We’re on track to set a new record for global meat consumption
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
Per capita meat consumption in the US (poultry, beef, pork) in 1960 was about 170 lbs per year. Now it’s closer to 220 lbs per person per year. Cheese consumption has almost tripled since 1970.
https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/st...
Let’s all be heroes: Eat less (including meat and cheese), buy less, save money, improve your health, create less waste, drive less, walk more, save water and use less energy. And be a role model for the next generation.
Or are you thinking in purely abstract models?
I’m more of a physical sciences type. I feel no obligation to coddle completely made up, self re-enforcing garbage.
How is the market compensating for the real impact facing the future of the species?
Hint: it’s not. Everyone in power will simply be dead by the time the bill comes due.
“Trickle down economics” is a meme intended to mock the rubes. “Fuck them kids” is similarly something we uncomfortably laugh at as a joke while behaving with real indifference.
Individual action isn't it. It is a red herring.
Government policy is the only way forward.
I cannot agree with the cheese part, though. I think if you replace half of that meat consumption with cheese, it would be net positive for your health and the climate.
Also one should not consider poultry equivalent to beef.
Including food waste it's fairly reasonable. Commercial restaurants waste an amazing amount of food everyday.
1. They produce (or used to, this practice has been removed in Germany, I think) a large amount of food on stock and kept it warm. If it isn't sold after a few minutes (15?) it gets trashed. This is to optimize the speed of sales.
2. They hand out bizarrely large quantities (especially soft drinks, but also cheap stuff like fries) that often the customer won't eat completely. This is for a reason that I don't understand. Might be a US thing, though.
In 1960, 0.91% of Americans had Type II Diabetes. In 2015, 7.40% of Americans had Type II Diabetes: https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/statistics/slides/long_term_tre...
Obesity has also skyrocketed: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...
When we look at this year’s report, we see that we are living longer, but with an increasing burden of preventable chronic illness. In particular, our nation’s health is persistently compromised by risk factors such as sedentary behavior, obesity, and diabetes.
http://cdnfiles.americashealthrankings.org/SiteFiles/Reports...
So again: how do you define "healthier then average in 1960"?
If you want numbers, there was a 3x decrease in mortality from heart/cardiovascular disease, 5x decrease in mortality from cerebrovascular disease (1960s were actually one of the most unhealthy decades to be alive in):
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/25/morta...
Sedentary behavior, obesity and diabetes are more signals of stress rather than our current environment - look at the top 10% by income - those risk factors are nowhere to be found in that subgroup.
Except then you get situations like the great recycling crisis, where individual consumers do their part to recycle and then we "realize" that recycling has been a giant scam for decades.
With at least one famous and bloody civil war in what is now a nuclear power. I’d rather not have one of those again, even though I’m increasingly of the suspicion that {the poorly specified concept named variously “sentience”, “ability to suffer”, or “consciousness”} is likely found in many more species than just humans.
Yes, let’s all be heroes but at the same time let’s acknowledge the fact that as long as the incentives of the system remain the same, the trend will continue. This rhetoric reminds me of the rhetoric around plastic consumption; the big producers of plastic push the message that it’s on all of us to reuse, recycle, and so on. Let’s instead capture the cost of the externalities in the actual prices of meat production and consumption — prices then should be higher and demand at that price point will be less. Let’s make it easier to be heroes by changing the system.
I'd love for the industry to remove sugar and therefore unnecessary cravings for a lot of people.
In theory: smaller humans would be the ultimate solution. But that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Perhaps a way more efficient digestion system?
The fallacy of the op is to exercise more ( = use human energy for transportation) and eat/drink less. That's not how the human body works...
( It was mentioned)
http://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/animalsciencesdept/2016/06/22/cows...
Bison in particular have such a beneficial effect on soil retention, aeration, and quality, that some scientists view them as part of the solution as opposed to part of the problem. Their grazing patterns literally turn everything they touch into more efficient carbon sinks.
If this idea is to extend to other livestock, it would do wonders for swine, chicken, sheep, and goat carbon intensity as well, but it probably will never be enough to compensate for cow methane emissions.
https://www.agweb.com/news/livestock/beef/feeding-cows-seawe...
Less people, less problems. More people, more problems. Just look at the world population since 1950
The current solution is more efficient agriculture ( ofc ) or finding better and viable alternatives
Forcing way more expensive meat is not a good option. Too many jobs will be lost at once and people will view it as an attack on their freedom. Nobody will want to make that decision and i don't think it's realistic to execute.
I'd like some research on this too. Since I remember young vegans from school to be unhealthy looking and needing vitamin supplements.
Even China added eggs and other things to the school diet, since they wanted to catch up on height with japanese people. They had positive effects within 1 generation.
Just 1 example: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/vegetarian-kindergarten-china-orde...
I'll let my kids eat meat and they can decide what they want when they are full-grown.
Ps. I've met countless of vegans being offended by these claims/observations, while they couldn't find any proof against it.
Joy... I invite you to debunk it. Please... Alter my POV with some evidence.
Later, I though we were well off to have it 1-2 times a week. It was just not part of the culture in the part of Russia we were, and it was, and I think still, considered simply wasteful, and irrational.
When I moved to Canada in 2009, the whole idea of eating mean not only every day, but multiple times a day was hard to digest.
