Comment by woodruffw
2 days ago
Of note: the US's per capita consumption of meat has increased by more than 100 pounds over the last century[1]. We now consume an immense amount of meat per person in this country. That increase is disproportionately in poultry, but we also consume more beef[2].
A demand for the average American to eat more meat would have to explain, as a baseline, why our already positive trend in meat consumption isn't yielding positive outcomes. There are potential explanations (you could argue increased processing offsets the purported benefits, for example), but those are left unstated by the website.
[1]: https://www.agweb.com/opinion/drivers-u-s-capita-meat-consum...
[2]: https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-detai...
> the US's per capita consumption of meat
That number seemed unreal to me, so I looked it up. I think it represents the total pre-processing weight, not the actual meat meat consumption. From Wikipedia:
> As an example of the difference, for 2002, when the FAO figure for US per capita meat consumption was 124.48 kg (274 lb 7 oz), the USDA estimate of US per capita loss-adjusted meat consumption was 62.6 kg (138 lb)
Processing, cutting into sellable pieces, drying, and spoilage/loss mean the amount of meat consumed is about half of that number.
Interestingly, ~12% of humans in the US are responsible for ~50% of beef consumption.
> The US is the biggest consumer of beef in the world, but, according to new research, it’s actually a small percentage of people who are doing most of the eating. A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US.
> Men and people between the ages of 50 and 65 were more likely to be in what the researchers dubbed as “disproportionate beef eaters”, defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces – the rough equivalent of more than one hamburger – daily. The study analyzed one-day dietary snapshots from over 10,000 US adults over a four-year period. White people were among those more likely to eat more beef, compared with other racial and ethnic groups like Black and Asian Americans. Older adults, college graduates, and those who looked up MyPlate, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) online nutritional educational campaign, were far less likely to consume a disproportionate amount of beef.
High steaks society: who are the 12% of people consuming half of all beef in the US? - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usd... - October 20th, 2023
Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming - https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795 | https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15173795 - August 2023
(my observation of this is that we can sunset quite a bit of US beef production and still be fine from a food supply and security perspective, as consumption greatly exceeds healthy consumption limits in the aggregate)
> A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US
By itself, this figure doesn't really mean much. On any given day, less than 1% of people have birthdays, but that doesn't mean there's a small percentage of people who are having most of the birthdays
The following paragraph is more valid, but the 12% figure still seems dubious.
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> Interestingly, ~12% of humans in the US are responsible for ~50% of beef consumption.
Go on...
> One limitation of this work is that it was based on 1-day diet recalls, so our results do not represent usual intake[0].
Ah.
[0]: Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795
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> A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US.
This phrasing strongly suggests it’s not the same 12% every day. In which case… it’s probably not that noteworthy.
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> defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces... daily.
This sounds like.. not very much. I eat 6-7oz of ground beef with breakfast alone, pretty much daily! Are people really eating less than ~1/2 cup of meat over all their meals combined?
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So the data is skewed by burgers georg who eats 3,000 Big Macs each day?
We are Paraguayans... Argentinians, and Brazilians... but mostly Paraguayans and Argentinas
https://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day....
"just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US."
what???? there is entire family that eat entire Cow that can feed the whole village, that is crazy
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Drying doesn't mean anything... The nutrients are still there you're only really losing water.
What evidence do you have that the loss adjusted numbers have gone down while the preprocessed numbers have gone up so dramatically?
> Drying doesn't mean anything... The nutrients are still there you're only really losing water.
The problem with the number is that people see it and imagine pounds of meat like they see at the grocery store, but it's measuring pounds of meat that go into the meat processing plant.
> What evidence do you have that the loss adjusted numbers have gone down while the preprocessed numbers have gone up so dramatically?
No, the two numbers show the ratio.
The "pounds of meat consumed per person" from the FAO is a pre-processed weight.
The pounds of meat consumed per person from the USDA is the end-user weight. It's about half of the FAO number.
