Meat the Food of the Future 705
Hugh Pickens writes writes "BBC reports that rising food prices, the growing population, and environmental concerns are just a few issues that have food futurologists thinking about what we will eat in the future and how we will eat it. In the UK, meat prices are anticipated to have a huge impact on our diets as some in the food industry prognosticate meat prices could double in the next five to seven years, making meat a luxury item. 'In the West many of us have grown up with cheap, abundant meat,' says Morgaine Gaye. 'Rising prices mean we are now starting to see the return of meat as a luxury. As a result we are looking for new ways to fill the meat gap.' Insects will become a staple of our diet. They cost less to raise than cattle, consume less water and do not have much of a carbon footprint. Plus, there are an estimated 1,400 species that are edible to man. 'Things like crickets and grasshoppers will be ground down and used as an ingredient in things like burgers.' But insects will need an image overhaul if they are to become more palatable to the squeamish Europeans and North Americans, says Gaye. 'They will become popular when we get away from the word insects and use something like mini-livestock (PDF).' Another alternative would be lab grown meat as a recent study by Oxford University found growing meat in a lab rather than slaughtering animals would significantly reduce greenhouse gases, energy consumption and water use. Prof Mark Post, who led the Dutch team of scientists at Maastricht University that grew strips of muscle tissue using stem cells taken from cows, says he wants to make lab meat "indistinguishable" from the real stuff, but it could potentially look very different. Finally algae could provide a solution to some the world's most complex problems, including food shortages as some in the sustainable food industry predict algae farming could become the world's biggest cropping industry. Like insects, algae could be worked into our diet without us really knowing by using seaweed granules to replace salt in bread and processed foods. 'The great thing about seaweed is it grows at a phenomenal rate,' says Dr Craig Rose, executive director of the Seaweed Health Foundation. 'It's the fastest growing plant on earth.'"
Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But why? If human kind managed to get most of the way to today without McDonald's 'burgers', could we not go back to fruits and grains and the occasional wooly mammoth of our ancestors?
We know a lot about nutrition - we don't need animal protein to survive. Although, personally, life without an Egg McMuffin may well not be worth it.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Funny)
Although "Mosquito McMuffin" does have a certain ring to it....
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Funny)
"Do you want flies with that?"
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:4, Funny)
I think you meant..."Do you want flied lice with that...?"
Often heard at the local chinese takeouts around here...
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I am a carnivore and I will not give up my Chicken, red meat and the occasional Pork item(usually bacon or sausage).
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Insightful)
It's probably not environmentally friendly, but I recommend you also try some animals not in the "big four," if you haven't already. I have found that when people describe things as, "gamey," what they mean is that it doesn't taste like dry, bland, overcooked chicken. Oddly, some of those same people will occasionally complain that "everything tastes like chicken..."
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Interesting)
"Gamey" to me means it has a metallic, "liver-ish" aftertaste. But I happen to like that. Most Americans won't touch organ meat, but you get a hint of that flavor in game muscle tissue.
I once had a huge wild duck pig-out with a hunter friend of mine. The drumsticks, which wild ducks hardly use, were indistinguishable from domestic duck. If anything they were sweeter. The breast (which the animal uses to fly) was a much more powerful muscle, and it was distinctly gamey. I actually enjoyed the gamey breast better, because domestic duck I can have any day of the week. It also helped that the duck was cooked to perfection -- there isn't a lot of margin for error in cooking game if you don't want it to end up like shoe leather. This was at a Chinese restaurant that was willing to cook its customers game -- how cool is that?
I've had rattlesnake, which wasn't exactly chicken-like, but it did have a remote resemblance. I think the "tastes like chicken" thing means "leaner than marbled beef". When I was young, pork tasted quite different than it does now. Hog farmers, conscious of the negative public attitude toward fat, are producing lean pork that is very close to chicken in flavor. Recently I had some wild boar, and it was a revelation. The flavor was so intense I wasn't sure at first that I liked it. Imagine the taste difference between a pork chop and a chicken breast, then multiply that by 100x.
The plant equivalent of chicken, by the way, is "asparagus". For some reason many wild plants seem to remind people of asparagus.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Insightful)
I will not give up my Chicken, red meat and the occasional Pork item.
You will if it gets priced off the market and farmers switch to raising grasshoppers because they can do more volume.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Insightful)
It's actually quite simple to raise a small number of food animals yourself.
In the US, many if not most suburban areas, and nearly all cities, forbid keeping farm animals e.g. chickens, pigs, goats, etc. even as pets.
Long before people start eating cricket-burgers they'll be engaging in the black market for meats, which will spur increases in things like armed meat-truck hijackings, warehouse/store burglaries/robberies, corruption, and further degradation of the social structure and needless deaths as respect for the rule of law evaporates.
Here's a novel idea...
How about we instead make the government quit screwing around with things that make meat prices (and energy, housing, clothing, healthcare, education, etc etc) increase as a way for them to increase their power and control over the population?