In the end, I got used to this. I became rather fat.
Meat twice a day was a luxury even for Moscow, and that with CPSU keeping Moscow well fed at any cost.
In regions, it was a norm for meat shortages in excess of 1 month.
In class 4 cities, and ethnic republics, it was even worse, some form of mild scurvy was a norm there.
School lunches had meat them 4 days a week, as a rule. All the kids ate school lunches except those with too much allergies.
Scurcy was not norm, that is not true. You also don't get scurvy from not eating meat.
I can't see how meat alternatives are ever going to be able to compete otherwise. We already have a ton of good cow milk alternatives to choose from and people aren't rapidly switching to them so I don't expect e.g. lab meat to change much unless it was an order of magnitude cheaper.
On a bright note though, I remember the Beef Association (or something along those lines) were protesting against meat substitutes being sold alongside real meat in the same refrigerator. They seem to have at least lost that battle at the chain grocery stores.
Chimpanzees eat some meat, maybe 2-3% of their diet? We can do that, too. The long-term costs need to be included in meat production. Regulation that affects everyone seems important, so that we don’t get stuck appealing to and hoping for individual responsibility.
We also still don't understand the mechanisms behind rare diseases that are associated with vegetarian diets but also not considered from being overt malnourishment. We are far from ready from centrally advocating for plant-based diets.
Seems like the best thing we can do and are doing is introducing more plant-based options on the market.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/05/health/hunter-gatherer-diet-t...
It’s a three day sampling, but fruit and honey make-up a non-trivial portion of their caloric intake.
Inuit diet, of course, was mostly fat and protein out of necessity
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-2-million-years-humans-ate...
If anything, high acidity shows humans as scavengers rather than hunters.
As for me personally, I run 8 mi/day and lift 6 days a week so yes.
EDIT: source on hunter gatherers living almost as long as us: https://theconversation.com/hunter-gatherers-live-nearly-as-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_nutrition#Positions_of_d...
"Positions of dietetic and government associations - The American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and Dietitians of Canada state that properly planned vegan diets are appropriate for all life stages, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence.[5][6] They indicate that vegetarian diets may be more common among adolescents with eating disorders, but that its adoption may serve to camouflage a disorder rather than cause one. The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council similarly recognizes a well-planned vegan diet as viable for any age,[7][8] as does the New Zealand Ministry of Health,[9] British National Health Service,[10] British Nutrition Foundation,[11] Dietitians Association of Australia,[12] United States Department of Agriculture,[13] Mayo Clinic,[14] Canadian Pediatric Society,[15] and Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.[16] The British National Health Service's Eatwell Plate allows for an entirely plant-based diet,[17] as does the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) MyPlate.[18][19] The USDA allows tofu to replace meat in the National School Lunch Program.[20] The American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics adds that well-planned vegan diets are also appropriate for older adults and athletes.[1]"
> well-planned
For these reasons requiring proper planning on the individual level is why the US require certain foods to be fortified.
[0] podcast: How to Save a Planet, 2021-03-25, The Beef With Beef
I see a different problem with climate emissions: If cattle produces a large quantity of green house gases, should the US meat eater outbid the Indian gasoline buyer? Because I think that's the likely consequence of a global market for emissions.
I think it's much more efficient (but frustratingly slow) to set global standards for sustainable production. One could demand a certain level of renewable energy or a particular grazing standard world-wide. This way, no one loses out on the global market.
edit: Now I get it. You must have misunderstood my point. Let me reiterate. Health care cost are part of the external costs of food. But they occur non-linearly, based on the amount of consumption. But they can only be priced linearly. So someone who eats a little meat would effectively pay the external costs of someone who eats a lot of meat.
PFfffffffffffffffF!! BULLSHIT! this is fucking propagando and news advertisement. I am looking for the first person who want to shoot his own foot?!?! so sad and lame...
Population growth historically received a lot of attention, but at this point there's enough queued up people waiting to join the West's way of life it looks to me like that ship has sailed.
China promptly overtook the US in co2 emissions as they arrived in the past few decades [0], by a wide margin. What does the world look like when India starts competing with China for that position? They certainly have the headcount for it, at least they're mostly vegetarian right? For how much longer...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
The future looks grim. Because life is getting better. for lots of people?
Take this anti-humanistic garbage elsewhere. We can solve problems and make a better world without having to decrease, or even slow the increase, of quality of life around the planet. Lab-grown meat. Spacefarms. Whatever. I can think of many ways to increase quality of life universally, and this pessimistic, anti-human sentiment is actively getting in the way.
I think at least some of this comes from the new environmental movement, which tends to be much more anti-human than pro-fixes.
I just want you to read your first sentence there, and really internalize what you said. How absurd is that?
I want to add that there's a statistical trend to have less offspring once quality of life improves, as well.
That being said, civilizations have come and gone before. I believe we must not fall into "tech religion", and wait for magical solutions when we can and should address many things politically rather than technologically.
I am also happy we're reaching for the solar system, because a backup mankind seems prudent.
It's just another way of pulling up the ladder after climbing it, the same as people like to accuse homeowners of doing when they don't want to be crowded out of their neighborhoods. You can even find both in the same neighborhood/person -- you'll be looked at funny if you don't have a Prius parked in front of your multi-million dollar house right next to a protected forest that only you can access because there is no train and no parking.