

Local Food or Less Meat? Data Tells The Real Story - xbryanx
http://blogs.hbr.org/winston/2011/06/local-food-or-less-meat-data-t.html

======
thaumaturgy
Yeah, we don't do the locavore thing for carbon footprint reasons, but just
because it's ... nice, I guess, for lack of a better word. Once a week we get
to meet the family that we buy fresh peaches from, and we joke with them or
ask 'em how the crops are doing and so forth. They tell us if they've had to
spray or not. The peaches smell like real peaches, they're fresh, they last
for days so we don't have to eat all of them right away before they spoil,
they're juicy.

My girlfriend works at a CSA one morning a week and comes home with a week's
worth of veggies that she picks. They, too, are fresh and tasty and seem
different from what we're used to getting in the supermarket.

We have about 160 square foot garden of our own; I'll have tomatoes ready
soon, cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumbers, zucchini, corn, bell peppers, green
beans, onions, strawberries ... it's just fun. If we need a little rosemary or
thyme or basil for cooking, we can go outside and pick what we need.

I like getting to know the people who grow my food. That somehow makes it
taste better.

~~~
pault
For me, the main reason for buying locally is economic; circulating money
through locally owned businesses helps your neighbors. I would prefer to have
the wealth created from my labor change hands a few times before going
directly to Walmart HQ and/or some international tax haven.

~~~
dereg
Isn't this a good argument for protectionism? Why should people trade outside
their own borders anyway?

~~~
thaumaturgy
For the same reason that people should have sex outside their own families:
other groups often come up with innovative solutions to various problems, and
by trading with them, you can benefit from their knowledge and experience and
approaches.

Of course, trading too openly can also be detrimental to one or more groups
sometimes, too.

------
akamaka
As good as the author's logic is, he's trying to refute a point that locavores
haven't even really been emphasising.

See for yourself: <http://www.locavores.com/how/why.php>

Energy conservation is only one of 12 reasons to buy locally, and saving
transportation costs is only a minor subpoint. The main energy conservation
argument is to not buy from farms relying heavily on fossil fuels.

~~~
xbryanx
It also depends where you live. I was blown away how much food miles were
emphasized as a mark of sustainability on packaging and advertising in the UK
two years ago.

~~~
nickthedart
The uk is a crowded island and anything we can do to reduce the number of
lorries (trucks) on our roads would be good. An example is, why do potatoes
from Cornwall get sold in Yorkshire and vice versa since both areas could be
self-sufficient in potatoes? Why are we wasting fuel, vehicles, truck drivers
time (and their whole lives really) shifting potatoes around depending on the
market price? A more extreme example is that New Zealand apples and lamb are
sold in the UK, both of which are readily available from this country, not
only at different times of year. I've even seen "Organic" New Zealand apples
in Sainsburys. Well they might be organically grown but certainly not
organically produced overall if they're shipped halfway around the globe.
Another bugbear I have is, here in the East Midlands we have freight planes
landing and taking off at night. Some people aren't getting a decent night's
sleep so that others can get Mange Tout and sugar snap peas from Ghana or
wherever. So in summary if you want the planet to be a nicer less stressful
place with less lorries and planes, try to buy local!

------
127001brewer
For a counter argument to the "Locavore" movement, I recommend reading "Just
Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly" by
Jame E McWilliams.[1]

As others more knowledgeable on the subject than me have stated (in various
places), eating less red meat greatly improves the environment and your
health. An example of eating less red meat would be treat it as a side dish
instead of the main dish.

1\. [http://www.amazon.com/Just-Food-Where-Locavores-
Responsibly/...](http://www.amazon.com/Just-Food-Where-Locavores-
Responsibly/dp/031603374X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309361841&sr=1-3)

~~~
ericmoritz
There was a study released last week that basically stated the same thing.
Refined grains, potatoes and meat attribute to greater weight gain vs diets
centered around vegetables. It's really looking like the best meal
ecologically, economically and for your health is one where the primary
calories come from vegetables.

~~~
dmm
> where the primary calories come from vegetables

A kilogram of spinach has 230 cals. How many kilos do you plan to eat?

Fats are a more practical source of calories.

~~~
lukesandberg
It is true that fats are among the most calorie dense food in existence but
that doesn't make them necessarily 'practical'. If animal fats have lots of
external costs (in terms of environmental damage) then they aren't very
practical. The costs are just not well understood.

