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Local Food or Less Meat? Data Tells The Real Story

139 points by xbryanx 15y ago

127001brewer 15y ago
For a counter argument to the "Locavore" movement, I recommend reading "Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly" by Jame E McWilliams.[1] As others more knowledgeable on the subject than me have stated (in various places), eating less red meat greatly improves the environment and your health. An example of eating less red meat would be treat it as a side dish instead of the main dish. 1. http://www.amazon.com/Just-Food-Where-Locavores-Responsibly/dp/031603374X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309361841&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.com/Just-Food-Where-Locavores-Responsibly/...
- ericmoritz 15y ago
  There was a study released last week that basically stated the same thing. Refined grains, potatoes and meat attribute to greater weight gain vs diets centered around vegetables. It's really looking like the best meal ecologically, economically and for your health is one where the primary calories come from vegetables.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - 127001brewer 15y ago
    Here's one article that discussed the study: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/potatoes-bad-nuts-good-for-staying-slim-harvard-study-finds/2011/06/17/AGRWmIgH_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/potato...
  - dmm 15y ago
    > where the primary calories come from vegetables A kilogram of spinach has 230 cals. How many kilos do you plan to eat? Fats are a more practical source of calories.
    - lukesandberg 15y ago
      It is true that fats are among the most calorie dense food in existence but that doesn't make them necessarily 'practical'. If animal fats have lots of external costs (in terms of environmental damage) then they aren't very practical. The costs are just not well understood. As for the spinach straw man argument...I don't think anyone is suggesting that you eat 10 kilos of spinach, that would be extremely unhealthy. I think the OP was suggesting simply that calories come mostly from plants. This includes nuts (peanut butter is very high calorie), fruits (also high calorie) and vegetables.
      - sliverstorm 15y ago
        If you allow "plants", then yes- starchy staples, nuts, fruits all have you covered on calories. It's up to the OP though to clarify whether he meant plants or celery.
    - jessedhillon 15y ago
      Some sources of plant fats: avocados, olives, coconuts, almost all nuts. Bonus: 0mg cholesterol.
      - Evgeny 15y ago
        Dietary cholesterol has not yet been shown to be harmful. Some well-researched books on the subject include "Fat and Cholesterol are good for you" by Uffe Ravnskov and "The Great Cholesterol con" by Anthony Colpo.
        jessedhillon 15y ago
        That's right. High levels are correlated with atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, but they haven't been shown to cause those conditions. Some cholesterols are also "good" (high density) in that they have positive effects for people with high cholesterols -- they can lower levels.
- dkastner 15y ago
  Here are some great rebuttals to "Just Food:" http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-08-mcwilliams-locavore-polemic http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-08-mcwilliams-locavore-... http://sharonastyk.com/2009/09/11/start-by-asking-the-right-questions-setting-the-terms-for-the-debate-on-local-and-organic-food/ http://sharonastyk.com/2009/09/11/start-by-asking-the-right-...
- scythe 15y ago
  >and your health As far as I am aware, the data on this claim is conflicting, and most studies are plagued by confounding variables. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat#Health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat#Health See? This article is a freakin' yo-yo. It causes heart disease, it does not cause heart disease, it causes cancer, it does not cause cancer, everyone is jumping on everyone else's methodology, and sometimes it seems as though the conclusions were decided before the study was performed. Here it causes heart disease: >a survey ,conducted in 1960, of 25,153 California Seventh-Day Adventists, found that the risk of heart disease is three times greater for 45-64 year old men who eat meat daily, versus those who did not eat meat. Here it does not: >In another study[84] in 2010 involving over one million people who ate meat found that only processed meat had an adverse risk in relation to coronary heart disease. The study suggests that eating 50g (less than 2oz) of processed meat per day increases risk of coronary heart disease by 42%, and diabetes by 19%. Equivalent levels of fat, including saturated fats, in unprocessed meat (even when eating twice as much per day) did not show any deleterious effects, leading the researchers to suggest that "differences in salt and preservatives, rather than fats, might explain the higher risk of heart disease and diabetes seen with processed meats, but not with unprocessed red meats." The lack of attention given to statistical confounding in the diets of the people studied is concerning. The fact that new studies appear to refute previous studies suggests that one of three things is going on: -the new studies are wrong -the old studies are wrong -the physical laws of the Universe have changed in some fundamental manner I cannot hope to be convinced on this topic without hopefully a thorough examination of the methodology of the researchers and potential biases. It is not becoming of a scientist to make an assertion of knowledge without a thorough examination of the data and its origins, and I have my doubts about the quality of any of the current data, whether it condemns or acquits meat consumption. The work regarding heterocyclic amines and the recommendation to microwave meat before it is cooked seems now as a tiny ignored candle flame in a dark room full of people claiming to see the light. I do, however, have the intuition that studying something as broad as "meat consumption" is almost inherently inclined to error and bias, and that it would be better to perform multiple specific analyses and hopefully even experiments involving perhaps directed diets, so that the question can be laid to rest, and people can make a decision based on evidence, fact, and their own relative valuation of health and hedonism. Not from dogma.
prpon 15y ago
I thought this article would be about which one of the two (local food or less meat) is better for you health wise, with data. It talks about carbon footprint of each source.
