How much meat do you eat? How sustainable are current meat-eating levels?

Glass Prison 1214

This time last year I watched Cowspiracy, and it opened my eyes to how unsustainable meat consumption is. I began to cut it out of my diet and a few months later I cut it out completely. I have been vegan for six months now and I have never felt healthier or more energetic. I wish I had made the change years ago.

I would never tell someone else what to do, but I do wish more people would watch Cowspiracy to truly understand the impact of meat consumption.

Maximus Alexander

I eat meat seven days a week, usually twice a day; lunch and dinner. It's delicious. Growing up I can't remember a dinner that wouldn't have had a substantial amount of meat in it.

If it becomes scarce then it will get expensive. If it gets expensive enough that I can't afford to eat it as often, then of course I will eat it less.

Junkyard Tom

Who needs meat when you can eat burgers and sausages!

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

eviltwin wrote: »

My kids don't eat meat

how do they get their protein?

Maximus Alexander

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

I eat meat seven days a week, usually twice a day; lunch and dinner. It's delicious. Growing up I can't remember a dinner that wouldn't have had a substantial amount of meat in it.

If it becomes scarce then it will get expensive. If it gets expensive enough that I can't afford to eat it as often, then of course I will eat it less.

I may very well be wrong, but did you say in a thread before that you were 6 foot 4? That would be interesting to me if you had.

Outlaw Pete

I eat more than I think is healthy.

Like rashers but pork is so intensively reared and pumped full of nitrates and what not that I'd rather not be eating it... no damn will power though and so fry ups always lure me back to the bacon and sausages.

Was recently watching some long term raw vegans on YouTube and it did make me wonder how the hell do it and if I could manage it. Be great to just be able to eat some fruit and feel great.... doubt it's that easy though, despite their testaments.......................

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6oJA_xhTa8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TR8FyZ75l4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA743NUIsXg

Surely these people must be taking B12 shots at the very least??

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

these fcuking food fads... THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH EATING MEAT! and loads of it. sure, they're pumped full of stuff to kill diseases and to fatten them quicker so they can feed more people, but all these additives have been heavily tested and are safe to eat.

it's the greatest food group going. it supplies huge amounts of protein in low calories. and it satiates, makes you feel full so you shouldn't overeat. and it tastes sooooo damn good :-)

Outlaw Pete

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

Was recently watching some long term raw vegans on YouTube and it did make me wonder how the hell do it and if I could manage it. Be great to just be able to eat some fruit and feel great.... doubt it's that easy though, despite their testaments.......................

Surely these people must be taking B12 shots at the very least??

I suppose it is very hard to work out what the exact optimal diet a person should eat is, in fact it is bound to change from person to person surely?
My own hunch, which is clearly as good/bad as anyone elses, is that the healthiest is (not an exhuastive list..)
- low calorie for a start, low sodium, moderate fibre. That takes care of blood pressure, excess weight, and promotes healthy digestion.
- Next that it has at even a small amount of vegetables/fruit to let your body stock up on vitamins that are hard to get elsewhere ("greenstuff", as sailors used to call it when they would go looking for it upon landing on some island after months at sea)
- I'd imagine dairy is totally avoidable while remaining healthy.
- I'd imagine in terms of carb sources, out of our domesticated food-crops which contain much more starch than ancient plant food sources, roots like potatoes are better than grains since they are more similar to the carb sources our ancient ancestors would have most used. I'd guess oats are a better source of fuel than wheat and less irritating and blood sugar spiking - I know that I feel healthier, skin is less red etc. when I am regularly eating porridge for breakfast. Rice I would guess is pretty good for you since it is not as addictive as and is more satiating than wheat bread or pasta. I'd imagine the coarser a bread is the healthier.
- My own hunch is that it is healthier to eat *some* very small amount of sugar than none at all, if only for your ensuring your body continues to know how to deal with sudden spikes in blood sugar.
- I'd say eating a small bit of meat say twice a week and a decent bit once a week would be enough to keep you healthy with the rest of your protein being capable of being supplied through leguiminous plants (and nuts if you'e not allergic) and supplemented with the protein from your carb sources.
- A bit of saturated fat is good I'd say but only a bit and stuff like trans fats is a big no-no. I believe olive oil is a very useful source of fat.
- Added salt, another no-no
- No alcohol is better than any, despite what all the studies confusing correlation with causation tell us

