Comment by Aurornis
2 days ago
> 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.
That sounds a lot like the "you only use 10% of your brain" saying. Yeah, 10% at any given moment.
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> 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
Yeah, it just means that half the beef eaten per day goes to the 12% having a BBQ, etc, not that only 12% of the population have access to half the beef available each day
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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
> 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.
The phrasing strongly suggests exactly the opposite. Essentially, the whole framing of the linked guardian article is that there is a specific population which are the "disproportionate beef eaters".
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is it normal, in the USA, for half of all people to only eat beef once every 8 days?
They also found a demographic correlation, which isn't easily explained by random sampling.
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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?
> Are people really eating less than ~1/2 cup of meat over all their meals combined?
Your mind is going to be blown when you learn about vegetarians!
I'm in the US and was raised on a pretty standard diet. As a young adult, I stopped eating beef for environmental reasons. As an older adult (50s) I mostly stopped eating most meat for environmental and ethical reasons. I don't call myself a vegetarian and don't make a fuss when vegetarian options aren't available (eg, eating at a friend's house).
That is all to say: I haven't noticed any difference in my health either way, but that isn't why I (95%) stopped eating meat.
Beef, not meat. Surely you jest and you know that that's a huge amount and you're on some high-calorie gym diet?
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Habits vary (vegans exist!) And I agree 4 oz is a pretty small portion. But I don't think I personally know very many people who eat beef daily. For me and my family it is once or twice a week.
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I eat meat (beef, pork, poultry, and fish) maybe three or four meals a week, and probably about 6 to 8 oz per meal when I eat it. So on a per day basis, yeah, I probably eat about 3-4 ounces of meat per day.
But the source you were quoting was about beef alone. So these are people who eat more beef daily than I eat of any meat.
Sometimes I wonder how is it possible that cattle alone severely outweighs all livestock on the planet, and by a very huge margin (like 10 to 1), then I read about such dietary habits.
I eat meat too, but I don't eat it every day so if you average it over time it will likely be around those numbers.
Your diet is your own business of course, but a burger for breakfast is… unusual, right?
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I haven't had any meat in about 20 years. But I also don't live in the US.
There is a substantial body of evidence that much red meat is wildly not good for you, especially when you consume it as consistently as you're saying you do.
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That's 4 ounces of beef, not meat. I eat plenty of meat, but eat beef less than once a week.
Wow! That's feels like a lot to me. I take 7 days to consume 450g (~1 US lb) of pork. I eat maybe 120g of beef in a month.
Are you really eating nearly half a pound of beef for breakfast every morning? I have, like, some toast and cheese.
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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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Don't be like that. They're just looking at how the numbers change with/without this semi-outlier chunk of the curve.
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I'm simply observing the trajectories we're on due to climate change, input costs, and the aging out of beef cattle ranchers (in this context, projected beef supply, cost, and downstream consumption patterns from those inputs). We simply have to do nothing as the economics shrinks beef herds over time, pushing prices up. Think consumption death spiral as the the affordability of beef dwindles.
Beef ranchers are uncertain of the future, so they are sending more heads to slaughter, capitalizing on very favorable prices, versus expanding their herds for the future. What does this do to future herd sizes and therefore supply and cost to the consumer? Add the gestational period of cattle to that mental model. When these processing plants close, how long will it take to build new ones or start mothballed ones back up if herd sizes increase years from now? Will you be able to find communities who will accept these plants again? Where will you find the workers?
More US Beef Plants May Close as Cattle Herds Keep Shrinking - https://www.fb.org/market-intel/u-s-cattle-inventory-smalles... - February 5th, 2024
(think in systems)
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Not sure why the downvotes, it's a coherent post, and certainly there is a perception that food, and particularly beef, is a partisan issue.
Of course Democrats haven't actually taken any steps to penalize beef farming or consumption. But that doesn't stop Republicans claiming they want to. And if beef consumption drops, well, we just get the (Republican) health dept to recommend it.
I would agree that comments like "sunset beef production" intrinsically sounds bad to those who eat beef. But farmers farm profit, so as long as people buy it, farmers will farm it. (And at least some proportion of land used for beef farming is unsuitable for anything else.)
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.
> Point being someone eating a couple bags of jerky over a workday would probably count as having eaten literal pounds of beef
For the purposes of this conversation, about the nutritional effect of your diet, that seems like a fair way to put it.