- orky56 15y ago
  That's what I thought too. The only certain thing is that doing both (local and less meat) is the way to go.
akamaka 15y ago
As good as the author's logic is, he's trying to refute a point that locavores haven't even really been emphasising. See for yourself: http://www.locavores.com/how/why.php http://www.locavores.com/how/why.php Energy conservation is only one of 12 reasons to buy locally, and saving transportation costs is only a minor subpoint. The main energy conservation argument is to not buy from farms relying heavily on fossil fuels.
- evgen 15y ago
  The reason locovores no longer make "food miles" a central justification is that it has been thoroughly debunked. Go back a few years and you will see "food miles" being used all over the place in the eat local arguments.
- xbryanx 15y ago
  It also depends where you live. I was blown away how much food miles were emphasized as a mark of sustainability on packaging and advertising in the UK two years ago.
  - nickthedart 15y ago
    The uk is a crowded island and anything we can do to reduce the number of lorries (trucks) on our roads would be good. An example is, why do potatoes from Cornwall get sold in Yorkshire and vice versa since both areas could be self-sufficient in potatoes? Why are we wasting fuel, vehicles, truck drivers time (and their whole lives really) shifting potatoes around depending on the market price? A more extreme example is that New Zealand apples and lamb are sold in the UK, both of which are readily available from this country, not only at different times of year. I've even seen "Organic" New Zealand apples in Sainsburys. Well they might be organically grown but certainly not organically produced overall if they're shipped halfway around the globe. Another bugbear I have is, here in the East Midlands we have freight planes landing and taking off at night. Some people aren't getting a decent night's sleep so that others can get Mange Tout and sugar snap peas from Ghana or wherever. So in summary if you want the planet to be a nicer less stressful place with less lorries and planes, try to buy local!
- 15y ago
deleted 15y ago
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jsdalton 15y ago
One of the commenters on the thread says: "If the meat you are eating is organic, local, and grass-fed it's going to have an extremely low carbon footprint." Is this true? Does anyone know of any data that supports or refute this? I'm just wondering if a third factor -- how the meat is produced -- has a meaningful impact on its carbon footprint. I wonder how much of the carbon footprint of red meat, for example, comes from all of the petroleum used to produce fertilizer to grow corn for grain-fed cattle.
- bmj 15y ago
  I don't have hard facts, but if done correctly, pasturing/grass-feeding animals means it is possible raise and feed a herd without adding energy inputs (aside from the sun and rain necessary to grow the grass). This, at least, applies to animals like cows who are equipped to eat only grasses as a food source. Raising other animals (like pigs or chickens) means you may need to supplement pasture grazing with grains. But there's nothing stopping a farmer from growing those on the farm without much additional energy inputs.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
    It's a matter of scale. There was a pig (and other animals) farmer who used to have a really good blog. One of the practices he used was to get free discarded milk and by-products from a local dairy to feed his pigs. Instead of the dairy having to pay to discard about-to-spoil whey, for example, he would just accept a few tons of it and feed it to his animals. But that only goes so far, and the supply has to be local or it becomes too expensive to truck in. You can feed your cows on grass, but the animal density has to be much lower, or the grass will be under so much pressure that it will die out from overgrazing. Likewise, you can pasture-raise chickens and the eggs/meat are tastier for it, but the number of chickens/sq yd of pasture is much less than you can squeeze into an indoors "battery operation." If you are concerned with animal welfare -- and I firmly believe that you should be -- these things are difficult problems. On the one hand you want to raise animals in a sustainable manner that allows them a good, if short, life, but on the other, your customers need to be able to afford the food you provide. And it's that final point that is stopping many farmers from doing it.
thaumaturgy 15y ago
Yeah, we don't do the locavore thing for carbon footprint reasons, but just because it's ... nice, I guess, for lack of a better word. Once a week we get to meet the family that we buy fresh peaches from, and we joke with them or ask 'em how the crops are doing and so forth. They tell us if they've had to spray or not. The peaches smell like real peaches, they're fresh, they last for days so we don't have to eat all of them right away before they spoil, they're juicy. My girlfriend works at a CSA one morning a week and comes home with a week's worth of veggies that she picks. They, too, are fresh and tasty and seem different from what we're used to getting in the supermarket. We have about 160 square foot garden of our own; I'll have tomatoes ready soon, cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumbers, zucchini, corn, bell peppers, green beans, onions, strawberries ... it's just fun. If we need a little rosemary or thyme or basil for cooking, we can go outside and pick what we need. I like getting to know the people who grow my food. That somehow makes it taste better.
- mark_l_watson 15y ago
  Right on - my wife and I basically do the same thing: grow some of our own veggies, talk with local farmers at the farmers' market, etc. I also think that lowering our carbon and environmental footprint by eating less meat is the right thing to do.
  - thaumaturgy 15y ago
    Yeah, my friend and I are pretty much unapologetic carnivores -- we half-kid sometimes about buying a 4H cow. But, I've noticed that ever since we started getting fresh veggies, I haven't minded eating the green stuff nearly as much. I'm skeptical about these food practices being able to feed everyone though. While, personally, I'd like to see dairy farms in California with pasture-fed free-range etc. etc. cattle, that would probably make milk too expensive for poorer families to afford.
    - PakG1 15y ago
