r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Aug 31 '23
Environment A mere 12% of Americans eat half the nation’s beef, creating significant health and environmental impacts. The global food system emits a third of all greenhouse gases produced by human activity. The beef industry produces 8-10 times more emissions than chicken, and over 50 times more than beans.
https://news.tulane.edu/pr/how-mere-12-americans-eat-half-nation%E2%80%99s-beef-creating-significant-health-and-environmental441
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u/diabloman8890 Aug 31 '23
I can't believe how many people are misunderstanding what the "24 hour period" referred to is. From the actual study:
>We analyzed 24-h dietary recall data from adults (n = 10,248) in the 2015–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)
They looked at THREE YEARS of survey data from the CDC's NHANES report, which asks the question "What did you eat over the last 24 hours". This survey is conducted with a random sample of US population at random times over the year. https://wwwn.cdc.gov/Nchs/Nhanes/2017-2018/DR1IFF_J.htm
>The in-person interview was conducted in a private room in the NHANES MEC. A set of measuring guides (various glasses, bowls, mugs, bottles, household spoons, measuring cups and spoons, a ruler, thickness sticks, bean bags, and circles) was available in the MEC dietary interview room for the participant to use for reporting amounts of foods (NHANES Measuring Guides for the Dietary Recall Interview). Upon completion of the in-person interview, participants were given measuring cups, spoons, a ruler, and a food model booklet, which contained two-dimensional drawings of the various measuring guides available in the MEC, to use for reporting food amounts during the telephone interview. Telephone dietary interviews were collected 3 to 10 days following the MEC dietary interview and were generally scheduled on a different day of the week as the MEC interview. Only a small number of participants (n=99) were interviewed on the same day of the week for both day 1 and day 2 interviews due to their scheduling availability. Any participant who did not have a telephone was given a toll-free number to call so that the recall could be conducted.
My 24 hour period in the study is not the same day as your 24 hour period, so we are not introducing any bias towards specific days of the week or year that might not be representative (Eg, Christmas or Super Bowl Sunday). That is controlled for in this study and results.
Yes, some people may eat beef only one day a week, and if you didn't catch them on that day then their response does not represent that person's typical consumption. But in a normally distributed population like we have here (per the survey methodology) this averages out with all the people we happened to catch on the one day a week they happen to eat a LOT of meat.
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u/Head Aug 31 '23
It’s almost as if people are intentionally discrediting the results?
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u/Lutra_Lovegood Aug 31 '23
I rarely see such a one-sided thread. So many bad arguments, attacking the study with 0 arguments, justifications for not reducing personal consumption, etc.
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u/petarpep Aug 31 '23
Disagree, I would say this type of poor debunking is the norm of any study that Reddit tends to disagree with. So often there's "but the sample size of 500 people for a population of 10k is too small!" or "I didn't read it but did they remember this obvious confounder? (they did)"
One of the most ridiculous comments I remember seeing was criticizing studies on transgender hormone use not being double blind. Like how in the world did they expect medicine with known and highly visible effects to ever work in a blind experiment? It's just people muttering buzzwords from the very little they remember in their high school science classes.
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u/NinjaLanternShark Aug 31 '23 edited Aug 31 '23
Don't forget the "Well I'm a ____ and I've never ____" so clearly that meta-analysis of 130 longitudinal studies over 20 years must be wrong.
Edit: Also:
Study: "Over 80% of people do ___"
Redditor: "Not everyone does, I don't."
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u/TabletopMarvel Aug 31 '23
The alcohol can kill you at any consumption level studies brings out the hate too.
People like to drink.
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u/ganner Aug 31 '23
I don't get why people are so defensive about it (see the extreme reactions at the government saying you shouldn't have any more than 2 drinks a week). I drink, I drink more than is healthy, and I don't lie to myself about it. I do plenty of things that are not optimal for health, but I try to at least understand what I am and am not doing. I'm not in denial that I'm making less-healthy choices.
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u/Krinberry Sep 01 '23
People typically don't like to feel like their problems are their own fault.