More freedom, more meat.
Just sayin'
Strat
Not exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Interesting)
Ironically, the best beef for you is not from a cow being fed corn from giant trough which is also sludged up with manure, dead cow parts, and days-old standing water. How about a cow eating grass, seeing as they happen to be ruminants?
So yes, GOOD meat would be less expensive if the government stopped subsidizing the corn industries. In fact, the whole idea of massive farms growing nothing but corn is the stupidest waste of land possible. Corn has very low benefit for both humans and cows, but it just happens to be easy to ship long-distance. Ask yourself "Why do they need subsidies to survive?" It's just like the "too big to fail" banking system that must be subsidized at the cost of huge segments of our economy. Politics and power never seem to collude in our benefit.
The whole concept of the monoculture industrial farming system has ruined generations of farmland. The age-old concept of rotational grazing [jclandtrust.org] as well as other sustainable methods [polyfacefarms.com] has actually been shown to produce much more return for square acre than typical large-scale industrial farming, but our whole government and food-regulation system makes it very hard for these kinds of farms to compete. Check out Joel Salatin's book "Everything I Want to do is Illegal".
Re: (Score:3)
It will never cost $30 a meal unless the government interferes with the producers.
Re: (Score:3)
The government already interferes with the producers. Other than that I agree with you.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? Things get more expensive sometimes- it can happen to meat.
Fun fact is that oysters used to be a peasant food in the UK- there are old recipes for things like "beef and oyster pie", where the oysters were used to bulk out the mega-expensive beef. Now beef is cheap, and oysters are a hugely expensive luxury item; those peasant recipes would cost £100's to cook at today's prices. That had nothing to do with the government.
Meat could go back that way again (and oysters won't be coming back down). We'll have to adjust our diets again- and your choice will be either going back to the mostly turnip-based diet of our ancestors, or finding something new to eat with all our modern knowledge.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:4, Insightful)
People simply will not tolerate being vegetarians, especially if it's not by their choosing. This article is complete and total bullshit. It's just more paranoid delusions, fear mongering, and doomsaying.
As far as I can tell meat prices aren't rising any faster than any other food products. The cost of ALL food is going up. And last time I checked it's significantly more expensive to eat vegetarian, as fresh fruits and vegetables cost a whole lot more per usable pound than meat and we need to eat a lot more of it to get comparable nutrition. What do you think is going to happen to vegetable prices if demand skyrockets due to untenable meat prices? No, humans will simply adapt to eating less meat and/or lower quality meat.
Sorry, this whole thing is simply bullshit, plain and simple. Insects and algae have NEVER been a staple of the human diet and never will be, no matter what this idiot thinks.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:4, Insightful)
Eating like that is a one-way ticket to nutritional deficits. And what if you don't like soy? Or are allergic to soy? Or don't want the potential hormonal problems that comes with eating too much soy if you're a guy? Tough shit? Sorry, but no.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose you could try and eat like your ancestors. Do you want to live like them too?
I think that's the part people are missing here. It's like a bunch of people at the SCA or Ren fair acting like they all would be Lords and Ladies when in fact they would be the nearly starving peasants.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Homo industrius
Hm, is that like the construction worker in the Village People?
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Interesting)
Allergies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing that concerns me would be allergies.
Far fewer people are allergic to fish, chicken, beef than they are to shrimp, crab, lobsters. Or even dust mites. So I wouldn't be surprised if many are also allergic to these "popular" arthropods.
http://www.hollowtop.com/finl_html/allergies.htm [hollowtop.com]
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:4, Interesting)
The article is garbage and the latest in a long line of "we're all going to die" crap.
Re: (Score:3)
It was very nice of you to offer the flesh off your hands, but how do you expect him to remove them, chill them, and extract the protein, with duelling pistols?
Re: (Score:3)
Obligitory (Score:5, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Interesting)
Land Lobsters.(They're both arthropods) Then you can charge a premium for them.
I think that would complete the circle. Lobsters used to be called the cockroaches of the sea. They were considered just barely good enough to give to your slaves.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Informative)
Who apparently weren't too happy about it:
http://traveltips.usatoday.com/history-maine-lobster-21560.html [usatoday.com]
During colonial times, lobster was food for the poverty stricken, prisoners and indentured servants. In the Massachusetts colony that encompassed the land that became known as Maine, indentured servants protested and had instructions written in to their seven-year contracts that they would not be forced to eat lobster more than three times a week.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:4, Interesting)
Only USA Today would quote a floral designer on the history of crustaceans.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:5, Informative)
Slaves hated Lobster for much the same reasons that people today prefer things like beef or "rabbit starvation" is named after rabbits.
Lobsters, like rabbits, have very low fat content. If your meat does not have fat, you are going to have to figure out how you're going to get fat into your diet.
