Science News has terrific coverage of an American Association for the Advance of Science panel devoted to food choices and greenhouse gases. The first article recaps the panel’s discussion of beef, while the second article is devoted to fish.
These articles are packed with interesting info and offer some of the best coverage I’ve seen on this subject. The beef article makes the rarely advanced but obviously true point that most global warming associated with beef could be eliminated simply by eating chicken instead.
Changing the subject, I’d love to see the primary source of this quote from the beef piece:
Or perhaps per capita intake of meat could drop from a current average of 90 kilograms per year in the developed world to the 53 kg per person per year that’s been advocated as sufficient for human health by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
WTF? Has the USDA really claimed that people ought to be eating 53 kilograms of meat annually to protect their health? If this claim checks out as being an actual USDA statement, this is something that veggie advocates should hold up for ridicule at every opportunity. Please contact me if you know the source of this claim.
Update: Jon writes in with the apparent primary source of the USDA’s recommendation. Turns out the recommendation is 56.9 kilos annually from the “meat and beans” group, but this recommendation could be met solely by eating beans, tofu, and peanut butter. So I think this is a case of the USDA making recommendations using categories that could easily be misinterpreted, and the Science News piece falling right into that trap. To avoid confusion, the USDA ought to call its category “protein-rich foods” — not “meat and beans.” But then, I think the USDA wants confusion.
Much more troubling is that this USDA plan includes a “milk group” that contains no non-dairy alternatives. Given that many brands of soymilk contain as much calcium as cow’s milk, the USDA’s “milk group” recommendations here are indefensible.
Second Update: More good coverage of this panel’s findingshere.
