Interestingly, ~12% of humans in the US are responsible for ~50% of beef consumption.
> The US is the biggest consumer of beef in the world, but, according to new research, it’s actually a small percentage of people who are doing most of the eating. A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US.
> Men and people between the ages of 50 and 65 were more likely to be in what the researchers dubbed as “disproportionate beef eaters”, defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces – the rough equivalent of more than one hamburger – daily. The study analyzed one-day dietary snapshots from over 10,000 US adults over a four-year period. White people were among those more likely to eat more beef, compared with other racial and ethnic groups like Black and Asian Americans. Older adults, college graduates, and those who looked up MyPlate, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) online nutritional educational campaign, were far less likely to consume a disproportionate amount of beef.
(my observation of this is that we can sunset quite a bit of US beef production and still be fine from a food supply and security perspective, as consumption greatly exceeds healthy consumption limits in the aggregate)
> A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US
By itself, this figure doesn't really mean much. On any given day, less than 1% of people have birthdays, but that doesn't mean there's a small percentage of people who are having most of the birthdays
The following paragraph is more valid, but the 12% figure still seems dubious.
> By itself, this figure doesn't really mean much. On any given day, less than 1% of people have birthdays, but that doesn't mean there's a small percentage of people who are having most of the birthdays
Yeah, it just means that half the beef eaten per day goes to the 12% having a BBQ, etc, not that only 12% of the population have access to half the beef available each day
i'm over 40; this is anecdotal, but I've talked to a lot of people all over the country; however i'm not asserting this is 100% factual:
in the US most days include a meat in at least 1 meal. Now, i'm framing this as "fish, eggs, fowl". Cereal with milk, bagel with cream cheese, not meat, but meat adjacent. Waffles have eggs. we love "deli meats" in the US, every store has a deli counter where you can get meat sliced right before your own eyes; or you can go to the 4-8 door cold case where the pre-sliced meats are. And dinner, well i can think of a couple of vegetarian dishes that are "staples" like red beans and rice (can be vegan/vegetarian), or pasta with marinara (vegetarian).
When presented with something like the Mediterranean diet, most americans would balk at the bird and rabbit food they were now expected to eat.
I can expand, but yes, meat is like, a huge deal in the US. Especially beef. part of it is our chicken and pork is kinda bland and merely "just food" but our beef ranges from "ok if i'm real hungry" to "really very good, actually". Fish is hit and miss, depends where you live in the US as to how popular it is. also most of the cow is used for food in the US, very little is wasted, to my understanding. brain, eyes, tongue, glands, lungs, etc are all sold, bones sold as fertilizer, hide is obviously leather, and so on.
for the record i wish animals were treated better, in fact, i have been searching for a local beef farmer for a decade and all the ones i run in to sell their beef to texas!
gp is likely referring to a specific diet called The Mediterranean Diet, "inspired by the eating habits and traditional foods of Greece, Italy, and the Mediterranean coasts of France and Spain, as observed in the late 1950s to early 1960s."
I think most Americans would consider those foods very "exotic."
I was an adult before I ever ate chickpeas (in any form), really any beans outside of Taco Bell refried beans, eggplant (in any form), tzatziki, any sort of flatbread, lentils, avocado, zucchini, cauliflower. Etc.
Define BBQ; in the US it means two things depending on the location; Southern style slow cooked meat that falls apart on your fork, or grilling?
If you mean grilling, at least every 8 days! Hopefully more often than that! And what's the issue? I can cook indoors or outside the same meal but avoid the smoke and heating the house.
I'm sorry but is nobody reading TFA? It quite specifically is saying there's a population of disproportionate meat eaters, noting that they're older, they're whiter, and influenced by cultural traditions normalizing it.
It's not just saying it pops out of the data as a statistical curiosity, it's saying that there is a real subset of the population who are disproportionately eating more beef.
> Interestingly, ~12% of humans in the US are responsible for ~50% of beef consumption.
Go on...
> One limitation of this work is that it was based on 1-day diet recalls, so our results do not represent usual intake[0].
Ah.
[0]: Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795
The phrasing strongly suggests exactly the opposite. Essentially, the whole framing of the linked guardian article is that there is a specific population which are the "disproportionate beef eaters".