Substituting starches for fats is not going to help you long-term. Your body will convert those starches into fat, yes - but the body will store it and not use it directly. You'll end up being hungry shortly after eating. You'll also end up suffering mental disorders due to fat nutrient deficiency over time.
But yeah. Lobster's great and all, but there's a damn good reason people dip it in butter sauce.
Eating a diet of bugs will suffer the same problem. They have zero fat.
Re:Hey, just market bugs as (Score:4, Informative)
Slaves hated Lobster for much the same reasons that people today prefer things like beef or "rabbit starvation" is named after rabbits.
Lobsters, like rabbits, have very low fat content. If your meat does not have fat, you are going to have to figure out how you're going to get fat into your diet.
Substituting starches for fats is not going to help you long-term. Your body will convert those starches into fat, yes - but the body will store it and not use it directly. You'll end up being hungry shortly after eating. You'll also end up suffering mental disorders due to fat nutrient deficiency over time.
But yeah. Lobster's great and all, but there's a damn good reason people dip it in butter sauce.
Eating a diet of bugs will suffer the same problem. They have zero fat.
That is absolutely not true. But let's skip that for a second, and address it as if it were true.
Those problems can be solved by efficiently and economicallyenriching the food with fats. Notice the words "efficiently and economically". This is a problem we can solve much better than our predecessors. There are quite a few sources of fat that are relatively cheap to mass produce - flax seeds, jojoba, algae, fruit seeds (from which oil is currently extracted for addition to pet food/animal fodder), palm kernels, grasses seeds, hemp seeds, plant roots. Many vegetable things that are not considered edible can be processed to extract edible oils.
Also, there is algae and krill that could be economically harvested and mixed with insect food.
But going back to your original claim, the claim that insects have zero fat is unsubstantiated. Grubs and pupae are known for their enormous fats and protein content, with the iconic Australian Wichetty grub leading the - moth larvae, rhino beetle worm, silk worm, termites, agave worm, ant and bee pupae and many others to name a few. Insect eggs could also be exploited that way.
You sir, are wrong-o.
Lobsters: fertilizer, restrictions on eating, ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Land Lobsters.(They're both arthropods) Then you can charge a premium for them.
I think that would complete the circle. Lobsters used to be called the cockroaches of the sea. They were considered just barely good enough to give to your slaves.
IIRC ...
There were actually laws in the Massachusetts Bay colony limiting how often you could feed your servants lobster. Are they still on the books?
Lobsters were heavily harvested but were often used as fertilizer for the fields.
At some point someone applied butter heavily, served it to the queen, she said she liked it and things changed virtually overnight. The trash food of the lowest "class" became gourmet.
This still happens today. My grandfather grew up in Italy poor and hungry. He laughs a little when looking at the menu in Italian restaurants in the U.S. today. Some of the featured and expensive dishes offered are quite literally the meals he was mocked for eating as a child by the kids from wealthier families.
More efficient to grow but less efficient as fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet, veggie meals are more environmental friendly, more healthy, easier to digest, cheaper, more energy efficient.
Veggies may be more efficient to grow but they are less efficient as fuel for the human body and mind. It was meat that enabled our brains to grow and to become the species we are today.
Eating habits need to change but lets not pretend that meat is not a very important food source for our species.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Non-militant vegetarians that I know say otherwise. They occasionally eat meat when their bodies feel a little "off", they expect a nutritional imbalance. A steak every month or two gets them feeling "right". As others have pointed out a vegetarian lifestyle requires a very carefully researched and planned diet. This is because it is not the lifestyle we evolved under.
Re: (Score:3)
Are you aware of the numerous communities that live their entire lives, cradle-to-grave, without ever eating meat? Some of them live right here in America! Like the Seventh day Adventist sect of Christianity.
Their children are not stupid or weak or sickly or any different than anyone else's children.
Are you sure? I mean, they are religious... Seriously though, there are no indigenous vegetarians. None. There may have been some, but they were probably eaten by whoever lives now where they used to live.
Re:More efficient to grow but less efficient as fu (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
This does not imply a causative effect between meat and intelligence however - apes and monkeys, arguably the smartest non-human animals, are technically omnivores but with the exception of a few species that eat insects, they eat plants almost exclusively.
Bullshit. [nationalgeographic.com]
If you've got any information that suggests that meat was or is essential to brain development I'd like to see it.
How about that I eat meat, and I can use Google [npr.org]?
Not for me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not for me (Score:5, Funny)
It's really pretty obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Under-abundance of meat
Over-abundance of humans
If you convert the over-abundance into the under-abundance, they balance themselves out.
If you ask me (Score:4, Interesting)
Our population just topped 7 billion; if you ask me, there is already too much meat.
Re: (Score:3)
But there's always the supply-chain problem: how do we get it into supermarkets?
Re:If you ask me (Score:5, Funny)
Arthur C. Clark would be proud (Score:4, Funny)
Why stop there? Why not use human muscular stem cells? Then it could be branded as Ambrosia Plus.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:3)
Think of the creepy dinner parties those wealthy enough to run their own batches will have!
