wageslaveonbike

Most people think that bicycling doesn't use gas, but actually it does. It takes lots of fossil fuel to produce the food for the cyclist's calories -- and cycling requires more food fuel than driving.

Of course, we can't just stop eating, but we can definitely choose what we eat, and here's the kicker: meat requires much more fossil fuel to produce than vegetables and grains. How much more? About 145 times more for beef than for potatoes.1 The reason for this is simple: Cattle consume 14 times more grain than they produce as meat. They're food factories in reverse. So it takes a lot more water, land, and of course, energy to produce that meat. In short, the more meat you eat, the more gas you waste.

David Pimentel of Cornell University calculates that it takes nearly twice as much fossil energy to produce a typical American diet than a pure vegetarian diet. This works out to about an extra 150 gallons of fossil fuels per year for a meat-eater. This means that meat-eaters are "driving" an extra eleven miles every day whether they really drive or not, when we look at how much extra fuel it takes to feed them.2

In fact, meat production is so wasteful that walking actually uses more fossil energy than driving, if the calories burned from walking come from a typical American diet:

"It is actually quite astounding how much energy is wasted by the standard American diet-style. Even driving many gas-guzzling luxury cars can conserve energy over walking -- that is, when the calories you burn walking come from the standard American diet! (62) This is because the energy needed to produce the food you would burn in walking a given distance is greater than the energy needed to fuel your car to travel the same distance, assuming that the car gets 24 miles per gallon or better."4
The same is not true of bicycling vs. driving, because bicycling is more than twice as efficient as walking (calories consumed per distance traveled) -- bicycling uses less fossil energy than driving even if the cyclist were eating nothing but beef.5 But to focus on this misses the point. It's no bombshell that cycling uses less fossil energy than driving. What's important is that meat-eaters use twice as much fossil energy as pure vegetarians -- whether they're bicycling or not.

What does this mean in practical terms?

It means that the amount of gas you use isn't just related to how you get from place to place, it's also related to what you eat. Meatless diets require half as much fuel to produce than the standard American diet. Pimentel calculated that if the entire world ate the way the U.S. does, the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years. The typical American could save almost as much gas by going vegetarian as by not driving.6

Food for thought.

lyeinyoureye

Yes, this is precise why people shouldn't run around willy nilly making blanket statements about the detrimental effects of their actions, or the actions of others, without due consideration. What you're refering to with meat is know as the change in trophic level, and for each change you generaly incur a penalty. The rule of thumb is each change ends up losing ~90% of the initial energy, in the case of cattle this is ~95% compared to potatoes.

filtersweep

Figures some bozo from Cornell would come up with such research.

I grow my own food and kill my own meat.

Seriously- who really cares? The entire premise is partially based on the fact that farmers pay no FUEL TAX and have no real incentive to use energy-efficient farming practices. In the US, food is so cheap and plentiful that they literally can burn it as ethanol and biodiesel. And that is to manipulate crop prices more that it has to do with energy policy. At least here in Europe, we generally only grow food to eat (no soy beans or corn production--- rather vegetables, or hay for winter livestock feed).

Yeah--- I probably waste more water and electricity from showering more often because I bike.


When I was biking in the US-- commuting 40 miles round trip daily, I figured that I ate more money spent on extra calories for quality food than I would have spent on gas. Of course, with a vehicle, fuel is only a small part of car ownership. But I rode to work for health-- not for any other reason. Try putting a monetary value on good health and fitness.

lyeinyoureye

This has nothing to do with lack of taxation for farm fuels, it has to do with the state of agriculture, specifically agribusiness. It's very fossil fuel intensive, and by raising animals to eat you're losing ~95% of your vegetables that you just spent tons of energy to grow in the first place. Obviously some situations are different, take chickens on the farm, because you can let 'em go do their thing, and as long as the chicks don't get picked off too much, there's a no hassle, low energy source of meat and eggs. Personally I'd just keep a few hens around and have eggs, having an embryo pop out of the egg and onto the frying pan, sizzling, is unpalatable. Health and fitness is worth $43.89.

linux_author

- i don't know if i could totally give up on meat in my diet, but i do know what's the most expensive meat on the planet!

- and you'll need one of these to eat it!

:-)

slagjumper

Now a-days peeing in the municipal toilet uses gasoline. That's why I...

Any veggies or veagans actually ride 50 or more miles a day? If so what do you eat?

I personally think that waste is what fun is all about. Why pedal fast, (and waste engergy), when you could just coast? What about sex, wouldnt it be less wasteful to just sit in the AC?

I'd be a vegitarian, but those combines kill thousands of field mice per acre. How sad.

I am on the verge of judging someone judgemental.

lyeinyoureye

What if I post a preemptive judgement on your ass? Ohhhh... burn.
Damn I'm bored.

wageslaveonbike

This has nothing to do with how much money you spend. It has to do with how much fossil fuel is used to sustain a meat based diet.

filtersweep

I am familiar with water usage as it relates to agribiz.... I was just taking the example to its absurdist extreme. I guess I don't really have to shower... any more than I need to eat meat.

MarkS

This may be a good argument for vegetarianism, but its irrelevant to car vs. bike discussions. The idea that how much we eat is directly linked to how much we exercise is obviously incorrect. Follow the 300 lb guy in the SUV to the restaurant and then watch, with your steaming face plastered against the window, as he downs an entire sirloin steak. The calories used for driving are on top of whatever calories the driver consumes.

redden

What about the greenhouse gases released by the vegan cyclist. Greater contribution than the H2!!

slagjumper

Isn’t the, “what is more efficient use of oil - meat or veggies”, really an argument against giant, geographically localized (and distant) agribusiness and animal farming both?