And from the study linked, that framing/suggestion would be incorrect (at least for the numbers given). "the 12% are not the same every day" is an accurate interpretation. They asked about what people ate _yesterday_...
Again, the whole premise of the article is that there really is such a thing as disproportionate beef eaters (DBE), and it spends time talking about this group explicitly. So the wording doesn't suggest otherwise, it explicitly suggests this is a real group.
Regarding the study this is a both can be true situation. There can be (1) a population who is disproportionate in their beef eating, and (2) a study about 12% doing the most on any given day can count in favor of that group being real and (3) not everyone from the daily 12% is part of the DBE group. It's more likely a venn diagram overlap, and where it doesn't overlap, people who aren't part of the DBE are incidentally in that 12% while being closer to average in the aggregate over the longer term. Those facts can all sit together comfortably without amounting to a contradiction.
The phrasing you’re looking for is that 12% of Americans consume an average of 50% of beef consumed every day.
By saying “on any given day” you are suggesting it’s a different 12%. The article does confuse this by identifying cohorts that eat more beef. But it’s a tautological label based on the survey data. They identify some correlates, like being a 50 something male. But there are males who are 50 something that don’t eat any beef. They’re not included in the 12%.
The 12% is just the outcome of the sample. It doesn’t mean they’re a consistent cohort.
Example:
* on any given day x million women give birth
* there are x million women who give birth every day
> is it normal, in the USA, for half of all people to only eat beef once every 8 days?
Thats not the implication of 12% of Americans eating 50% of beef by consumed by all Americans that day.
If I had to make up some numbers it’s probably that, on any random day, 12% of Americans ate 50% of the beef (a large burger), 28% of American ate the rest of the beef (bit of lunch meat), and 60% of Americans did not eat any beef.
> defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces... daily.
This sounds like.. not very much. I eat 6-7oz of ground beef with breakfast alone, pretty much daily! Are people really eating less than ~1/2 cup of meat over all their meals combined?
> Are people really eating less than ~1/2 cup of meat over all their meals combined?
Your mind is going to be blown when you learn about vegetarians!
I'm in the US and was raised on a pretty standard diet. As a young adult, I stopped eating beef for environmental reasons. As an older adult (50s) I mostly stopped eating most meat for environmental and ethical reasons. I don't call myself a vegetarian and don't make a fuss when vegetarian options aren't available (eg, eating at a friend's house).
That is all to say: I haven't noticed any difference in my health either way, but that isn't why I (95%) stopped eating meat.
6oz of beef is only 44g of protein; a moderate gym load would require more for many adult men. Typical might be more like 75-100g. (Recommendations I’ve heard is 2g per 1 kg of muscle mass; roughly 40% of your weight at moderate fitness.)
I’m a large guy (190cm/100kg); I lose weight eating a pound of bacon for breakfast and a pound of chicken for dinner, if I’m even moderately exercising (3x cardio, 3x strength each week). Thirty minutes a day, split between strength and cardio is hardly “top athlete” and more “recommended amount”.
That’s not to say anybody is wrong, merely our experiences may be as varied as humans are — ie, we may legitimately have different needs.
Except the people hallucinating that we need to eat more meats. A couple of people requiring more caloric/protein intake doesn't make it reasonable for everyone to take in more
The advice to cut processed foods is solid and is something we have been saying for decades.
Well the point of nutrition research is to account for that kind of thing. And it's true enough that men and women have specifically different protein needs. But person-to-person variation doesn't scale up into pure randomness. The reason it's possible to make meaningful population level nutrition recommendations is precisely because of broadly shared commonalities, about what is both good and bad for us.
Due to digestion protein is also much lighter on calories then the baseline would suggest (15% less then the measured value can be typical) - dependent highly on preparation of course (I.e. the typical American steak prep of "first I'm adding half a stick of butter..." kind of ruins the benefit).
There is a substantial body of evidence that much red meat is wildly not good for you, especially when you consume it as consistently as you're saying you do.
There’s a substantial body of evidence that consuming the average American diet while also being mostly sedentary is terrible for you. I’m unclear how much of the data gathered about red meat specifically can be meaningfully decoupled from all the confounding factors, though.
