4 ms·

If meat collapses it will put strain on other parts of the food pipeline which might not be able to pick up the slack. There's a lot of calories in meat.

• deeblering4 5y ago
  Are there a lot of calories in meat? I always looked at meat by itself as pretty lean. By volume I think there are quite a few types of food that are richer in calories, and a lot of times meats are rich due to how they are prepared (fried, or drenched in butter, etc.)
  • akiselev 5y ago
    Depends on how lean the meat and how dense the fat but generally only processed foods (like bread) are more calorie dense than meat. Protein and sugar (carbs) provide 4 kcal per gram while fat provides 9 kcal per gram and our gastrointestinal tracts are better adapted to carnivorous than herbivorous diets (compared to, say, cows or rabbits). We're simply unable to digest a lot of the mass in fruits and vegetables like the insoluble fiber and animal husbandry's purpose is to convert that material to edible food - it'd be pretty pointless if it wasn't more calorie dense.
  • s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Yes, There are a lot of calories is meat, even without additions. See bellow for calories in 100g of common foods. The only things that are more calorie dense than meat are primarily composed of sugar or fat. 271 Beef 265 bread 247 Roast chicken, skin on 130 black beans 110 rice 57 Apples 35 Broccoli
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• dahart 5y ago
  The calories in meat aren't relevant, it takes more calories in animal food to produce meat than the calories in the meat. The meat industry is a strain on the food pipeline, losing it would free up other parts of the pipeline and feed more people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p... I eat meat, but the parent is correct, it's a luxury. *edit: confused by all the downvotes. Am I incorrect, or being somehow offensive?
  • viraptor 5y ago
    You're taking about long-term effects, which are true. But that meat waiting to be distributed is already there. If the deliveries disappear for a few days/weeks, you don't suddenly get extra plants to distribute in that timeframe.
    • dahart 5y ago
      True. Yeah I thought the whole sub-thread here was talking about long-term effects, not a short-term one-time gap of unused supply. The top comment was talking about the general necessity of meat to our economy, right?
      • lainga 5y ago
        Well general and specific, and short- and long-term, are orthogonal. Oil is also generally necessary in the US economy in the short-term, if (conceivably) not in the long-term. On the other hand electricity is not necessary in the short-term specifically to aluminum foundries, but in the long-term it is (or the crucibles solidify).
        • dahart 5y ago
          Sure agreed. I'm perhaps not understanding what part of the above that this distinction clarifies. Sudden loss of oil would bring the entire economy to a halt and certainly result in mass loss of life. Sudden loss of human edible meat would no doubt be a major blow and an enormous waste, but would not generally result in a lot of people dying or stop the economy. It would certainly bankrupt and cripple the operations of meat farmers, but loss of oil would bankrupt and cripple all farmers, and all transportation and distribution of food.
  • swiley 5y ago
    Beef is grown using cellulose which contains calories that are unavailable to humans. Unless you've discovered a very neat chemistry trick that would also make fuel much cheaper.
• redprince 5y ago
  As if there's a scarcity of food in the US so that missing out on calories from meat could not very easily be substituted. Incidentally that would also result in a diet commonly regarded as healthier.
• websites420 5y ago
  Americans eat too many calories already. Let us eat some vegetables for a few weeks, it won't kill us.
• SilverRed 5y ago
  I don't think America is particularly starved of calories.