"I put a lot of myself into this dish, I hope you enjoy it!"
You already eat bugs; get over it (Score:5, Interesting)
'Things like crickets and grasshoppers will be ground down and used as an ingredient in things like burgers.'
Um, yeah, you just go on thinking thats a "future tense" activity. Maybe not intentionally, maybe a lower percentage...
Re:You already eat bugs; get over it (Score:4, Informative)
Um, yeah, you just go on thinking thats a "future tense" activity. Maybe not intentionally, maybe a lower percentage...
Perhaps you are under the mistaken impression that Westerners are the majority on this planet?
In Africa, of course we Westerners expect this sort of thing, here in America, we have almost all seen Andrew Zimmern go the these exotic Third World locals and dish himself up a big plate of bugs.
But in many Asian counties such as the Korean Peninsula, certainly China, and probably Japan, bugs are not just the diet of poor people.
I've eaten many a bag full of butter fried grasshoppers (or some similar insect) from street stalls and shops right in downtown Seoul. And given some of the "exotic" (disgusting?) sea life that Japanese eat, bugs are surely in their diet as well.
Maybe MAYBE sometime in the future, insect protein will be added to ground meat products and baked goods for consumption by Westerners, be we are a VERY squeamish society in the United States, and I'll bet Western Europeans are much the same way.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not even a low percentage. Carmine [wikipedia.org], the red food colouring used in many types of food, is basically powdered insect remains.
Re: (Score:3)
Snails (arguably not an insect)
Arguably???
I'm sure there's a religion which classifies snails as insects. So it's not just arguable, it's religiously arguable. Better watch out, or you'll meet a gruesome end (probably involving fire and/or stones) of a heretic.
As a heavy meat eater (Score:3)
there are lots of way to dress up vegetables to make even meat eaters drool all over. Just look outside of the western culture for some recipes. Unfortunately for some its too much work/time to cook up some Curry or Thai so they'll just stick to SPAM.
Meat prices are high... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Meat prices are high... (Score:5, Insightful)
Those politicians are no fools. You can bet they made a tidy sum for services rendered to the industry. Fools are those that vote for them
The EU is safe from insect burgers (Score:5, Informative)
The EU has a deliberate policy of remaining self sufficient for food. Euro haters love to rage about the huge grain mountains and heavy farm animal subsidies, but the whole point of them is to make sure the EU will always have enough farming capacity to feed itself should the need arise.
We will never allow ourselves to get to the stage where we don't have enough meat. Yeah, India's population will keep on increasing, but it won't matter much to us. The population of Europe is stabilising and even falling in some places. The third world will carry on starving until they have enough education to limit the number of children they have, but the EU will just keep transferring money from the rich to subsidy for farm animal meat for the rest of us.
Overpopulation is myth disconnected from reality (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no global overpopulation. Some places (such as Japan) are already experiencing population aging and decline, which is bad in many ways. Other places (such as the USA and specially Europe) already have sub-replacement fertility rates, and their population only grows because of demographic lag and immigration. It is predicted the the European Union population (now at 503M) will reach zero natural population increase by 2015 and zero total population increase in 2035 (at 520M), then start declining.
The USA will grow from 310M in 2010 to 403M in 2050. [1]
Asia will increase from 4.2B in 2010 to 5.1B in 2050, then start declining. [2]
The only region that is really growing is Africa. It will increase from 1B in 2010 to 2.2B in 2050. [2] Then its population density will be 73/km2. [3] Compare that to the current population density in Portugal (115/km2), in South Korea (487/km2) and in Taiwan (641/km2). [4]
Global population is predicted to grow from 7B in 2011 to 9B in 2050 and 10B in 2100 [5] and start falling soon after [6].
And according to [7], 40-50% of America-produced food is thrown away. According to [8], 1/3 of the world food is thrown away.
And this does not take into account that people eat, just for pleasure, excessive quantities of resource-intensive food (such as meat). If Americans/Europeans want to help the poor, an easy way would be to decrease (say, by 30%) their diet of meat. This will immediately reduce food demand and, for double bonus, the saved money can be donated to charity. And much arable land is wasted on subsidized inefficient corn-based ethanol. You can lobby your government to stop that.
Plus, there does not seem to be a negative correlation between population density and GDP per capita. [9]
African hunger is not caused by overpopulation. It is caused by corrupt and authoritarian governments, and by guerrillas/terrorists motivated by Marxism, theocractic Islamism, ethnic hate or simply greed.
Overpopulation fear-mongering is very old - at least as old as Malthus. One of its more recent incarnations was the 1968 book "The Population Bomb", which predicted mass starvation to occur in the 1970s.
Anyway, for better or for worse, there is already strong action taken by individuals, foundations, and Western governments, to restrict fertility in Africa.