Well if it’s based on weight, and one of the steps is to reduce the weight significantly…
Point being someone eating a couple bags of jerky over a workday would probably count as having eaten literal pounds of beef, despite consumed weight being much lower. Water is noncompressible and makes your stomach full very quickly.
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I'm a weightlifter and as part of my training, I eat pretty close to about a pound of meat a day during bulk, usually about 12-14oz. This is because I need to eat about 200g of protein a day. I supplement it with protein shakes.
I find that to be a challenging amount of meat. It's a lot! And to find out that's average???
Americans eat way too much meat. Cheese, too.
The number quoted is the pre-processing weight. A lot of mass is lost during processing, drying, aging, in transport, to spoilage, and so on.
The real number for meat consumption at the end consumer is about half that amount.
The thing is though you’ll be eating (I presume) mostly lean meat. Chicken breast, white fish etc.
When you compare the macros of that to sausages or ribs or even steak it’s quite drastically different.
Also I’d guess you aren’t covering your meat in thick sugary sauce every time…
I am not a weightlifter, I am an amateur powerlifter, and I do pretty intense resistance training for my age (54yo) and my weight (112kg) and I eat about 800g to 1kg a day of meat - duck, pork or beef. Even if I eat 1kg Wagyu beef, it would give me about 3000 calories, slightly less than 3500 calories I need to keep my muscle mass. I would happily eat even more meat but circumstances prevents me to do so.
I used to drink protein shakes, but now I am actively against these. Artificial sweeteners provoke insulin release [1] [2] that leads to type-II diabetes.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2887503/
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10568...
you can get protein powder that doesn't contain artificial sweeteners. You can get protein powder that doesn't contain any sweetener. You can even buy pure protein powder without any additives at all.
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You can get protein powder without flavoring. I drink that either pure or with a little bit of flavored protein mixed in (something like 3:1) because the flavored stuff is so sweet I can't drink it. Some brands I could literally do 3 parts flavorless, 1 part flavored and it would still taste too sweet.
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Your best evidence is a rat study and a narrative review?
Kinda makes zero cal sweeteners look good.
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I guess it's a matter of perspective and what you're used to. Some indigenous North American peoples used to subsist largely on bison for at least part of the year and often consumed 5 pounds or more of meat and other animal products per day. Was that too much?
I too try for 200g of protein/day, with meat and supplements by shakes. It’s difficult to eat more meat than that, because of how it fills you up, its prep requirements and its cost.
I don’t believe that the average American eats nearly a pound of meat per day. I do believe if the average American ate meat before carbs, we could get there, and all be a lot healthier, though.
For me, processed carbs make me much hungrier, but the kale salad I’m eating right now makes me less hungry.
200g a day? Are you a big guy? I did an experiment in my 20s on building muscle on a plant based diet, and managed to gain 10kg in one year (muscle mass, confirmed by a DEXA scan). Total weight gain was about 16kg. Most of the surplus was water.
I started at 70kg (181cm), so pretty skinny, and without prior resistance training. I ate between 120and 140g of protein per day, without any shakes.
I am aware that these gains would not have continued, but my body obviously had more than enough with 130g to build muscle. I did eat a calorie surplus, but
200g seems like A LOT.
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I think this is person dependant. A Kale salad makes almost no impact on my hunger, but a piece of bread makes me feel pretty full.
Just as an example of an opposite experience.
(american, vegetarian for 13 years, athletic, former meat eater, long carb centric diet that i'm trying to change)
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I cut out mammal products and replaced with plant protein like lentils and wild rice.
I can eat 200g of lentil noodles in a sitting.
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Depending on the type of training you're doing, you're likely eating lean meat too, like chicken breasts and fish. Most people are much less picky about the kind of meat they eat, opting for fatty cuts or meat products high in salt and saturated fats.
yes that's true
im probably more conscious about what i eat than the average person, just on virtue of watching macros lol
> And to find out that's average???
I think you’re conflating 200g of protein with 200g of meat that has protein.