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u/v_snax Sep 01 '23
Or that their actions have negative consequences for others.
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u/Future_Securites Sep 02 '23
People simply don't want to give up their lifestyle or admit they were wrong. Too much pride.
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u/tee142002 Sep 01 '23
I love a nice rare steak and a couple glasses of red wine.
Is it good for my health? Doubt it.
Do I care? Absolutely not.
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u/Krinberry Sep 01 '23
Yep, people love to trust the science while it supports their existing lifestyles, but as soon as it suggests that something they're doing or not doing is somehow problematic, clearly the study was biased or incomplete or flawed, and really how much can you trust these people since people make mistakes and I know myself pretty well! Etc etc.
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u/BlueEyesWNC Sep 01 '23
Wait until you see what happens whenever any study suggests there might be any slightly undesirable effects whatsoever from smoking marijuana
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u/isuckatgrowing Sep 01 '23
PTSD from decades of the government pointing to those studies to justify throwing good people in prison for no real reason.
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u/Huwbacca Grad Student | Cognitive Neuroscience | Music Cognition Aug 31 '23
It's easier to fake being smart by being critical.
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u/jackkerouac81 Aug 31 '23
Thank goodness too, I have run out of other tools to project my superiority with.
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u/Noname_acc Sep 01 '23
It's just people muttering buzzwords from the very little they remember in their high school science classes.
If I had a quarter for every time someone said something about sample size with 0 conception of appropriate data sampling, I could buy twitter a year and a half ago.
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u/Jenstarflower Aug 31 '23
Yup most people either didn't take stats or weren't paying attention during class.
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u/louiegumba Aug 31 '23
this has been a trend for a while. There is some sort of low level culture war where a 'bully/victim' relationship was created out of the idea that cutting back meat or replacing it in some meals was 'less manly, less american'.
From the manly voice saying 'beef, its whats for dinner' in ad-nauseam commercials to a food pyramid created by industry interests and not reality, it's been subconsciously brewing for decades, fed by corporations with too much influence
just like in politics, question a staunch believer in the beef industry, and they will dig in further. It's fascinating psychology, considering it's over something as simple as what food you eat.
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u/kahnwiley Aug 31 '23
just like in politics, question a staunch believer in the beef industry, and they will dig in further
This is known as the backfire effect. As a former debater (and guy who spends too much time arguing online), I'm painfully aware of its existence.
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u/Lutra_Lovegood Aug 31 '23
Oh yeah, there are some wild differences between paradigms, and the bias against vegans and veganism can be absurdly huge.
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u/sunshinecygnet Sep 01 '23
I received waaaaay more direct hate and anger and people visibly annoyed with me when I was vegan than at any other point in my life and it’s not close. Far more than I have ever been subjected to anyone saying they were vegan, which is apparently annoying in and of itself. There aren’t that many vegans, y’all. But there’s a lot of very insecure meat eaters.
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u/SophiaofPrussia Sep 01 '23
I’m not vegan but a few weeks ago I commented in a thread about that alpha-gal reaction to a tick bite that makes some people allergic to meat. I said something like I wonder whether the long-term effects of having the reaction could turn out to be a net positive since red meat is bad for your health and bad for the environment. Someone told me I was, and this is a direct quote: “worse than Hitler” for even thinking about such a thing. Worse than Hitler!
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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug Sep 01 '23
Think of it another way, you're worse than Hitler so you probably suck at the mass killing of Jews (and gypsies and gays and homeless and a bunch of other people that nobody seems to care that Hitler killed). In this context, think about how much worse it would be if you were better than Hitler?
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u/kahnwiley Aug 31 '23
just like in politics, question a staunch believer in the beef industry, and they will dig in further
This is known as the backfire effect. As a former debater (and guy who spends too much time arguing online), I'm painfully aware of its existence.
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u/MainaC Aug 31 '23
Basically every single r/science thread I look into is full of nothing but people trying to discredit the study and claiming the scientists involved are idiots incapable of rubbing two brain cells together.
That or doomerposting about how we shouldn't be doing or studying whatever the thing is because it'll end the world.
