Comment by fulafel
1 year ago
Meat consumption per capita has almost doubled since 1960: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-consumpti...
Meat consumption is associated with higher BMI: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32443920/ (summarized in: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200615/Vegetarians-have-...)
That's world, not USA. And the obesity inflection point was in the mid to late 70s. Pew has an excellent study on American diets from 1970 to 2010 here. [1] In short our consumption of meat, in terms of calories, is pretty much flat-lined, and at an abysmal 400. But grain products, fats/oils, and sweetener consumption has skyrocketed.
Something you have to keep in mind in modern times is also food processing. A 10 piece set of McDonalds chicken nuggets weighs around 163 grams, but contains only 23g of protein. By contrast 163 grams of chicken breast contains just about exactly 50 grams of protein. The more processed something is, the more it tends to drift from its nominal nutritional value, and it's safe to say that a much larger chunk of people's "meat" is also coming from these sort of heavily processed meat-like foods.
As for the studies, you have a common bias they suffer from. You're comparing some group of people opting into some diet or another, versus the population at large. An apples to apples comparison would be something closer like comparing those on a long-term vegetarian diet to those on a long-term carnivore or keto diet. The idea is to just make sure you control for the "I care about my diet and have sustained dietary self control" variable. Unfortunately actually controlling studies means you'd get far fewer exciting headlines and bullet points for our CVs.
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/12/13/whats-on-...