UniCafes decision to stop serving beef is an example of Dysrationalia, that likely will have consequences on mental- health

Finnish Swedish speaking media outlets HBL and YLE report that Antti Kerppola, the managing director of Ylva, the company which runs the restaurants that serves food at the University of Helsingfors, has taken the decision to cut beef of the restaurants' menu, starting from February 2020. Rational decision making is based on 'disjunctive reasoning', opposite to dysrationalia. Understanding what food and Climate is, respectively, is important. White and Hall (2017), and Nylund (2019) show that production If animal source food has little to no impact on the climate. Kerppola decision to stop serving beef is therefore dyrsational. The outliers who abstain from eating ASF report neuroticism ,anxiety, depression and issues with social relations. When Kerppola read this, he opted to block me on Twitter.

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Finnish Swedish speaking media outlets HBL and YLE report that Antti Kerppola, the managing director of Ylva, the company which runs the restaurants that serves food at the University of Helsingfors, has taken the decision to cut beef of the restaurants' menu, starting from February 2020.

Mr. Kerppola's rationale is to save the climate:

“We believe that companies must take their own responsibility to stop climate change" ("Vi anser att företag måste ta sitt eget ansvar för att hejda klimatförändringen,” YLE).

Is that a wise decision based on science and rational thinking?

Let's check the facts.

First, rational decision making is based on something called 'disjunctive reasoning'. That means taking all things into consideration (Stanovich, 2009).

The opposite of disjunctive reasoning is a mental fallacy called dysrationalia - the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence (Stanovich, 1993).

When it comes to food, there are some factors at play that philosophers are theorizing about, economists try to make predictions about, and which scientists try to pinpoint by various assessments.

To avoid dysrationalia correct, it's important to understand concepts and methods.

Food is any substance consumed that provides energy and nutrition to our body and brain, and thus influences human development over a lifespan and over generations.Our ancestors started to consume bone marrow 3.6 Mya. This new 'diet' triggered a reduction of their guts and an expansion of their brains, giving room for new mental faculties (continue reading - Österberg, 2019).

Climate is defined as a process where trace gases move in a circular fashion between five spheres: the atmosphere, the biosphere, the cryosphere, the hydrosphere, and the pedos- or lithosphere. Central to this process is the carbon cycle.

Since the start of Phanerozoic eon, or the Cambrian explosion, some 538 million years ago (Mya), when CO2-leves was 5000 - 7000 ppm, Oxygen 4-10 %, and the temperature was 50 % higher, the climate has had some changes (n ca 100; Cohen et al. 20xx).

Figure 1. Variation in temperature and CO2-levels. (see numerous references in the subtext to the figure).

Food production has its own climate/carbon cycle - the Biogenic Carbon Cycle.

White and Hall (2017) show that if all American's would change to a vegan diet, 2.6 % of biogenic carbon would be reduced.

In 2019, SCL:s chairman Mats Nylund published data from statistics Finland:

Link to source.

Translated with Google:

“It is certainly not the Finnish meat production that threatens the climate. According to Statistics Finland, 74 percent of all climate emissions in Finland originate from the energy sector and the burning of fossil fuels. Only 12 percent of emissions originate from agriculture. According to Finland's medium-term climate policy plan, 56 percent of agricultural emissions in Finland are estimated to come from arable land and 44 percent from livestock production. In plain language, this means that just under 5 percent of Finland's climate emissions come from livestock production”.

Ergo. Mr. Kerppola's target is, according to HBL and YLE, not about Water vapor, Nitrous oxide, or Methane, but about the CO2. And by taking beef off the menu, Mr. Kerpola seems to be adamant in his belief will reduce CO2 by 11 % [of the Unicafé emissions]. That's an act of dysrationlia.
Which are the real consequences of suppressing meat from the meny?

The outliers who decide to abstain from eating animal source food, also score high on neuroticism, anxiety, and depression, and report they have issues with social relations (Forestell and Nezlek, 2018; Nezlek, Forestell and Newman, 2018; Plante et al. 2019). When Kerppola read this, he opted to block me on Twitter.

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