I pulled 1,000 articles from a meat industry trade publication. Of those, 30% contained negative information about the meat industry in the headline: breaking the law, diseases running rampant, workers' rights being violated, even child labor!!
Björn Jóhann
@bjornjohann.bsky.social
I write about the best ways to shfit our food systems away from factory farming. Barcelona based. Bird dad. Read my work: https://morethanmeatstheeye.substack.com/ Support my work: buymeacoffee.com/bjornolafsson
Most people don't know all that much about common practices and the consequences of animal factories. Here's just a short collection of polls showing what percentage of respondents knew about these issues. Without a solid knowledge base, we're never going to make real change.
Lots of misleading and incorrect facts get spread into the mainstream, especially around climate and animal welfare. We could fact-check and bemoan the inaccuracy or we could sit back, take notes, and figure out how to get accurate facts into the zeitgeist. Link in comments
AI doesn't use very much water. Don't believe viral memes that lack citations. You know what DOES use a ton of water? Factory farms.
Want to stop wasting water? Great! Switching from animal-based to plant-based foods once a day is more valuable than boycotting AI for a year.
New from me! Turns out, your choice at the dinner table is far, far, far more important for water waste than whether or not you vibe-code with Claude. Don't believe me? Well, let's look at the data together -- it's not close.
New from me! Why AI isn't the watery villain you think it is, and why a culprit 130 times worse is actually on your dinner plate:
AI Isn't Draining the Rivers. Your Dinner Is.
The real story of AI's water footprint, the animal-agriculture comparison no one makes, and how one bad stat went viral.
morethanmeatstheeye.substack.com
If you care about water usage, good! Let's figure out the best way to make sure we are using it efficiently. And that means reducing meat consumption in favor of eating more plant-based foods...not boycotting AI.
Pigs solve mirror-test variants. They learn computer-joystick games. They recognize their own names. By the cognitive benchmarks that earn dogs their "companion" status, pigs land somewhere around a 3-year-old human. We also slaughter roughly 1.5 billion of them a year.
Shifting our institutions in a plant-based direction reaps many benefits, including to the economy! New data shows that plant-forward public procurement could generate nearly 12 billion euros in returns for the EU. This includes benefits to the environment and public health.
You can have 3,000+ Chatgpt queries before you use the same amount of water as a single hamburger. If you're concerned about water usage -- focus on meat reduction instead of AI reduction.
100 grams of beef protein emits about 50 kg of greenhouse gases. 100 grams of pea protein emits about 0.4 kg. That's a 125x ratio. There is no other consumer choice — not your car, flights, nor thermostat — where two adjacent options differ by that kind of magnitude.
Most people don't know that the egg industry kills baby male chicks right after they're hatched -- a cruel practice known as "chick culling". Thankfully, some countries are trying to end it:
The pork industry spent $260K lobbying a single Farm Bill provision this quarter. The provision: putting pigs back in cages.
Animal agriculture produces more greenhouse gas emissions than every car, truck, plane, train, and ship on Earth combined. Most of the largest environmental NGOs don't have a single full-time staffer working on it.
Just got back from AVA Canada where I spoke about plant-based nudges! I even teased two new interactive tools for advocates that I am stoked about — follow along here for the debut in the new few weeks!
ICYMI: I ran a new study that has made me question the idea of what a "pre-vegan" even is. Read the post to see how I interpret the new evidence: morethanmeatstheeye.substack.com/p/cruelty-fr...
We've Been Looking for Pre-Vegans in the Wrong Places
What a six-month Te Protejo report I worked on reveals about who's actually ready for diet change
morethanmeatstheeye.substack.com
We've been looking for future vegans at the dinner table. A study I just published suggests the bathroom cabinet is a better place to start.
Great post from Vox about the meat paradox -- and I'm quoted in it!: www.vox.com/future-perfe...
The paradox at the heart of American meat consumption
No one likes how animals are treated on factory farms. But no one wants to stop eating them.
vox.com
Meat-lovers are willing to pay far less for alternative proteins than flexitarians or vegans/vegetarians are. While it's not surprising, it shows that to reach large segments of the population, price will likely be one of the biggest hurdles.
One reason the reaction to Billie's statements can seem so contradictory is that there is near-universal agreement that normal factory farming practices are unacceptable. 1 in 2 people would even ban factory farming outright!
Billie Eilish said you can't love animals and eat meat. The internet exploded, exactly on cue. But I think most animal advocates are thinking about cognitive dissonance all wrong — and I wrote about what the research actually says.
Okay, I know I'm like the tenth person to weigh on the Billie Eilish thing, but here's my take: we need to think more deeply about what cognitive dissonance theory actually says about human psychology instead of pointing it out and hoping hypocrisy will get people to change behavior. Check it out!
You’re Probably Thinking About Cognitive Dissonance All Wrong
The standard activist script doesn't account for what the psychological research says. Here's what does.
morethanmeatstheeye.substack.com
I charted dozens of studies showing that calling menu items "vegan" isn't very good at incentivizing people to order them. What does work? Highlighting their taste or health benefits seems to work best.
One of the best ways to increase plant-based consumption is obvious: offer more plants! In this chart, I plotted data points from several studies showing that increasing the PB ratios on a menu is a pretty easy way to increase consumption. Most people don't even notice it!
Fact 1: Most people dislike factory farming Fact 2: Nearly all farmed animals in the world are factory-farmed Fact 3: In surveys, only a minority of people say they purchase meat that is "inhumae" or factory-farmed Something here doesn't add up...
Here's what the research shows about how defaults work: across every study I am aware of, a plant-based default increased the uptake of plant-based foods. It boosts sales by around 50 percentage points in total. Pretty big win!
Here’s what a vegan default looks in practice: the meat dish is still available, but the customer has to put a bit more effort into getting it. Assuming the veg dish is tasty and filling, most people will end up eating plant-based. Convenience often overrides taste preferences.
