The Protein Pyramid

[groovedaddy]

Per capita meat consumption more than doubled over the past half-century as the global economy expanded. It is expected to double again by 2050. Which raises the question, what does all that meat eat before it becomes meat?

Increasingly the answer is very small fish harvested from the ocean and ground into meal and pressed into oil. According to a new report by scientists from the University of British Columbia and financed by the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, 37 percent by weight of all the fish taken from the ocean is forage fish: small fish like sardines and menhaden. Nearly half of that is fed to farmed fish; most of the rest is fed to pigs and poultry.

The problem is that forage fish are the feedstock of marine mammals and birds and larger species of fish. In other words, farmed fish, pigs and poultry — and the humans who eat them — are competing for food directly with aquatic species that depend on those forage fish for their existence. It’s as if humans were swimming in schools in the ocean out-eating every other species.

The case is worse than that. When it comes to farmed fish, there is a net protein loss: it takes three pounds of fish feed to produce one pound of farmed salmon. This protein pyramid — small fish fed to farmed fish, pigs and poultry that are then fed to humans — is unsustainable. It threatens the foundation of oceanic life.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10mon3.html?th&emc=th

[Captain Hilts]

1. I've really cut down on my meat consumption because of this and the effect of chicken farms...

on the Chesapeake Bay.

[Deja Q]

2. People should get their kidneys checked often. Too much protein and it kills the kidneys.

Pity there's no such thing as chicken flavored baby spinach... or artichoke hearts flavored like beef heart...

[GliderGuider]

5. Try reading Gary Taubes' book "Good Calories, Bad Calories"

It's one heck of a thorough piece of science journalism. It conclusively shows that the fear of protein is a paper tiger foisted on a scientifically illiterate public and government by nutritional ideologists and "carbohydrate corporations".

There are lots of reasons not to eat meat, but they're all ecological, not nutritional.

[Warpy]

3. Mark Bittman has a great lecture on that

at the TED talks: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html

In it he discusses what we eat, how it gets there, what it's doing to us, and what to do about it. He is not a vegetarian and he doesn't preach.

It's well worth the download, but there's a dialup warning, it's a 20 minute lecture. It's still worth it for anyone who wants to know how it all fits together on a shrinking planet.

[CrispyQ]

4. The impact of a meat based diet on our planet.

The issue no one wants to talk about.

Every one wants the world to be a better place, but no one wants to make any personal sacrifice to make it so.

k&r

[GliderGuider]

6. If the consumption of meat grew as the global economy expanded...

then it will decline as the global economy collapses. Ultimately this is a self-regulating problem -- except for the teensy little problem that we vacuumed the oceans clean of fish in the process. Unfortunately, it's too late to do much of anything about that except blame ourselves.