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Comment by k__ | Hacker News Reader

I have the impression almost nobody could buy meat if animals were raised healthy.

That's a wrong impression because raising healthy animals is doable and is still done quite a bit these days.

Most suppliers who sell meat branded as things like "from small family farms" or "biodynamic" generally adhere to practices that raise healthy animals. There also exists stubborn old farmers who don't bother with any of this marketing and branding foofoo who still raise animals that are just as healthy as the foofoo marketers.

There's unfortunately still no good certification or verification for sourcing meat from these good places. You basically have to either do the research yourself or rely on trustworthy suppliers to do the research and curating for you, like hippie-type food co-ops.

Of course, you'll definitely pay more. I'm personally very low income but still manage to afford it. Plenty of people are like me. But most people simply don't want to pay extra, even if they can.

This is exactly the case - at least if you're in a rural or rural-adjacent area.

And you don't even really have to "change much", just vary the percentages in the meals you do make, e.g., add a side dish or two.

If you're deep into the metro area, it may be more costly, but I assume it can be done.

Not at the rate that we consume it. But having beef, chicken and pork once per week? Definitely something that is healthier for our bodies, the planet and the livelihoods of these animals.

Definitely? The reality is that there is no high-quality research which establishes the healthiest weekly frequency of meat consumption. We can't say whether it's 0, 1, or some higher number. The studies so far have generally been too short, relied on subject reported data (i.e. junk), used proxy metrics only loosely correlated with overall health, had small effect sizes, and failed to control for confounding variables (i.e. healthy subject effect).

Let's have some humility in this area. There is very little in human nutrition that we know for sure.

I reakon this is the way to go. Some meat, better quality, better lives for the livestock. A steak once a week sounds ok to me.

Post physique.

More seriously, though, a steak once per week as your only meat isn't sufficient protein. Unless you want to faff about with vegetable combining.

You don't have to do any kind of "vegetable combining" concoctions to get sufficient protein from plants, that is a (false) urban legend.

Got a source? I can't Google anything that agrees with you.

> All plant foods contain all 20 essential amino acids including the 9 essential amino acids in varying amounts.

> Though historically, protein combining was promoted as a method of compensating for supposed deficiencies in vegetables as foods, studies on essential amino acid contents in plant proteins have shown that vegetarians and vegans typically do not need to complement plant proteins in each meal to reach the desired level of essential amino acids as long as their diets are varied and caloric requirements are met. The position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is that protein from a variety of plant foods eaten during the course of a day supplies enough of all essential amino acids when caloric requirements are met.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_combining

If you buy a 1/4 or 1/2 cow around here (MI) that is anywhere between $400-$1200 which should feed a family of 4 for about a year. That's getting you a humanely-raised cow that is significantly higher quality than what you would get at a grocery story. It works out to be slightly more expensive or on-par with the grocery store price but you do need a chest freezer.

We have much more stringent standards for cattle (and other animals), and yes, meat is more expensive here ($24/kg vs $11/kg for ground beef); on the other hand median salaries are also much higher ($90k/y vs $50k/y), so?

Where is here?

Small insular European country known for it's banking with a population less than New Jersey.

New Jersey is an excellent example of the difference between population and surface area. Despite being divided between two MSAs centred on neighbouring states, it's still worth 14 electoral votes on its own, and there are 78 senators representing populations smaller than NJ's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_Valley

(anyone know how well economic activity correlates with population or surface area in general? For prosperity you want the former, not necessarily either of the latter)

And Switzerland is a great example of a state with a huge disparity between population and GDP.

And for its cows and cheese, I take it?

Salaries in most of the EU are decidedly NOT higher than USA.

Did I say EU? https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/aktuell/neue-veroeffent...

It might be interesting for someone (else!) to do a comparison of western european median salaries vs individual US state median salaries?

That little nation is not in the EU for many reasons, but higher average salaries than surrounding countries is arguably one of them. Zurich regularly features at the top of lists of the most expensive places in the world to live.

Only if we also insist on wasting as much as we do. You'd just not always be able to purchase any cut of any animal any time of the year. You'd be limited to cuts and species available with seasonable components. Wasteful excess is what the current modus operandi supports, not availability full stop. There is plenty of evidence that suggests this would offer health benefits as well, since if we cannot always eat our favorite cut, we eat more diverse portions of animals, which in turn means more diverse nutrition intake, as nature intended I guess.

The EU disagrees. There are vastly more regulations here and coupled with traditions, results in more healthy animal raising. Meat consumption is lower in all EU countries compared to the US, but that's also a good think because meat overconsumption is not good for people.

As for what I mean by tradition - for some brands of cheese it's mandatory that the cows/sheep/goats have grazed on specific types of vegetation in specific geographic areas for them to be eligible to be called that brand. Many popular brands of meat refer to specific races and specific types of raising (grazing in Normandy fields), and even butchers and supermarkets with a butchers' section list stuff like "grass fed" or "chickens that lived out in the open".

USA has "free range" chicken and "grass fed" beef. There are a few brands that are also particular about where and how their stock is raised.

I'm from the EU and had the impression that there is more talk about those regulations than actually enforcing them.

> Meat consumption is lower in all EU countries compared to the US.

Wut!?

Here are the European countries ahead of the US in 2020 numbers on pork consumption per capita in kg:

    Poland 54.95
    Spain 52.56
    Lithuania 50.69
    Croatia 49.63
    Hungary 48.30
    Austria 45.03
    Czech Republic 44.54
    Germany 44.01
    Montenegro 43.24
    Belarus 39.18
    Slovakia 38.82
    Latvia 38.44
    Portugal 38.09
    Estonia 37.73
    Serbia 37.33
    Cyprus 36.78
    Romania 34.50
    Luxembourg 33.14
    Italy 32.88
    Belgium 32.80
    Ireland 31.11
    France 30.97
    Finland 30.80
    United States 30.64

Just pork.

Exactly - but what about total per capita meat consumption?

For the US that runs at ~ 100 kilograms per person per year.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-meat-usa

https://sentientmedia.org/meat-consumption-in-the-us

Is this number exceeded by many EU countries?

Americans eat a lot of beef and chicken compared to Europeans who eat way more pork than either of those. And there's good reason for this:

`The best beef in the world comes from places with large open areas. USA/Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil. Having large and flat areas with varied vegetation allows the cows to develop properly. As well as providing the land to grow feed. By contrast, the smaller and often hillier farms in Europe produce a leaner and more muscular cow. Which influences what breeds are raised and used for meat or milk, as well as being subject to each country’s agricultural laws.`

And the US eats about as much chicken as Spain eats pork, but for beef they're more like in Serbia's position.

If Europe had as much flat, fertile land as the US, or were geographically closer to the above-mentioned places, Europeans would certainly be eating more beef and chicken.

Spain, Portugal, Iceland and Poland really aren't that far off from the US in consumption.

Buying from a niche, hipster-y local family farm (that shipped across the US through an online web store), it was about double what you pay in your local grocers, and that meat was so legit and delicious and high quality. I absolutely overcooked the T-bone steak and it still melted in my mouth.

One thing to keep in mind is that real beef, grass fed and grazing etc, has a much more gamey taste than Americans like. America really likes it's homogenized "meat" flavor

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