1 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_11.htm [un.org]
2 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_2.htm [un.org]
3 : According to [2], Africa will have 2.2B people in 2050, and according to Google[10] and Wikipedia [11], the area of Africa is 30,221,532 km2
4 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density [wikipedia.org]
5 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_1.htm [un.org]
6 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_6.htm [un.org]
7 : http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376-us-wastes-half [foodnavigator-usa.com]
8 : http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/74192/icode/ [fao.org]
9 : http://sanamagan.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/population-population-density-gdp-per-capita-ppp/ [wordpress.com]
10 : https://www.google.com.br/search?q=africa+area [google.com.br]
11 :
Re: (Score:3)
The third world will carry on starving until they have enough education to limit the number of children they have, but the EU will just keep transferring money from the rich to subsidy for farm animal meat for the rest of us.
How naive. What do you think is a common cause of wars?
Re: (Score:3)
The rich are the class that can most easily be taxed sustainably. Unlike the lower or middle classes, you'd have to tax them by a hell of a lot to force them down into a lower class.
Re:The EU is safe from insect burgers (Score:4, Insightful)
ically, people that tow-the-line on sustainability are often the first to fool themselves that taking from the rich isn't subject to the laws of sustainability either.
No, no, no. Killing the rich isn't sustainable. Taxing them certainly is sustainable. It's like selective logging versus clearcutting. In fact what is not sustainable is allowing the rich to twist the laws of our nations to allow them to accumulate wildly disproportionate wealth. That leads to massive poverty, societal instability, loss of liberty, and the waste of the talents of the overwhelming majority. Extremely high taxes on the richest just plain work. Look at the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Massive growth of the middle class, astonishing leaps of technology and amazing accomplishments. The best and longest reduction in poverty in our nation's history.
poory written title (Score:3, Funny)
Meat the Food of the Future
Maybe I'm getting old, but I just cannot fathom 'meating' my future food. Well.. maybe if it's apple pie.
I put the over/under of soylent green jokes at 50 (Score:3)
and the over/under of future food overlords jokes at 12.
I don't see this happening in the US. (Score:5, Insightful)
So long as we in the US continue to subsidize corn and raise livestock on it, meat will remain in easy reach of residents of the united states. That's not even considering how an entire huge segment of the population would take the news that they can't do big barbecues anymore. I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm saying this is what I anticipate will happen.
Re: (Score:3)
You know, even grass fed meat isn't all that cost prohibitive when you think about it. Yeah, it's slightly more expensive but it's not like I would stop eating it all together if the corn subsidies were eliminated.
I'm guessing a lot of people would do the same because, well, most Americans hate vegetables and limit them in their diet as much as possible.
Re:I don't see this happening in the US. (Score:5, Insightful)
The land that now grows corn to feed cattle used to feed the bison directly. That grass was able to sustain bison herds the size of a small country. This all happened without any human management. So the idea that we all have to get used to Tofu is a little silly.
Re:I don't see this happening in the US. (Score:5, Interesting)
According to http://www.americanbisonsocietyonline.org/AboutUs/Timeline.aspx [americanbi...online.org] there were 25-30 million bison on the Great Plains before we started seriously hunting them to the point of reducing their population.
According to http://www.beefusa.org/beefindustrystatistics.aspx [beefusa.org] there are about 95 million cattle in the US as of 2011. About 33 million were harvested in 2011.
So if we're willing to reduce the beef production by a factor of 3 from where we are now, we can probably avoid human management. Otherwise, chances are human management is needed.
That said, we certainly have enough beef for just the US here; the problems, if any, start when beef exports start competing on price with domestic purchases.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, sure. Grandparent was talking about restoring those in lieu of the agriculture we do now, as far as I can tell. Which would be a pretty hard sell, but my point was that even that wouldn't be enough to replace current US beef production with grass-fed free-range beef.
Re:I don't see this happening in the US. (Score:4, Insightful)
Beef rose to ascendancy in the American diet based on free range grazing. This was an activity that required ZERO agriculture. People are fixated on this idea of replacing Beef with Tofu and don't acknowledge the fact that it still takes a considerable amount of effort to get good soybean yields.
Grain fed beef and feedlots are a very recent phenomenon.
Less beef might not be such a big problem. The environmental impact will likely be lower than either feedlots or giant soybean farms.
The tree huggers ignore that soybean farmings isn't free either and it's sustainability is also disputable. It's disputable for the same reasons. A lot of energy goes into generating high crop yields.
This is a question of sustainability not the political agenda of some vegan zealots from PETA.
Re:I don't see this happening in the US. (Score:4, Interesting)
So long as we in the US continue to subsidize corn and raise livestock on it, meat will remain in easy reach of residents of the united states. That's not even considering how an entire huge segment of the population would take the news that they can't do big barbecues anymore. I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm saying this is what I anticipate will happen.