They said “I eat pretty close to about a pound of meat a day during bulk, usually about 12-14oz”
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I'm not a weightlifter but I'm a carpenter. Meat is like a healing potion on my body. Makes the pain go away. And without meat, it doesn't.
Eggs work too.
David Bars, while not even close to anything resembling a whole food, have made hitting macros so much easier. End up being cheaper than chicken, per gram of protein per calorie, sometimes too!
A 16oz ribeye can easily be eaten in a single meal by most people who are large enough (90kg) to need 200g of protein per day.
Would be important to see how that number is being computed? If it is the amount of meat sold divided by number of people it may be misleading since there is a fair amount of wastage particularly in places like schools etc with kids filling plates that are never consumed.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. There is even more trimming that goes on as well. Chefs trim what's ordered, tallow may be rendered for non-consumptive reasons, and so on. Like a poster above, as an athlete I eat more meat than most people, and I don't seem to eat those numbers... I feel like we are missing some data points.
Cheese is probably there due to lobbying. I don’t understand why it would be that high.
Cheese _is_ delicious.
(But I doubt the cheese I find so delicious is that same as the cheese that's so prevalent in American diets...)
I'm not a weightlifter, and 1lb steak (pre-cook weight) is a normal amd very reasonable sized dinner for me. Weird to hear that called "challenging".
Bodybuilder? Powerlifter? Curious what specifically you mean that requires you to bulk vs. cut
well im not bodybuilding anymore, so i guess im just in a constant bulk/caloric parity. i still think like that tho lol
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TIL the amount of animal suffering that goes into each person trying to be swole.
That's an immense amount of cholesterol. You might consider replacing some or all of it with plant-based sources. (Many protein shakes are made with whey powder, which also contains cholesterol.)
Heart disease is a real risk. Don't ignore it. It's not something that only happens to other people.
The starting point for that data is 1909, when average life expectancy was under 50 years and child malnourishment was a major problem. The change since 1970 has been much quite modest: http://ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detai...
Also, you need to adjust for demographics. In 1900, 35% of the population was under 15: https://demographicchartbook.com/index.php/chapter-5-age-and.... Today it’s only 19%. Children and babies obviously eat a lot less meat than adults, and they make up a much smaller share of the population today than back then.
There’s a restaurant in Las Vegas, the Heart Attack Grill, which sarcastically plays on this trope.
> It has become internationally famous for embracing and promoting an unhealthy diet of incredibly large hamburgers. Customers are referred to as "patients," orders as "prescriptions," and the waitresses as "nurses." All those who weigh over 350 pounds are invited to unlimited free food provided they weigh themselves on an electronic cattle scale affront a cheering restaurant crowd.
> The menu includes the Single Bypass Burger®, Double Bypass Burger®, Triple Bypass Burger®, Quadruple Bypass Burger®, Quintuple Bypass Burger™, Sextuple Bypass Burger™, Septuple Bypass Burger™, and the Octuple Bypass Burger™. These dishes range in weight from half a pound to four pounds of beef. Also on the menu are Flatliner Fries® (cooked in pure lard) and the Coronary Dog™, Lucky Strike no filter cigarettes, alcohol, Butterfat Milkshakes™, full sugar Coca-Cola, and candy cigarettes for the kids!
https://heartattackgrill.com/press
Real sugar Coca-Cola is delicious though, and while this may just be a personal anecdote, real sugar soda always makes me feel full and satiated, while I've been able to drink several cans of corn syrup soda in a sitting before, I can't imagine doing that with several cans of real sugar soda. The calories are pretty much the same!
Was very confused by this comment, until I looked it up. It seems, sweet beverages and candies in the U.S. are not sweetened with sucrose (table sugar) like in most places on earth. Instead, they use fructose (fruit sugar) syrup.
The more you know.
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A must visit, though I have no idea how anyone could possibly get past the single bypass...
Just looked it up on Google Maps. Have to say it's not exactly what I would expect from a restaurant... but makes sense in Vegas though.