I don't think eating meat 3 times a day or in large quantities in general would be "healthy", even if it leads to you having low body fat. Constipation for one must be killer. Also, surely a nitrogen rich diet places a heavy load on your body in general? Neither can I imagine a raw-food vegan diet etc. being healthy - the fact it would be so hard to stick to and would involve restricting from your diet foods which would have been relished by your ancient ancestors, tells me that it's probably not healthy, but I could easily be wrong there obviously! I'd say most of the benefit comes from sheer calorie restriction.

Nekarsulm

How sustainable are our current meat-eating levels?

If you are talking about the Irish market, we only eat 10% of the beef produced in the Republic.
90% is exported.
Last year, Irish farms produced 535,000 tons of beef for export.
Thats about 10,000 tons a week.
On a six axle truck/trailer combination, fully loaded with 28 tons of beef thats 357 trucks a week leaving this part of the island.

We have lots of room to increase our beef consumption

Junkyard Tom

As an efficiency nerd producing meat is one of the worst ways of utilising tillage farming. Energy cannot be created or destroyed etc. That field that's needed to produce a number of steaks for a few fat cunts will grow enough food for a thousand hungry fuckers.

Maximus Alexander

Deleted User wrote: »

I may very well be wrong, but did you say in a thread before that you were 6 foot 4? That would be interesting to me if you had.

Nope, I'm a comparatively squat 6'2!

Maximus Alexander

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Nope, I'm a comparatively squat 6'2!

Ah right, it crossed my mind that you mentioned your height before and I thought you were very tall You got your fill of precious protein before your growth-plates fused so!

Nekarsulm

Nekarsulm wrote: »

How sustainable are our current meat-eating levels?

If you are talking about the Irish market, we only eat 10% of the beef produced in the Republic.
90% is exported.
Last year, Irish farms produced 535,000 tons of beef for export.
Thats about 10,000 tons a week.
On a six axle truck/trailer combination, fully loaded with 28 tons of beef thats 357 trucks a week leaving this part of the island.

We have lots of room to increase our beef consumption

While I am thinking more of on a worldwide basis, this post is illuminating for me - thanks for helping me visualise the Irish situation as regards meat produced and consumed.

And on Maximus Alexander's point about how it will simply become more expensive when it becomes scarce - but surely the nature of all economic goods isn't the same? Like these goods are sentient for one thing, and they are also something we need to nourish our bodies so we can't allow them to fall to too low of numbers eg. depleting fish stocks threatened with extinction. And I imagine in a scenario where the market price of a burger is 100 euro, there are going to be knock on effect elsewhere in society and worldwide! After all, one contributing reason put forward for why people were so violent in the past was protein-hunger, and lack of protein in childhood hinders cognitive development. I just have a feeling our species is collectively sleep-walking into catastrophe due to a desire not to have to change their current behaviour or think about the situation - like it is us who live in the abnormal situation eating as much meat as we do, not our ancestors who ate very little. Does it not strike anyone else as too good to be true to be able to have as much meat as we can have, as cheaply and that there is no reason for you to feel guilty about it or anxious that it is going to change and run out?

Nekarsulm

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

As an efficiency nerd producing meat is one of the worst ways of utilising tillage farming. Energy cannot be created or destroyed etc. That field that's needed to produce a number of steaks for a few fat cunts will grow enough food for a thousand hungry fuckers.

Yes, but the thousand hungry ****$rs willing to eat feed wheat are all living in Ethiopia.
Remember, not even our own bread is capable of being made from exclusively Irish grown tillage crops, we import a % of milling wheat from Canada and the USSR.
So unless we all convert to porridge, and grow oats, the argument that tillage to feed animals is wasteful is a false one.
Also, a large proportion of this country has neither the soil type nor the climatic conditions to successfully grow tillage crops.
Grass is the natural crop, and until humans evolve to process this crop, we will continue to utilise animals to convert grass to a food we can digest.

