"Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler"
A thought-provoking article from The New York Times by Mark Bittman:
"A sea change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil. It's meat."
Read the rest, discuss?
I agree with Bittman, and with another person who writes for the NY Times: Michael Pollan (author of the new book, In Defense of Food). They don't want everyone to become vegetarians (unless you want), but to make meat a minor part of one's diet. It's better for the earth and better for your health.
Part of the problem is that we should be eating food this is a.) produced locally, b.) produced without the use of petroleum. So by buying a McDonald's hamburger, the beef used in that burger had to be shipped to McDonald's...but before that, it was fattened on grain that was produced using petroleum-based fertilizers, then shipped to the feed lot, then...
It really goes on and on.
Sooner or later, we're going to have to realize that eating meat with every meal is bad for all parties involved, that meat should be a luxury to be eaten a few times a week at most, and that the largest part of meals should be vegetable based. One problem I have with a lot of diets is the emphasis on "protein", and when people say protein, they mean meat. Protein-deficiency is rarely a problem (unless you're an athlete), and protein exists in many grains and plants: legumes, whole grains, seeds, etc. You don't have to eat a diet high in protein if you're eating lots of vegetables.
I'll end with Pollan's words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
I actually just started reading Pollan's "The Botony of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World" and so far I love it!
Have you read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree whole heartedly!
It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources.That's just plain flat-out wrong. See the Journal of American College of Nutrition on protein needs and this NSCA article - 50g a day is the minimum level for replacing the protein lost through protein degradation and enzyme turnover for a sedentary adult. That doesn't have to be animal protein, but 30g/day is not enough to sustain health over the long term for anyone.
I just read that article this morning, and actually forwarded it to a few people.
I liked a lot of the info and one paragraph shined for me
To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.
However, I agree with melkor. When I read that sentence, I was really surprised and disappointed. 30g is below any of the recommendations I have come across when researching protein needs. I try to have double that, and even then my protein goal only mirrors the minimum required for my activity level.
I read that article too. It made me go back to my tattered copy of Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappe. While Lappe re-thought her original ideas about how to obtain complete proteins by combining foods, the facts of how much food it takes to make a pound of meat is still very true. That's what inspired me, years ago to eat less meat, to try veganism, and to this day, to limit my own consumption of meat products.
We can obtain plenty of protein from plant sources. There are societies in the world where people seldom eat meat, or even never - as in the Hindu and Buddhist cultures. Barring extreme poverty, people there are well fed and don't have protein deficiencies. I still use Lappe's concept of combining grains and legumes with seeds and nuts to get most of my protein.
Thanks for starting a good discussion.
my Dad still eats nothing but meat, and takes a looooong nap after dinner, then attacks those cookies, heh.
Original Post by melkor:
Bitmann's really, really off on one part of his column though.It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources.That's just plain flat-out wrong. See the Journal of American College of Nutrition on protein needs and this NSCA article - 50g a day is the minimum level for replacing the protein lost through protein degradation and enzyme turnover for a sedentary adult. That doesn't have to be animal protein, but 30g/day is not enough to sustain health over the long term for anyone.
Not really. It's more about the percent of your calories that come from protein. You only need 5-6% of your calories to come from protein in order to replace amino acids lost. For someone like me who only needs like 1600 to maintain that is way under 50 grams. Actually 6% would be 24 grams. I go for about 10%, but usually get 8 or 9% which is about 35ish grams.
Main point: depends on body size and activity and 30 grams a day is enough for some of us.
Most health agencies recommend more than what is actually needed as insurance. If they recommend 9-15% most of us will get atleast 5-6%.
The minimum for a sedentary adult is 0.8g/kg of bodyweight - for maintenance. 35-ish grams is enough for someone weighting in at 35g/0.8g/kg=43.75 kg, roughly 96lbs.
30g of protein like the article advocates... 30g/0.8g/kg= 37.5kg , roughly 82.5lbs. I suppose, for some edge cases that might work but honestly, I have a hard time picturing a healthy 80lbs adult.
I swear I had a reference for the 50g cutoff point handy but now I can't find it, so I suppose if you're below 137lbs and never exercise you can go lower than 50g protein/day. But again, note that this is based on an adult who is completely sedentary. Even moderate exercise like walking a total of 90 minutes/week raise your needs to 1.0g/kg.
Here is the study. *warning - extremely large PDF file*
I agree that the 30g/day recommendation is probably too low for most of us, but it wouldn't surprise me if the average american ate at least twice as much as necessary for good health. I also tend to think that the total quality of the food matters ... if I can get 10g of protein from a bowl of homemade vegetarian chili that also has lots of fiber, vitamins, minerals and healthy vegetable fats, I'm personally going to prefer that to 10g of protein from a steak that comes with a heavy dose of saturated fat. Just my preference, though.
I agree completely with this author that meat is a horribly inefficient source of food for most of us. Most of my protein is from beans, nuts, whole grains, and some eggs and dairy. I also tend to believe that there are significant health costs associated with a meat-heavy diet.
Besides, industrial meat production is just gross. I drive past some smaller feedlots (i.e. +/- 500 head) going to work and those animals stand around up to their armpits in their own feces. It just baffles me how anybody could look at that and think, "MMM, I want to eat that."
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