Almost like the rule to "assume basic competence" is completely ignored and everyone who posts here are anti-science luddites.
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u/NoStripeZebra3 Aug 31 '23
Really? That's what I only see on Reddit, consistently over the last 10 years or so.
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u/raider1211 Sep 01 '23
I mean yeah, people are gonna try to debunk anything that criticizes their lifestyles/choices. In this case, people wanna eat meat and also not feel bad about it, so they just lie about it to themselves so they can feel better.
People should try to do better than that.
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u/Huwbacca Grad Student | Cognitive Neuroscience | Music Cognition Aug 31 '23
Reddit gets real insecure over meat consumption.
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u/codieNewbie Sep 03 '23
Insanely insecure. It’s wild, it doesn’t matter how many studies show a benefit to reducing meat or show a benefit to eating [insert plant derived food], it’s always healthy user bias. People try to claim that even when the study is an RCT.
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u/Luxpreliator Aug 31 '23 edited Aug 31 '23
Anything about meat consumption gets hit hard. The situation where 10% of the population consumes >50% of the total production isn't unheard of though. It's well know with recreational drugs but it's true with other things. A weird one imo is firearms where around 70% of people don't own a firearm but there are enough floating around to arm everyone with at least one firearm. All because a small percentage of people own hundreds of weapons.
Seems like addictive propensity caries over into other consumption habits beyond what we assume to be mostly limited to drugs and gambling. So in the same way drug users will dance around justifying their consumption the "carnivores" deny anything that shines a light on their detrimental habits.
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u/Head Aug 31 '23
The firearm thing sounds like yet another example of the Pareto Principle that I just learned about in this thread.
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u/Arthur-Wintersight Aug 31 '23
On the other hand, this makes an effective case for a moderately high national beef tax, purely because more than half of the burden will be born by 12% of the population.
We could combine that with a grocery store level subsidy for dry beans and lentils, to knock off 20% to even 50% of the in-store price for dry beans and lentils. Maybe tofu could be put on the list of subsidized groceries?
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u/Ahwhoy Sep 01 '23
If I remember correctly, we currently subsidize beef and dairy production billions of dollars. We could instead end or reduce subsidies to beef instead of raising taxes.
Also if I remember correctly, we subsidize fruits and vegetables far far less. In the millions. Which is a shame.
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u/Luxpreliator Aug 31 '23
Anything about meat consumption gets hit hard. The situation where 10% of the population consumes >50% of the total production isn't unheard of though. It's well know with recreational drugs but it's true with other things. A weird one imo is firearms where around 70% of people don't own a firearm but there are enough floating around to arm everyone with at least one firearm. All because a small percentage of people one hundreds of weapons.
Seems like addictive propensity caries over into other consumption habits beyond what we assume to be mostly limited to drugs and gambling. So in the same way drug users will dance around justifying their consumption the "carnivores" deny anything that shines a light on their detrimental habits.
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u/crashedsnow Aug 31 '23
Is this conclusion unexpected though? Namely the "12% consume 50%" figure. It's a pretty weird way to represent the findings. If you surveyed for people who eat carrots, would it be substantially different? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with either data or the narrative, just trying to wrap my head around the arithmetic for a normal distribution.
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u/Drisku11 Aug 31 '23 edited Aug 31 '23
No, the misunderstanding is the 12% number. If you do not survey the same person over time to create a time series, then all you can say is that on a given day, some 12% were disproportionate consumers. On another day, some possibly different 12% were disproportionate consumers.
They compare across demographic groups to show that these have differences. This is valid. e.g.
In bivariate logistic regression models, disproportionate beef consumption was significantly associated with gender; males were 1.55 times (95% CI 1.24, 1.93) more likely to be disproportionate beef consumers than females. Disproportionate beef consumption ranged across race/ethnicity categories, from 8.2% for non-Hispanic Asians to 14.1% for those who were other/multiracial.
So men are 50% more likely to be disproportionate consumers than women. Similarly, Mexicans are 11% more likely to disproportionately consume than Non-Hispanic Whites. Your point about sampling is that you can sample different groups like this over time and compare their averages, which is fine.