      I think a lot of tribal meat eaters ate pretty sustainably because their population numbers held pretty steady, didn't explode. So just hunting wasn't enough to require the wild herds to also grow exponentially for survival. Let's face it, the issue is not meat, it's growth of the human population. But nobody wants to advocate eliminating humans (and definitely I don't), so we have to make the hard choices sometimes. I'd say the bigger issue isn't carbon footprint, it's water supply. http://www.businessinsider.com/water-use-of-foods-2011-4?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/water-use-of-foods-2011-4?op=...
andrewcooke 15y ago
article makes an interesting point, but "both" would be better than either alone (something certainly possible here in santiago, chile - fresh, local food is one of the best things about this place. y no hay nada mas chileno que un poroto ;o)
chrisjsmith 15y ago
I think the carbon crisis is political rubbish that spawned a new industry I mean who the hell thought of carbon trading - sounds like something school children came up with. The earth's atmosphere and environment is more changeable than we realise - we've only been looking at it for a blink of an eye in the scale of things so we can't claim to understand it. Not only that, they've worked out based on various factors that the CO2 levels were higher in the Cambrian, Ordovician and Jurassic periods. It's like trying to work out who farted in a lift full of people. As for the locavore thing, it's only better because it's not usually mass produced crap so it has health benefits. Chickens, goats etc are a counterpoint to the OP's "theory" as they live off waste and are highly efficient meat generators. Not only that, anyone can manage them. I grow huge amounts of edible things myself (because it tastes better and is cost, health and psycologically beneficial). I'm not labelling myself with Carbon Crusader, Green warrior, Locavore or whatever terms they think up next etc though - that's just silly. You're ultimately trading your health for carbon guilt.
- enemieslist 15y ago
  I'm always really curious about people who deny human causation of global warming, which is what it seems like you're doing. I mean this as a legitimate question: How do you justify this belief? The overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe in human-caused global warming. I'm assuming that you don't have specific training in these issues, or data that no one else possesses, so under what criteria do you choose to follow your own reasoning, or gut instinct, over such a mountain of educated opinion? A corollary, for me, could be drawn to atoms. I have never seen an atom, nor have I ever really dug deep into the data that people say proves atoms exist. I have no more first-hand knowledge of atoms than I have of God. Yet, I simply choose to believe in atoms because people who are supposed to know about these things say atoms exist, and I'm told that if I really wanted to prove it to myself, I could go back to college or to a laboratory and do so. We have to do this for all kinds of things, every day. We're surrounded by things that operate on principles that no single person will ever have the time or energy to investigate and validate by themselves. We have to delegate authority over most technical matters to specialists, simply because we don't have any other choice. Why draw the line at global warming? Do you believe in internal combustion? Do you believe in black holes? Do you believe in evolution? Really, I do not mean this to sound like an attack. I want to know.
pdenya 15y ago
I've been a vegetarian for a few years after hearing more about the cruelty, environmental impact, etc. We get local food fairly often but I should really make more of an effort.
PilateDeGuerre 15y ago
Local food or less meat is a false dichotomy, for one. What is really important is an understanding that personal consumption choices are no substitute for political change and that political change does not necessarily, and often does not, follow personal change. Derrick Jensen has written extensively on this issue, and has a fantastic and short essay, "Forget Shorter Showers" [1]. It could easily have been called "Forget Local Food or Less Meat". [1] http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/ http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801...
AretNCarlsen 15y ago
Great article. Scientific analysis is solid. Understanding of American capitalism is flawed, however. >> As companies keep discovering, it really helps to run the numbers. As I've written about before, Pepsi discovered... >> Smart, knowledgeable execs are consistently surprised when good lifecycle data trumps seemingly solid assumptions. [emphases mine] That is naive. Pepsi is running a tight ship; they have all the numbers in front of them, all of the time; and they pay a lot of engineers a lot of money to not fall prey to "seemingly solid assumptions". Regardless of when the relevant analyses (like the Tropicana gas-vs-fuel analysis) are performed, companies will announce the "discovery" of such nuances precisely when it becomes good publicity to do so. In related reading on ignoring surrounding factors when introducing green technology, windmills destroy the environment: http://www.savewesternny.org/environment.html http://www.savewesternny.org/environment.html
Tyrant505 15y ago
Do grass fed cattle produce more methane?
jgorham 15y ago
The average American eats twice as many kilograms of meat than the next nationality (last time I checked it was the British). As the article states, beef is by far the most environmentally draining; it turns out in terms of protein and calories, pork is nearly the same as beef with a much smaller amount of energy required to produce that meat. If the US had a better food culture [I'm not counting fast food here], we might be able to actually change the mindsets of the public that they dont need a meat entre with every meal.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Is that really true? More than twice as much meat as, say, the Australians, Germans and Argentinians? update: According to http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/meat-consumption-per-capita-climate-change http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/m... your implausible-sounding numbers are wrong. In fact US meat consumption (at least as of 2002) is in line with the other agriculturally-rich Western countries, and well behind Denmark and New Zealand. (Australia is missing from the statistics.)
nhangen 15y ago
