Why Does Eating Meat Consume More Resources Than Eating Plants?

It takes a lot more resources to grow an animal for food than it does to grow plants. Learn how much more -- and what that means for the conscientious omnivore -- in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/food-nutrition/facts/meat-eaters-consume-more-plants-vegetarians.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. Over the past couple decades,
and perhaps especially over the past couple of years, there's
been increasing attention to and hype around plant based eating.
People may avoid or cut back on animal products for

(00:22):
all kinds of reasons, from ethics to religion to the
fad diet of the moment. But today we're focusing on
a different and perhaps more scientific or at least data
driven angle the environment. Production of the meat we eat
burns up a lot of natural resources. For example, according
to the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University,

(00:44):
it can take as much as six hundred and twenty
five gallons that's some two thou fifty liters of water
to produce a quarter pounder. When you've take into account
not just the water that cattle drink, but the irrigation
required to produce the grain and grasses that they ate.
Research by scientists shows that raising farm animals accounts for
of the world's freshwater consumption. Pound for pound, The animals

(01:08):
we eat require a lot more resources to grow than
the plants we eat. But when you factor in the
amount that a cow ate before it became your burger. Omnivores,
that is, those of us who consume both plant and
animal products consume more plant based food than vegetarians or vegans.
The study Patterns of Food Consumption among Vegetarians and non Vegetarians,

(01:31):
published in the Journal of Nutrition, surveyed eighty nine thousand
people in the US and Canada to gather data on
various dietary preferences. These subjects ranged from people who ate meat, eggs,
and dairy products to hardcore vegans who avoid any food
that comes from an animal. In between, there are lacto
oval vegetarians who consume dairy products and eat eggs, pasco

(01:53):
vegetarians who eat fish but no red meat or poultry,
and semi vegetarians who eat meat occasionally. The researchers tallied
up the total weight of the plant based foods that
the subjects ate every day, that is, fruits, vegetables, avocados, potatoes, grains, lagoons, soy, nuts,
and seeds. And now I'm rounding the numbers here for

(02:15):
audio simplicity, but they found that vegans, on average ate
about seventeen hundred grams that's sixty ounces of plant based
foods a lacto ova vegetarians and pesco vegetarians each ate
about fourteen hundred grams that's fifty ounces. Omnivores, in comparison,
ate about eleven hundred grams or forty ounces of plant
based foods, not as much on its own as the vegetarians,

(02:37):
but a substantial amount. However, the omnivores in the study
also ate about sixty grams or two ounces of meat
a day. That's actually a lot lower than the national
meat eating average of around two hundred and twenty five
grams or eight ounces based on US Department of Agriculture data,
but let's assume the smaller amount for now. As we

(02:58):
consider the amount of grain grasses consumed by the animals
that end up as meat on our plates, this gets
a little trickier to calculate, because, of course, different animals
consume different amounts of plant based food. For the article,
this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke by
email with Marion Nestley, the PAULA. Goddard Professor in the
Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New

(03:20):
York University and author of the book Food Politics. She
said the ratio seems to be on the order of
six pounds of grain to one pound of meat. So
even that low sixty grams or two ounces of meat
represents the equivalent of an extra three hundred and sixty
grams or twelve ounces of grain based intake every day,

(03:41):
meaning the omnivore study participants were responsible for consuming a
bit more plants than their vegetarian counterparts. But again, remember
that's using an example at the low end of meat eating.
If you use the U s d A's daily average
of two hundred and twenty five grams or eight ounces
of meat consumption, the total soul is to round about
twenty grams or ninety ounces of plant based food. That's

(04:05):
way more than even vegans consume about fifty or half
again as much. So why is this significant. The amount
of plant based food that meat animals consume is mind boggling.
As Nestlie points out, roughly se of coin and soybean production,
just for example, goes to feed animals. That makes meat

(04:26):
production an inefficient way to glean nutrition out of the
planet's farmland. Study by University of Minnesota researchers published in
the journal Environmental Research Letters concluded that if the farmland
needed to produce animal feed. Were instead used to grow
food for human consumption, we could feed an additional four
billion people worldwide. Today's episode is based on the article

(04:53):
far more plants get consumed thanks to meat eaters, not
vegetarians on houseuf works dot Com, written by Patrick J. Keider.
Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership
with how stuff works dot Com and is produced by
Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.