The Great Plant-Based Con: Why eating a plants-only diet won't improve your health or save the planet

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For me, I've come across a lot of vegetarians. My current partner is one. He eats chocolate a lot whereas I just don't crave for it. His diet was fully based on carbs. Full English breakfast with lots of noodles for dinner. And I have gotten upset about the plate not having any greens. It's also like I'm not that fit physically but my bones are strong, my whole body has a lot of power and I have a lot of energy. Buxton again tells a similar example of American shopping trolley. In 2020, the actor Liam Hemsworth had to rethink his vegan diet after an overload of oxalates (a naturally occurring compound in plants) gave him painful kidney stones that required surgery. She would rather that we come to terms with our biology, rather than trying to evolve beyond it by creating lab-grown meats. “You can eat grazing animals that have led a really good life and have been good for the soil.” The case for UK-produced meat

The Great Plant-Based Con by Jayne Buxton review — the case

Even if we take the highest estimate, the CO2 cost of a serving of beef is utterly dwarfed by the per-person CO2 cost of the flight (1.6 tonnes, or 1,600kg, for a one-way flight). Equally specious is the concept of the Hollywood elite demonstrating their commitment to combating climate change by taking meat off the menu at the Golden Globes while travelling to the awards ceremony by private jet. Buxton searched for the answers to these questions: is a plant-based diet better for your health? Will it save the planet? Who is pushing the plant-based diet and why? And how should we eat? I do need to be presented with consistent arguments though, and the author fails to give them. One minute, almonds and avos are the good guys, the next minute, they are the bad guys. Can't have it both ways.

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Buxton supports the transition towards farming regeneratively, which aims to restore soil quality and biodiversity while producing sufficient food of high nutritional quality. “British farming is going well compared with the rest of the world.” A calm, incisive dissection of veganism's salvationist claim to protect human health and the planet - Country Life Preventable diseases running rampant, Diabetes overwhelming the health systems, a huge proportions of obese people, all thanks to current thinkings 'nutrition wisdom'. Praise for The Great Plant-Based Con: Why eating a plants-only diet won't improve your health or save the planet Tim Spector is professor of epidemiology at King’s College London , and the author of Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food Is Wrong. Further reading:

The Great Plant-Based Con by Jayne Buxton REVIEWED Part 1 The Great Plant-Based Con by Jayne Buxton REVIEWED Part 1

Lumping the UK in with global figures for countries with vastly different farming practices means that some of the good news gets lost. Beef cattle and sheep in the UK account for just 5.7 per cent of all UK emissions, but this is reduced to 3.7 per cent if carbon sequestration (storing of carbon in the soil) is taken into account. While she says it’s a cliché, “It really is the how, not the cow.” In the UK, meanwhile, as wheat yields doubled between 1970 and today, the number of farmland birds decreased by 54 per cent, according to the National Biodiversity Network.We’ve heard time and again that cutting meat and dairy will have the biggest environmental impact but, if you look at the facts, the single biggest change you could make is to forego a flight. Or you can reduce the use of your car. Or you can eliminate all food waste from your home.” Buxton, a former management consultant with an MBA, is trained to look at data critically. She began researching the topic of food, health and the environment (specifically, the impact of meat and plant-based diets on human and plan­etary health) and she realised the extent of the ­misinformation around both the health and environmental impact of meat-eating, and that the benefits of plant-only diets were being exaggerated. Stop following the bullshit advise dished out by the government agencies, the AHA and Diabetes foundations and the media. Buying less, flying less and doing less could make a more meaningful impact. “Just generally consume less. That’s not a good message in a capitalist economy, though. People don’t like it. They like this one because it drives the ­economy forward.”