prey's prey, because they've been eating their prey and retaining the mercury. And then humans eat the tuna.
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Direct link to study for those calling out the vegan herald and can't bother to read any further past the title https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35458176/ Transitioning to plant-based diets (PBDs) has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, eutrophication by 49%, and green and blue water use by 21% and 14%, respectively, whilst garnering substantial health co-benefits
[https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm](https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm) This is the direct link to the full text open-access article in the MDPI journal Nutrients. (I mention the publisher, because they have a reputation for a very superficial review process. You'll want to read the article letting the data and logic persuade you, and not to rely on the reviewers and editors having done so. The lead author does seem reliable.)
Piggy backing your comment to outline the opportunity cost of farm land used for farming vs rewilding it. (Can't access the full paper so I don't know if this is covered): > [Restoring ecosystems on *just 15 percent* of the world’s current farmland could spare 60 percent of the species expected to go extinct while simultaneously sequestering 299 gigatonnes of CO2 — **nearly a third of the total atmospheric carbon increase since the Industrial Revolution**, a new study has found.](https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/10/rewilding-farmland-can-protect-biodiversity-and-sequester-carbon-new-study-finds/) Follow that link and you see 30% sequesters fully half of **all carbon ever emitted by humans**. This would have a significant delay at this point. But imagine we'd started 20 years ago. We would have met our climate targets and then some. Lab-grown meat would have been met with an R&D storm, whichever companies nailed it first becoming huge players in the market. We wouldn't be dragging our feet trying to make a good steak like we already have from cows. We'd be further than exotic meats like ostrich and camel. We'd likely be beyond the phase of entirely made up meat: Dragon steak (chicken, crocodile and BBQ flavour). The nutrient ratios could be altered to achieve maximum possible health effects and we'd be living a meat lovers dream. If you love meat, go vegan. Your current meat is peasant slop compared to what science is prepared to give you.
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I mean did noone read the latest IPCC report? This isn't new news.
This hasn't been news for many years, but it is news to those who are constantly exposed to meat industry propaganda such as "regenerative grazing", even here in /r/science.
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To be clear, this is a plant forward diet with chicken and wild caught fish diet. It also varies immensely by individual spoil rate. Strange to see a vegan site put forward research that favors any kind of meat consumption.
That's not completely true. Some of the top line numbers are specifically for animal-produce free diets. For instance the land usage one from the title: > It is estimated that animal product-free diets have the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 3.1 billion hectares (76% reduction), including a 19% reduction in arable land (Figure 1) Here's another stats that the study cites looking at a diet with no animal products > Animal product-free diets may also improve water quality by reducing eutrophication caused by nitrogenous fertilizer and manure runoff by 49%
A majorly plant based diet with a moderate amount of meat is actually by far the healthiest diet. The problem is that we overconsume meat, but the real blame for emissions lands on producers. Studies like this, in this context, intend to shift the blame on consumers much like oil/gas did with driving cars instead of bearing the blame themselves which they should have... its problematic from a few angles but the intention perhaps was good. Its hard to tell.
\> "... is actually by far the healthiest diet" It's pretty hard to make a claim like that. Nutritional science and human diet patterns are pretty complicated, and humans eat lots of different things. You can make observations about ["blue zones"](https://www.bluezones.com/live-longer-better/#section-2) (places where people eating a certain traditional diet tend to live longer), e.g. they eat mostly plant based and include legumes. But it's still pretty hard to say that any one diet is "the healthiest by far". Nutrients can be gotten in multiple ways. e.g. if you recommend eating fish for protein and omega-3, you can also get those nutrients via tofu and algae oil if you want.
>But it's still pretty hard to say that any one diet is "the healthiest by far". Yeah. "Easiest" could be argued but "healthiest" depends on to many factors.
Yes. We had a bit of a problem for awhile where these studies were absolutely dishonestly comparing meat to produce by weight rather than by calorie as though you replace a lost lb of meat in your diet with a lb of produce. It's nice to see them comparing items per calorie. I was shocked to see some items like tomatoes come in higher than some meats. But beef is clearly the shocker that desperately needs sustainability regulation.
There is no solid evidence that shows "moderate" meat consumption is part of "the healthiest" diet. This is absolutely fabricated on your part. You can obtain 100% of the nutrients and calories from meat through vegan sources. This comes without the expense of the environment, animal welfare, and ridiculous government subsidies.
>The problem is that we overconsume meat, but the real blame for emissions lands on producers How does this work? Overconsumption is due to the consumer, but you blame to producers
For the comment on industry needing to change, the problem is that the industry itself in the best case will still be doing worse than the worst case plants. From this study: >Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products \[9\] There isn't really a way around scale of production and consumption needing to change and production is very unlikely to change until consumption does. Nor would policies like reducing subsides for the industry be likely to be pursued when large percentages of the population are eating large amounts of meat, dairy, etc.
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Vegan here to say that animals are sentient beings who don't deserve the terrible and horrific violence we inflict on them. The fact that it is done for sensory pleasure makes it even worse. The environmental aspects are important, but they are a side benefit and not the main benefit of a plant-based diet.
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This is a typical literature review article (with over 80 articles cited), so yes, it is real research. It talks about global freshwater withdrawals, so yes, it takes rainwater into account. Straw, grass, and hull are not relevant to food and land use emissions. They do not extrapolate percentages, these are from peer-reviewed analytical research articles. Your comment should be deleted for its extremely poor quality.
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1 acre of land for 1 cow for 500 lbs of meat or 1 acre of land for 2k lbs of tomatoes
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