As for the spinach straw man argument...I don't think anyone is suggesting
that you eat 10 kilos of spinach, that would be extremely unhealthy. I think
the OP was suggesting simply that calories come mostly from plants. This
includes nuts (peanut butter is very high calorie), fruits (also high calorie)
and vegetables.

~~~
sliverstorm
If you allow "plants", then yes- starchy staples, nuts, fruits all have you
covered on calories. It's up to the OP though to clarify whether he meant
plants or celery.

------
hugh3
True, but missing the point.

If you prove, convincingly, to a "locavore" that the stated benefits of their
choices are in fact better achieved by (say) acquiring all your food from Wal-
Mart, will they thank you and be glad that they know this now? Of course not,
they'll get angry. And that's because the _actual_ desire for "locavore"
eating is not about the stated benefits, it's about being able to feel
superior to others.

Now me, I don't see the point of this. But that's probably just because I have
plenty of _other_ reasons to feel superior to others. But if I were denied
these then, heck, maybe I'd be tempted to engage in this sort of hair-shirt
behaviour too.

What I say is: let the baby have his bottle. If someone wants to feel superior
to others due to whatever random harmless activity he's engaging in, then give
him a pat on the back and try to avoid bringing logic and reason into the
conversation. Everybody has a deep-seated psychological need to feel like
they're better than others, and if denied this fairly harmless sort of outlet
then these folks will start lashing out in other, probably more harmful, ways.

------
AretNCarlsen
Great article. Scientific analysis is solid.

Understanding of American capitalism is flawed, however.

>> As companies keep _discovering_ , it really helps to run the numbers. As
I've written about before, Pepsi _discovered_...

>> Smart, knowledgeable execs are consistently _surprised_ when good lifecycle
data trumps seemingly solid assumptions.

[emphases mine]

That is naive. Pepsi is running a tight ship; they have all the numbers in
front of them, all of the time; and they pay a lot of engineers a lot of money
to not fall prey to "seemingly solid assumptions". Regardless of when the
relevant analyses (like the Tropicana gas-vs-fuel analysis) are performed,
companies will announce the "discovery" of such nuances precisely when it
becomes good publicity to do so.

In related reading on ignoring surrounding factors when introducing green
technology, windmills destroy the environment:
<http://www.savewesternny.org/environment.html>

------
jsdalton
One of the commenters on the thread says: "If the meat you are eating is
organic, local, and grass-fed it's going to have an extremely low carbon
footprint."

Is this true? Does anyone know of any data that supports or refute this?

I'm just wondering if a third factor -- how the meat is produced -- has a
meaningful impact on its carbon footprint. I wonder how much of the carbon
footprint of red meat, for example, comes from all of the petroleum used to
produce fertilizer to grow corn for grain-fed cattle.

~~~
AdamTReineke
Don't forget that even organic, local, grass-fed cattle still produce methane
[1], which is 25x worse than CO2 [2].

[1] <http://www.epa.gov/rlep/faq.html#1>

[2] <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=methane+100+year+gwp>

~~~
seabee
My memory is rusty and the link doesn't corroborate your figure from what I
could see. What I remember is that methane is more potent a greenhouse gas
than O2 but it has a significantly shorter half-life in the atmosphere.

~~~
troutwine
Methane has a half-life of < 10 years (7, I think) but a GWP of 25. The
primary concern of atmospheric methane is, then, the possibility of a quick
build-up that increases CO2 emission from natural sources; there is quite a
bit of CO2 stored in bogs that only a bit of methane will release. It's the
long-term side-effects of atmospheric methane that become long-term concerns,
rather than the methane itself.

------
prpon
I thought this article would be about which one of the two (local food or less
meat) is better for _you_ health wise, with data. It talks about carbon
footprint of each source.

~~~
orky56
That's what I thought too. The only certain thing is that doing both (local
and less meat) is the way to go.

------
randoom
Slightly meta/off-topic:

By just looking at the comments I have seen about five controversial
statements like Parent: Red meat is bad, because $study Child: No, it isn't
see $counter-study

What is up with the science in foodscience?

All the camps (paleo, vegetarian, vegan, locavore, raw foodists, ...) are
citing studies which support their point of view and disregard the others.

Or another good example is the Weston A. Price Foundation [1] and Dr. Fuhrman
[2]. They are "battling" each other with study after study.

Why are there so many contradicting and controversial studies and opinions in
a field which calls itself a science?

[1] <http://www.westonaprice.org/>

[2] <http://www.diseaseproof.com/>

~~~
Evgeny
It is virtually impossible to design a convincing study on the effect of
FoodstuffA on human health. The ideal study would look something like that: \-
Enlist people into study, divide them randomly into two groups \- Design a
diet, where everything will be exactly the same, except FoodstuffA for group 1
will be replaced with some FoodstuffB for group 2. \- Keep all subjects under
supervision 24/7 to eliminate possible cheating \- Continue the study long
enough to determine long term effects (years? decades?)