Worth noting there seems to be no upper limit for the anabolic response to protein ingestion, according to this study:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38118410/
What happens is that the excess of protein stays in your system, but, if you don't use the nutrient by exercising, the caloric excess will obviously make you fat.
"These findings demonstrate that the magnitude and duration of the anabolic response to protein ingestion is not restricted and has previously been underestimated in vivo in humans."
It says 1.2-1.6 grams of protein and healthy fats per kilogram of body weight, from animal and plant sources (including milk). Is that really advocating for more meat?
The implication is that the current food pyramid disproportionately weights against proteins and fats. Assuming that Americans follow the current pyramid (this is a hell of an assumption), then any change to the pyramid that asks them to change their diets in favor of more protein and fat is likely to result in them eating more meat.
In reality, I don't think anybody in the US follows the food pyramid religiously. But I do think people (try to) follow the main strokes of what the government tells them is a healthy dietary balance, and so any recommendation to increase their fat/protein intake will result in more meat consumption even if the guidelines doesn't itself proscribe that as the only source.
The food pyramid was phased out in 2011: https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/nov/07/food-pyramid-...
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> But I do think people (try to) follow the main strokes of what the government tells them is a healthy dietary balance...
Do you really observe that in your circles? I've lived in 6 different states, from Maryland to Idaho, and I've never got an impression that many people take any real though or consideration for their health at all. If anything, I'd armchair guestimate something like 10% of adults seem to put any real attention of effort into their health. I feel like late teens to late college year people put more effort in general, but only because they themselves are on the meat market and don't usually have complex lives (kids, careers)
I agree, and think particularly where there children are concerned at least some parents will try to follow official dietary guidelines to make sure their kids grow up healthy and with healthy habits.
Americans do not follow the food guidelines. It's an absurdly low percentage who do
As I see it, the point of this new pyramid is not to add more emphasis to meat specifically, but to undo some of the past vilification of fat (note the emphasis on whole milk and full fat dairy), and to move emphasis away from carbs as the basis of the diet. And honestly, I think that's pretty much correct - the low fat movement was a disaster for our collective health, because food manufacturers added more sugar to compensate for the bad effects on taste that that has, and because if you eat a good amount of full fat stuff, there's not nearly as much need to snack between meals.
If you go to Western Europe, they're not drinking lots of skim milk, and if you eat things from the bakeries, there's more butter and not as much low quality vegetable oil or sugar. When my French cousins come here, they find lots of the stuff sold here revoltingly sweet.
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This can be an outrageous amount for a normal individual. These proportions are used for bodybuilders and powerlifters.
And even then this rule is not perfect because of individual genetics, metabolism rates, activity level, percentage of lean mass, etc.
Americans (US citizens) really do eat a lot. What the hell
These numbers are actually "disappearance" they include an immense amount of food waste as well so the average American is probably almost half a body builder and leaving food on their plate at a restaurant while more of it is going bad at home and in their grocery.
1.5g/kg for a 90kg person is 135g. You can get almost half that daily need from a chicken breast or a few ounces of fish. Two meals of that and a few non-meat things like rice and beans, lentils, peanut butter, etc and you're set, even towards the higher end of the recommended range. That's doesn't seem outrageous at all.
And here I am thinking that 50-100g of protein per day for an elderly person was way too low.
But here we have the problems with the numbers and why they should only be guidelines. Consumption of protein needs to increase as you get old (into the range we consider for athletes). And basing consumption on body weight is stupid, because telling an obese person they need to eat twice as much protein as a non-obese person is probably wrong.
I think most commenters are missing two things:
1. It’s proteins and fats, not just protein. The site specifically calls out avocado as an example.
2. It’s from meat and vegetable sources. Other commenters have mentioned that you get more protein from non-meat sources than you expect.
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yeah, and it’s also worth noting that the usual guidelines you hear like “eat 1g of protein for each pound you weigh” are actually meant to be 1g of protein per pound of lean mass, which for many people is significantly smaller amount.
