Summary of Jayne Buxton's The Great Plant-Based Con

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The media regularly promotes the idea that animal agriculture is the biggest contributor to climate change. However, this is completely false.

#2 In 2020, many people around the world heard the call to reduce or eliminate meat consumption. The proportion of UK meat eaters who reported having reduced or limited the amount of meat they consume rose from 28 percent in 2017 to 39 percent in 2019.

#3 There is no shortage of people arguing for a more balanced and fact-based debate. However, the media continues to focus on the emissions from livestock, instead of the main culprit: fossil fuels.

#4 One fact is that 85 percent of global emissions are generated by sources other than animal agriculture. So why are we vilifying farmers and the meat and dairy products they produce. Because it’s easy to target, and because people feel guilty about the damage they are doing to the planet, they want to seem like they’re doing something positive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Aug 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350017410

IRB Media

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Insights on Jayne Buxton's The Great PlantBased Con

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The media regularly promotes the idea that animal agriculture is the biggest contributor to climate change. However, this is completely false.

#2

In 2020, many people around the world heard the call to reduce or eliminate meat consumption. The proportion of UK meat eaters who reported having reduced or limited the amount of meat they consume rose from 28 percent in 2017 to 39 percent in 2019.

#3

There is no shortage of people arguing for a more balanced and fact-based debate. However, the media continues to focus on the emissions from livestock, instead of the main culprit: fossil fuels.

#4

One fact is that 85 percent of global emissions are generated by sources other than animal agriculture. So why are we vilifying farmers and the meat and dairy products they produce. Because it’s easy to target, and because people feel guilty about the damage they are doing to the planet, they want to seem like they’re doing something positive.

#5

The idea that livestock generates more emissions than transportation is widely accepted, and this has been used to promote a plant-based diet. But emissions from animal agriculture are highly variable around the world, and the global number is the one that is most often cited.

#6

The anti-meat movement is not just about the environment, but also about economy and health. It is easy to see the appeal of this message, as it doesn’t require any economic sacrifices.

#7

The plant-based diet is not better for your health, and it is not saving the planet. It is being promoted by corporations and organizations with a financial interest in convincing you to eat a plant-based diet.

#8

While this book is not anti-plant or anti-vegan, it is a plea for us to take a hard and honest look at the plant-based diet in the context of the facts about human and environmental health.

#9

The problem is not with meat in the diet itself, but with the farming system the meat comes from. If we continue to allow the debate to be dominated by those with a vested interest in eradicating animal foods from our diets and from the planet, we will eventually reach the point of no return.

#10

The three main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. The overall carbon impact of all these gases combined is calculated in terms of CO2 equivalents. Some of these gases are produced and consumed by natural processes.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The second most common reason people give for going vegan is for their personal health. But is this really the case. Many scientists have based their complex models and arguments on weak epidemiological evidence from other papers that show that eating meat is harmful.

#2

The diet-heart hypothesis, which stated that saturated fat caused heart disease, was proven in the 1950s by the Six Countries Study and the Seven Countries Study. However, the associations between dietary fat and deaths from heart disease were much less convincing when other countries were studied.

#3

The Seven Countries Study was an epidemiological study, meaning that it only showed association, not causation. It is worth taking a brief detour to consider these terms, because they will crop up again and again in this book.

#4

Epidemiological studies suffer from three flaws: they can show association but not causation, they are usually based on the tracking of specified data over a period of years, and they report relative rather than absolute risk numbers.

#5

The problem with most studies is that they are flawed. They cannot determine the cause and effect relationships between variables. For example, if a study finds that eating red meat is associated with higher rates of cancer, how can we be sure that it’s the red meat that’s at fault, and not the bun, fries, and cola consumed alongside it.

#6

The diet-heart hypothesis was based on the fact that people who ate a lot of saturated fat were likely to have high cholesterol, and high cholesterol was linked to