It must cost more to ship a watermelon from Georgia, then a chicken from Indiana.

I suppose that there is an oil problem with eating things that come from more than 20 miles away. In Pennsylvania, that certainly means that, Washington cherries, tufu from far away, and potatoes are a “waste” of fuel. Groundhogs, Turkeys, deer, Milk, turnips, rutabaga, and apples on the other hand are OK. Bunnies are easy to get most everywhere East, no gas needed.

https://www.bowhunting.net/susieq/rabbit.html

maximusvt

Seriously, at least we're using that "fuel" to power our own mode of transportation rather than just enlarging our asses, thus further ensuring that we're gonna need to drive a car to get where we're going because we're too darn fat.

Nightshade

This topic belongs in Foo as it has NOTHING to do with being car-lite
or car-free. How much fuel is used in the production of anything is
a seperate issue from the use of cycles for personal transport.

That said, the focus of this poster on meat in our diet is nothing more
than a radical Vegan posting trollish statements that both annoy and
mis-reprsent the intent of the car less cyclist. It is also an insult to the
folk's who care enough on a personal level to peddle their way around
inplace of using MORE fuel with cars.

JT52

+1

This is a pointless thread.

yes

i've been doing some research on this topic for a while. did you copy and paste this from somewhere or are these your original thoughts? there are some citations in there, but no bibliography. where is this from?

lyeinyoureye

Iirc it's based on a pimental paper and some other papers, you should be able to find different articles on the same thing through Google.

Roody

OK but if you have any facts to back your argument that eating is bad, i'd like to see them. Otherwise, this is just another rant and troll.

Also, What about organic or sustainable agriculture?

Hobartlemagne 

I only eat veal raised by amish farmers, so its ok

Roody

^Well just so long as they're amish baby cows, I guess it's OK.^

yes

^^^ I shouldn't really have to, since it appears that the original post was a copy from https://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/beef.html

I'm quite familiar w/ the work of Pimental. He happens to present a relatively bleak view of agriculture. There are quite a few assumptions that have to be made along the way in these calculations, and he always makes the ones that make farming look poor. Two primary examples are how emissions are allocated to chemical by-products of the fertilizer industry, e.g. ammonia/co2 production, and what steps are required to make farming sustainable, e.g. replacing carbon in the soil. This brings us back to the definition of sustainability.

I'm not arguing w/ the idea that meat uses a lot more energy per kcal or per gram produced than vegetables, and especially more than grains.

When someone starts cycling in place of driving (say 10,000 miles a year), the need to eat a lot more. Most of the extra calories can come from grain, though. This is especially true if they aren't hammering, which is done for exercise rather than transportation. Any nutritionist will tell you that atheletes need a higher percentage of calories from carbs. So, most of the extra calories should come from dense carbs like potatos, rice, or pasta. This puts the assumption of fueling a biker w/ beef into context.

People that cycle 10,000 miles are also usually displacing other forms of excercise. If in the U.S., you might compare them to someone that drives to work, then drives to the gym, then eats a lot more b/c of exercise at the gym, then overeats anyway. Or, compare them to someone that is overweight and out of shape. Add in the environmental cost of all of the pills that these relatively unhealthy people swallow later in life. Add in the environmental cost of whatever they do in place of cycling (boating, wathing tv, driving to the park, etc.). This is of course getting quite nit-picky. However, the point is that the raw numbers need to be understood as quite imprecise. They can offer insight, but really only when one better understands how they are calculated. When comparing biking to driving, I believe that the real insight should be that cycling shifts the environmental burden from fossil fuel consumption to water use, eutrophication, and odor pollution. Exactly how much depend on all of tangentials brought up in this post and many of the previous posts by others in this thread.

jamesdenver

I started my 18 miles daily commute (9 each way) about I really DON'T eat more than I did 4 years ago before I started, and have heard the same from others.

Yogurt before leaving, mid morning snack, sandwhich for lunch and a normal dinner of my choice. In fact I would think biking forces you to make wiser food choice - i.e. not eating tons of food that would make you sluggish and feel physically unhealthy.

I think my body has completely adapted to my mon-fri ride. A few weeks ago I did a long bike tour (167 miles in two days). THEN I was eating like horse. 10 peanut butter and honey sandwiches at the rest stops, powerbars left and right, and lots and lots of water and gatorade -- but was the first time I've done a ride THAT long.

I'll bet an initial commuter would eat more food to compensate, but like me as their body adapted they wouldn't need as much. Does that make any sense from a phyisiologocal standpoint

worker4youth

You are the bozo for making such a statement.

bmclaughlin807

How about someone with such an insanely high metabolism that he can easily consume 10,000 calories in a day and not gain an ounce, even when NOT biking or really doing anything specific for excercise?

When I was still in the Navy we counted one day when I had plenty of money for snacks and stuff.... I hit 10,000 calories by 1 PM. At that point we got pretty disgusted and quit counting.

I actually consume a lot less now than I did then, and I rode 650 miles last month, and didn't run my truck at all.

lyeinyoureye

1)It ain't my argument that eating's bad. I never said eating's bad, I actually like to eat.
2)Go search google and read those papers, they contain "facts" that may or may not be accurate, judge for yourself.
3)I don't know about organic or sustainable agriculture, why don't you go find out for yourself?
4)Baa-Naa-Naa.