An enormous amount of grass is converted into milk by the dairy herd.
This is processed into cheeses, yogurts, butter etc. as well as liquid milk.
The by-products of the butter industry are also very valuable, in unexpected ways. Casein, the protein element of whey (itself a by-product of the cheese and butter making process) is exported worldwide for use in the pharmaceutical industry.
That Tylenol tablet or antibiotic pill you take is made primarily from casein, with a few added chemicals that actually have the desired effect on your body.
Our local Co-op exports casein to Mexico for this very purpose.
So it's not just a case of getting a "number of steaks" from a field of grass/grain for "a few fat c>nts".

Junkyard Tom

Right. I think you're much more knowledgeable about this than me so maybe you can educate me a bit?

Nekarsulm wrote: »

So unless we all convert to porridge, and grow oats, the argument that tillage to feed animals is wasteful is a false one.

Okay fair enough, but which animals? Isn't beef production the worst of all the meats to produce because the land used could be used to produce grass to feed cows could be used to produce an exponentially larger volume of food?

Also, a large proportion of this country has neither the soil type nor the climatic conditions to successfully grow tillage crops.

Isn't that why we turn the sheep out on the mountains? Honest question.

Grass is the natural crop, and until humans evolve to process this crop, we will continue to utilise animals to convert grass to a food we can digest.

Fair point.

An enormous amount of grass is converted into milk by the dairy herd. This is processed into cheeses, yogurts, butter etc. as well as liquid milk. The by-products of the butter industry are also very valuable, in unexpected ways. Casein, the protein element of whey (itself a by-product of the cheese and butter making process) is exported worldwide for use in the pharmaceutical industry.

That Tylenol tablet or antibiotic pill you take is made primarily from casein, with a few added chemicals that actually have the desired effect on your body.

Our local Co-op exports casein to Mexico for this very purpose. So it's not just a case of getting a "number of steaks" from a field of grass/grain for "a few fat c>nts".

Very good points. I'm outa my depth on the whole farming thing but am interested by it all the same. Thanks for the responses.

Nekarsulm

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Right. I think you're much more knowledgeable about this than me so maybe you can educate me a bit?



Okay fair enough, but which animals? Isn't beef production the worst of all the meats to produce because the land used could be used to produce grass to feed cows could be used to produce an exponentially larger volume of food?

You need a combination of grass and cereals to produce beef. The cereal proportion is small in comparison to the grass. Indeed, consumer driven fads and fashion is responsible for aspects of current beef industry. People don't like fat in their meat, so leaner continental breeds now dominate the industry. These grow faster and need more cereals to "finish". There is also the restriction on age of beef animals at slaughter. Currently, they must be younger than 30 months of age, or you are heavily penalised, price wise. Indeed the industry move ius towards 24months age limit.Why 30 months? Its a legacy issue from the BSE crisis. Which itself was a legacy issue from Maggie Thatchers deregulation of the rendering industry. Which allowed producers of meat&bone meal process at lower temperatures, thus saving money.
Traditional breeds were slower maturing. Hereford and Angus etc. would have been almost totally grass fed, but taken a year longer to finish. Swings and roundabouts. But these breeds are tastier, due to the veins of fat in the meat.

Isn't that why we turn the sheep out on the mountains? Honest question.
Mountain grazing is a small % of total grazing.
An acre of grass can support a fixed amount of livestock, generally speaking.
A cow is 1 livestock unit.
Six sheep equals 1 livestock unit.
The output possible from your acre is similar. One calf of 500kg or 12 lambs at 45kg, if you see what I mean. Rough figures.


Fair point.

Have a look over on the Farming Forum, folk are generally helpful there.


Very good points. I'm outa my depth on the whole farming thing but am interested by it all the same. Thanks for the responses.

Nek.

Cupcake_Crisis

I don't eat red meat at all really, but I do eat quite a lot of chicken and eggs. The odd bit of fish. It's more because I just don't really like meat than anything else. I'd rather eat my own face than a steak, bleurgh.

Graces7

Very very rare meat in any form here.