Wow, didn't realize this many people were concerned about carbon footprints. I'm curious how this breaks down, at least in the US, in the east vs the west. I'm a vegetarian, so I obviously can't eat less meat, but I do enjoy buying locally when I can, mostly because I can be assured to have fresh ingredients, and I can see where the food came from.
- metageek 15y ago
  You could eat negative meat, by raising cattle and not letting anybody eat them. ;-)
  - nhangen 15y ago
    Better yet, raising cattle and feeding them people :)
code_duck 15y ago
There's no reason to quibble carbon when there are other clear resource differences between food sources. It takes a very large quantity of grain to produce the same mass of beef, as so much energy goes to powering the cow itself while it's alive. Same for water usage. Large animal farms are also reponsible for a great deal of run off pollution now not just from sewage and nitrates, but also antibiotic residue. There's no question that raising animals for food is inefficient compared to agriculture.
krosaen 15y ago
There are good lifecycle analysis studies that back up organically grown vegetables have a smaller carbon footprint than conventional: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArTN5sfBYj4adG5VMVJ4MFBkRmdVeUVHV2dPdHNCRnc&hl=en_US&authkey=CLDP9s4G https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArTN5sf... So while you are eating less meat, may as well eat more organic vegetables, locally grown all else being equal. And if you want to find food where you can trace it back to its farm, http://realtimefarms.com http://realtimefarms.com is the place to go! (disclaimer, that's my startup, feedback welcome :)
Aloisius 15y ago
I try to only eat mini-cows. No seriously. Mini/micro/teacup cows produce a fraction of the methane emissions and eat a third less food per pound of meat.
dcolgan 15y ago
I saw this TED talk a while back in which the speaker argues we should lower our meat consumption by increasing our insect consumption. He says insect meat is just as nutritious as mammal meat (if not more), and it also takes a lot fewer resources to produce it commercially. http://www.ted.com/talks/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects.html http://www.ted.com/talks/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects.ht... I believe he said it takes 10 kg of feed and other resources to produce 1 kg of cow meat, while it takes 1 kg of inputs to produce 1 kg of grasshopper meat. I ordered some canned mealworms off of Amazon the other day just to try them, and they actually weren't that bad with some butter and spices.
- westicle 15y ago
  Grasshoppers may be more efficient to produce than cows, but science tells us that for the 1:1 input:output claim to be true grasshoppers must expend 0 energy and produce 0 excretions. Doubtful!
  - dcolgan 15y ago
    Ah, sorry I misquoted him. He said that given 10kg of inputs, you can get 1kg of cow meat, or you can get 9kg of locust meat. My bad.
hugh3 15y ago
True, but missing the point. If you prove, convincingly, to a "locavore" that the stated benefits of their choices are in fact better achieved by (say) acquiring all your food from Wal-Mart, will they thank you and be glad that they know this now? Of course not, they'll get angry. And that's because the actual desire for "locavore" eating is not about the stated benefits, it's about being able to feel superior to others. Now me, I don't see the point of this. But that's probably just because I have plenty of other reasons to feel superior to others. But if I were denied these then, heck, maybe I'd be tempted to engage in this sort of hair-shirt behaviour too. What I say is: let the baby have his bottle. If someone wants to feel superior to others due to whatever random harmless activity he's engaging in, then give him a pat on the back and try to avoid bringing logic and reason into the conversation. Everybody has a deep-seated psychological need to feel like they're better than others, and if denied this fairly harmless sort of outlet then these folks will start lashing out in other, probably more harmful, ways.
bad_user 15y ago
red meat being particularly egregious, requiring 150% more energy than even chicken It is true, but that's only because currently chickens are fed aggressively with growth hormones and other such shit. In 10 days a farm can produce chickens weighting 4.5 pounds (and this is for the cases where the farmer shows some restraint). As an observable result, small children are getting increasingly more hairy. Red meat cannot be grown so aggressively, especially when discussing pork. It's ironic that the most unhealthy red meat of all may end up being the best for your children's health.
randoom 15y ago
Slightly meta/off-topic: By just looking at the comments I have seen about five controversial statements like Parent: Red meat is bad, because $study Child: No, it isn't see $counter-study What is up with the science in foodscience? All the camps (paleo, vegetarian, vegan, locavore, raw foodists, ...) are citing studies which support their point of view and disregard the others. Or another good example is the Weston A. Price Foundation [1] and Dr. Fuhrman [2]. They are "battling" each other with study after study. Why are there so many contradicting and controversial studies and opinions in a field which calls itself a science? [1] http://www.westonaprice.org/ http://www.westonaprice.org/ [2] http://www.diseaseproof.com/ http://www.diseaseproof.com/
- Evgeny 15y ago
  It is virtually impossible to design a convincing study on the effect of FoodstuffA on human health. The ideal study would look something like that: - Enlist people into study, divide them randomly into two groups - Design a diet, where everything will be exactly the same, except FoodstuffA for group 1 will be replaced with some FoodstuffB for group 2. - Keep all subjects under supervision 24/7 to eliminate possible cheating - Continue the study long enough to determine long term effects (years? decades?) Even in this case, there will be opportunity for speculation. Maybe the FoodstuffA is not bad, but the FoodstuffB is just beneficial, maybe we should have used FoodstuffC. So, there's two alternatives that are realistic: 1. Observational study. Ask 1000000 people about how much red meat they eat, compare health, do conclusions. Lots of confounding variables - smoking, physical activity, alcohol consumption etc etc. 2. Randomised controlled study. Will be fairly short due to funding and subject to criticism due to design of the diets of participants (no, group 1 had too much fat! no, group 2 had too little carbs!). Both options are not ideal and subject to controversy.

