# Have you changed your meat consumption over the last decade? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 28, 2020, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652 "2020-07-28T22:59:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Delayed\_Reflex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/delayed_reflex/32/3172_2.png) [@Delayed\_Reflex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delayed_Reflex)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2020, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/41 "2020-07-31T21:31:14Z")
Mmmm, that’s definitely something I didn’t really consider, the rise of low carb and keto-friendly diets possibly resulting in some people increasing their meat consumption. I was curious as it seems like per-capita meat consumption in the US had been dropping from its peak in 2004 down to 2014, but since 2014 it seems like it’s been on the rise again, hitting a new high in 2019 ([according to this table, anyway](https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/statistics/per-capita-consumption-of-poultry-and-livestock-1965-to-estimated-2012-in-pounds/)). Perhaps it also has to do with shifting demographics as well. [Canada has also seen an uptick in per-capita meat consumption](https://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/animal-industry/poultry-and-egg-market-information/industry-indicators/per-capita-disappearance/?id=1384971854413) over 2014-2019, after dropping from peak consumption in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2020, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/42 "2020-07-31T22:48:39Z")
I’m eating fewer Iowa chops (pork) and more carnitas. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2020, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/43 "2020-08-01T00:07:17Z")
I’m eating more meat. A decade ago my now-wife was a vegetarian, so while I ate some meat, our meals together tended to have little or none. She now eats meat, and with two small kids it’s often easier to make meat because everyone will eat it and it’s delicious with little effort. Non-meat proteins can be delicious too, but they often take a lot more preparation. I’ve had plenty of so-so lentil recipes that take 20 minutes of labor to create, but bacon takes 2 minutes to put in the oven and always tastes amazing, and no one in the family will turn down a hamburger, which again takes only a few minutes of active work to mold into shape and throw on the grill. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2020, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/44 "2020-08-01T23:00:23Z")
I haven’t read the whole thread yet, but I’m glad that people seem to cut back on meat even without going full vegetarian. This is good for all the right reasons that have been mentioned already, ethically, environmentally, and for personal advantage, health related. I have been a ovo-lacto vegetarian for 24 years, but I reintroduced fish into my diet a few years ago. It’s just that I have never bothered about leaving meat and never craved for it afterwards, but I missed some fish, especially sardines in oil. I still have some ethical and environmental problems with eating fish, but not so much nutritionally. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2020, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/45 "2020-08-01T23:43:17Z")
And… as seems usual when I participate in threads like these I wound up indulging in liver sausage. Ah, well, a taste now and then isn’t a bad thing, and probably helps keep anemia at bay. Now I have a craving for my beans-greens-and-noodle soup… ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2020, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/46 "2020-08-02T00:04:56Z")
Life-long Member of PETA. _People Eating Tasty Animals_ ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2020, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/47 "2020-08-02T00:31:18Z")
I was pretty consistent for over a decade but I think I’ve increased my consumption with the 'rona. I found that my weight was ticking down slowly, below where I’d like to be (BMI ~19.5). The reason was obvious: I’ve been mostly eating just one meal a day instead of two. Having lunch+dinner at the work cafeteria made for a pretty stable weight. But cooking takes work and I can rarely motivate myself to do it more than once a day. Plus, a lot of calorie-dense vegetarian foods I ate a lot (like french fries) are too hard to cook at home. So I’ve been packing my meals with more protein+fat than usual to boost the calories. And that typically means more meat, or at least more animal fats like butter. It’s working so far and a better option that getting calories via soda, etc. It’s tasty, too. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2020, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/48 "2020-08-02T00:42:29Z")