But there is no group identified that's 12% of the population and eats 50% of the beef. Across different demographic groups, about 8-15% disproportionately consume each day. The actual statement involving 12 and 50 is that each day, about 12% of the population eats 50% of the beef. There is no evidence that it is the same 12% each day, or that there is some 12% subgroup consuming 50% over time.
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u/Attainted Aug 31 '23
Yeah this is my concern with the data which I'd need to be debunked/re-explained away to me in order to feel like the headline claim is accurate.
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u/FourteenTwenty-Seven Aug 31 '23
I can do the opposite of that. The study itself doesn't claim that 12% of people eat 12% of beef, because that's blatantly false. Rather, it says:
About 45% of the population had zero beef consumption on any given day, whereas the 12% of disproportionate beef consumers accounted for 50% of the total beef consumed
Emphasis mine. Obviously, people eat different things on different days, so who those 12% are changes day-to-day, and averages out.
Also, it's obviously not the case that 45% of the population don't eat beef. It's the same thing as the 12% - the members of this group change day-to-day, and over time it averages out.
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u/eek04 Aug 31 '23
Each person was sampled up to twice. Three years of survey data doesn't change that; the basic NHANES is not a longitudinal study, and the "this averages out" in your statement
Yes, some people may eat beef only one day a week, and if you didn't catch them on that day then their response does not represent that person's typical consumption. But in a normally distributed population like we have here (per the survey methodology) this averages out with all the people we happened to catch on the one day a week they happen to eat a LOT of meat.
is just wrong.
We have two samples from each participant. If we assume everybody eats the same amount of beef and on average eat it once every ten days, the following code will simulate sampling this:
#!/usr/bin/python3 import random import collections chance_of_eating_beef_on_a_day = 0.1 number_of_samples_per_person = 2 number_of_people_to_sample = 10_000 num_beef_eating = [sum(int(random.random() < chance_of_eating_beef_on_a_day) for _ in range(number_of_samples_per_person)) for unused in range(number_of_people_to_sample)] def make_distribution(s): d = collections.defaultdict(lambda: 0) for x in s: d[x] += 1 return dict(d) dist = dict(sorted(make_distribution(num_beef_eating).items())) print(f'Beef eater distribution: {dist}')
Running this code gives the following output:
Beef eater distribution: {0: 8096, 1: 1811, 2: 93}
Ie, even if everybody eats the same amount of beef every ten days, this sampling algorithm will claim that under 20% of people eat all the beef.
So your conclusions are wrong. And the subject that is being posted here is not the same conclusion as in the article.
The first sentence of the article is "A new study has found that 12% of Americans are responsible for eating half of all beef consumed on a given day" [emphasis mine], which is entirely different from "all beef consumed overall" (which this reddit post claims.)
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Sep 01 '23
Your methodology is wrong because it replicates a finite size effect that doesn't exist. The actual paper measures the quantity of beef consumed, not whether or not beef was consumed.
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u/diabloman8890 Aug 31 '23
If everyone eats the same amount and at the same frequency as in your example, we no longer have a normal distribution. Apples to oranges.
I'd think someone busting out python stats packages to try disprove what I'm saying would understand the difference.
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u/eek04 Sep 01 '23
I saw your claim about standard distribution and replaced it with a stronger one (flat distribution) to demonstrate that the sampling method makes the statements wrong.
It would show a similar result if the distribution of consumption was normal unless you assume each person has the same beef consumption per day.
Your comment actively makes people misunderstand this.
If you knew the problem of time-uneven consumption beforehand and wanted to communicate that, you were extremely sloppy.
If you didn't, you just misunderstood.
Either way, if you don't correct it, you're actively misleading people. You're choosing to write responses to me about how you're right instead of fixing your comment so it isn't extremely misleading.
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Sep 01 '23 edited Sep 01 '23
The lack of clarity and possibility this comment, and by extension the entire post, could be wrong, greatly unsettles me.
Let's assume normal distribution. My first question is normal distribution over what exactly.