139 points by xbryanx 15y ago

For a counter argument to the "Locavore" movement, I recommend reading "Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly" by Jame E McWilliams.[1] As others more knowledgeable on the subject than me have stated (in various places), eating less red meat greatly improves the environment and your health. An example of eating less red meat would be treat it as a side dish instead of the main dish. 1. http://www.amazon.com/Just-Food-Where-Locavores-Responsibly/dp/031603374X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309361841&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.com/Just-Food-Where-Locavores-Responsibly/...

ericmoritz 15y ago
There was a study released last week that basically stated the same thing. Refined grains, potatoes and meat attribute to greater weight gain vs diets centered around vegetables. It's really looking like the best meal ecologically, economically and for your health is one where the primary calories come from vegetables.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- 127001brewer 15y ago
  Here's one article that discussed the study: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/potatoes-bad-nuts-good-for-staying-slim-harvard-study-finds/2011/06/17/AGRWmIgH_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/potato...
- dmm 15y ago
  > where the primary calories come from vegetables A kilogram of spinach has 230 cals. How many kilos do you plan to eat? Fats are a more practical source of calories.
  - lukesandberg 15y ago
    It is true that fats are among the most calorie dense food in existence but that doesn't make them necessarily 'practical'. If animal fats have lots of external costs (in terms of environmental damage) then they aren't very practical. The costs are just not well understood. As for the spinach straw man argument...I don't think anyone is suggesting that you eat 10 kilos of spinach, that would be extremely unhealthy. I think the OP was suggesting simply that calories come mostly from plants. This includes nuts (peanut butter is very high calorie), fruits (also high calorie) and vegetables.
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      If you allow "plants", then yes- starchy staples, nuts, fruits all have you covered on calories. It's up to the OP though to clarify whether he meant plants or celery.
  - jessedhillon 15y ago
    Some sources of plant fats: avocados, olives, coconuts, almost all nuts. Bonus: 0mg cholesterol.
    - Evgeny 15y ago
      Dietary cholesterol has not yet been shown to be harmful. Some well-researched books on the subject include "Fat and Cholesterol are good for you" by Uffe Ravnskov and "The Great Cholesterol con" by Anthony Colpo.
      - jessedhillon 15y ago
        That's right. High levels are correlated with atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, but they haven't been shown to cause those conditions. Some cholesterols are also "good" (high density) in that they have positive effects for people with high cholesterols -- they can lower levels.
dkastner 15y ago
Here are some great rebuttals to "Just Food:" http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-08-mcwilliams-locavore-polemic http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-08-mcwilliams-locavore-... http://sharonastyk.com/2009/09/11/start-by-asking-the-right-questions-setting-the-terms-for-the-debate-on-local-and-organic-food/ http://sharonastyk.com/2009/09/11/start-by-asking-the-right-...
scythe 15y ago
>and your health As far as I am aware, the data on this claim is conflicting, and most studies are plagued by confounding variables. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat#Health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat#Health See? This article is a freakin' yo-yo. It causes heart disease, it does not cause heart disease, it causes cancer, it does not cause cancer, everyone is jumping on everyone else's methodology, and sometimes it seems as though the conclusions were decided before the study was performed. Here it causes heart disease: >a survey ,conducted in 1960, of 25,153 California Seventh-Day Adventists, found that the risk of heart disease is three times greater for 45-64 year old men who eat meat daily, versus those who did not eat meat. Here it does not: >In another study[84] in 2010 involving over one million people who ate meat found that only processed meat had an adverse risk in relation to coronary heart disease. The study suggests that eating 50g (less than 2oz) of processed meat per day increases risk of coronary heart disease by 42%, and diabetes by 19%. Equivalent levels of fat, including saturated fats, in unprocessed meat (even when eating twice as much per day) did not show any deleterious effects, leading the researchers to suggest that "differences in salt and preservatives, rather than fats, might explain the higher risk of heart disease and diabetes seen with processed meats, but not with unprocessed red meats." The lack of attention given to statistical confounding in the diets of the people studied is concerning. The fact that new studies appear to refute previous studies suggests that one of three things is going on: -the new studies are wrong -the old studies are wrong -the physical laws of the Universe have changed in some fundamental manner I cannot hope to be convinced on this topic without hopefully a thorough examination of the methodology of the researchers and potential biases. It is not becoming of a scientist to make an assertion of knowledge without a thorough examination of the data and its origins, and I have my doubts about the quality of any of the current data, whether it condemns or acquits meat consumption. The work regarding heterocyclic amines and the recommendation to microwave meat before it is cooked seems now as a tiny ignored candle flame in a dark room full of people claiming to see the light. I do, however, have the intuition that studying something as broad as "meat consumption" is almost inherently inclined to error and bias, and that it would be better to perform multiple specific analyses and hopefully even experiments involving perhaps directed diets, so that the question can be laid to rest, and people can make a decision based on evidence, fact, and their own relative valuation of health and hedonism. Not from dogma.

prpon 15y ago

I thought this article would be about which one of the two (local food or less meat) is better for you health wise, with data. It talks about carbon footprint of each source.

orky56 15y ago
That's what I thought too. The only certain thing is that doing both (local and less meat) is the way to go.