Even in this case, there will be opportunity for speculation. Maybe the
FoodstuffA is not bad, but the FoodstuffB is just beneficial, maybe we should
have used FoodstuffC.

So, there's two alternatives that are realistic:

1\. Observational study. Ask 1000000 people about how much red meat they eat,
compare health, do conclusions. Lots of confounding variables - smoking,
physical activity, alcohol consumption etc etc. 2\. Randomised controlled
study. Will be fairly short due to funding and subject to criticism due to
design of the diets of participants (no, group 1 had too much fat! no, group 2
had too little carbs!).

Both options are not ideal and subject to controversy.

------
dcolgan
I saw this TED talk a while back in which the speaker argues we should lower
our meat consumption by increasing our insect consumption. He says insect meat
is just as nutritious as mammal meat (if not more), and it also takes a lot
fewer resources to produce it commercially.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects.ht...](http://www.ted.com/talks/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects.html)

I believe he said it takes 10 kg of feed and other resources to produce 1 kg
of cow meat, while it takes 1 kg of inputs to produce 1 kg of grasshopper
meat.

I ordered some canned mealworms off of Amazon the other day just to try them,
and they actually weren't that bad with some butter and spices.

~~~
westicle
Grasshoppers may be more efficient to produce than cows, but science tells us
that for the 1:1 input:output claim to be true grasshoppers must expend 0
energy and produce 0 excretions. Doubtful!

~~~
dcolgan
Ah, sorry I misquoted him. He said that given 10kg of inputs, you can get 1kg
of cow meat, or you can get 9kg of locust meat. My bad.

------
bad_user

         red meat being particularly egregious, requiring 150%
         more energy than even chicken
    

It is true, but that's only because currently chickens are fed aggressively
with growth hormones and other such shit. In 10 days a farm can produce
chickens weighting 4.5 pounds (and this is for the cases where the farmer
shows some restraint). As an observable result, small children are getting
increasingly more hairy.

Red meat cannot be grown so aggressively, especially when discussing pork.
It's ironic that the most unhealthy red meat of all may end up being the best
for your children's health.

------
code_duck
There's no reason to quibble carbon when there are other clear resource
differences between food sources.

It takes a very large quantity of grain to produce the same mass of beef, as
so much energy goes to powering the cow itself while it's alive. Same for
water usage. Large animal farms are also reponsible for a great deal of run
off pollution now not just from sewage and nitrates, but also antibiotic
residue.

There's no question that raising animals for food is inefficient compared to
agriculture.

------
nhangen
Wow, didn't realize this many people were concerned about carbon footprints.
I'm curious how this breaks down, at least in the US, in the east vs the west.

I'm a vegetarian, so I obviously can't eat less meat, but I do enjoy buying
locally when I can, mostly because I can be assured to have fresh ingredients,
and I can see where the food came from.

~~~
metageek
You could eat negative meat, by raising cattle and not letting anybody eat
them. ;-)

~~~
nhangen
Better yet, raising cattle and feeding them people :)

------
krosaen
There are good lifecycle analysis studies that back up organically grown
vegetables have a smaller carbon footprint than conventional:

[https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArTN5sf...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArTN5sfBYj4adG5VMVJ4MFBkRmdVeUVHV2dPdHNCRnc&hl=en_US&authkey=CLDP9s4G)

So while you are eating less meat, may as well eat more organic vegetables,
locally grown all else being equal.

And if you want to find food where you can trace it back to its farm,
<http://realtimefarms.com> is the place to go! (disclaimer, that's my startup,
feedback welcome :)

------
andrewcooke
article makes an interesting point, but "both" would be better than either
alone (something certainly possible here in santiago, chile - fresh, local
food is one of the best things about this place. y no hay nada mas chileno que
un poroto ;o)

------
PilateDeGuerre
Local food or less meat is a false dichotomy, for one. What is really
important is an understanding that personal consumption choices are no
substitute for political change and that political change does not
necessarily, and often does not, follow personal change.

