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Comment by chrispeel | Hacker News Reader

mb meat intake is positively correlated with having enough calories.

I.e. for people who are struggling to get enough to eat, of course they should eat meat. In contrast, I guess most readers of HN get enough calories and there will be no problem with eating veg

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There are far cheaper sources of calories than meat. If anything, it's that meat is positively correlated with having enough nutrition, which is mostly the non calorie stuff. Lean meat is extremely nutritious, and relatively low calorie (since protein is incorrectly summed in caloric counts for meat, from 120 year old incorrect math [1], and the fact that the average person is never in a deep enough state of fasting/starvation for glycogenolysis to take over [2]).

1. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25033392-800-calories...

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3636601/

Pasta, potatoes, grains, and sugar all provide more calories than meat for cheap. Especially that if you're a meat eater you're more likely to eat lean, unprocessed meat if you can afford that.

Meat is the most inefficient way to grow calories. Beef, for example:

> The inefficiency is particularly high for beef, which uses about three-fifths of the world’s agricultural land yet produces less than 5 percent of its protein and less than 2 percent of its calories.

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/Solutions... (based on FAO data)

Then it follows that meat intake is positively correlated with living somewhere that communities having enough surplus food or agricultural capacity to also feed/raise livestock.

Getting balanced diet of nutrients and calories is the key.

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