It’s only natural that we’d average twice the meat a day over the rest of the globe. Much of the globe is not as well off fiscally, and as Bittman’s article notes, nearly a billion people are starving or malnourished . Meat costs more money than beans, rice, bread.

And JB, I would imagine that a population that consumes more meat does so because they can afford to, having “spare money”, something that also lends itself toward leisure, free time, and other extravagances. This would lead to a more meaty population whether or not meat, itself, had anything to do with the ‘meaty’ outcome.

My other problem with the statistics is they seem to mislead, as if they are saying we’re responsible for consuming a sixth of the world’s meat. Bittman’s part makes it sound as if American’s are global resource consuming gluttons. It may be so, but his numbers don’t support it.

Note, he states “roughly twice” the global average. Roughly twice means, “not twice”. If it were less than 4oz, he would say more than twice, so it’s more than 4oz a day.

Note, the 4oz average is derived by figuring in the nearly billion people not getting almost any meat at all, so the actual intake for the average person who eats is more like 5% or more.

Regardless of the shady numbers, we eat 75k tons of meat a day, while the rest of the globe eats 825k tons per day, if you use 4% as the global average, which we know is a conservative estimate.

This means we consume less than 9% of the meat on the globe.

The article then states we process MORE than 15% of the meat pie. This indicates that 2/5 of the meat we process feeds the global community. This doesn’t include the other 85% of the meat that the rest of the globe process and consumes without the help of fat Americans.

This also means that since nearly half of the meat we process feeds the globe, I’m not going to feel guilty about rainforests being torn down for feeding livestock.

If Americans are responsible for that, it would only be because our government paid farms subsidies to not grow food.

Ok, maybe not, but I’m going to have a steak for lunch in protest.

“Mr. Gonzalez joined a handful of elite athletes who have put the vegan diet to the test, either for their health or because they oppose using animals as food. But he was the first pro-football superstar to try. And the first to fail.”

So it was a failure? Or just the early steps? Huh?

Also, nice to see the little shout-out to Mac Danzig: WAR DANZIG! For those that didn’t watch The Ultimate Fighter: Hughes vs. Serra, he was colorful, vegan and crazy.

It is a shame to think about how inefficient cows are at processing their food. Other animals like deer and buffalo are much better suited to processing the food found naturally. The downside is they don’t get fat and the meat can be pretty tough.

You can totally do this man. We eat way more poultry in our house now than we used to. Although how bad is tons of chicken poo for the environment…