A study of people who eat almost exclusively whole foods that do not include red meat vs people who eat almost exclusively whole foods that do include meaningful amounts of red meat would be really interesting.
When so much red meat is consumed as greasy burgers coupled with white bread buns and deep fried potatoes, I don’t know how to decouple the impact of the red meat from the rest of it. I fear the “red meat bad” stuff might be the inverse of the “oh, it’s clearly the wine” silliness for why French people are healthier.
I believe that they try to, but I have serious doubts about how effective it is. Dietary science is littered with examples of incorrect guidance driven by data we misinterpreted. Remember when a generation of people were told to eat low fat and they all got fatter? Remember trans fats replacing saturated? Remember when we told everyone that drinking alcohol in moderation was healthier than not drinking at all?
Most dietary studies are observational, which means there is no control group and no blinding. It’s a deep dive into data (largely self-reported) with an attempt to control the endless variables by slicing and dicing the data to hopefully end up with groups that can be meaningfully compared.
There are plenty of studies that take place outside north america saying the same thing.[1], for example. If you insist on this not being true thats fine, everyone gets to think whatever they want, but you're clearly not supported by the data in saying so.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. You cited a study that does not support the claim that red meat is unhealthy.
> After correction for measurement error, higher all-cause mortality remained significant only for processed meat
This is in the abstract. You don’t even have to open the actual report to see this. Without even getting into whether or not this study controlled correctly for all possible variables, even they themselves had to acknowledge that the link between red meat and mortality is at best weak.
There is so much of this sort of misinterpretation when it comes to dietary science that it’s really hard to know what information is accurate and what information is being misrepresented or misunderstood.
Habits vary (vegans exist!) And I agree 4 oz is a pretty small portion. But I don't think I personally know very many people who eat beef daily. For me and my family it is once or twice a week.
4 oz (a quarter pound) is 100 g or an amount about the size of the palm of your hand -- a single serving. It's not a small portion, it's recommended standard portion.
If you were following the old food guide in use for the last 20 years -- the one that replaces the food pyramid -- you'd see that 100 g is about a quarter of your plate. The old food guide could be summed up as "a quarter of your plate should be protein, a quarter carbs, and half fruits and vegetables". Real simple, so simple anyone could understand it. Although I have been presented with evidence recently that there are some who can not.
I eat meat (beef, pork, poultry, and fish) maybe three or four meals a week, and probably about 6 to 8 oz per meal when I eat it. So on a per day basis, yeah, I probably eat about 3-4 ounces of meat per day.
But the source you were quoting was about beef alone. So these are people who eat more beef daily than I eat of any meat.
Sometimes I wonder how is it possible that cattle alone severely outweighs all livestock on the planet, and by a very huge margin (like 10 to 1), then I read about such dietary habits.
I eat meat too, but I don't eat it every day so if you average it over time it will likely be around those numbers.
Outliers are more likely to post their experiences, and those unusual experiences are then also more likely to be shared. It can make for a skewed perception of the world if someone consumes a lot of media (or other secondhand information) and allows it to shape their worldview.
And to your point, I think the psychology of someone in the comment section is to react to broad statements like they are Sudoku puzzle where you can "solve" by finding an exception to a broad statement, however rare the exception.
The administration putting out the "eat more meat" guidance is simultaneously telling everyone they need to work out. The recommendation seems consistent when their started goal is to change current "American" habits.
every breakfast joint near me in California has some sort of variation on hamburg steak & eggs. Judging by the fact that it's on every menu, it must be popular to some degree.
I was thinking more as a unit of measurement, but yeah, sorry that was poorly written on my part, sorry.
> every breakfast joint near me in California has some sort of variation on hamburg steak & eggs. Judging by the fact that it's on every menu, it must be popular to some degree.
Sure. The diners near me have that kind of stuff too, just, if I went to a diner every morning my heart would probably revolt after about a month.
So you have effectively zero protein with breakfast, are you eating four chicken breasts for dinner or something? Or are you protein-deficient.. if so, it seems the guidance in OP is meant to correct people like you.
I only mentioned it because I really struggled with hitting protein targets unless I made sure I had a good portion of meat with every meal.