akamaka 15y ago

As good as the author's logic is, he's trying to refute a point that locavores haven't even really been emphasising. See for yourself: http://www.locavores.com/how/why.php http://www.locavores.com/how/why.php Energy conservation is only one of 12 reasons to buy locally, and saving transportation costs is only a minor subpoint. The main energy conservation argument is to not buy from farms relying heavily on fossil fuels.

evgen 15y ago
The reason locovores no longer make "food miles" a central justification is that it has been thoroughly debunked. Go back a few years and you will see "food miles" being used all over the place in the eat local arguments.
xbryanx 15y ago
It also depends where you live. I was blown away how much food miles were emphasized as a mark of sustainability on packaging and advertising in the UK two years ago.
- nickthedart 15y ago
  The uk is a crowded island and anything we can do to reduce the number of lorries (trucks) on our roads would be good. An example is, why do potatoes from Cornwall get sold in Yorkshire and vice versa since both areas could be self-sufficient in potatoes? Why are we wasting fuel, vehicles, truck drivers time (and their whole lives really) shifting potatoes around depending on the market price? A more extreme example is that New Zealand apples and lamb are sold in the UK, both of which are readily available from this country, not only at different times of year. I've even seen "Organic" New Zealand apples in Sainsburys. Well they might be organically grown but certainly not organically produced overall if they're shipped halfway around the globe. Another bugbear I have is, here in the East Midlands we have freight planes landing and taking off at night. Some people aren't getting a decent night's sleep so that others can get Mange Tout and sugar snap peas from Ghana or wherever. So in summary if you want the planet to be a nicer less stressful place with less lorries and planes, try to buy local!
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jsdalton 15y ago

One of the commenters on the thread says: "If the meat you are eating is organic, local, and grass-fed it's going to have an extremely low carbon footprint." Is this true? Does anyone know of any data that supports or refute this? I'm just wondering if a third factor -- how the meat is produced -- has a meaningful impact on its carbon footprint. I wonder how much of the carbon footprint of red meat, for example, comes from all of the petroleum used to produce fertilizer to grow corn for grain-fed cattle.

bmj 15y ago
I don't have hard facts, but if done correctly, pasturing/grass-feeding animals means it is possible raise and feed a herd without adding energy inputs (aside from the sun and rain necessary to grow the grass). This, at least, applies to animals like cows who are equipped to eat only grasses as a food source. Raising other animals (like pigs or chickens) means you may need to supplement pasture grazing with grains. But there's nothing stopping a farmer from growing those on the farm without much additional energy inputs.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
  It's a matter of scale. There was a pig (and other animals) farmer who used to have a really good blog. One of the practices he used was to get free discarded milk and by-products from a local dairy to feed his pigs. Instead of the dairy having to pay to discard about-to-spoil whey, for example, he would just accept a few tons of it and feed it to his animals. But that only goes so far, and the supply has to be local or it becomes too expensive to truck in. You can feed your cows on grass, but the animal density has to be much lower, or the grass will be under so much pressure that it will die out from overgrazing. Likewise, you can pasture-raise chickens and the eggs/meat are tastier for it, but the number of chickens/sq yd of pasture is much less than you can squeeze into an indoors "battery operation." If you are concerned with animal welfare -- and I firmly believe that you should be -- these things are difficult problems. On the one hand you want to raise animals in a sustainable manner that allows them a good, if short, life, but on the other, your customers need to be able to afford the food you provide. And it's that final point that is stopping many farmers from doing it.

thaumaturgy 15y ago

Yeah, we don't do the locavore thing for carbon footprint reasons, but just because it's ... nice, I guess, for lack of a better word. Once a week we get to meet the family that we buy fresh peaches from, and we joke with them or ask 'em how the crops are doing and so forth. They tell us if they've had to spray or not. The peaches smell like real peaches, they're fresh, they last for days so we don't have to eat all of them right away before they spoil, they're juicy. My girlfriend works at a CSA one morning a week and comes home with a week's worth of veggies that she picks. They, too, are fresh and tasty and seem different from what we're used to getting in the supermarket. We have about 160 square foot garden of our own; I'll have tomatoes ready soon, cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumbers, zucchini, corn, bell peppers, green beans, onions, strawberries ... it's just fun. If we need a little rosemary or thyme or basil for cooking, we can go outside and pick what we need. I like getting to know the people who grow my food. That somehow makes it taste better.

mark_l_watson 15y ago
Right on - my wife and I basically do the same thing: grow some of our own veggies, talk with local farmers at the farmers' market, etc. I also think that lowering our carbon and environmental footprint by eating less meat is the right thing to do.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  Yeah, my friend and I are pretty much unapologetic carnivores -- we half-kid sometimes about buying a 4H cow. But, I've noticed that ever since we started getting fresh veggies, I haven't minded eating the green stuff nearly as much. I'm skeptical about these food practices being able to feed everyone though. While, personally, I'd like to see dairy farms in California with pasture-fed free-range etc. etc. cattle, that would probably make milk too expensive for poorer families to afford.
  - PakG1 15y ago
    I think a lot of tribal meat eaters ate pretty sustainably because their population numbers held pretty steady, didn't explode. So just hunting wasn't enough to require the wild herds to also grow exponentially for survival. Let's face it, the issue is not meat, it's growth of the human population. But nobody wants to advocate eliminating humans (and definitely I don't), so we have to make the hard choices sometimes. I'd say the bigger issue isn't carbon footprint, it's water supply. http://www.businessinsider.com/water-use-of-foods-2011-4?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/water-use-of-foods-2011-4?op=...

