Calling out MMM [Get Rich with Science Blog Post]

[mrshudson]

Aaaand the straw-man argument logical fallacy award goes to:

So previously I mentioned that a pound of beef has way more calories than a pound of spinach.    About 1400 vs. 100.   

Please explain to me then  how spinach is more environmentally friendly than beef.    I would need to eat 20 pounds of spinach to equal the amount of calories in 1.4 pounds of beef. 

[Zikoris]

Please explain to me then  how spinach is more environmentally friendly than beef.    I would need to eat 20 pounds of spinach to equal the amount of calories in 1.4 pounds of beef.

Why are you trying to get half your daily caloric intake from just spinach?  From what I've read on the subject, protein should account for no more than a third of your daily intake.  If you're trying to substitute spinach for meat, you're going to need other items to ensure you have the amino acids and nutrients you're not getting from the spinach anyways so it seems your comparison is an extreme/borderline strawman.

I thought this was self-explanatory but since you're the second person who made this mistake...

It doesn't matter how much meat or spinach you're talking about.  Bob was talking about the relative different in cost and resources.  The absolute amount doesn't matter, whether you're talking about a milligram or a ton.

It's not a good comparison though - you don't eat spinach for the calories. It would be insanity to try to get your calories entirely from spinach. No vegetarian here has argued that eating truckloads of low calorie vegetables every day is a sensible and environmentally friendly way to eat. You'll get no argument from any of us on the concept on spinach being a pretty inefficient way to get your daily calories.

It's just not logical to compare one animal product to one vegetable product and make an environmental assessment based on that. You have to look at what each diet actually includes overall, which for vegetarians is generally some combination of legumes, produce, nuts/seeds, and grains - and the spinach would be a pretty small number of the daily calories unless they were Popeye.

[mrshudson]

^ Exactly.

And hence the straw-man award. The argument just doesn't hold up because the comparison is not meaningful because it can't be meaningfully scaled. It's like saying, for instance hypothetically that trains consume more power and hence are inherently more wasteful than cars.

a) No one eats 20 pounds of spinach to meet their nutritional needs.

b) Nutritionally, you are not getting everything you need from either of one pound of beef or 20 pounds of spinach.

c) The closest "relative" nutritionally speaking is something like a pound of beans. One pound of cooked pinto beans has about 700 calories [1, 2].

d) Now if I run the numbers again, I can buy a pound of canned pinto beans for about 90 cents at my friendly neighborhood Trader Joes.  Therefore, on a calorie to calorie basis, I can get about 1400 calories for about $2 or rather half of the cost of beef.

e) By the rationale that the cost of a food item is proportional to the energy cost involved in producing, preparing & sourcing it (reasonable, but needs to validated) the beans turns out to be cheaper and environmentally friendlier than beef. So there.

 f) The reason the spinach v. beef comparison doesn't hold a candle here is because the argument is not whether everyone should stop eating animals and only eat *specific kinds of vegetables*, but rather, is a generally plant-based diet more environmentally sustainable in comparison to a generally animal based diet.  That is, the argument is not whether beef is better than spinach, but rather can we substitute something that costs a lot of resources to produce and has a certain caloric density with something else that costs a lot less in terms of resources and has an *equivalent* caloric density.

[1] http://www.calorieking.com/foods/calories-in-fresh-or-dried-legumes-beans-pinto-beans-boiled_f-ZmlkPTY5OTYw.html
[2] http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=89

[Travis]

Please explain to me then  how spinach is more environmentally friendly than beef.    I would need to eat 20 pounds of spinach to equal the amount of calories in 1.4 pounds of beef.

Why are you trying to get half your daily caloric intake from just spinach?  From what I've read on the subject, protein should account for no more than a third of your daily intake.  If you're trying to substitute spinach for meat, you're going to need other items to ensure you have the amino acids and nutrients you're not getting from the spinach anyways so it seems your comparison is an extreme/borderline strawman.

I thought this was self-explanatory but since you're the second person who made this mistake...

It doesn't matter how much meat or spinach you're talking about.  Bob was talking about the relative different in cost and resources.  The absolute amount doesn't matter, whether you're talking about a milligram or a ton.

And he picked two things that have no business being compared to each other.  Nobody is being expected to consume several dozen pounds of spinach in a single day to meet their needs.  I don't buy my spices by the pound either, but I'm sure they cost more than a burger.  Mrshudson already discussed the nutritional comparison.  If we're comparing resource expenditures, let's compare what an acre of land can get you for energy and materials expended. 

