The Shocking Consequences of the World’s Meat Addiction

[L. Coyote]

The Shocking Consequences of the World’s Meat Addiction
Cole Mellino | March 4, 2016

Three billion animals are slaughtered every year for meat with global demand skyrocketing. Animal agriculture is putting an ever-increasing strain on world resources, particularly global water supplies, according to VICE’s two-part episode, Meathooked and End of Water, which premieres March 4 at 11 p.m. on HBO.

In Vice’s fifth episode of season 4, Isobel Yeung traveled to feedlots, farms and slaughterhouses to learn where our meat comes from and to uncover its true costs, and Vikram Gandhi traveled to the Central Valley in California and São Paulo, Brazil to find out just how severe the global water crisis has become.

In California’s Central Valley, farmers are quickly depleting the state’s groundwater ..........

[villager]

1. I wonder if the usual snarky, cruel taunts from "progressives" will accompany this OP?

We shall see....

[FLPanhandle]

2. The problem isn't eating meat, that's a symptom

The problem is that humans have over populated the earth to the point meat has to go.

Humans have been eating meat since we evolved. The only difference is the number of humans on the planet.

Add a few more billion humans and then certain fruits & vegetables will be considered bad.

We should be addressing the world's addiction to having children and solve the real problem.

[KamaAina]

3. "We should be addressing the world's addiction to having children".

Indeed. And the proven way to do that is to lift the Global South out of poverty. As incomes increase, fertility rates decrease.

[Major Nikon]

11. Not the only proven way

Family planning works. You just have to break the churchs' backwards-ass stranglehold against contraception and abortion.

[Warpy]

4. Yes and no

The problem is the ridiculous allocation of the planet's resources so that a few people in one area can dine on steak while many people in other ares starve on nothing but starches. Both groups will die prematurely, the former from atherosclerosis and the latter from malnutrition.

There is no reason for cattle to eat grain. They don't even need to eat grass, they can eat other plant materials just fine. Grain fed cattle are unhealthy, with fat deposits through their muscle tissue that tenderize the meat and make the diners ill. Chickens do best on a mixture of plants and insects. Pigs will eat almost anything that doesn't eat them first. There is no reason to use foodstuffs that will feed humans to animals who don't need them. Meat should be scarcer, more expensive, and certainly not eaten 3 times a day, 7 days a week. Overconsumption is killing us.

You see children as bad. Fortunately, few people agree with you. However, if you want to reduce the number of children per third world woman, you're going to have to raise her status above that of (preferably male) baby incubator. That's the only proven way to drop the birth rate.

[The2ndWheel]

6. Why would meat go against the general trend of society?

What do we make scarcer and more expensive?

[MH1]

8. "you're going to have to raise her status above that of (preferably male) baby incubator"

That is absolutely what we need to do, and not just so we can get population under control.

But, the nice side effect of treating women fairly and addressing issues of poverty, infant mortality, health and general status, is that the birth rate will come down to a reasonable level.

The only problem with that, is that by the time women all over the world have attained that status, the global population will probably be so out of whack that population shrinkage will be necessary anyway, with a lot of potentially negative cultural implications. (And if it is necessary, it will happen ... voluntarily and gradually, or not voluntarily and not so gradually.) But, some people think we have already reached that point anyway.

[Warpy]

9. It's going to be that, female infanticide, or wholesale castration of males.

All of those are less palatable to all but the religious patriarchs, who have a morbid fear of any increase in the worth of women as human beings.

[The2ndWheel]

5. Every institution we've built requires more people

[handmade34]

7. so, time to "evolve" even more!

or "devolve"...

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancestors-were-nearly-all-vegetarians/

If you want to return to your ancestral diet, the one our ancestors ate when most of the features of our guts were evolving, you might reasonably eat what our ancestors spent the most time eating during the largest periods of the evolution of our guts, fruits, nuts, and vegetables—especially fungus-covered tropical leaves.

as well as ending poverty and stopping the rapid population growth, we need to stop excessive meat consumption...

"Plants were our paleo diet for most of the last thirty million years," Dunn concludes.

So what's the take-home message here? It's not, I think, that we're meant to be vegetarian (nor does Dunn claim this). Rather, it's that ancestral diets don't aid us in making food choices today, any more than our ancestors' mating patterns help us in establishing healthy partnerships and families.

results revealed that the ancient Egyptians were mainly vegetarian and their diet was primarily wheat- and barley-based. Cereals, such as millet and sorghum, formed a minor part of their diet
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/new-study-reveals-ancient-egyptians-were-mostly-vegetarian-

[Blue_In_AK]

10. Vice was extremely depressing tonight.

Watched the first segment - ok, maybe we should go vegetarian (even though I always gain a lot of weight when I do). Then, bam, second segment - no water to grow vegetables. That guy better get busy with his synthetic hamburger or we're all going to starve to death.