Have we reached the point of peak meat?

"According to the (flat?) Earth Policy Institute"
This notion that eating less meat is a good thing seems to correspond nicely with the explosion in US waist lines.
A nice lean steak is about 300 calories, a Salad with dressing can easily eclipse 600 calories.
Meat is important to our diet, so will we eat less meat? Nope.
The environmental issues can be overcome with bioengineering if we want to badly enough.
Or... we can eat more and more pasta, rice & corn while we watch the type 2 Diabetes levels explode.

I eat meat every few days. Nice steak here and there, chicken sometimes, pork some days. Meat is nice, especially when I raise my own animals. I know where the meat is from and what I've been feeding the animals.
Its all about moderation no matter what we eat. Moderation and knowing what is in the food we eat. Eat anything you want as long as you do enough to burn it off during the day.
I eat about the same amount of meat I always have. I know some who, mainly for economic reasons will not buy one meat when it is high in price in exchange for a lower priced meat at the time. That or they only eat meat 3 times a week instead of 5. Some people will buy meat direct from a farmer they know because many are scared of what is being injected into commercial cattle from other places. It all depends on where you live and how you view it.

I think it has to do with the baby boomer generations. They make up a vast amount of the population and as people age we tend to eat less. Just a general anaylization.

Chinese people have definitely started eating a LOT of meat (and more milk and wheat too)...and some people are HEAVY. KFC is dominant there, on every corner. School cafeteries hardly have a veggie dish that doesn't also have meat crammed in with it, kids happily snack on little pieces of meat out of individually packaged bags, and you can see small children and girls (surprising to me) with a fish or pieces of chicken on a stick as a snack.

Dave: Salad isn't loaded with calories, dressing is. Wheat isn't necessarily the alternative to lots of meat.

Fruits and veggies, a balanced diet with food from lower on the food chain...can be very healthy. Balance of nutrients is easier to do when you eat something similar to humans (other mammals), but it's not necessary if you're smart about it. DON'T try to be vegan without help, without information...you can easily go low on some nutrients, and this can be LETHAL.

I've abstained from meat since 2002 and been vegan since 2005. I'm not a militant vegan, so I'm not here to preach to anyone. In fact, I make raw dog food for my own dogs by hand (and grinder). I would say to anyone, do what you feel is right. Your body will tell you what you need and don't need. My journey to veganism was not initally based on ethics. My body just started to reject meat. I got really, really bad pains in my mid section whenever I would have any kind of meat (chicken, beef, pork). So, I just ate fish. Eventually, I starting thinking about the ethics of eating another animal, and realized it just wasn't for me anymore. It was a journey that took several years. I can report that high cholesterol runs in my family. I"ve seen my doctor about this. He tells me that my cholesterol level is high. But, it's the good cholesterol that is high (1.8 as opposed to the normal 1.0), while the bad one is around normal. I don't have any other health problems. For anyone who is thinking about going vegan, yes, make sure to educate yourself. However, it's easier than you may think. Just make sure there are a lot of different colors on your plate, eat mostly whole foods, and if you think you are not getting what you need, there are lots of vegan multivitamins out there to top you up.

The China Study, is an amazing book to read

During the transformation from plant into animal protein a lot of nutritious matter is wasted. 4 Kilo of vegetable protein (cattle feed) on average yields only 1 kilogram of animal protein.
On average, the production of meat costs up to 14,7 times more energy than that of vegetable food. One kilo veal compares to 100 kilo potatoes, as for the amount of energy. A normal pasture field produces approximately 330 kilo meat. The same field yields 40.000 kilo potatoes. Moreover a kilo meat requires 111.250 liter water.
It takes a lot less water to feed a strict vegetarian during a whole year than to feed a meat eater during a single month. A country like Holland uses so much water for the production of bovine meat in a year that the same amount of drinking water could supply almost a third of the world population.

I'm still eating as much meat as I have for the past 6 decades. Great steaks, bbq ribs, chicken dishes, sausages, pork chops & roasts etc. I don't plan on stopping, I really enjoy it. Oh, & crispy bacon too! :-)

First, Vivian. Vegetable protein is poorly absorbed by the body (low bioavailibility). Animal proteins are much better utilized (Whey is the best). Secondly you better do your homework because in many area growing crops isn't possible but raising animals is. Canadian shield for example. You can't raise crops here because the land is rugged and too rocky. But you can raise FREE RANGE GRASS FED livestock. The energy here is free because it comes in the form of grass and water ground water. So your point is only a half truth. It's true about large farm livestock but NOT about free range meat.

Tim: The China Study has been COMPLETELY discredited and ripped apart. It holds little legitimate truth. Being an epidemiological study (study of populations) it is subject to too many variables that aren't taken into account. That study is worthless and seriously flawed. Show me ONE SINGLE study that compares vegans with STRICT Paleo eaters on longevity. I'll save you the time. NONE EXISTS! There is zero evidence that natural meat is bad for you, contributes to more disease and leads to lowered longevity rates than vegetarian diets or vegan ones. Most of the studies on meat include processed meats laden with toxic chemicals or so called unprocessed meats laden with hormones and antibiotics which skew the results. You don't consider fruit roll ups fruit so why do so many studies lump ALL meat together? Because they have to to get the results they want: which is to convince people like you that meat is bad for you.

