These transformations are tied to the changing American diet. Since the early 1980s, America’s per-person cheese consumption has doubled, largely in the form of mozzarella-covered pizza pies. And last year, for the first time, the average American ate 100 pounds of chicken, twice the amount 40 years ago.

    • TurboDiesel@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      We need to take a whole-cloth look at how agribusiness operates. Why is there so much outrage over resources we’re using to farm chicken, which as you pointed out are lower calorie-for-calorie than beef, but crickets for the resources we’re wasting on growing alfalfa in Arizona.

        • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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          6 months ago

          No: chicken eats about 2 calories for each calorie of bird you get. With beef, the cow eats 10x. Cheese is similar.

        • library_napper@monyet.cc
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          6 months ago

          Why would you possibly think that? When you eat the thing that eats the thing instead of just eating the first thing, obviously its less efficient. In this case, its around 90% less wasted energy to just eat plants than to eat the thing that ate the plants

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          No because you have to feed every calorie to an animal to get animal proteins. So maybe you’re grazing animals on land that can’t produce human edible plants, but most of the grain and soy grown in America is grown as feed. We could be using the corn fields of the Midwest to grow human food

          • Sybil@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            most of the grain and soy grown in America is grown as feed.

            almost all of the soy grown everywhere (including america) is pressed for oil. the byproduct of that process is called “soymeal” or “soycake” and that is the vast majority of the soy fed to animals. they are eating parts of the plant that people don’t want to.

        • burgersc12@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          It takes 10x as much energy to move one chain up the food chain iirc so it takes 10 calories of plants for one calorie of animal protein. So in the long run feeding us plants would be better

    • derf82@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Produce less people. Reducing the per person carbon production is meaningless when we keep adding people. In 1950, there way 1/3rd less people and less than half the number of Americans.

      We have eaten animal protein for millennia. It was instrumental to our evolution. It’s only a problem now that we have way too many people

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        We’re already reducing population. In order to stave off disaster without atrocity we will need to accept lifestyle changes. Groundwater issues are a problem now, not in a generation. And there have been vegans and vegetarians for millennia too.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      6 months ago

      Actually cut beef consumption sharply. That frees up a huge amount of land and water

      • StunningGoggles@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Most people aren’t going to stop eating meat, that’s an unrealistic expectation. If you’re telling people that eating chicken over beef isn’t good enough they will shrug their shoulders and go right back to beef.