andrewcooke 15y ago

article makes an interesting point, but "both" would be better than either alone (something certainly possible here in santiago, chile - fresh, local food is one of the best things about this place. y no hay nada mas chileno que un poroto ;o)

chrisjsmith 15y ago

I think the carbon crisis is political rubbish that spawned a new industry I mean who the hell thought of carbon trading - sounds like something school children came up with. The earth's atmosphere and environment is more changeable than we realise - we've only been looking at it for a blink of an eye in the scale of things so we can't claim to understand it. Not only that, they've worked out based on various factors that the CO2 levels were higher in the Cambrian, Ordovician and Jurassic periods. It's like trying to work out who farted in a lift full of people. As for the locavore thing, it's only better because it's not usually mass produced crap so it has health benefits. Chickens, goats etc are a counterpoint to the OP's "theory" as they live off waste and are highly efficient meat generators. Not only that, anyone can manage them. I grow huge amounts of edible things myself (because it tastes better and is cost, health and psycologically beneficial). I'm not labelling myself with Carbon Crusader, Green warrior, Locavore or whatever terms they think up next etc though - that's just silly. You're ultimately trading your health for carbon guilt.

enemieslist 15y ago
I'm always really curious about people who deny human causation of global warming, which is what it seems like you're doing. I mean this as a legitimate question: How do you justify this belief? The overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe in human-caused global warming. I'm assuming that you don't have specific training in these issues, or data that no one else possesses, so under what criteria do you choose to follow your own reasoning, or gut instinct, over such a mountain of educated opinion? A corollary, for me, could be drawn to atoms. I have never seen an atom, nor have I ever really dug deep into the data that people say proves atoms exist. I have no more first-hand knowledge of atoms than I have of God. Yet, I simply choose to believe in atoms because people who are supposed to know about these things say atoms exist, and I'm told that if I really wanted to prove it to myself, I could go back to college or to a laboratory and do so. We have to do this for all kinds of things, every day. We're surrounded by things that operate on principles that no single person will ever have the time or energy to investigate and validate by themselves. We have to delegate authority over most technical matters to specialists, simply because we don't have any other choice. Why draw the line at global warming? Do you believe in internal combustion? Do you believe in black holes? Do you believe in evolution? Really, I do not mean this to sound like an attack. I want to know.

pdenya 15y ago

I've been a vegetarian for a few years after hearing more about the cruelty, environmental impact, etc. We get local food fairly often but I should really make more of an effort.

PilateDeGuerre 15y ago

Local food or less meat is a false dichotomy, for one. What is really important is an understanding that personal consumption choices are no substitute for political change and that political change does not necessarily, and often does not, follow personal change. Derrick Jensen has written extensively on this issue, and has a fantastic and short essay, "Forget Shorter Showers" [1]. It could easily have been called "Forget Local Food or Less Meat". [1] http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/ http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801...

AretNCarlsen 15y ago

Great article. Scientific analysis is solid. Understanding of American capitalism is flawed, however. >> As companies keep discovering, it really helps to run the numbers. As I've written about before, Pepsi discovered... >> Smart, knowledgeable execs are consistently surprised when good lifecycle data trumps seemingly solid assumptions. [emphases mine] That is naive. Pepsi is running a tight ship; they have all the numbers in front of them, all of the time; and they pay a lot of engineers a lot of money to not fall prey to "seemingly solid assumptions". Regardless of when the relevant analyses (like the Tropicana gas-vs-fuel analysis) are performed, companies will announce the "discovery" of such nuances precisely when it becomes good publicity to do so. In related reading on ignoring surrounding factors when introducing green technology, windmills destroy the environment: http://www.savewesternny.org/environment.html http://www.savewesternny.org/environment.html

Tyrant505 15y ago

Do grass fed cattle produce more methane?

jgorham 15y ago

The average American eats twice as many kilograms of meat than the next nationality (last time I checked it was the British). As the article states, beef is by far the most environmentally draining; it turns out in terms of protein and calories, pork is nearly the same as beef with a much smaller amount of energy required to produce that meat. If the US had a better food culture [I'm not counting fast food here], we might be able to actually change the mindsets of the public that they dont need a meat entre with every meal.

hugh3 15y ago
Is that really true? More than twice as much meat as, say, the Australians, Germans and Argentinians? update: According to http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/meat-consumption-per-capita-climate-change http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/m... your implausible-sounding numbers are wrong. In fact US meat consumption (at least as of 2002) is in line with the other agriculturally-rich Western countries, and well behind Denmark and New Zealand. (Australia is missing from the statistics.)

nhangen 15y ago

Wow, didn't realize this many people were concerned about carbon footprints. I'm curious how this breaks down, at least in the US, in the east vs the west. I'm a vegetarian, so I obviously can't eat less meat, but I do enjoy buying locally when I can, mostly because I can be assured to have fresh ingredients, and I can see where the food came from.