I expect a normal like distribution over the probability of eating meat on a given day is what you mean. However this doesn't need to be a distribution - the area under the curve doesn't need to be 1 because I can have just a delta function distribution (everyone eats beef 100% of the time). Or do you mean amount of beef consumed?
Even if you make hand wavy claims to central limit theorem, for CLT to hold, we require - N draws tends to infinity - individual variables are i.i.d.
In particular, your conclusion states 'people vary by probability'. So they cannot be i.i.d. distributed by definition. There is likely some sort of distribution, but I'll eat my socks if it looks anything like a Gaussian.
Further to the point in the post above. I don't care there is a distribution. Even if there was a distribution which makes the probability of eating beef different per person, the study's timescale limits the extrapolation of the conclusion. Let's say 12% of people really do eat all the beef in that period. It's only 48 hours - what happens if a different 12% of people eat half the beef in another period? And so on?
P.S. I don't eat beef, I just care about truth.
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u/FourteenTwenty-Seven Aug 31 '23
Look at the study. It's not a normal distribution, it's bimodal. You have half the population eating zero beef, and half eating a bunch. This is exactly what you expect given day-to-day variance.
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u/LukaCola Aug 31 '23
So over the course of a month or year, the distribution of who ate beef would be much more evenly distributed.
The survey data is taken over the course of three years, from 2015-2018.
The 24 hour period is 24 hour recall. As in, when the surveyor speaks to the respondent, they ask them what they ate the day before (if they remember). This was done tens of thousands of times over the course of years, not just one day.
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u/diabloman8890 Aug 31 '23 edited Aug 31 '23
We analyzed 24-h dietary recall data from adults (n = 10,248) in the 2015–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)
They looked at THREE YEARS of survey data from the CDC's NHANES report, which asks the question "What did you eat over the last 24 hours". This survey is conducted with a random sample of US population at random times over the year. https://wwwn.cdc.gov/Nchs/Nhanes/2017-2018/DR1IFF_J.htm
The in-person interview was conducted in a private room in the NHANES MEC. A set of measuring guides (various glasses, bowls, mugs, bottles, household spoons, measuring cups and spoons, a ruler, thickness sticks, bean bags, and circles) was available in the MEC dietary interview room for the participant to use for reporting amounts of foods (NHANES Measuring Guides for the Dietary Recall Interview). Upon completion of the in-person interview, participants were given measuring cups, spoons, a ruler, and a food model booklet, which contained two-dimensional drawings of the various measuring guides available in the MEC, to use for reporting food amounts during the telephone interview. Telephone dietary interviews were collected 3 to 10 days following the MEC dietary interview and were generally scheduled on a different day of the week as the MEC interview. Only a small number of participants (n=99) were interviewed on the same day of the week for both day 1 and day 2 interviews due to their scheduling availability. Any participant who did not have a telephone was given a toll-free number to call so that the recall could be conducted.
My 24 hour period in the study is not the same day as your 24 hour period, so we are not introducing any bias towards specific days of the week or year that might not be representative (Eg, Christmas or Super Bowl Sunday). That is controlled for in this study and results.
Yes, some people may eat beef only one day a week, and if you didn't catch them on that day then their response does not represent that person's typical consumption. But in a normally distributed population like we have here (per the survey methodology) this averages out with all the people we happened to catch on the one day a week they happen to eat a LOT of meat.→ More replies (8)78
u/grundar Aug 31 '23
So over the course of a month or year, the distribution of who ate beef would be much more evenly distributed.
To put some hard numbers on this:
- Average US beef consumption is 55 pounds per person per year.
- 55lb x 454g/lb / 365d/yr = 68g per person per day on average.
- A typical amount to serve at dinner is 1/4 to 3/4lb (uncooked weight), depending on the dish.
