alt Hacker NewsInterestingly, ~12% of humans in the US are responsible for ~50% of beef consumption.
> The US is the biggest consumer of beef in the world, but, according to new research, it’s actually a small percentage of people who are doing most of the eating. A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US.
> Men and people between the ages of 50 and 65 were more likely to be in what the researchers dubbed as “disproportionate beef eaters”, defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces – the rough equivalent of more than one hamburger – daily. The study analyzed one-day dietary snapshots from over 10,000 US adults over a four-year period. White people were among those more likely to eat more beef, compared with other racial and ethnic groups like Black and Asian Americans. Older adults, college graduates, and those who looked up MyPlate, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) online nutritional educational campaign, were far less likely to consume a disproportionate amount of beef.
High steaks society: who are the 12% of people consuming half of all beef in the US? - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usd... - October 20th, 2023
Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming - https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795 | https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15173795 - August 2023
(my observation of this is that we can sunset quite a bit of US beef production and still be fine from a food supply and security perspective, as consumption greatly exceeds healthy consumption limits in the aggregate)
Replies
> Interestingly, ~12% of humans in the US are responsible for ~50% of beef consumption.
Go on...
> One limitation of this work is that it was based on 1-day diet recalls, so our results do not represent usual intake[0].
Ah.
[0]: Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795
> A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US.
This phrasing strongly suggests it’s not the same 12% every day. In which case… it’s probably not that noteworthy.
> defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces... daily.
This sounds like.. not very much. I eat 6-7oz of ground beef with breakfast alone, pretty much daily! Are people really eating less than ~1/2 cup of meat over all their meals combined?
So the data is skewed by burgers georg who eats 3,000 Big Macs each day?
We are Paraguayans... Argentinians, and Brazilians... but mostly Paraguayans and Argentinas
https://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day....
"just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US."
what???? there is entire family that eat entire Cow that can feed the whole village, that is crazy
> A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US
By itself, this figure doesn't really mean much. On any given day, less than 1% of people have birthdays, but that doesn't mean there's a small percentage of people who are having most of the birthdays
The following paragraph is more valid, but the 12% figure still seems dubious.