There's already a substantial percentage of people in the US who can't afford to eat. To me anything over zero is substantial given the wealth of the US and here we're talking about 506,000 households or roughly 49 million Americans (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/us/17hunger.html).
Before the idiots on here slam the media, I'll point out that even if you cut this number by a factor of ten you'd still have five million Americans not having enough food. Five million. In the richest country in the world.
I probably don't have to say just how pitiful that is.
Re:I don't see this happening in the US. (Score:4, Informative)
I have to disagree. The only way to get hungry in US is to blow all your food stamps on liquer and dope. It's actually hard to stay fit with all cheap junk peddled on every corner. If you think a dude on a street with a cardboard sign "Just hungry" is really do not have anything to eath try to give him a sandwich.
In the face of your experience and wisdom, I can only ask if you read the lowly and uneducated, not to mention no doubt poorly researched NY Times article I referenced? No doubt it can't be compared to your omnipotence but still, I'll quote it to you:
"...the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed last winter, raised the average monthly food stamp benefit per person by about 17 percent, to $133."
Calculate that out, it comes to 4.43 USD per day, per person, for food. Can you live healthily on that? No, I didn't think so.
If you and your family haven't been on food stamps then you don't know what you're talking about. You should hope that you never end up living that firsthand because you'd find out real fast that most people on food stamps (like my parents when I was a child) spend it on food and not a single fucking other thing.
Idiomatics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Idiomatics (Score:5, Funny)
Hivestock.
Incects/bugs... (Score:3)
Edible doesn't mean tasty. I am open to the idea as I eat spiders in my sleep, but there are some that don't look to tempting and I would most likely get very hungry before eating one.
I like that term as well: 'mini-livestock' I think it will stick hahaha
I think we can make the switch, but I am sure it will be the pussy switch just like Vegetarians. Open up there freezer and what do you see? Veggie-BURGER, meat substituted STEAK and all other kinds of crap that are vegetable based, but looks and tastes like meat. And the therapist said "I" was in denial?
Re: (Score:3)
King crabs aren't much different from huge spiders.
That's why I never liked lobster. Nothing but huge bugs.
I, Caveman (Score:4, Interesting)
So, interestingly enough... I caught an episode of Morgan Spurloch's new docu/experiment.
In the episode I saw 2 people leave, and one essentially go crazy from lack of protein. What happened first was the smallest thinnest woman probed to be the most incapable of dealing with the extreme lack of meat protein and fat. She voluntarily left when the "tribe" failed twice to kill an elk. Strangely enough the supposed semi-pro hunter of the group voluntarily left second. He couldn't deal with the frustration of failing to kill an elk with a spear and atlatl. Morgan kept trying to kill a muskrat, but also couldn't remain patient enough to land a killing blow.
The weirdest thing was how the sanity of the vegetarian played out. She consistently tried to brainwash the other tribe members by constantly complaining about animal meat. IIRC she successfully swayed the tiny girl that left to not eat any of the fish they caught because none of the other tribe members would remove the head... Yes. She refused dire nutrients because it had a face on it and the vegetarian brain-washed here into essentially starving until she volunteered to leave from lack of food and partial dehydration.
The next morning after the semi-pro hunter left, a few of the tribe members (including the woman that got her feet wet and complained about being cold while intentionally avoiding huddling around the campfire) set out early to stalk the elk herd. Back at camp, the vegetarian did literally nothing for the tribe; however she made herself a nice salad of grass and leaves... ROFL. The other members at camp started building a drying rack in the hopes the hunters brought back some meat to preserve.
The first atlatl strike missed the target and almost startled the herd into fleeing, however the second guy landed a beautiful shot to the neck of a large buck. They waited a few moments until it collapsed then went in for the kill. I was proud to see the woman (I think her name was Manu) make the kill shot by puncturing the elk's lung. All 4 members of the hunting party became extremely emotional about killing the large majestic mammal.
They performed a small ritual, thanking the animal for its sacrifice, then proceeded to draw and quarter it. They hauled over 200lbs of fresh elk meat back to camp for all of the tribe to share... except the vegetarian.
The vegetarian immediately began complaining that they had murdered an animal to consume. She began gagging in what I believe was an attempt at spreading a mass hysteric type social reflex (think of a yawn and how it seems to spread). Then came the complaints about how gross it was to butcher it in the field, and she wasn't going to eat any it because it was against her beliefs.
Here is where they pan to the actual scientists running the show. They began to discuss the ramifications of tribe members that refuse to contribute to the tribe, and how in ancient times there were rules to compensate for the lazy and belligerent. Next they began to discuss how if the "experiment" continued how she would rapidly become emaciated and essentially starve to death from lack of edible plant proteins in the wild.
So, the moral is that animals need to die for homo sapien sapiens to survive in our modern bodies as they evolved. Over the last 3 years I have been cutting out plant protein/sugar as my staple and replacing it with animal protein/fat. I feel 100x healthier and happier than I have in over a decade. As long as there are ungulates I will never return to plants as my staple diet. If that means poaching, so be it. Humans require animal protein/fat to be healthy. It's scientifically proven.