I grew up in an age when what you ate was a sign of your social/financial standing and thus meat was prized. Chicken in those days was a once a year food. And poor folk ate parts of the animal we would not give to our dogs now
We were better off so meat every day. Beef on Sundays that lasted until Tuesday.

Partly with me the relative cost when I was on disability.

Then living among sheep and lambs.... raising pet lambs finished eating lamb.

Then finding that meat more than filled me; weighed me down intolerably.

Then came the dreaded oesphageal narrowing and the stuff gets stuck.

And I have totally lost my taste for it. Even the smell..

Yes it is unsustainable and bad for the earth and yes we need to be aware of that. And respect that.

Wondering what the correlation is in the US where they are serious meat eaters and cancer? OP any ideas?

eviltwin

georgiecasey wrote: »

how do they get their protein?

Same place I get mine.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

Shenshen

Nekarsulm wrote: »

How sustainable are our current meat-eating levels?

If you are talking about the Irish market, we only eat 10% of the beef produced in the Republic.
90% is exported.
Last year, Irish farms produced 535,000 tons of beef for export.
Thats about 10,000 tons a week.
On a six axle truck/trailer combination, fully loaded with 28 tons of beef thats 357 trucks a week leaving this part of the island.

We have lots of room to increase our beef consumption

Beef only constitutes under 30% of all meat consumed in Ireland. It doesn't exactly make it a niche market, but it's far from the biggest share.

Since people always love to point to all the happy cows in the fields, I'd also suggest increasing your consumption of those. Should make for a few less chickens and pigs being kept in poor conditions.

Autonomous Cowherd

Onion, I raised 2 boys complete vegetarian, one is 5'10, the other 6'2. The shorter height is present in both our (us parents) families, though himself is tall. I'm short. Anecdotal, of course. Vegetarianism requires study and effort to acquire sufficient nutrition, for example in traditionally vegetarian societies there are lots of fermented foods which supply vital trace elements. Etc etc. But it is perfectly possible nowadays to get excellent nutrition without meat. People can eat what they want, i don't feel any reaction to people eating meat... But...Less meat consumption generally would benefit the environment.

Nekarsulm

Shenshen wrote: »

Beef only constitutes under 30% of all meat consumed in Ireland. It doesn't exactly make it a niche market, but it's far from the biggest share.

Since people always love to point to all the happy cows in the fields, I'd also suggest increasing your consumption of those. Should make for a few less chickens and pigs being kept in poor conditions.

Indeed. I was simply pointing out that the Republic exports a large majority of the beef produced in the 26 counties.
As far as I can see, in 2016 we also exported about 50,000 tons of lamb, 200,000 tons of pork and 100,000 tons of poultry products.
Its hard to get a figure for pork and poultry imports, but they must be significant. One article I read claimed that 50% of processed pork products eaten in Ireland contain some level of imported pork.

Trade agreements and levies make for a confused market, with no apparent sense to the system.
Get talking to any trucker in the haulage business and they will tell you about bringing a truck-load of chicken over to Belgium (for example) then picking up a load of chicken in Holland for Dunnes (or any supermarket chain/processor) and bringing it back.

I was watching a program at the weekend, about Guy Martin visiting China. In conversation about the global shipping trade and the role of the container, he stated that due to the enormous size of these mega ships, transport costs from China to Europe are tiny. He claimed that it is cheaper to farm Salmon in Scotland, ship it to China for filleting, and ship it back to Scotland for sale, than simply filleting it at point of production. I don't know how freezing in Scotland, defrosting and filleting in China, then re-freezing and shipping back to Europe improves food safety, but thats a discussion for someone with more knowledge of food storage than I have.

Giblet

Graces7 wrote: »

Very very rare meat in any form here.
I grew up in an age when what you ate was a sign of your social/financial standing and thus meat was prized. Chicken in those days was a once a year food. And poor folk ate parts of the animal we would not give to our dogs now
We were better off so meat every day. Beef on Sundays that lasted until Tuesday.

The 1800's?

