> The study, published in the journal Nutrients, analyzed data from the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which tracked the meals of more than 10,000 adults over a 24-hour period.
12% of Americans ate half the beef on a single day. It is the unlikely that the 12% are the same people from day to day. You may have been one of the 12 percent when you went out for a steak dinner or especially if you visited a Brazilian all you can eat steakhouse.
This seems a very weak foundation to draw a lot of conclusions from.
Applying the same logic the study's authors apply to their results, you would also come to the conclusion that 45% of Americans consume no beef at all, rather than that 45% of Americans happen to not eat beef on any given day.
How did this not set off anyone's bullshit detector? And how did this get published?
The authors appear to be unaware of this obvious flaw in their methodology.
>"On one hand, if it's only 12% accounting for half the beef consumption, you could make some big gains if you get those 12% on board," Rose said. "On the other hand, those 12% may be most resistant to change."
What an absolute turd. I don't know what would make me madder, someone who lies through their teeth to manipulate or someone who is this highly educated and yet so astoundingly dumb.
Regulating cattle has nothing to do with green initiatives and is harmful to seeing real change that could actually make a difference in climate change. It would be useful to dives from these conversations and focus on issues that will actually take a chunk of out emissions.
Silly things like this, with their obvious fabricated headlines, signal the intent here is to harass a population segment, which is counter productive, instead of having useful relationship building conversations, where real change happens.
Lentils, much like most legumes, have a neat trick up their sleeve. They partner with root bacteria to capture nitrogen from the air and stash it underground. This not only gives the legumes a nutrient boost but also helps the soil retain more water and essential nutrients for the next crop. Plus, it reduces the need for those carbon-heavy nitrogen fertilizers.
When it comes to meat production, it operates quite differently from legumes like lentils. Meat production primarily relies on the consumption of feed by animals, such as cows, pigs, or chickens. These animals don't have the nitrogen-fixing capabilities found in legumes. Instead, they require protein-rich diets, often in the form of soybean meal or other crops.
The issue arises because these animals, during digestion, release a significant amount of nitrogen into the environment in the form of ammonia and other nitrogen compounds. This process is known as nitrogen excretion. Unlike legumes, which enrich the soil with nitrogen, meat production can lead to nitrogen pollution when excess nitrogen is not properly managed. This pollution can harm water quality and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, making it less environmentally sustainable compared to legume cultivation.
The cattle industry is the lowest hanging fruit in reducing greenhouse emissions.
Ranchers and meet packers won't be happy about efforts to reduce beef consumption, but there losses could be offset by higher prices.
Beef consumers would be very unhappy about higher prices, but beef becoming a luxury item would cause minimal harm, as there are plenty of substitute protein sources.
Politicians on all sides are afraid of policies that could be seen as anti agricultural, so they focus all there efforts on much more costly measures.
> The cattle industry is the lowest hanging fruit in reducing greenhouse emissions.
Citation needed.
This is a recurring meme in online discussion and I am honestly a bit aggravated by this. I am all for curbing the slaughter industry for the ethical aspect of animal suffering but the argument for ecological reasons seems like something introduced in public discourse to create distraction.
For example fugitive methane emissions from oil wells, pipelines, and coal pits, account for 5.8 % of GHG (This is also I suspect largely underreported). In contrast Livestock emissions and Manure/Fertilizer related emissions are also 5.8%. [0]
Please explain how it will be easier to stop Farmers in remote parts of Brazil and Argentina from raising cattle versus forcing billion dollar companies to sequester methane at extraction sites in US/Canada/Gulf countries?
In fact let's take it further if we look at the GHG emissions of:
- Iron/Steel Industry (7.2%)
- Cement Industry (3%)
- Fugitive methane emissions from Oil/Gas/Coal (5.8%)
- Petrochemical industry/refinement (3.6%)
These 4x GHG sources alone produce more GHG emissions than our _entire_ Agricultural activity (Plants + Livestock) including deforestation and crop burning. [0]
Our governments/regulators are failing us. We expect a 180 change from developing countries when entire billion dollar industries are idle in jurisdictions where we actually have a saying. As much as I agree with it for Animal welfare, in my view, Beef as an ecological battle _is_ a distraction.