In OP, they say "Protein target: ~0.54–0.73 grams per pound of body weight per day". Given that an average male weighs 200lbs in the US[1], we're looking for 108-146g protein/day. If your protein only comes from chicken breasts, and given that an average (52g) chicken breast has 16g of protein[2], you'd have to eat 8 chicken breasts per day to fulfill those requirements. Factoring in your other meat (something with lunch, and a bit from other sources like cheese), if you skip meat in your breakfast, yeah, you'd need like four with dinner to hit targets.
Your diet is your business of course, but I'd consider tracking your diet for a few days to see how the numbers add up.
I don't know where "1 unit" comes from, but the Portion menu lists 1 unit as 52g, and 0.5 breast as 86g. So 1 unit is about one third of one. Using the numbers on that site, you'd need 2-2.7 average skinless breasts to reach the target 108-146g, which is a lot more reasonable. And that assumes there's zero other protein being consumed.
I hope your numbers were more accurate when you determined you were struggling with hitting targets....
Oh yeah that's odd. What a weird measurement. Maybe a "serving" is considered a third?
No, I bought a kitchen scale and did everything by weight, it seemed like the only sensical solution. This is probably a good time to plug Cronometer! I'm not affiliated, just been a happy paying customer for a few years now. https://cronometer.com/
Precisely. I'm saying if we let the production capacity evaporate, which appears to be the trajectory we're on, there will be no harm. Will people be sad or have strong feelings about a luxury good being unaffordable? Potentially, and that's unfortunate.
I'm simply observing the trajectories we're on due to climate change, input costs, and the aging out of beef cattle ranchers (in this context, projected beef supply, cost, and downstream consumption patterns from those inputs). We simply have to do nothing as the economics shrinks beef herds over time, pushing prices up. Think consumption death spiral as the the affordability of beef dwindles.
Beef ranchers are uncertain of the future, so they are sending more heads to slaughter, capitalizing on very favorable prices, versus expanding their herds for the future. What does this do to future herd sizes and therefore supply and cost to the consumer? Add the gestational period of cattle to that mental model. When these processing plants close, how long will it take to build new ones or start mothballed ones back up if herd sizes increase years from now? Will you be able to find communities who will accept these plants again? Where will you find the workers?
What happens to a small Nebraska town when 3,200 workers lose their jobs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46362052 - December 2025 ("Tyson says it’s closing the plant [Lexington, Nebraska] to “right-size” its beef business after a historically low cattle herd in the U.S. and the company’s expected loss of $600 million on beef production next fiscal year."
Since this is a market economy, I assume equilibrium will eventually be reached. Lower supply raises prices, new entrants see an opportunity to make money raising cattle, prices start to come down.
Not sure why the downvotes, it's a coherent post, and certainly there is a perception that food, and particularly beef, is a partisan issue.
Of course Democrats haven't actually taken any steps to penalize beef farming or consumption. But that doesn't stop Republicans claiming they want to. And if beef consumption drops, well, we just get the (Republican) health dept to recommend it.
I would agree that comments like "sunset beef production" intrinsically sounds bad to those who eat beef. But farmers farm profit, so as long as people buy it, farmers will farm it. (And at least some proportion of land used for beef farming is unsuitable for anything else.)
> The US is the biggest consumer of beef in the world, but, according to new research, it’s actually a small percentage of people who are doing most of the eating. A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US.
> Men and people between the ages of 50 and 65 were more likely to be in what the researchers dubbed as “disproportionate beef eaters”, defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces – the rough equivalent of more than one hamburger – daily. The study analyzed one-day dietary snapshots from over 10,000 US adults over a four-year period. White people were among those more likely to eat more beef, compared with other racial and ethnic groups like Black and Asian Americans. Older adults, college graduates, and those who looked up MyPlate, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) online nutritional educational campaign, were far less likely to consume a disproportionate amount of beef.
High steaks society: who are the 12% of people consuming half of all beef in the US? - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usd... - October 20th, 2023
Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming - https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795 | https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15173795 - August 2023
(my observation of this is that we can sunset quite a bit of US beef production and still be fine from a food supply and security perspective, as consumption greatly exceeds healthy consumption limits in the aggregate)