Nekarsulm

Nekarsulm wrote: »

I was watching a program at the weekend, about Guy Martin visiting China. In conversation about the global shipping trade and the role of the container, he stated that due to the enormous size of these mega ships, transport costs from China to Europe are tiny. He claimed that it is cheaper to farm Salmon in Scotland, ship it to China for filleting, and ship it back to Scotland for sale, than simply filleting it at point of production. I don't know how freezing in Scotland, defrosting and filleting in China, then re-freezing and shipping back to Europe improves food safety, but thats a discussion for someone with more knowledge of food storage than I have.

On a similarish note, tomatoes grown in Spain probably cause less CO2 emissions than most locally grown here as the transport causes less than the heating etc. required here for most of the year.

vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/Smil_2014.pdf

This short paper is written by the same man as wrote the paper in my first link in the opening post and is more recent than the first (2014 vs 2003). In it, the author describes what would need to happen to maintain current meat eating trends into the next few decades and he concludes that it is utterly impossible to maintain current habits even up to 2030. Even though we won't want to we will all be forced to eat less meat. I think people take for granted that material living standards will continue to rise forever - this is not preordained. Living standards have been "rising" for an appreciable percentage of the worlds population (for each given moment), for about 200 years (to be overly generous) - the first 2 centuries of continuous growth can be expected to eventually be seen to have been much easier than the next two, seeing as the population was starting from a lower base (about 1 billion) and limited exhaustable fossil fuels had yet to become seriously tapped. This present era of available cheap energy will be seen as an ephemeral blip, a wonderous time period when the world population was freed up to balloon and many were able to have extremely high living standards like we all enjoy. And if we manage to stretch out the resources of meat for another 100 years, what about after that? When fossil fuels are gone in 200 years, how will we be able to continue feeding all the people who will be around (possibly fewer than today but still billions)?
It seems to me that the only solution is for the human population to decrease more quickly, especially in countries with high meat diets, and for each of us to reduce our meat intake by maybe 20% and never be wasteful with meat. Unlike our ancestors and people around the world at present, we get to live with the luxury of being able to forget that meat is a resource in limited supply in the world - we are utterly spoiled in this regard. We wastefully won't even eat stuff like sheeps head or bull testciles because we're so spoiled by living in these temporary conditions of plenty (and I include myself in that!).

Graces7

Graces7 wrote: »

Wondering what the correlation is in the US where they are serious meat eaters and cancer? OP any ideas?

Hmm, I suppose the links with bowel cancer are well documented? I'm sure a lifetime of eating lots of meat just can't be healthy- maybe I'm wrong but I'd bet I'm not.

miezekatze

I grew up eating meat for almost every meal, and my parents still eat like that today. I agree that this way of eating is not sustainable though, and the way animals are being treated in a lot of places is just horrible. I'm not vegetarian or vegan, but now I only eat meat maybe twice a week. As I find more and more delicious vegetarian meals I might reduce that further. I used to think that most vegetarian meals were boring, but that's really not the case.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Graces7 wrote: »

Very very rare meat in any form here.

I grew up in an age when what you ate was a sign of your social/financial standing and thus meat was prized. Chicken in those days was a once a year food. And poor folk ate parts of the animal we would not give to our dogs now
We were better off so meat every day. Beef on Sundays that lasted until Tuesday.

Partly with me the relative cost when I was on disability.

Then living among sheep and lambs.... raising pet lambs finished eating lamb.

Then finding that meat more than filled me; weighed me down intolerably.

Then came the dreaded oesphageal narrowing and the stuff gets stuck.

And I have totally lost my taste for it. Even the smell..

Yes it is unsustainable and bad for the earth and yes we need to be aware of that. And respect that.

Wondering what the correlation is in the US where they are serious meat eaters and cancer? OP any ideas?

I'm totally confused. You post about bacon and eggs for breakfast and the cat eating the chicken that was defrosting. So you do eat meat and are part of the consumption of the unsustainable product.

Jack the Stripper

Paulina Scary Billiards wrote: »

I'm totally confused. You post about bacon and eggs for breakfast and the cat eating the chicken that was defrosting. So you do eat meat and are part of the consumption of the unsustainable product.

She is on the wine I'd say.