> These 4x GHG sources alone produce more GHG emissions than our _entire_ Agricultural activity (Plants + Livestock) including deforestation and crop burning
If someone wants to decrease their green house emissions, its very hard to personally do anything about the Steel/Cement/Oil industry without a fair amount of effort - particularly if you're part of the "younger generation". Changes to those industries takes concerted political/industrial effort and vested interests want to maintain the status-quo.
However, anyone can give up or reduce the amount of beef they're eating without much effort, no government regulation needed.
Most people that care about environment, animal cruelty, and ethics are already small consumers of meat anyway. I would hazard guess also that any market reduction in Beef consumption in the West would be absorbed by Asian Markets, producers would not be producing less.
Actions like:
- Reducing/eliminating car usage
- Reducing residential heating/cooling
Are something individuals control and both would objectively have a much much greater GHG emissions impact. However they are not as popular in public discourse.
Looking at some documentaries about living conditions in very dense places proves that humans could survive in much smaller housing. You could massively increase density of housing and people would still stay alive.
But for some reason this is never suggested as solution before stopping eating meat...
> Most people that care about environment, animal cruelty, and ethics are already small consumers of meat anyway.
Based on what I see for sale in grocery stores and on restaurant menus a huge amount of meat is consumed in the US. I have a hard time believing it's all being consumed by people that don't care about the environment, animal cruelty and ethics. I think/hope that most people care about those things but just feel they are powerless to do anything about them or maybe aren't aware how bad some situations are, e.g. animal welfare in the meat industry.
> in contrast Livestock emissions and Manure/Fertilizer related emissions are also 5.8%.
Are those net emissions (= from fossil fuels) or they include net-zero emissions, such as CO2 from the atmosphere (crops) converted to some other (short lived) ghg?
> This is a recurring meme in online discussion and I am honestly a bit aggravated by this.
It is because the FAO report "Livestock's long shadow" has stood the test of time, despite what is usually said in internet comment sections.
On an individual level, it is probably the most simple thing you can do. Not driving/flying or will make it impossible for you to participate in society. Not eating meat is simple in most western countries.
I struggle to see how a X percentage reduction in meat consumption in North America or Europe would lead to a matched reduction in livestock numbers or deforestation. That surplus would just be absorbed as cheaper beef in other markets with deficit (in Asia for example).
I would be interested in seeing an analytical breakdown of consuming 50% less meat versus bringing your thermostat 3 or 4 Celsius away from your ideal temperature? Or forcing Commercial real estate to bring their thermostats 3 or 4 Celsius away from ideal?
I never said I think it is an individual problem. If we don't switch the energy sector away from oil there is not a chance in hell we are getting anywhere. What I said is, on an individual level, not eating animal products is a lot easier than avoiding oil use.
Regardless of how we chose to tackle the problem, we can't look away from the fact that meat - and especially beef - is an incredibly inefficient way to produce food. Not just with regards to CO2e. It uses a pretty staggering amount of land and often a staggering amount of fresh water.
I am looking out the window right now at a seemingly endless field of crops that will be fed to pigs and chicken. Sure, they are a lot better at converting plant calories to meat calories than cows, but it seems pretty wasteful. I remember calculating grams of protein per acre and was blown away at how inefficient everything except farmed fish and maybe chicken (which preformed worse than most pulses when comparing the most intensive husbandry).
I haven't looked it up, but I wouldn't be surprised if more than half of the used arable land in Norway (where I am right now) is used for feed. Everywhere I look there are crops grown for cows, pigs and chicken (not counting the rest products they get from other types of crops).
I’ve been doing a deep dive into grid resilience and decarbonization lately, basically exploring all of the sources of energy that are either available for purchase at grid-scale today or look very promising for commercial readiness on a <5 year time horizon. The two main thoughts that are unfortunately dominating are:
- Any time people are being told that their own individual actions that potentially cost them money or reduce their quality of life (buy rooftop solar! “Shave The Peak!” Stop eating meat! Take the bus or train, don’t drive or fly), they’ve essentially been tricked into getting warm and fuzzy feelings by a corporation who will profit from their decision while making the most minuscule insignificant dent in the problem
- Collective action is the only way this problem gets solved, and to be palatable to the general population it’s going to need to be done in a way that doesn’t reduce quality of life. The main one: rapid rollout of a combination of nuclear, combined-cycle natural gas with carbon capture, solar, wind, and pumped-storage hydro if the local geography actually supports that in an economic way. This needs to be sufficient capacity buildout that we not only can power our homes and industry with primarily carbon-free energy but also heat them and power our vehicles.