The public health discourse about protein is in a weird place right now. The recommendations are higher than ever, yet people are constantly told not to think about protein, or to worry about excess protein intake instead.
Case in point: the Mayo Clinic article titled "Are you getting enough protein?"[0]
It claims that protein is only a concern for people who are undereating or on weight loss drugs, yet it cites protein recommendations that many people find challenging to meet (1.1g/kg for active people, more if you're over 40 or doing strength or endurance workouts.) To top it off, it's illustrated with a handful of nuts, which are pretty marginal sources of protein. It's bizarrely mixed messaging.
[0] https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...
When I did strength sports and would eat ~180g protein a day (which for me was 1.8g/100kg), I ate a lot less meat than you would think, I was carefully tracking all my food for a while and you have to count the whole diet.
I really like this study of a population of highly trained athletes and their diets/protein intake: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27710150/
In that study they eat > 1.2g protein/kg body weight, but 43% of that is "plant sources", meaning grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables. Like one serving of oatmeal is 6g, things you don't think of as "protein" add up and you have to count them. The athletes in that study are Dutch and 19% of their protein intake came from bread.
But what always happens with protein recommendations is that they say "x grams protein/kg bodyweight" but people hear "protein is meat, you are telling me to eat x grams/kg bodyweight of meat." Very few people ever look closely enough at their diet to develop an intuitive sense for counting macros.
Protein from grain food isn’t as well absorbed as protein from meat, milk, fish. Roughly, 2g of protein from bean equal 1g meat protein.
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90g of protein, what is recommended for me, is like 4 hamburgers or a 16oz steak per day ...
Doesn't make sense to me that a 400lb obese person would need to consume the same amount of protein as a 400lb lean muscle bodybuilder.
All of the protein recommendations I've seen were for lean mass. You don't feed fat.
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If you don’t forget to count proteins from all the grains and other products, then you may realise you don’t need that much meat (or any meat at all).
Nobody should be getting all of their protein from meat, though.
Even a cup of cooked rice or a slice of bread has several grams of protein.
People, even meat-eaters, tend to get much of their protein intake from the long tail of non-meat foods they consume. Lots of foods (especially grains and legumes) have a little bit of protein, and that adds up.
That's not really a lot of protein on a low carb diet like they are suggesting.
Nobody said you have to get all your protein from meat…
do you think that's a lot or a little? does that sound realistic or unrealistic?
Too many calories is the basic explanation for why American's health sucks. Calories available per person has gone up ~32% since the 1960s (we obviously can't measure calories consumed per person, but supply and demand would dictate these excess calories are going somewhere). It is not clear to me that meat specifically is a problem so much as excess consumption leading to obesity, which then causes chronic health problems downstream.
Though of course "meat" is too vague a category to be helpful. Obviously there's a link between beef and heart disease and colorectal cancer. There seems to be no health problems associated with consuming chicken or seafood.
People are more wasteful now (in times of relative plenty generally) too though, at least I'm sure that's true in the UK.
I bet the number of vegans and vegetarians in the US are also at their highest (and growing).
That's probably true, but I don't think vegans and vegetarians as a demographic overlap closely with demographics that tend to have heart disease.
(Note that I am neither a vegetarian nor a vegan.)
There may be some correlation but causality is unclear. India has a lot of vegetarians and also a high incidence of heart disease.
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There is a massive amount of research that shows that Vegans are healthier as a population than Vegetarians and definitely meat eaters. Lower risks of nearly every preventable food related illnesses, including cancer. Having this new government health pyramid flies in the face of nearly all current research.
Vegans are probably mostly healthy. Vegetarians? Religious vegetarians and healthy vegetarians intersect but mostly don't ;).
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nothing stops you from reading more about the topics before commenting on them haha
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I'd strongly prefer the government just not try to tell people what to eat, the incentives will always be perverse and nutrition science is anything but science in most cases.
EDIT down-thread to prove my point you'll see people citing studies in favor of and against the new recommendations. The studies are almost always in animals or use self reported data with tiny sample sizes.