I was always a carnivore, but since going keto two years ago, I picked it up even more. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2020, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/49 "2020-08-02T01:51:19Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Started thinking of meat as a condiment in the 70s, and still do. Usually, an ounce or two of meat is cooked into a more complex dish. I’m not sure when I started thinking about meat this way, back in the 90s sometime, but for some dishes yes, and an ounce or two depending on the meat and how it’s prepared is plenty as a flavor component. But I’ve never been able to look at the dietary recommendation of 6oz without laughing when it comes to something like steak, or pork chops where the meat _is_ the dish ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2020, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/50 "2020-08-02T03:03:28Z")
I have no guilt about the foods I eat whatsoever. I genuinely don’t care about their origins. My meat consumption is the same as always, which is to say, probably below average compared to most humans across western cultures, but a good chunk of my diet (3 or 4 meals per week contain meat). ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2020, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/51 "2020-08-02T21:54:55Z")
I’ve been a vegetarian for 25 years, so my meat consumption over the last 10 years has stayed the same. OK, actually I did eat some fish when I first went vegetarian, but I stopped eating that somewhere in the middle. Can’t remember exactly when, but between 10 and 15 years ago. My reason for stopping eating meat was mostly because I didn’t like the way meat production had been industrialized. I figured it couldn’t be improving the quality of the meat and was more likely degrading it. Thus it was not good for one’s health. The environmental benefits are a bonus, although they’ve become more important to me in recent years. But my total calories have not changed significantly. A few years back I did a rough calculation of my calorie intake and came up with 4000/day. That changes depending on how much I bicycle. If I bike every day, it goes down some. ---
**Author:** ![LivingGhost371](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b9e5f3/32.png) [@LivingGhost371](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LivingGhost371)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2020, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/52 "2020-08-03T02:01:08Z")
About the same. Burger King advertising that smashed up peas are indistinguishable from their Whopper seem to be more an indictment of how bad their from-the-freezer Whopper is than how good the Impossible Burger is. I’d take more notice if Five Guys or the local bar and grill, or even McDonad’s and Wendy’s with their fresh, never frozen, beef made that claim. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2020, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/53 "2020-08-03T02:33:11Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Less beef, more pork/chicken. But not a major shift - maybe 20%. That’s me, except a fairly major shift, and more towards poultry than pork. I’m cutting down on red meat mainly for health and also for ethical reasons, but I must admit that I still eat too much beef when it’s “well disguised”: the best meatballs I’ve ever found are locally made chicken, veal, and beef, and I still like the occasional burger or all-beef hot dog on the grill. But steak and beef roasts – which look a lot like the innards of dead cow because that’s what they are – are increasingly a turnoff and not good for you, either. I also try to eat more seafood but still don’t have it very often. But I do have great marinade recipes for jumbo shrimp and sea bass! ---
**Author:** ![Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brown_eyed_girl/32/3574_2.png) [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brown_Eyed_Girl)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2020, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/54 "2020-08-03T17:01:18Z")
I’m also eating considerably more meat since switching from more plant-based diet to a keto diet. The quality of meat has trended higher since I’m relying on meat as a primary source of protein, the types of meat have changed since I go for fattier cuts, and the variety of sources has increased as I try to vary my meals. So far, so good. I just wish my spouse would let me splurge on better eggs more consistently. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2020, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/55 "2020-08-04T01:08:08Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I have no guilt about the foods I eat whatsoever. I genuinely don’t care about their origins. I don’t have guilt about the foods I eat, but I do have guilt about the food I waste. And letting meat go to waste makes me feel the guiltiest because something died for no reason. As for eating meat, I eat about the same amount as I always have. Unlike grains and dairy, meat I have few issues with digestion or intolerance-wise (only pork is ever dicey), so I eat it. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2020, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652/56 "2020-08-05T00:08:28Z")
Thread needs a theme song. I was going to link to the Reverend Horton Heat’s “Eat Steak” but figured it might be too in-your-face for the evangelical vegan crowd. [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d4O1A-mmBWw/hqdefault.jpg "TOTAL COELO - I EAT CANNIBALS") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4O1A-mmBWw) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-changed-your-meat-consumption-over-the-last-decade/916652.md?page=2)