Re: Vegetarians (Score:3)
Re:I, Caveman (Score:4, Informative)
Most serious vegetarians (I consider myself to be one), know full well that only modern methods of science are able to extract needed amounts of protein from plant sources, be it through tofu, seitan, tempeh or else. Humans are not made to be fueled solely by salad and grass.
Bio-availability of plant protein is lower when it is only from one source, and while most people eat a diverse enough mix, one can get problems with it quite easily. But by mixing, this can be greatly improved (as can be witnessed by the protein shakes for body builders that are purely plant based).
Help me out here, I'm a bit confused (Score:4, Funny)
Is the BBC turning into The Onion? Or is the author just plain daft to start with?
Substituting the words "mini-livestock" in place of "dead insects"? What the fuck are these Brits smoking?
I know crushed-up insects may pass for a semi-decent gourmet meal by British culinary standards, but here in America I'll stick to my 97% lean ground beef and REAL pork chops, thanks.
Re:Help me out here, I'm a bit confused (Score:4, Insightful)
97% lean ground beef is sad. The fat is what makes it taste good.
Re:Help me out here, I'm a bit confused (Score:5, Interesting)
It worked for rape seed oil, err, I mean "canola" and for mechanically reclaimed meat in place of "lips, ringpieces and bits of meat blasted off the bones".
It will work for grasshoppers.
A much more accurate prediction (Score:3)
In the future, people will eat essentially the same things we eat now. Rising prices for meat will cause meat producers to make more money, which will cause more people to raise more livestock for meat, which will cause meat prices to stabilize at a supply/demand equilibrium.
Environmental concerns will become less and less important to people as people learn that human concerns are less and less important to environmentalists. Practical conservation efforts will regain the environmental mainstream, overthrowing the hairshirt doomsday environmentalism that peaked in about 2005.
Futurists and futurologists (?) will continue to predict "interesting" futures, because no one writes an article about you when you say things will stay about the same.
Re: (Score:3)
which will cause more people to raise more livestock for meat,
Expect to see the return and rise of the local family farm. If chickens cost $100 each, suddenly they will become very lucrative. Also, more less desirable meat cuts of an animal become marketable in one form or another. And let's not forget that the current more agrarian third world countries will see a boon in the export of their farm products including meat.
All of which leads to a stabilization of meat prices.
Futurists (Score:5, Funny)
Malthusians never learn... (Score:5, Insightful)
We will find a way to continue to produce food efficiently, mostly for the reason that it is very profitable to do so.
Bio-reactor milk? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always wondered why we use cows to generate milk. Given that most of milk is relatively simple (water, sugars, chalk, oil), why can't we have bioreactor into which we put grass-clippings, and get out something roughly similar to milk?
The need for adding protein, and some kinds of vitamins might be moderately tricky, but I should think that this wouldn't matter for many applications. The only thing that would require the full complexity of real milk would be in making (good quality) cheese. This would also appeal to vegans, some vegetarians, and many people with lactose intolerance.
Re:There is no reason to starve (Score:5, Insightful)
There already is more than enough food produced to make everyone on the planet fat. The problems are distribution and cost.
Re:Meat gap? (Score:4, Interesting)
Meat is easy.
If you dump animal proteins then you actually have to know what you are doing. Otherwise you can do permanent damage to yourselves. If you're going to be a vegetarian then you need the tribal knowledge to back it up and most Westerners simply don't have that.
Also, if we let all of corn fields go fallow, the cows could live off of that. We can't. That's an important detail that's missed here.
Cattle used to be semi-wild animals that just wandered around and mostly fended for themslves. It's the same for grazing animals in general.
A lot of effort and fossil fuel goes into turning grasslands into something that a human might be able to eat. Even if we repurpose the American midwest to direct human feed crops, a lot of high tech effort has to go into it.
Re:Meat gap? (Score:4, Insightful)
Been there. Done that. Luckily the damage wasn't permanent.
The simple fact of the matter is that WE ARE NOT HERBIVORES. We simply don't have the enzymes for it. This is why cows and sheep can survive on stuff we can't.
Mass starvation has occured with people trying to eat like herbivores and dying anyways.
You don't need a "special diet", but you need to exploit a regional food culture that accounts for the lack of meat. Vegans that try to claim otherwise are going to hurt people and their own "cause".
The fact is that it does take some work. This turns off lazy people. So people with an agenda try to deny the facts.
Animal protein is an easy shortcut.
Some vegetarians eat meat when they feel "off" (Score:4, Interesting)
The vegetarian/vegan forums are all full of people who go on a fad vegan diet and end up not feeling well or having other issues because they did not adjust their diet properly
I have a vegetarian friend who goes that path for health reasons, not religion, politics nor philosophy. Once every month or two he "surprises" us (coworkers) by eating meat at lunch. He explained that when he feels his body is a little off he understands that there may be a nutritional imbalance. He understands that a meat free lifestyle is not natural for our species, its not the environment we evolved in. So he does the practical and natural thing. On extremely rare occasions he may try a meat dish out of curiosity. For example when working in the US Gulf Coast region he tried alligator with the rest of us.
