[LadyRuby]

I've heard some stats about how much oil is required for a pound of beef. Does anyone have information on energy requirements to produce other proteins (chicken, fish, pork, beans, tofu, eggs, milk, etc.)?

I'd like to think about modifying my family's diet a bit to be more energy efficient, since I assume this is something we'll need to likely go toward in the future anyway, but would love to have some more data to get a better feel for which proteins we eat are the least energy efficient. (Is chicken a lot better than beef, for example?). I doubt we'll go totally vegetarian anytime soon, but I can see it happening in the future.

[EnergySpin]

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF VEGETARIAN DIETS:
David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel
Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment
Am. J. Clinical Nutrition, Sep 2003; 78: 660 - 663.

free full paper
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/78/3/660S

In the end no diet is sustainable ... soil ends up in the seas and the oceans.
We have to live with that and see what can be done (i.e. ocean farming)
BTW recycling of materials from the oceans - seas to the ground takes place via birds feeding on aquatic species.

[agni]

The vast majority of us don't need the 3500 kcal per person per day used in Pimentel's survey. Okinawan females average 1100 kcal/day and males, not much more than that. It could be argued that anyone who eats much more than that is eating too much.

If I was forced to stay at 1100 kcal for any extended periods of time I would seriously start looking into eating other humans! And I am a skinny 130lb guy.

[EnergySpin]

No human should eat 3500 calories a day in modern society, otherwise it ends up a fat slob.
Unless someone is really in heavy construction work, 2200 (men) and 1800 (women) is plenty. No sense in eating 3500 calories a day and then go to have gastric bypass surgery or work out 3 hrs a day

[EnergySpin]

The vast majority of us don't need the 3500 kcal per person per day used in Pimentel's survey.

Pimentel is a guy with an agenda ... many of the conservationist biologists do view the human species as vermin and need to seriously examine their system level thinking. Pimentel wants the land that has been designated to agriculture to revert to wildlife yesterday.... for him humans are just a parasitic species. A more balanced approach is the one offered by REAL system level thinkers like James Lovelock or Lynn Margulin. They do view the current situation as unstainable but do recognise the role of technology as nodal in solving both the environment and human society.
That unfortunately involves both geology and microbiology and the need to consider energy material flow cycles as processes amenable to intervention (geobiochemistry). But unless one thinks outside the box of 101 Ecology he will never come up with an answer that allows humans in the big picture.
Read the article by Pimentel (I actually read it a couple of months ago, I was researching the possible health impacts of my lactoovovegetarian diet). The conclusion that should come to after he carefully reads it is that NO DIET IS SUSTAINABLE IN THE LONG RUN. So ... how come terrestrial animal life still persists on this planet?
Having said that ... we do need to cut back and scale down and power down, but Pimentel and a bunch of other folks would only be happy with two hundred thousand people living in caves.

[LadyRuby]

Thanks for the link. Interesting, I never would have expected eggs and milk to be more energy intensive than chicken and turkeys. Hate seeing lamb as the worst, we don't eat it often but it's one of my favorites. Too bad it doesn't list fish/shellfish, I would imagine they'd require relatively little fossil energy.

Anyway I think eating less meat and fewer calories in general would probably be a good thing.

TABLE 2 Animal production in the United States and the fossil energy required to produce 1 kcal of animal protein


Lamb 57:1
Beef cattle 40:1
Eggs 39:1
Swine 14:1
Dairy (milk) 14:1
Turkeys 10:1
Broilers 4:1

Fossil energy is expended in livestock production systems (Table 2). For example, broiler chicken production is the most efficient, with an input of 4 kcal of fossil energy for each 1 kcal of broiler protein produced. The broiler system is primarily dependent on grain. Turkey, also a grain-fed system, is next in efficiency, with a ratio of 10:1. Milk production, based on a mixture of two-thirds grain and one-third forage, is relatively efficient, with a ratio of 14:1. Both pork and egg production also depend on grain. Pork production has a ratio of 14:1, whereas egg production has a 39:1 ratio.

The 2 livestock systems depending most heavily on forage but also using significant amounts of grain are the beef and lamb production systems (Table 3). The beef system has a ratio of 40:1, while the lamb has the highest, with a ratio of 57:1 (Table 2). If these animals were fed on only good-quality pasture, the energy inputs could be reduced by about half.

[savethehumans]

Too bad it doesn't list fish/shellfish, I would imagine they'd require relatively little fossil energy.

I imagine, Ruby, that once you get into the costs of running a fish farm (fishery), fuel for fishing fleet boats, cost of processing/manufacturing/delivery, et al, that the fosfuel count for fish would make us BOTH lose our appetites!

Anyone know where such statistics may be found?

[BabyPeanut]

The vast majority of us don't need the 3500 kcal per person per day used in Pimentel's survey. Okinawan females average 1100 kcal/day and males, not much more than that. It could be argued that anyone who eats much more than that is eating too much.

If I was forced to stay at 1100 kcal for any extended periods of time I would seriously start looking into eating other humans! And I am a skinny 130lb guy.