metageek 15y ago
You could eat negative meat, by raising cattle and not letting anybody eat them. ;-)
- nhangen 15y ago
  Better yet, raising cattle and feeding them people :)

code_duck 15y ago

There's no reason to quibble carbon when there are other clear resource differences between food sources. It takes a very large quantity of grain to produce the same mass of beef, as so much energy goes to powering the cow itself while it's alive. Same for water usage. Large animal farms are also reponsible for a great deal of run off pollution now not just from sewage and nitrates, but also antibiotic residue. There's no question that raising animals for food is inefficient compared to agriculture.

krosaen 15y ago

There are good lifecycle analysis studies that back up organically grown vegetables have a smaller carbon footprint than conventional: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArTN5sfBYj4adG5VMVJ4MFBkRmdVeUVHV2dPdHNCRnc&hl=en_US&authkey=CLDP9s4G https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArTN5sf... So while you are eating less meat, may as well eat more organic vegetables, locally grown all else being equal. And if you want to find food where you can trace it back to its farm, http://realtimefarms.com http://realtimefarms.com is the place to go! (disclaimer, that's my startup, feedback welcome :)

Aloisius 15y ago

I try to only eat mini-cows. No seriously. Mini/micro/teacup cows produce a fraction of the methane emissions and eat a third less food per pound of meat.

dcolgan 15y ago

I saw this TED talk a while back in which the speaker argues we should lower our meat consumption by increasing our insect consumption. He says insect meat is just as nutritious as mammal meat (if not more), and it also takes a lot fewer resources to produce it commercially. http://www.ted.com/talks/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects.html http://www.ted.com/talks/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects.ht... I believe he said it takes 10 kg of feed and other resources to produce 1 kg of cow meat, while it takes 1 kg of inputs to produce 1 kg of grasshopper meat. I ordered some canned mealworms off of Amazon the other day just to try them, and they actually weren't that bad with some butter and spices.

westicle 15y ago
Grasshoppers may be more efficient to produce than cows, but science tells us that for the 1:1 input:output claim to be true grasshoppers must expend 0 energy and produce 0 excretions. Doubtful!
- dcolgan 15y ago
  Ah, sorry I misquoted him. He said that given 10kg of inputs, you can get 1kg of cow meat, or you can get 9kg of locust meat. My bad.

hugh3 15y ago

True, but missing the point. If you prove, convincingly, to a "locavore" that the stated benefits of their choices are in fact better achieved by (say) acquiring all your food from Wal-Mart, will they thank you and be glad that they know this now? Of course not, they'll get angry. And that's because the actual desire for "locavore" eating is not about the stated benefits, it's about being able to feel superior to others. Now me, I don't see the point of this. But that's probably just because I have plenty of other reasons to feel superior to others. But if I were denied these then, heck, maybe I'd be tempted to engage in this sort of hair-shirt behaviour too. What I say is: let the baby have his bottle. If someone wants to feel superior to others due to whatever random harmless activity he's engaging in, then give him a pat on the back and try to avoid bringing logic and reason into the conversation. Everybody has a deep-seated psychological need to feel like they're better than others, and if denied this fairly harmless sort of outlet then these folks will start lashing out in other, probably more harmful, ways.

bad_user 15y ago

red meat being particularly egregious, requiring 150% more energy than even chicken It is true, but that's only because currently chickens are fed aggressively with growth hormones and other such shit. In 10 days a farm can produce chickens weighting 4.5 pounds (and this is for the cases where the farmer shows some restraint). As an observable result, small children are getting increasingly more hairy. Red meat cannot be grown so aggressively, especially when discussing pork. It's ironic that the most unhealthy red meat of all may end up being the best for your children's health.

randoom 15y ago

Slightly meta/off-topic: By just looking at the comments I have seen about five controversial statements like Parent: Red meat is bad, because $study Child: No, it isn't see $counter-study What is up with the science in foodscience? All the camps (paleo, vegetarian, vegan, locavore, raw foodists, ...) are citing studies which support their point of view and disregard the others. Or another good example is the Weston A. Price Foundation [1] and Dr. Fuhrman [2]. They are "battling" each other with study after study. Why are there so many contradicting and controversial studies and opinions in a field which calls itself a science? [1] http://www.westonaprice.org/ http://www.westonaprice.org/ [2] http://www.diseaseproof.com/ http://www.diseaseproof.com/

Evgeny 15y ago
It is virtually impossible to design a convincing study on the effect of FoodstuffA on human health. The ideal study would look something like that: - Enlist people into study, divide them randomly into two groups - Design a diet, where everything will be exactly the same, except FoodstuffA for group 1 will be replaced with some FoodstuffB for group 2. - Keep all subjects under supervision 24/7 to eliminate possible cheating - Continue the study long enough to determine long term effects (years? decades?) Even in this case, there will be opportunity for speculation. Maybe the FoodstuffA is not bad, but the FoodstuffB is just beneficial, maybe we should have used FoodstuffC. So, there's two alternatives that are realistic: 1. Observational study. Ask 1000000 people about how much red meat they eat, compare health, do conclusions. Lots of confounding variables - smoking, physical activity, alcohol consumption etc etc. 2. Randomised controlled study. Will be fairly short due to funding and subject to criticism due to design of the diets of participants (no, group 1 had too much fat! no, group 2 had too little carbs!). Both options are not ideal and subject to controversy.