We are told that much of the world is trending toward a plant-based diet.
Turns out that in most countries, as you get richer you eat more meat.
Makes sense to me. We are an omnivorous species, as are many of our evolutionary cousins (monkeys often eat meat and plants both).
Meat is a lot denser in energy and therefore better from an evolutionary standpoint – i.e. we can survive longer having eaten meat than having eaten plants.
But of course, meat requires a lot of energy to produce, meat producing animals have to eat many times their weight in plants to produce the meat that they do. Therefore meat is a lot more expensive.
“The world’s production of meat and poultry reached about 100 million tonnes in 1970, 233 million tonnes in 2000, and 325 million tonnes in 2020. That represents a tripling since 1970. Even after accounting for the intervening population growth, per capita meat consumption rose by 55 percent during the 50 years.”
Personally, I rarely eat plants. They come out of the dirt.
The Richer They Get, the More Meat They Eat – Ignore the hype that the world is about to turn vegan