The whole point of government performing the function is that they don't profit from misleading you, rather their goal is the country's welfare.
Obviously there are exceptions - particularly right now - but those are solved by rooting out corruption.
You say that but the food pyramid was devised but the agriculture lobby, and was never based on science.
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> not try to tell people what to eat
food industry has to be policed -- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a high school level story featuring the meat packing industry. All around, additives and substitutes are more profitable than raw ingredients.
I'm clearly not advocating against basic safety oversight. It's worth noting that The Jungle was a work of fiction and Sinclair famously fabricated a lot of details wholesale.
"a chicken in every pot" is a political slogan that has been in active use from 17th century France to at least Herbert Hoover.
Processed food and sugar consumption has also gone up.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8805510/
> Conclusions: As observed from the food availability data, processed and ultra-processed foods dramatically increased over the past two centuries, especially sugar, white flour, white rice, vegetable oils, and ready-to-eat meals. These changes paralleled the rising incidence of NCDs, while animal fat consumption was inversely correlated.
Small nit - this is probably assumed, but I would like the unit to be explicit: Yearly per capita pounds of meat.
That is, how many pounds of meat the average American eats in a year. An increase of 100 pounds means about an extra quarter-pound a day.
USA is actually healthier then in 1909. Life expectancy was going up the whole time. A whole bunch of malnutritiom related issues and diseases just disappeared.
You need to go to much more recent times to get worsening results/predictions.
I wasn't making a claim about the US being either healthier or unhealthier as a whole; I was only observing that annual per capita meat consumption does not trivially track with the benefits claimed on the site. It might, but the evidence is not presented.
> I was only observing that annual per capita meat consumption does not trivially track with the benefits claimed on the site
There was no such observation, just claim going contra observed data. The period you picked does correlate meat consumption going up with health getting better.
You said that meat consumption went up for last century. Then you claimed that "our already positive trend in meat consumption isn't yielding positive outcomes" - except that majority of that period did yielded positive outcomes.
The biggest food related problem in the US is obesity. Lean meat is very high satiety and really helps with keeping weight in check. Of course a McDonalds meal is the opposite and you eat more than half your day's calories in a few minutes.
You should see the local Golden Corral.
I think the key point is the relative ratios of meat versus processed carbs. Right now we have government guidance telling people to eat more processed carbs than meat, and that’s backward.
Americans also just need to eat less period, but that’s a separable issue.
>Right now we have government guidance telling people to eat more processed carbs than meat
No we don't. Please show me where.
Are you claiming the old food pyramid is where?
Because Bush jr deprecated that in 2006, and his new, balanced pyramid was again replaced in 2011 by MyPlate, which did not tell you to eat more processed carbs, and was not even a pyramid.
Why do so many of you people think that something that was very clearly replaced twice is still somehow in effect? How much of the recent history of the US are you guys missing? Did you lose your memory or something?
Okay, I amend my statement to say “we raised an entire generation to think you should eat multiple times as much carbs as protein.”
I learned the 1992 food pyramid in school. I was in college by the time they changed it, and I have no idea what the current one says. When the government undertakes a mass campaign to socialize children into a particular idea that’s what happens.
At least the page mentions alternatives - plenty of other sources of protein, like dairy, eggs, legumes, etc.
The moment I saw whole milk and a huge steak in the intro, I knew this website was not to be trusted.
Milk is very unhealthy, in any quantity.
Meat is as well. Maybe organic in small quantities, not too often can help.
Fish is problematic as much is contaminated with mercury and other heavy metals (we poisoned the ocean).
So what then do you believe is a healthy diet? Surely eating animal protein on a regular basis is better than having to take a variety of unregulated supplements to stay within a healthy range of essential vitamins and minerals? Animal protein also has the upside of offering a tremendous amount of, well, protein, alongside the necessary vitamins.
Dairy (in certain forms) offers the same benefits.
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What is your criteria for "very unhealthy" and do you have any evidence to back up that claim?