Study surface-to-volume ratio. You will find that the smaller an organism is the faster it loses heat. Therefor the more calories it needs to stay in place. Put on some weight and in the long run you will need to eat less.

The tiny short-tailed shrew must eat 1 1/2 times its own body weight in insects each day.

[FoxV]

here I think is one of those areas where "Free Market Forces" will actually work. As energy gets more expensive, the more energy intesive foods will also become more expensive, forcing us to eat food which requires less energy

I believe the effect will also be exponential so that if energy price increase causes vegetables to double in price, it'll have a quadruple effect for meat (double the energy cost to produce the grain X double the energy cost to produce the meat)

So we may move to more healthy vegetarian lifestyle simply because that's all we can afford. The double big Mac with extra cheese and beacon is going to be a luxury (for those that can stomach it)

[Ludi]

Food! One of my favorite topics! And a very complicated subject. As others point out, you can't just simply say "a vegetarian diet uses less energy to produce." Not necessarily. Much vegetarian food is highly processed, any kind of highly processed and overpacked food is going to use much more energy than less processed.

I just got a book you might be interested in, "One Circle" by Dave Duhan, which describes a simple, very low energy intensive diet you can grow yourself (or purchase), with complete nutrient information, as well as discussion of energy requirements of vegetarian versus omni diets.

One Circle

[HeterosexOrgan]

One thing that I don't think has been mentioned is the relationship between the meat industry and pollution/ozone layer depletion/resources depletion.
Beef cattle grazing is the major form of consumption on the planet.
It takes somethinglike 80 times teh energy expended to get one unit of energy/capital from meat. Green revolution techniques are less wasteful whilst still being almost totally wasteful.

I'm not sure if people are just talking about diets or meat-eating's effect on the world. Meat doesn't give you that much energy. Esp. not after you've digested it. Proper protein-combining and even the luxury of digestive enzymes/proteins from eggs can give you all you need and more.

[seldom_seen]

When you fill up your car you give it a certain amount of calories in gasoline. What if you gave it the same amount of calories in say kerosene? Your car would explode, or run like shit, or not run at all.

The point is that the gross amount of calories you put in to your body is highly irrelevant compared to the content of those calories.

The human brain requires a large amount of energy. The best form of energy for the human brain comes in the form proteins/amino acids and essential fatty acids found in meats and fish. Paleoanthropologists are converging on the theory that the human brain was only able to develop by the direct contribution of the energy dense nutrition found in meat and fish.

Think of throwing some newspaper on the fire, it burns fast and goes out quick. That is your potato chip. Think of throwing a log on the fire, it burns less bright but deeper and over a much longer duration. That is your salmon fillet, or your short ribs.

Whatever the environmental impacts of a vege versus meat diet are, it is irrelevant to the fact that you can't get the nutrition found in say an elk steak or some buffalo jerky in a potato. Humans are omnivirous with a slant towards the carnivore side. You will never find a starving vegetarian.

[HeterosexOrgan]

If I were you I would be cautiious trying to argue these kinds of theories using new scientific discoveries. Instead I suggest you try to understand older, more established facts on teh human body and nutrition first. Because of this, Im going to begin at the end of your argument and work my way back.

seldom:

Think of throwing some newspaper on the fire, it burns fast and goes out quick. That is your potato chip.

But it seems like you have an agenda, comparing a fast-burn deadly nightshade to meat. I assume you aren't talking about sweet-potato, which is a slow-burn energy rich food.

Paleoanthropologists are converging on the theory that the human brain was only able to develop by the direct contribution of the energy dense nutrition found in meat and fish.

This does indeed sound interesting. But what are the implications of this? What conclusions are you hoping to milk from this?
Are you suggesting that people who don't eat meat wont operate at the same intellectual efficiency as meat eaters?

The human brain requires a large amount of energy. The best form of energy for the human brain comes in the form proteins/amino acids and essential fatty acids found in meats and fish.

Which fatty acids and proteins?
I have been led to believe you can get the same ones from eating eggs. I could be wrong.

The point is that the gross amount of calories you put in to your body is highly irrelevant compared to the content of those calories.

My point is that the amount of energy it takes to digest meat subtracts from teh overall energy content. This would differ from person to person, of course. but if you are suggesting that the content of non-meat foods is somehow not adequate calorie-wise or in any other way, please be specific, because I think its a load of horseshit.

[Ludi]

Paleoanthropologists are converging on the theory that the human brain was only able to develop by the direct contribution of the energy dense nutrition found in meat and fish.

Many hunter-gatherer populations have been largely vegetarian, because vegetable foods take fewer calories to obtain, in many cases, than meat. Our early ancestors were probably scavengers eating from large animal kills, and became hunters later on. There isn't a huge variation in brain size between populations who are largely vegetarian and who are mostly carnivorous, so brain size is not dependent now on eating meat. These large brains probably developed during the Ice Ages when meat was the easiest food to obtain for humans, diets diverged after that, rather recently but still long enough for brain size to have been affected by diet, which it hasn't been. Brain size now seems to be separate from meat eating, so don't be worrying about human brains shrinking due to eating vegetables, it's not going to happen.