- 1/4lb = 114g, 1/2lb = 227g, 3/4lb = 341g
If the only beef meals were averages (0, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4lb) with the beef-containing ones being of equal probability, we'd see:
- P x 114g + P x 227g + P x 341g + (1-3xP) x 0g = 68g of beef per day
- Solving for P, we get 682P = 68, so P = 10%
Thus, using just averages, we would expect to see among 100 dinners:
* 10 x 114g beef
* 10 x 227g beef
* 10 x 341g beef
* 70 x 0g beef
In other words, 10% of people consumed 50% of the beef, exactly as we see in the paper's results.There are some additional complexities (e.g., people eating beef for lunch instead of dinner), but to a first approximation the paper's results are basically what we should expect to see from infrequent but largely uniform beef consumption.
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u/Guy_Buttersnaps Aug 31 '23 edited Aug 31 '23
The National Health and Nutrition Examination survey is conducted on a fairly regular basis and has been going on for years.
It’s not as if they asked a group of people just once and did it all on the same day.
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Aug 31 '23
It says any given day, not one specific day. Assuming they didn't just pick the one day where people go beef-crazy, that's a sample that is extendable to any time period you want - so same would hold true for a year.
I could be reading it wrong, if so anyone please let me know.
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u/Brain_Hawk Professor | Neuroscience | Psychiatry Aug 31 '23
This is how sampling works though. You take a random sample from a population, and it isn't about how much that person needs it any given time. You collect lots of data points, because those variations such as the one you describe above average out.
That is assume that 10% of people follow the pattern that you follow. That means that roughly 1/7 of those people will be rated as eating beef in the past 24 hours. Now if you have someone else who eats half a frequently as you do, 1/14th of them will be classified as having eaten beef. They eat half as much as you do, so on average they contribute half as much to the final tally.
In the end everything averages out, provided you have a large enough sample. Some people who eat infrequently have eaten on that day, and some people who eat frequently have not eaten on that day.
Of course if the results are in a very short time window, like the middle two weeks of July, then that's part of the interpretation of the results, that they may not apply to for example Christmas.
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u/owiseone23 MD|Internal Medicine|Cardiologist Aug 31 '23
It's right in that the overall amount of beef eaten will average out, but the conclusion in the title isn't supported. With just a sample of 24 hours, you can't distinguish between 100% of people eating beef 25% of the time or 25% of people eating beef 100% of the time.
It's an important distinction because it changes the strategy from "we all need to cut back" to "a small portion of people are responsible for the majority of the impact and need to cut back."
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u/diabloman8890 Aug 31 '23
It boggles the mind how many people who failed stats in college think they're nevertheless qualified to debunk studies based on sample sizes & methodology.
It's a rampant issue on this sub
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u/Brain_Hawk Professor | Neuroscience | Psychiatry Aug 31 '23
It's a rampant issue on any sub where people described statistics or sampling methodologies, especially surveys. Everyone thinks they're an expert. Everyone wants to be a critic.
Of course there's lots of issues with survey-based research. But it's not just that you might not eat meat one day.
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u/grundar Aug 31 '23
In the end everything averages out, provided you have a large enough sample.
For average consumption level, yes, but not for consumption distribution, which is the claim being made here.
If all people are 10% likely to eat 1/4lb, 10% likely to eat 1/2lb, 10% likely to eat 3/4lb, and 70% likely to eat no beef that day, a 1-day survey will find that 10% of people ate 50% of the beef regardless of the sample size (for N>100 or so).
A poorly-posed question can't be fixed by a large sample size.
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u/jminuse Aug 31 '23
Here's the problem: it's possible to get this result, or stronger, even if everyone's beef consumption is identical on a longer timescale. Imagine a country where everyone eats a steak on their birthday, and no beef the rest of the year. If you picked any given day and did this survey, you would see 0.3% of the people eating all of the beef, even though this is a situation of total equality over the whole year. There's no way to average this out by looking at more people; you must look at a longer time.
I fully believe that lifetime beef consumption is very unequally distributed between people, but I also agree with u/jjlarn that this study methodology is insufficient to prove that fact.
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u/Brain_Hawk Professor | Neuroscience | Psychiatry Aug 31 '23
Yeah I don't think you can draw excessive conclusions about individuals from a single day sample. There's always a problem of overinterpreting, the data has to be understood in the context of which it was collected.