If milk if unhealthy in any quantity how did we all survive infancy?
Fun...
This is something I have been thinking about and researching for awhile, because there is so very much confusing language out there.
Your quote says over the last century, so I'm going to use roughly 1920 as the baseline. It also refers to a per capita increase of meat consumption by 100 pounds, or about 45.4 kilograms (to make the math easier). This is roughly an increase of 124g of meat per person per day (or about 3oz if that makes more sense to you).
This equates to a daily increase in per-capita protein intake by 25-30g (depending on which meat and how lean it is).
In 1920, the average American adult male was about 140 pounds, and ate about 100g of protein per day, which works out to roughly 0.71 grams per pound of body weight (or about 1.6 grams per kilogram).
In 2025, one century later, the average American adult male is 200 pounds, and if he eats the same ratio of weight to protein, you would expect that he would eat around 140g of protein per day, which is slightly higher than the increase in per-capita meat consumption over the same time.
However, if you look at actual statistics of what people are eating in protein, you'll see that the average American adult male is actually eating about 97g of protein per day, or about 0.49 grams per pound (1.1 grams per kg), which is much less than we ate a century ago, which means that that the increase in meat consumption doesn't match change in protein, so is offset by either less non-meat protein, meat with lower protein content (e.g. more fat), or both.
There was some discussion lower in the thread about bodybuilders vs normal people, and about basing your calculations on lean body weight vs full bodyweight. Lean body weight calculations are often used for bodybuilders, but those numbers are elevated (typically 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body weight). For someone who is sedentary to lightly active (e.g. daily walks), the calculation is based on full body weight, not lean body weight, and is about 0.7 gram per pound (or 1.5 grams per kilogram), which matches this recommendation exactly.
Hitting these targets has been shown to greatly increase satiation, reduce appetite, but it does not make you lose weight, and it is not permanent (reducing your protein intake removes the effect, which makes sense). However, long term studies show that people who increase their protein intake to these levels and lose weight (through calorie reduction or fasting) keep that weight off.
Finally, from what I've been able to cobble together, high protein intakes combined with high fat and high sugar intakes does not have the same effect as a diet that matches the recommendations here (ie. it's not just about higher protein intake, it's about percentage of calories from protein, which should be around 20-25%... 200 pound sedentary to lightly active adult male, 140g of protein, or 560 calories, in a total diet of 2250-2800 calories, depending on activity level)
Wouldn't it be more likely that it's calories, not meat per se, that is the main proxy for measuring our health decline?
There is a lot of research that shows the type of calorie you consume determines to some extent the next calorie you want to consume. You are more likely to be "sated" (i.e. not want to eat more calories), if you eat protein than you are ultra-processed carbohydrates, low calorie soda will leave your body yearning sugar, and so on.
When you couple this with the motivations of industrial food companies (some of whom are now owned by tobacco companies), and the research they do into the neuroscience effects of flavour, texture, even packaging of food, you'll start to spot that a push to "Real Food", and for that food to be less processed and more inclined towards protein, is more likely to result in overall calorie reduction.
One of the things that isn't cutting through on this program is saying "eat protein" is assumed to mean "eat meat", which some assume means you can eat burgers. Nope. Healthy protein is not red meat that has been fried - that's going to take a bit more education, I expect.
My wife is vegetarian, mostly vegan because she's allergic to dairy.
I really enjoyed "keeping up" with her when we were dating, because I was really tired of eating the same things all the time. There's really a lot of delicious plant proteins if you take the time to look.
(That being said, our kids like meat. We just don't eat it all the time.)
It’s the corn subsidies.
"Last century" is a big piece of that, surely. As recently as 50 years ago, obesity rates were quite low (and risk of hunger among the poor was, you know, more real than it is today).
I think its dangerous to engage with this website as an earnest attempt to make people healthier as individuals or as a population and not a metastasis of woo-fueld ignorance of data and trends like you're talking about whos goal is ultimately just to sell shit to desperate people.