Another friend is purely vegetarian. However he comes from a society that has a long history of vegetarianism and as another poster mentioned, such "tribal wisdom" is of great benefit when planning/implementing a vegetarian diet. This friend is strong and healthy, healthy as in he is a marathon runner.
Careful and well informed planning seems to be absolutely necessary for a purely vegetarian lifestyle.
Re: (Score:3)
What I've recently found far more difficult is removing gluten from my diet (there's a link between my psoriasis and gluten sensitivity). When I go shopping, it seems that the Western diet (Indian and Thai food
Re:Meat gap? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not bullshit. If you ate nothing but salad every day, you're not going to get the same nutrition that you would from eating a lot of meats.
False dichotomy. If you ate nothing but steak every day then you'd also be dead in short order. If you eat a moderately balanced diet then you'll be fine. For a vegetarian, the big issue is making sure that you get the full set of amino acids. If you eat cheese, that's done. If you're a vegan it's a bit harder, but eating both rice and lentils will give you them all, as will several other well-known pairs. You have to have a pretty monotonous diet as a vegetarian to avoid getting all of the nutrients that you need.
Mind you, the same is true for omnivores, and in the USA a lot of them seem to manage to suffer from malnutrition (and obesity at the same time), so perhaps it is too much to expect...
Re:Meat gap? (Score:4, Informative)
"The human body does not require meat."
Yes it does. At most I could accept that due to our technology we can (hardly) substitute meat with something else.
"For example, we could just be eating more carrots."
If you thing you can exchange the protein needs of a growing human being out of carrots, you are beyond salvation.
"If less meat gets consumed, there will be more food available to humans overall"
Fat American standard is not "humans overall". About 90% of human population eats meat in quite a reasonable proportion.
To be fair he is right (Score:3)
So yeah, a steak or a semi hard choice of complement vegetable. Most people will take the easy way out and the meat. I certainly do. And there is a GOOD reason that for the average humain vegetable taste not as tasty as meat. A very good reason. Most vegetarian with their propaganda nev
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Meat gap? (Score:4, Insightful)
What is this meat gap?
The human body does not require meat.
It doesn't need vegetables either. Inuits are remarkably healthy - more so than your typical pasty health food fanatic.
And the human body sure as hell doesn't need the poisonous crops like soya, which can't even be safely eaten unless cooked or chemically processed to break down the serpins.
Suckling long pig seems to me to be a near ideal food source, but too expensive. I think we need more rapid gestation research to provide cheap, nutritional meats.
Re: (Score:3)
No we don't. There are life long vegetarians/vegans who are still not dead - must be surprising for you.
You are just accustomed and used to eat meat. It's like a bad habit or maybe even like cold turkey symptoms.
And like any drug addict you try to defend your drug.
You are able to be lifelong vegetarians because of supplements added to your foods.
It's not a "bad habit" to eat meat. Being a pure vegetarian is unnatural, but sustainable with supplements that you don't get from pure vegetables.
Re: (Score:3)
No it doesn't. They'll just have to turn (mostly) vegetarian. Meat isn't a requirement for a balanced diet.
Re: (Score:3)
The 'waste' factor depends on the terrain you're working with. Trying to grow any kind of a food crop on fairly steep hills is pretty futile, while cows or sheep are happy to graze there.
That's Chapulines (Score:4, Informative)
A delicacy among Oaxacans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapulines [wikipedia.org]
Though I would note the following:
Re:Easier solution (Score:4, Informative)
That said, my parents raise grass-fed cattle so I could get beef for cheap if I cared to.
So what? That doesn't (and couldn't) apply to most people on the planet, so adds nothing to the discussion beyond "Cool story, bro" pointlessness.
Re: (Score:3)
We're not vegetarians, but we used to be. But meat still isn't high on our radar except for the occasional fish or chicken. Sometimes beef from good quality small farms. We eat meat about 1-3 times in a given month. One doesn't have to go completely vegetarian, but cutting down on meat is a good idea I think.
No, we're omnivores. We evolved to eat whatever we could find. Way the hell back before the Stone Age, there were no domesticated grains you could use to make a balanced vegetarian diet. It just wasn't happening. Meat was the only source of concentrated proteins. It was only after we developed agriculture that we domesticated and bred plants for higher protein content. You still have to do some research though to balance your diet if you go vegetarian.
Re: (Score:3)
I used to have that standpoint too. Until I learned that the "green" revolution is 100% powered by fossil fuels and fertilizers made from fossil fuels plus minerals, some of which are also peaking.
Re:Another crystal ball post (Score:4, Funny)