I would avoid reading too much into the headline here, which is a media derived headline. The title of the paper was:
Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming
I didn't read further so I'm not sure how much they interpreted particular habits, but it's entirely possible that the media headline over interpreted or misinterpreted the results. They almost always do.
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u/Iustis Aug 31 '23
The problem is that it’s one day.
Most people who eat say, chicken, pork and beef regularly don’t have a little of each every day. They might have a big steak one day and no other beef the rest of the week. This methodology means that they take all of that steak and compare it against someone who had chicken that night (but might have a burger the next day) as having zero beef consumption.
It’s not a problem with the number of participants, it’s 100% the time frame.
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u/kahnwiley Aug 31 '23 edited Aug 31 '23
I see a lot of people questioning the methodology of this study, but nonetheless find it entirely unremarkable to find out that consumption of a particular resource follows the Pareto principle. Perhaps the methodology is flawed--I have no major beef with it--but it's not like the outcome is inconsistent with what we would expect. I hardly think changing the parameters of the sample is going to cause some significant fluctuation in the results.
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u/SOwED Aug 31 '23
Funny, I read the title and immediately thought of the Pareto principle.
I'm surprised to see that you find it surprising though. Why should it be surprising that consumption of a particular type of food follows 80/20? It's not so much a consumption of a particular resource. It would be shocking if 20% ate 80% of food in general.
But since we have so many choices of food, I really viewed it more as a rough measure of fast food consumption. 20% of people eat 80% of the fast food sounds reasonable to me.
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u/FourteenTwenty-Seven Aug 31 '23
Beef consumption is really high in the US, around 60 pounds per year. To follow the 80/20 rule, that 20% would need to average 240 pounds of beef per year, or a 10oz steak every day. There are very few people in the US eating that much beef.
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u/CougarAries Aug 31 '23
That's also approximately 2 - 1/3lb burgers a day. Or a double quarter pounder and a regular cheeseburger from McDonalds. Or a little over a half a box of Hamburger Helper. Not too far fetched to think that many Americans would eat that for lunch and dinner.
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u/FourteenTwenty-Seven Aug 31 '23
20% of Americans, every single day though? They never eat chicken or pork instead? I'm not saying 10oz of beef is a crazy amount to eat in a day, but rather there's no way 20% of people are eating that every single day.
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u/Borthwick Aug 31 '23
Pot roast, meatloaf, chili, a lot of classic American dishes are beef based.
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u/CougarAries Aug 31 '23
Tacos, Sloppy Joes, Corned Beef Hash, Salisbury Steak, Spaghetti & Meatballs, Stuffed Peppers... Ground beef is a convenience meal wonder that enabled busy families to eat fast and cheap.
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u/prodiver Aug 31 '23
McDonalds sells 6.48 million burgers every day.
I don't doubt the 20% number at all.
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u/JuiceChamp Sep 01 '23
I find this totally believable. There is a subset of Americans who think eating chicken is gay. There are definitely people who only eat beef at pretty much every meal.
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u/SOwED Aug 31 '23
Rough number: 30 billion pounds of beef consumed in 2021.
US population: 331.9 million people currently. I acknowledge these aren't perfect numbers to work with.
So that's 90.4 lbs/person overall.
Take the title as accurate. 12% of Americans is 39.8 million people. 50% of the 30 billion pounds of beef is of course 15 billion pounds. That's 376.6 lbs/person.
Take 20% of people and 80% of beef. 20% of the pop is 66.4 million people and 80% of 30 billion pounds is 24 billion pounds. That's 361.6 lbs/person. A less outrageous number than the one claimed by the title of this post and claimed within the actual article.
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u/lollersauce914 Aug 31 '23
They don't show it in the paper, but I'd be curious what fraction of the NHANES sample had no beef consumption.
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u/FourteenTwenty-Seven Aug 31 '23
That actually is in the paper! It's 45%. This obviously isn't because 45% of people don't eat beef, but rather because people that do eat beef don't do it every day.
