Yeah, they got that ‘no pores’ look that selfie filter give, that’s somewhat uncanny looking.

Where’s ‘turning the music off and driving in silence’?

You are, of course, correct.

But even so, costs are costs. It doesn’t matter if you’ve achieved communism, and are in a moneyless, stateless existance, you need labor and materials to build nuclear, and labor and materials to maintain it (along with other infrastructure).

And, I’m not anti-nuclear; it does make sense to use sometimes, in some amounts. Its just very very costly for what it provides.

But frankly, even only accounting for current tech, wide spread nuclear just doesn’t make that much sense compared to renewables + storage and large grids interconnects.

Sockeye salmon are reddish pink. That’s always what I thought the association was.

Its almost entirely made from plants

And like, even if it was dinosaurs, Dirt is also (partially) made from decayed animals. And, oversimplifying, that dirt becomes plants.

And that’s all fine for vegans, because it doesn’t involve exploitation of animals. Like, if you needed to raise and kill animals to use their corpses to grow plants, that’d be animal exploitation.

You want the one and only environmental problem in our food industry, that is it.

I’m genuinely sorry if that’s the takeaway from my message, as that was not my intent. That was, actually, the vibe I’ve gotten from you; that the primary issue in food production is locality. I think there are dozens and dozens of issues in our global food supply chain, and maybe a third of them are tied to meat production.

But I don’t think all of humanity must give up meat or anything. My main opinion is that meat is over-represented in our diets, especially American diets, and that huge demand for meat has economically incentivized meat production in areas and ways that aren’t sustainable. But I do think meat can be sustainable. The primary issue isn’t meat existing, its meat being over produced.

Much of what you say in your reply is correct, at least in part, so your not wrong that meat could be produced more sustainably. But, also as you say, it mostly isn’t. So, I choose to not eat meat. But I’m not asking you to not, but rather saying that your proposal, of eating exclusively local, isn’t practical for 90% of humans.

But yeah, you’re right, “it’s a sad fact that many states export so much local food, meat, only to import crops from the other side of the country.” That’s 100% correct, and a problem.

But your soy point isn’t really correct. https://ourworldindata.org/soy. While yes, most of animal feeds is soy meal, a byproduct of soy oil production, if you compare the amount of soybean directly consumed by us, its slightly less that then 7% whole soybeans fed directly to animals. So, animals are eating more straight whole soybeans than humans are eating tofu, tempeh, soymilk, etc.

And, on top of that, Soy meal is human edible. Yes, it often does require further refining, but it already is used to make things like Textured Vegetable Protein and Soymilk, since neither need the oil. And, we lose somewhere between 2-5x the energy using that soymeal to feed chickens, and somewhere between 6-25x that energy feeding it to cows.

And to reiterate, I’m not saying to burn down all animal agriculture and make everyone everywhere vegan. I’m saying that I agree with a lot of what you say, about reworking global logistics and agriculture to make all farming more local and more sustainable. And, as a consequence of that, meat production will have to drop. Factory farming is horrible on so many fronts, but it is efficient at pumping out loads of meat. To dismantle that, like you’re proposing, will result in lower global meat production, even if some localities might actually see a rise. Small scale operations are less efficient in terms of total meat production, even if they’re more efficient by most other metrics (all those pesky ‘market externalities’).

Okay, but what if nut allergy :(

Its hard out here, being a vegan allergic to nuts.

Sticky tofu is hands down my favorite. Something like this: https://veganonboard.com/sticky-lemon-tofu/

Soy Curls is honestly my favorite ‘meat replacement’ (though, I’m not too hot on ‘replacing meat’). They work for doing things like mongolian beef, or just lightly frying after marinading for ‘chicken strips’ to top salads or sandwiches. https://thevietvegan.com/vegan-mongolian-beef/

Soups are of course, pretty easy. I like Lentil Chilli, heavy on the seasonings and beans aside from lentils. Minestrone or lemon orzo are both also great. Thai curry or pho are both more work imo, but amazing (though, both broth bases can often have chicken or shrimp in them).

Burgers, and while impossible meat et. al. are fine I guess, they’re a bit pricey. I honestly prefer a good chipotle black bean burger over them 9/10 times. They’re pretty cheap to buy, but also not very hard to make, with most of the ingredients being cheap.

I personally like seitan, but I know quite a few other vegetarians don’t, so it might be divisive. BUT, in terms of cheap protein, its damn near rock bottom in price. It is some work to make stuff out of it from scratch, but ‘indian mock duck’ is usually seitan, and can be bought from indian stores if you just want to try it. But seitan works to replace burgers, chicken tenders, steaks, sausage, etc. Tons of recipes out there.

The problem with eating locally, is that it isn’t a viable way to feed humanity. Like, yeah, the more local the better, you aren’t wrong. We all should buy local foods as far as is possible. But the nature of humans living in cities, and many cities being near good trade areas rather than good agriculture areas, means that it just isn’t viable.

If everyone was like you, and bought local near-exclusively, the price of food in most cities and many regions would skyrocket, and unless people stopped, many would starve.

Not to say its a binary; we do ‘overship’ foods, and certainly could (and should!) eat more local foods.

Add to that, that demand for meat (especially beef) means that a lot of animal agriculture requires the shipping of plant feed for that meat; see how the majority of soybean farming (77%) is for animal feed. And, similar to the point above, ‘grass fed’ beef just isn’t possible to do while meeting demand. If we want grass fed animal meat only, a lot of people are going to have to give up meat, or dramatically cut down on meat consumption.