Saturated Fat Controversy

[The Grand Nudger]

What do you mean? People in poorer countries don't eat a diet full of meat.

Never occurred to you to wonder why that might be?  Americans didn't always eat a diet full of meat, either.  "A chicken in every pot" was an iconic promise made to us as a stand-in for success and upward mobility.  Now we have multiple chickens in every pot, since we only eat the breasts, lol.....and can afford to do that.  Eliminating waste in the kitchen and in developed world eating habits would help to feed starving people in ways that going vegan could never approach.  Accounts for alot of landfill and methane, too...but mostly vegetable waste in our case.  We eat the steak and leave the broccoli on the plate.  We do this for reasons hardwired into our biology.  The steak is a denser source of what was -once- rare and valuable nutrient composition.  Got us through the hungry gap, too.  That's also why it's delicious.  

Michael Pollan wrote a great book on that, though not about meat.  The Botany of Desire.  

Sorry, but I don't understand what you mean.

Yeah, no shit..but you could, if you stopped trying to push a doomed argument and did some actual fucking research, lol. It's not as if you haven't had time since this convo started, huh?

And I thought people in Africa and Latin America are better off now than they were 50 years ago or 100 years ago. With the possible exceptions of Venezuela and Libia. I mean, life in Venezuela and Libia is certainly better now than it was 100 years ago, but I don't know for sure if it's better than it was 50 years ago. Preserving cultures doesn't mean keeping people in poverty. Rural life can seem aesthetically pleasing to an outsider, but people give it up to go work in sweatshops voluntarily.

Sure, because of increased commerce with relatively wealthy markets and a larger portion of those proceeds going to a bigger slice of the demographic pie.  Knowing that, though..tell me..how would reduced commerce due to those wealthy markets no longer desiring their products...say...meat... effect them?

Rub those two brain cells together.

If usians stopped eating meat, or reduced their meat consumption, or shifted their meat consumption to other meats..we would probably be healthier, and it would help to deal with climate change to a limited extent.....but it would completely fuck anyone who depends on our current consumer habits to put food on their own plate. That's alot of people buddy....... I know, I know, you probably imagine that they would continue to make the product and maybe sell it to their neighbors..but that's not what happens in reality.

-at least until some other developing/developed market starts buying up the meat we no longer want. Like China. They do love them some pork. Just ask US producers. Livestock production (and ag in general), despite it's being hidden from most people in the first world..or maybe because of that...is so important that it can be used a political lever by hostile foreign actors...even when the nation being manipulated is the most powerful country that the world has ever seen. Story as old as time, really, rome famously rose and fell and fought based on and for it's ability to produce and move and distribute and grant access to grain. Bread lines are now and have always been the prelude to collapse, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd world, in any era. No matter. What do you think would happen if privileged consumer activities in the 1st world made production economically unfeasible elsewhere?

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