I am a semi-vegetarian, but I eat fish and seafood on average about 1.5-2lbs per week or about quarter pound a day. So the half or 0.75 lb figure for the average carnivore does not strike as implausible. If anything, I think it is rather low.
Also the average hides the class factor in meat consumption - lower socio-economic classes are more carnivorous than higher socio-economic classes (for health reasons) - which is a total reversal of the situations from, say, hundred years ago.
Wojtek
On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 7:27 AM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:
> In his chapter on the need to reduce meat consumption, McWilliams (in _Just
> Food_) says that New Zealanders eat 312 lbs of meat a year, Cyprusians (?)
> eat 288 lbs, USers eat 273, the Irish eat 233 lbs, the Swedish 167 lbs.
> Europeans, on average, eat 198 lbs.
>
> ? How is it possible to eat that much meat? Yesterday, I had to go to a
> luncheon, so I had 3 oz of turkey on a sandwich, chips. At dinner, 6 oz of
> chicken and peppers, onions, zucchini with parmesan cheese. That's a pretty
> typical day, though I normally eat either a spinach salad or chef's salad
> (meatless) with some kind of cheese and a couple of eggs for lunch. But 6 oz
> of protein at dinner, and maybe 3 or 4 oz at lunch seems to be what the
> typical person eats.
>
> So how the hell is it that we, in the US, ostensibly eat nearly a lb of
> meat a day? Most people eat a grain-based breakfast. Even if they eat some
> kind of meat sandwich for breakfast (e.g., mcmuffin), that's still only
> adding about 2-4 oz of bacon or sausage to the day. Assuming a 10 oz steak
> at dinner, and 6 oz of lunch meat or something ... WTF?
>
> Anyone know how this is calculated? McWilliams mentions earlier that USers
> waste 1.28 lbs of food every day. Are they just talking global production
> and purchase, and not accounting for what gets shot out?
>
> shag
>
> -
> http://cleandraws.com
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> ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
>
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