One acre of wheat=3.9 million calories, 150k grams/protein; requires 352,000 gallons of water
One acre of corn=3.2 million calories, 121k grams/protein; requires 600,000 gallons of water
One acre of potatoes=5.2 million calories; (couldn't find reliable water figures, but more than the grains)
One acre of beef=800k calories, 82k grams/protein; 5.6 million gallons of water

I wanted to find figures for beans and nuts but ran out of time tonight, but you get the picture.  I'm sure someone can find fuel and power plant energy consumption per acre harvested for these crops to round out the numbers.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/10/how-much-water-food-production-waste
http://gardeningplaces.com/articles/nutrition-per-hectare1.htm

[beltim]

^ Exactly.

And hence the straw-man award. The argument just doesn't hold up because the comparison is not meaningful because it can't be meaningfully scaled. It's like saying, for instance hypothetically that trains consume more power and hence are inherently more wasteful than cars.

No, what he said isn't like that analogy at all.  To make the analogy accurate, it would be he was saying that trains use less power per person transported than cars.  And your response is like saying that you can't actually get everywhere you want by train, so it's a straw man comparison.  No, it's not.

a) No one eats 20 pounds of spinach to meet their nutritional needs.
b) Nutritionally, you are not getting everything you need from either of one pound of beef or 20 pounds of spinach.

These are repetitions of your same complaint that don't make any sense.  i.e. you're arguing against a straw man here.

c) The closest "relative" nutritionally speaking is something like a pound of beans. One pound of cooked pinto beans has about 700 calories [1, 2].

d) Now if I run the numbers again, I can buy a pound of canned pinto beans for about 90 cents at my friendly neighborhood Trader Joes.  Therefore, on a calorie to calorie basis, I can get about 1400 calories for about $2 or rather half of the cost of beef.

e) By the rationale that the cost of a food item is proportional to the energy cost involved in producing, preparing & sourcing it (reasonable, but needs to validated) the beans turns out to be cheaper and environmentally friendlier than beef. So there.

 f) The reason the spinach v. beef comparison doesn't hold a candle here is because the argument is not whether everyone should stop eating animals and only eat *specific kinds of vegetables*, but rather, is a generally plant-based diet more environmentally sustainable in comparison to a generally animal based diet.  That is, the argument is not whether beef is better than spinach, but rather can we substitute something that costs a lot of resources to produce and has a certain caloric density with something else that costs a lot less in terms of resources and has an *equivalent* caloric density.

Now THIS is a much better response!  It's relevant to the point, it counters Bob's argument, it's well supported, and there's a detailed explanation.

[beltim]

Please explain to me then  how spinach is more environmentally friendly than beef.    I would need to eat 20 pounds of spinach to equal the amount of calories in 1.4 pounds of beef.

Why are you trying to get half your daily caloric intake from just spinach?  From what I've read on the subject, protein should account for no more than a third of your daily intake.  If you're trying to substitute spinach for meat, you're going to need other items to ensure you have the amino acids and nutrients you're not getting from the spinach anyways so it seems your comparison is an extreme/borderline strawman.

I thought this was self-explanatory but since you're the second person who made this mistake...

It doesn't matter how much meat or spinach you're talking about.  Bob was talking about the relative different in cost and resources.  The absolute amount doesn't matter, whether you're talking about a milligram or a ton.

And he picked two things that have no business being compared to each other.  Nobody is being expected to consume several dozen pounds of spinach in a single day to meet their needs.  I don't buy my spices by the pound either, but I'm sure they cost more than a burger.  Mrshudson already discussed the nutritional comparison.  If we're comparing resource expenditures, let's compare what an acre of land can get you for energy and materials expended. 

One acre of wheat=3.9 million calories, 150k grams/protein; requires 352,000 gallons of water
One acre of corn=3.2 million calories, 121k grams/protein; requires 600,000 gallons of water
One acre of potatoes=5.2 million calories; (couldn't find reliable water figures, but more than the grains)
One acre of beef=800k calories, 82k grams/protein; 5.6 million gallons of water

I wanted to find figures for beans and nuts but ran out of time tonight, but you get the picture.  I'm sure someone can find fuel and power plant energy consumption per acre harvested for these crops to round out the numbers.

This is also a really good response.  It's harder to find per acre numbers than per pound numbers, but using average calorie per unit of weight numbers, I come up with about 713,000 gallons of water for that acre of potatoes. 

I would also be interested in the figures for beans and nuts. 

[mrshudson]

These are repetitions of your same complaint that don't make any sense.  i.e. you're arguing against a straw man here.

Not a complaint, but observations that are tangential to the main point. My day job basically involves a lot of arguing (legal/factual stuff), so I can and usually will throw a lot of stuff out there, because it then becomes harder for the adversary. :)