I 100% understand the desire to feel like “I’m doing my part” and that personal sacrifice can feel a whole lot better when you feel like you’re contributing to solving an existential threat to humanity (which I do believe the carbon problem is, which led me to doing this research in the first place). But unless you’re actively attacking the Pareto portion of the problem, your individual effort isn’t going to do a whole lot.
Oh, I do agree with you. We should not individualize a collective problem. Telling people to eat less meat will be a lot less effective than, say, ending oil subsidies. I think a lot of people think ending the climate crisis is about NOT doing something, but that is not really a feasible choice. We would need something like 7 or 8 Corona recessions to actually reach the 1.5C "goal".
I do agree with you, except for the natural gas part. The leaks in the process of storing and transporting natural gas are too large for it to be feasible even if chimney carbon capture starts being 100% effective.
Regarding meat production we could at least start with not subsidising the shit out of it.
> I do agree with you, except for the natural gas part.
I’m coming at this from the perspective of a very flat Canadian province (very little hydro potential, the math on even pumped hydro storage is miserably bad). I have not yet found an alternative dispatchable energy source for load following that would work here other than natural gas. If you’ve got something that is economically viable and commercially available in the <5 year time horizon I would love to update my mental model with it. It sucks for sure, I just haven’t found anything better yet that can deployed today.
Edit:
> Regarding meat production we could at least start with not subsidising the shit out of it.
Definitely agree with you there! My wife and I are fortunate enough to live near a very small-scale ranch whose only real subsidy is that the wife works as a well-paid nurse. I’m generally a big fan of “let industries work out their own economics and if it doesn’t work out it can go away” :D
Not anything that would be available in the short term, but geothermal should work well in some parts of Canada, and where it is not enough for power generation it should still work for heating homes in an effective manner using small scale(ish) installations that cover maybe 10-15 houses at the same time. I had it installed in my house recently, and the most expensive part was the drilling. A government program to lower that threshold would probably be a good way to reduce peak energy.
Regarding meat, I am also all for feeding cows grass only, but that means land use balloons like crazy.
Yeah geothermal is amazing here for heating and cooling but not quite hot enough for “standard” geothermal power generation. There is an experimental pilot project happening in the south of the province where they think they may have found a technique that might work for power but it is so far unproven and the first plant is targeting only 5MW.
100% it is the way to go for carbon-free heating and cooling here. For new rural builds it’s even cost competitive. A friend of mine recently built a house and getting a gas line installed was going to cost $40k. Installing geothermal came in below that and with a COP of 4 it ends up coming out marginally cheaper on a monthly basis (1kWh of electricity costs approximately the same as 3kWh of natural gas heating here). He has resistive heating backup but I think it has only kicked in once or twice over 5 years.
And yeah, definitely not scalable for everyone to just split a hobby-grown cow with their whole family. It sure is nice for us though!
What part of flying is mandatory for society? Driving surely has become this way, but there is a large number of people that could reduce their driving by a significant amount without a large impact to their lives. They still choose not to. They don't care.
It is not mandatory, but for many people not flying is a choice in the same way not having a smartphone is. Like where I am right now: Getting around in Norway means flying.
wouldn't be sure about this: "but beef becoming a luxury item would cause minimal harm", there's anecdotal evidence of the carnivore community, where ppl can't eat anything else.
I'm lucky, I can eat other things. But I too suffer from depression when I stray too far into eating plants.
Beef returning to being a luxury item, as it was all over modern Europe until post-WW2 recovery. Non-wealthy Britons didn't eat beef very often, and it was also a special treat in Germany. Widespread regular beef consumption before the world wars was pretty much a big New World country (USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia) thing.