Derrick Jensen has written extensively on this issue, and has a fantastic and
short essay, "Forget Shorter Showers" [1]. It could easily have been called
"Forget Local Food or Less Meat".

[1]
[http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801...](http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/)

------
jgorham
The average American eats twice as many kilograms of meat than the next
nationality (last time I checked it was the British). As the article states,
beef is by far the most environmentally draining; it turns out in terms of
protein and calories, pork is nearly the same as beef with a much smaller
amount of energy required to produce that meat. If the US had a better food
culture [I'm not counting fast food here], we might be able to actually change
the mindsets of the public that they dont _need_ a meat entre with every meal.

~~~
hugh3
Is that really true? More than twice as much meat as, say, the Australians,
Germans and Argentinians?

update: According to
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/m...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/meat-
consumption-per-capita-climate-change) your implausible-sounding numbers are
wrong. In fact US meat consumption (at least as of 2002) is in line with the
other agriculturally-rich Western countries, and well behind Denmark and New
Zealand. (Australia is missing from the statistics.)

------
pdenya
I've been a vegetarian for a few years after hearing more about the cruelty,
environmental impact, etc. We get local food fairly often but I should really
make more of an effort.

------
Aloisius
I try to only eat mini-cows. No seriously. Mini/micro/teacup cows produce a
fraction of the methane emissions and eat a third less food per pound of meat.

------
Tyrant505
Do grass fed cattle produce more methane?

------
chrisjsmith
I think the carbon crisis is political rubbish that spawned a new industry I
mean who the hell thought of carbon trading - sounds like something school
children came up with.

The earth's atmosphere and environment is more changeable than we realise -
we've only been looking at it for a blink of an eye in the scale of things so
we can't claim to understand it. Not only that, they've worked out based on
various factors that the CO2 levels were higher in the Cambrian, Ordovician
and Jurassic periods. It's like trying to work out who farted in a lift full
of people.

As for the locavore thing, it's only better because it's not usually mass
produced crap so it has health benefits. Chickens, goats etc are a
counterpoint to the OP's "theory" as they live off waste and are highly
efficient meat generators. Not only that, anyone can manage them.

I grow huge amounts of edible things myself (because it tastes better and is
cost, health and psycologically beneficial). I'm not labelling myself with
Carbon Crusader, Green warrior, Locavore or whatever terms they think up next
etc though - that's just silly.

You're ultimately trading your health for carbon guilt.

~~~
enemieslist
I'm always really curious about people who deny human causation of global
warming, which is what it seems like you're doing. I mean this as a legitimate
question: How do you justify this belief?

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe in human-caused global
warming. I'm assuming that you don't have specific training in these issues,
or data that no one else possesses, so under what criteria do you choose to
follow your own reasoning, or gut instinct, over such a mountain of educated
opinion?

A corollary, for me, could be drawn to atoms. I have never seen an atom, nor
have I ever really dug deep into the data that people say proves atoms exist.
I have no more first-hand knowledge of atoms than I have of God. Yet, I simply
choose to believe in atoms because people who are supposed to know about these
things say atoms exist, and I'm told that if I really wanted to prove it to
myself, I could go back to college or to a laboratory and do so.

We have to do this for all kinds of things, every day. We're surrounded by
things that operate on principles that no single person will ever have the
time or energy to investigate and validate by themselves. We have to delegate
authority over most technical matters to specialists, simply because we don't
have any other choice.

Why draw the line at global warming? Do you believe in internal combustion? Do
you believe in black holes? Do you believe in evolution?

Really, I do not mean this to sound like an attack. I want to know.

~~~
jquery
Being skeptical of political crusades and trendy beliefs is very different
from being a "denier". We can scarcely predict the weather one day in advance.
Being skeptical of global climate predictions spanning decades is hardly on
the same level as denying the internal combustion engine. And even if you
accept the premise of global warming, as I do, it's a big stretch to make
lifestyle recommendations based on that, and an even bigger stretch to start
regulating personal eating habits.

~~~
pessimizer
We can scarcely predict the average of three dice rolls, but over a series the
average becomes trivial.

~~~
chrisjsmith
Unless you roll a thousand 6's.

