High steaks society: who are the 12% of people consuming half of all beef in the US?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

One of the biggest drivers of the climate crisis, accounting for a third of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions, is food production, with meat – particularly beef – at the top of the list.

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.

“It may be that some of those 12% don’t realize the impacts that beef has on their health or the environment,” said study author Diego Rose, professor and director of nutrition at Tulane University. “The concern is, on a usual basis, are you eating a disproportionate amount?”

Research has shown that beef production, which goes hand in hand with deforestation to create grazing land for cows, is responsible for over 4.2bn metric tons of global carbon emissions. Consuming beef is up to 10 times more impactful than chicken, and over 50 times that of beans. Numerous health studies have shown risks of elevated heart disease from red meat.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/high-steaks-society-12-people-100014867.html

[flying_wahini]

1. I guess the cattle farmers and their families are?

When the processing man takes a huge bite and after breeding, growing and feed and watering they just figure they would be money ahead to eat them.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. As a cashier at a food emporium,

I regularly see customers buy 4-5 steaks, arm-length filet mignons, etc. $300 sales of beef alone.

[redqueen]

5. F the planet, right?

🤬

[no_hypocrisy]

8. Like they give a cr*p

[Mark.b2]

3. I try my darnedest to eat as much as I can....

Steak would be my last meal, if it ever came to that!

[redqueen]

6. Gross

[lastlib]

4. Who are they? Me

I will give up my beef when they pry it out of my cold dead stiff fingers. I still think we're doin' the cows a favor eating them. This from a guy that raised 'em for 40 years. Don't tell me they're beautiful animals--they're just burgers wrapped in shoe leather.

[redqueen]

7. Disgusting

[lastlib]

16. Funny--I have the same reaction to tofu.....

and all that other "plant"-based crud. I say feed that to the rabbit--and then eat the rabbit.

YMMV.

[MontanaFarmer]

9. Nonsense.

Go look at the ingredient list of a plant-based meat substitute, be it Beyond, Impossible, whatever. It's fake, industrial, over-salted garbage, like most things in the middle of the supermarket today. Corn and soy, reformulated to be "better" than meat. The whole system is f$$$ed. And clearing land for grazing cattle is a complete straw man. The Amazon is being cleared to grow corn and soy. Remember them? I'll have the steak, thanks, medium rare.

[Brenda]

11. Excellent. You've got to shop the perimeter.

And I would add high fructose corn syrup, bromated flour, industrial bleached rancid "vegetable" oil to that list.

[dpibel]

12. Straw men

I don't believe anyone's suggesting a straight trade of real meat for fake meat. So that comparison is meaningless.

As for clearing the Amazon: You do know that much of that corn and soy you ask if we remember goes into fattening beef, right? You're a Montana Farmer. You know that the grazing part of beef raising is the low-impact part.

[MontanaFarmer]

13. In theory that's true.

My counter to that is if it's not fattening beef, it will end up as calories to replace the beef, the pork, the chicken, in some frankensteinian, over-processed form. The crops are getting grown regardless. Too much big money and skewed subsidies. There's a much larger policy conversation to be had here, but in this narrow scope those acres are getting planted.
Most of the cattle in this country are fed DDGs from ethanol production. 90% of beef consumption in the US is domestic beef, as of 2021. If you want to shift beef to a lower input system, you need to cut ethanol from the fuel supply chain, which i fully support. Perhaps some of those corn acres can be annual forage or cover crop each year, grazed by cattle for a portion of the time they'd be in feedlots. But that's a big policy boulder to roll up the hill.

[NickB79]

18. To be fair, you lose about 80-90% of the calories going from corn to meat

It's better in chickens, worse in cattle. Best is in insects. Laws of thermodynamics are a pain in the ass.

So hypothetically you could reduce land under agriculture by a huge margin of you are the corn and soy directly.

[bucolic_frolic]

10. Keto Keto Keto Diet

All that protein is not good for anyone. Increased risk of cancer, overloaded kidneys.

[FBaggins]

14. People who can afford it of course

25 years ago, I used to stock up the freezer when ground beef or boneless-skinless chicken breasts would go on sale. We could often get ground beef for 99 cents a pound… and the chicken for about twice that much.