Even today, Germans eat about 1/4 the amount of beef that Americans do, and somewhat less meat overall. It's certainly available, but it's a lot more expensive than pork or chicken. Domestic stall-raised beef is about the same price as free-range chicken, and free-range beef is even more expensive; I refuse to consider Brazilian beef, which is usually the cheapest, given its motivating role in the destruction of the rainforests.
Except that 1/2 of beef is consumed by a minority of boomer men according to this article. And they are eating this largely via burritos and burgers rather than steaks.
They don't sound like they are taking care of themselves already. Would increasing the prices reduce consumption or just mean they treat themselves more like crap?
Would increasing the price really impact them, or the other 88% of the population that consumes significantly less on average?
I've thought for years, the difficulty in getting artificial beef products promoted is due to the fact that so few people give a flying fart about it.
Now we have actual statistics. Half of beef is die-hard beef eaters who won't even go chicken, much less faux meat.
I personally disregard 'how much like beef' the new products are. Pork, chicken, fish aren't much like beef either. The idea is to find good recipes for making it delicious.
>Those below the age of 29 and above the age of 66 were least likely to eat large amounts of beef. Rose said this indicated that the younger generation might be more interested in mitigating the effects of climate change.
Also, people below the age of 29 are likely more food-health conscious. IE. vegans, vegetarians, gluten free, etc.
They are also poorer and less likely to be able to afford beef on a daily basis. But I'm sure that is a mere coincidence and in no shape or form relevant to the outcome of the study at hand.
People below the age of 29 are still likely to believe what they were taught in school, and haven’t yet suffered the consequences of the lifestyle they’ve been told their whole lives is more healthy and virtuous.
Depends on what you replace it with. For the majority of people less beef means more soy, more seed oils, or more chicken (the meat most easily modifiable by modern industrial techniques).
The consequence is low muscle mass and high body fat (skinny fat), chronic health issues and screwed up hormone profiles.
That's just nonsense. There are vegan bodybuilders & other top athletes out there.
I've been vegetarian since I was ~10y old, now 50+ and bordering on vegan, and doing fine health wise. If not better than many peers my age.
It's just a matter of making sure you get all vitamins, minerals & other nutrients the body needs. As opposed to just dropping food categories & hope for the best.
For vegans in particular, that means vit. B12 supplements, and have a good look at things like calcium and iron intake. But with that in order: NO problem.
The average American eats 55lbs/25kg beef a year. For 12% of Americans to eat 50% of the beef they have to consume over 4 times as much as the average American.
That'd mean they'd eat a ~270g beef steak every single day.
I'm by no means a vegetarian, let alone a vegan, but even you have to admit that this is excessive. This could easily be replaced with nothing and you wouldn't be protein deficient.
Uh, humans for the majority of existence have lived off grains, veg, fruits and only some meat. Meat being a everyday thing is purely a 20th century invention, and on that list of meat being available once in awhile, beef was very low on the list, pig was king.
You are starting to sound like one of those fragile male ego types that rants about soy having _plant estrogen_.
>humans for the majority of existence…
This is not globally true. Animal products have always been the most important part of the Northern European diet. Earlier, nomadic herders in Asia and Europe ate primarily animal products (while famously conquering every sedentary civilization they came across). Ötzi, the 5300 year old mummy found in the alps, had a stomach full of meat. Going back further, hunter gatherers traditionally derived most of their calories from animal products, and Neanderthals had a completely carnivore diet.
It heavily depends on place and period. Humans also lived a lot from eggs and milk products.
That being said, we are bigger and stronger. Humans suffered from malnutrition a lot. Many previously normal malnutrition caused diseases are basically nonexistent now.
This is a common trend I see. Younger people are making more environmental conscious choice, because of course they will suffer the most because bad decisions taken by the previous generation.
Personally I would not replace it with meat substitutes even though I understand why they exists. We can look at mediterranean and indian vegetarian diets for lot of inspiration on eating healthy vegetarian food.
12% of Americans ate half the beef on a single day. It is the unlikely that the 12% are the same people from day to day. You may have been one of the 12 percent when you went out for a steak dinner or especially if you visited a Brazilian all you can eat steakhouse.
This seems a very weak foundation to draw a lot of conclusions from.