AS PEOPLE GET MORE EDUCATED...THEY GET SMARTER!!! HA! BOOKS LIKE "DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA" (AND THE VIDEO) PLUS RECENT FILMS LIKE "FORKS OVER KNIVES" TELL THE TRUTH!!! DON'T TRUST BIG CORPORATIONS OR GOVERNMENT!!! I WORKED IN ADVERTISING FOR 12 YEARS (FOR THE BIG ONES) I WAS VERY MUCH PART OF THE "BULL SHIT" MACHINE! GO ONLINE AND GOOGLE "A DELICATE BALANCE-THE TRUTH" AND WATCH THE FREE FILM. BOTTOM LINE...GO VEGAN!!! IT'S GREAT FOR YOUR HEALTH, THE PLANET, THE ANIMALS (GOOD KHARMA) AND PEOPLE IN THE THIRD WORLD TOO!!!

If you listen to all the studies, you wouldn't drink water, eat fruit, vegetables, meat, breath air, go outside, run too much or too little, sit anywhere near a computer or hold a cell phone, live in urban areas and many rural areas, eat shellfish, fish and on and on, but the next week we're told it's ok, until the next week, when another study comes out and says don't do it. Many of us older people have been watching this come and go for years and years.

We support our local farmers as much as possible. Fact is, you're all going to die, life's not about how long, it's about enjoying what time you have & being kind to each other. Not throwing stones because you don't agree with what someone else puts on their plates. If you enjoy vegan, great! If you enjoy meat, good for you! It's called freedom.

As for caring for animals, I have been feeding wild birds for years, to the point some types trust me enough to land on my hand, shoulder, head etc when the see me in a grove of trees I feed them in.

My health is pretty good, yearly check-ups are great and due to living in a rural area and having a lot of land & woodland with our own walking trails we get great excercise year round.

We protect the wildlife in various ways, one, we did not allow companies that wanted to clearcut our three lots of woodland for a profit since we wanted to give the wildlife a place they could feel safe. Most others around allowed this for a few thousand dollars, to me, it wasn't about profit.
I enjoy seeing the foxes, partridge, canada geese, ducks, many types of smaller birds, bald eagles, hawks, rabbits, coyotes to name some wander around my property freely.

Buzz, be careful using the word "educated", the Soviets for one, had ways of reeducated people. It's not always what it's cracked up to be. :-)

For me it's about health concerns, enviromental issues or packing procedures. Although I would like to see the concerns of the production adressed it is not enough to stop me from eating meat. The main factor for my family is price. In the last few years the price of meat here has over tripled, and frankly at the prices they ask we just can't afford to eat it anymore, thus we have gone from eating meat 3-4 times a week to once a week if we are lucky. (i don't count processed meats as meat) I still can't understand why hamburger (the meat that wasn't good enough to be on my steak or pork chops) is more expensive now then the steak itself. $4/lb is ridiculous when right beside it is a nice steak for $3.49/lb ($2.49/lb on sale).
As prices continue to rise, our consumption will continue to fall, it's that simple. In all fairness though it's not just the price of meat, it is the price of all grocery products. My family is on the larger side and I am use to high grocery bills but when grocery bills double and income doesn't really change much your left with much of a choice. You have to shop smarter to make ends meet.

the reason im vegan is many, some of the main reasons are dealt with Buzz s comment. I care about future generations that are to come. Keep eating meat Joe ! read all the studies that comfort you at night, that agree with you, the biggest study I know of is ME. I have never been as healthy as I have ever been, Im glad I quit eating meat.

Buzz: Why do all you vegans have this need to come into message boards and type in all capitals as though you are yelling in print? A few capitalised words here in there for emphasis is understandable but EVERY word? Are you yelling in print? You are not the first vegan I have seen do this and you probably won't be the last. What is with you people? You're probably the same kind of guy that sticks those "eating aminals" stickers on stop signs. Militant much?

Tim: enecdotal evidence is not evidence. Until you vegans can provide unbiased, irrefutable proof that vegans outlive STRICT Paleo eaters, your personal claims mean nothing. Show me a study like this. One in which all variables have been controlled. One in which processed meats aren't considered meat. One in which every variable is controlled such as exercise levels, stress levels, pre existing health issues (one biased study was ripped apart for chosing meat eaters that smoked, drank and didn't exercise and were mostly men, while the vegetarians in the study were all clean living health concious women......clear and intentional bias).

And another thing. Take a look at all the prominent vegans that have died without becoming centenarians. Some died VERY young despite their long term veganism. H Jay Dinshah, Herbert M Shelton, T. C Frye, George Clements who believed he would easily live past 100 as a vegan and died at 92, Heward Carrington, Dr Abramowski and Ross Horne who died of prostate cancer at 79 after ironically, writing a vegan book titled: How To Cancer Proof Your Body.