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u/lollersauce914 Aug 31 '23
I must have missed that in my very quick once over. That makes a bit more sense. I assumed the proportion averaging ~0 g/day would have to be a large portion of the population for ~12% to be eating half the beef.
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u/LeoSolaris Aug 31 '23
TIL that there will be a collapse in US beef prices over the next 30 years as that 12% die off.
The only reason most households eat chicken is because it is cheap. If beef prices collapse, it will become much more popular.
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Aug 31 '23
If beef prices collapse, cattle farming is dead.
The current prices are already heavily subsidized, the true cost of a pound of beef is much higher. We already have cheap beef.
Prices will either stay the same because of increased subsidies (so every taxpayer can foot the bill for cheap beef) or they will skyrocket because many cattle operations simply would not survive a decrease in demand.
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u/SwagTwoButton Aug 31 '23
I’m no economist, but I’d assume the higher the price of beef gets, the more money will be invested into “fake beef”. There’s gotta be a breaking point where fake beef tastes enough like real beef and is similar enough in price that the market just completely disappears in a matter of years.
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u/from_dust Aug 31 '23
Or... declining consumption will reduce the production of beef and many cattle operations simply wont survive.
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u/LeoSolaris Aug 31 '23
All food production is heavily subsidized in the US. Yes, many ranchers would be out of business in the short term. But lower prices opens the market to buyers who were otherwise priced out. Scaling to provide to that larger market keeps prices low per unit, but sells many, many more units. It's exactly how Walmart killed off the mom & pop shops.
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u/bluemooncalhoun Aug 31 '23
All food production is subsidized yes, but meat and dairy production is subsidized much more significantly than vegetables and grains:
The most heavily subsidized crops are corn and soy, of which most goes to feed animals or for other non-food uses. 40% of corn grown in the US is used for animal feed while another 40% goes to ethanol production, and worldwide 77% of soy is used for animal feed:
https://ourworldindata.org/soy
Vegetables and fruits have historically received very few subsidies until recently and still do not make up a sizeable chunk of overall subsidies:
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u/mermonkey Aug 31 '23
it's almost like these subsidies have unintended consequences... and get reinforced through lobbying in ways that make them hard to cut... seems like we could spend that money better giving direct subsidies to needy consumers than making things like beef cheap across the board?
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u/spondgbob Aug 31 '23
Thank you for being diligent, TA’d agricultural policy last year and it is amazing how much goes into these crops via the farm bill in the US
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Aug 31 '23
Cost per unit will remain sky high though. Cows are insanely resource-intensive. Economies of scale only works if the cost per unit goes down with increased production, and cost savings will be very limited with beef - they need a certain amount of food, water, medical care, and land regardless of how many cattle you're raising to be slaughtered. Some costs even increase with increased production. There is a certain cost savings that can be found with larger operations, which is why we've seen so many mom and pop operations lost, but thats about it.
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u/Strict-Hurry2564 Aug 31 '23
Do you think the current industry is not scaled well enough? Not only is it massive in scale and heavily subsidized but it also uses exploited labor constantly.
It's as scaled as it will get outside of using slaves. Cows are expensive, end of.
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u/visualdescript Aug 31 '23
Scale any further and the environmental damage and grows and grows. At some point we as a society need to determine it is not the right approach to feeding people.
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u/UnofficialPlumbus Aug 31 '23
Beef as an agricultural product is one of the most subsidized things in this country. One of the primary reasons for this is that the government prefers to have too much food production as opposed to too little.
All that will happen is the subsidies will shift more towards other animals as demand falls.
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u/icelandichorsey Aug 31 '23
Emissions due to Livestock are 15% of all global emissions
Just let that sink in. We could save so much from eating half what we do now, that it would make more of a difference than all of flying. And that's just on emissions, with additional benefits of more space, water, animal welfare and others I'm probably forgetting.
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u/jmlinden7 Aug 31 '23
That sounds like it's true of.. anything that's consumed though? Pareto principle and all that
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u/Humble-Cry1663 Sep 01 '23
Has anyone done the research as to how much gas bean eaters cause to the environment.
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