Today ground beef is four or five times that much on sale… while you can still get the chicken for about the same price.

Econ 101 will tell you that demand could be expected to shift from beef to chicken or pork without any cultural shift related to climate impacts.

12% is a pretty good guesstimate for “people with enough disposable income to just buy what they enjoy the most.

I suspect for most - that’s beef

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. I think this is a weird, even misleading, statistic - the "on any given day" is crucial

From the study:

We analyzed 24-h dietary recall data from adults (n = 10,248) in the 2015–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Disproportionate beef consumption was defined as an intake greater than four ounce-equivalents per 2200 kcal. Associations of this indicator variable with gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, family income, diet knowledge, and away-from-home meals were assessed using logistic regression, incorporating survey design and weighting. Disproportionate beef diets were consumed by 12% of individuals, but accounted for half of all beef consumed.

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795

2200 kcal is an average intake. So what this is saying is that in a typical day, 12% of people eat more than 4 ounces of beef. This does not mean that the same people eat more that 4 ounces of beef every day, on average. So it does not follow that "12% of people consume half of all beef in the US", over periods longer than a day.

[jfz9580m]

17. Meat is pretty much one of the most wasteful foods out there

From an environmental standpoint. But it is also extremely cruel and that was what originally made me go vegetarian.

I would be happy if they at least reformed the culling and livestock raising practices. Even that would sadly be progress.

You don't have to go vegetarian or vegan, but you can back humane farming practices for the eggs, meat and dairy you consume. It is so much more important than various superficial changes that don't really do much beyond buy you a sort of cred..

This new (or at any rate new to me - even I who am generally inured to the brutality of this industry heard of this mass culling technique only in 2020) "ventilation shutdown" (i.e. roasting farm animals alive) stuff is horrifying. If you did to a pet, a tenth of what is routinely done to farm animals, the public outcry would be immense.
I don't get how we are this irrational as a species:
https://www.steelsnowflake.org/post/animal-ethics-three-philosophies-animal-ethics

[hunter]

19. About half the people in my extended family are vegan or vegetarian, including my wife.

I'd say about a quarter of the people in my family are meat enthusiasts.

Thankfully nobody is militant about their dietary choices, it's simply not a topic of argument. There are people who enjoy eating bacon, but no bacon cultists. Of all those who would impose their dietary beliefs upon me I find the bacon cultists most obnoxious. (There can be religious aspects to this too, when it's overt bigotry against kosher or halal diets.)

I do at least 90% of the cooking in our house which means I rarely cook meat for myself. When I do it's usually in the form of frozen convenience meals. I don't like handling uncooked meat in my kitchen. I don't buy pork products at all.

At family gatherings I'll cook what people expect wherever they are on the dietary spectrum, with whatever food they bring. The last big chunk of meat I cooked was a tri-tip, mostly for my dad and my father-in-law. It came from a local ranch.

I oppose industrial scale meat production. Access to cheap meat and dairy products isn't any kind of human right. Industrial scale meat production is bad for the workers, bad for the environment, and cruel to the animals.

I trust that meat and dairy animals could be raised humanely in a sustainable fashion but not at current scales of meat production and not at a similar cost. I look forward to a time when the most popular fast food burgers are vegan, based on preference and price. Our local Burger Kings and McDonalds already serve these but they cost more than regular burgers.

Our family dogs are not vegan. I'm pretty sure much of the kibble they eat is made from the chickens that are a secondary product of the egg industry.

[AkFemDem]

20. I did the keto diet for a year

Lost a bunch of weight, felt like total crap though, and it pretty much killed any fondness for either bacon or ground beef. I still enjoy a good steak a few times a year, and a burger here and there, but I can't stomach pork at all anymore and for the most part my meals are either meatless or use fish, chicken or ground turkey. I do think the whole protein push of many diets (eg keto, paleo, HPLC) in recent years has had an impact.

[Progressive dog]

21. So at least 24% of Americans

eat beef on any given day. And on a different given day there is no evidence that the 24% are the same people.