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Should We Eat Meat?: Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory
This book is a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination and critique of meat consumption by humans, throughout history and around the world. Setting the scene with a chapter on meat's role in human evolution and its growing influence during the development of agricultural practices, the book goes on to examine modern production systems, their costs, efficiencies and outputs. The major global trends of meat consumption are described: what part does meat play in changing modern diets in countries around the world? The heart of the book addresses the consequences of the "massive carnivory" of western diets, looking at the energy costs of meat and the huge impacts of meat production on land, water and the atmosphere. Health impacts are also covered, both positive and negative. In conclusion, the author looks forward at his vision of "rational meat eating," where environmental and health impacts are curbed, animals are treated more humanely, and alternative sources of protein are promoted. Eating Meat is not an ideological tract against carnivorousness but rather a careful evaluation of meat's roles in human diets and the environmental and health consequences of its production and consumption. It will be of interest to a wide readership including professionals and academics in food and agricultural production, human health and nutrition, environmental science and regulatory and policy making bodies around the world.
288 pages, Paperback
First published March 4, 2013
About the author
Vaclav Smil
61 books3,903 followersVaclav Smil Ph.D. (Geography, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of Pennsylvania State University, 1971; RNDr., Charles University, Prague, 1965), is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2010 was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
February 7, 2014
This was a slow read due to the many, many numbers, measurements, facts, figures, and explanations. Smil went to great lengths to ensure that he was comparing apples to apples before drawing conclusions. In the end, he believes animals should be raised for meat because meat is nutritionally beneficial and because so much by-product from making other foods can be used as animal feed rather than being wasted. That being said, he outlines suggestions for raising animals for meat in much less environmentally damaging ways than many current practices. He also explains that for the entire, growing, world population to have access to equal quantities of meat, there would need to be a reduction in consumption by today's biggest meat consumers. So, eat meat if you like it, but try to limit it and eat more vegetables, and choose a source that's raising animals for meat in an environmentally responsible fashion. Then, refer to this book for exact numbers and stats.
February 2, 2017
Smil is a smart guy, he's extensively researched the subject, and he doesn’t make stuff up (like Gary Taubes). But he’s an awful writer. In this case his book contains enough footnotes and is so difficult to get through even with a sympathetic reader, so that no one is going to be able to untangle this mess and identify if and where, exactly, he went wrong. Yes, you can profit from this book, but you’re going to have to exert the kind of attention that is normally reserved for a graduate-level college course. If you just accept what Smil says uncritically, you will be mostly right most of the time, but you’ll miss a lot of the most important information — including, unfortunately, the most critical information, that on the health value of meat, where he stumbles, and badly.
The chief value of the book is that he makes clear the extent to which humans and their livestock totally dominate the planet. He clearly understands a central point — the degree to which humans and livestock totally dominate the biosphere. This domination started, actually, in prehistory. He’s right about meat-eating in prehistory, and his discussion of the “prehistoric overkill” hypothesis is illuminating. In 1900, domesticated animal biomass was four times larger than that of all wild land mammals; by 2000, it was 25 times larger (p. 149). What does it take to produce all that meat? It takes a lot.
He even investigates the contribution of livestock to climate change. He’s heard of Goodland and Anhang’s 2009 estimate, but believes that they have overestimated the CO2 breathed out by cattle (p. 173). His discussion is brief but worth paying attention to, though he is overly sanguine about the ability of plant photosynthesis to re-absorb the CO2 emitted by cattle. Plants are being devastated by humans, and so if there’s a sudden increase in CO2 due to cattle respiration, I think you are going to see CO2 buildup in the atmosphere.
All this discussion is worthy of attention. However, when he gets to a critical subsection of the discussion — on human health — he really goes astray. The research lapses are quite startling. He is aware of Ancel Keys’ work decades ago, and is able to cite an obscure study by Mangels and Messina in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association; but somehow he is completely unaware of the China Study or any of Colin Campbell’s work. Campbell’s work tends to refute his contention that meat without the nasty fat, or at low levels of consumption, is not a health hazard. Even more alarmingly, he still evidently believes in the idea that vegetable proteins are inadequate, a view relying entirely on informal dogma that is completely lacking in scientific backing. He doesn’t cite any evidence to support this idea, and there isn’t any. The whole concept of “inferior vegetable protein” hasn’t even been coherently formulated, a point about which Smil is blissfully unaware. See A Vegetarian Sourcebook: The Nutrition, Ecology, and Ethics of a Natural Foods Diet, chapter 2, for a discussion.
What’s going on here? My guess is that Smil started out with an ideological predisposition to the middle of the nutritional road: not too much meat, not too little meat, just right. Then he went out and found some data to support his position. Finding some, he turned out a book which is essentially a data dump of what was on his desk or in his brain at the time. Because we live in a carnivorous culture, “moderate meat consumption” sounds pretty middle of the road, so most scientists and intellectuals are going to give him a pass without looking any further. The result: a carelessly researched and badly written mess.
His vegan scientific opponents, fortunately, don’t write this badly and are better informed. Check out How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease or nutritionfacts.org if you want to become better informed about the vast amount of scientific study which bears on the topic of meat eating.
The most likely hypothesis is that we are a naturally vegetarian species that got into meat-eating for essentially economic reasons, not nutritional reasons. That is: it was easier to kill something than to grow something, and tribes that hunted successfully had more leisure time in which to hone their hunting techniques, discover fire, invent the wheel, and so on. It’s possible that after 100,000 years or so that our DNA has substantially changed, but my suspicion that this sort of change takes much, much longer, perhaps on the order of millions of years. The science seems to be pretty clear that humans are the healthiest on a whole foods plant-based diet. In this respect we aren’t that much different, genetically, from our australopithecus ancestors many millions of years ago.
The chief value of the book is that he makes clear the extent to which humans and their livestock totally dominate the planet. He clearly understands a central point — the degree to which humans and livestock totally dominate the biosphere. This domination started, actually, in prehistory. He’s right about meat-eating in prehistory, and his discussion of the “prehistoric overkill” hypothesis is illuminating. In 1900, domesticated animal biomass was four times larger than that of all wild land mammals; by 2000, it was 25 times larger (p. 149). What does it take to produce all that meat? It takes a lot.
He even investigates the contribution of livestock to climate change. He’s heard of Goodland and Anhang’s 2009 estimate, but believes that they have overestimated the CO2 breathed out by cattle (p. 173). His discussion is brief but worth paying attention to, though he is overly sanguine about the ability of plant photosynthesis to re-absorb the CO2 emitted by cattle. Plants are being devastated by humans, and so if there’s a sudden increase in CO2 due to cattle respiration, I think you are going to see CO2 buildup in the atmosphere.
All this discussion is worthy of attention. However, when he gets to a critical subsection of the discussion — on human health — he really goes astray. The research lapses are quite startling. He is aware of Ancel Keys’ work decades ago, and is able to cite an obscure study by Mangels and Messina in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association; but somehow he is completely unaware of the China Study or any of Colin Campbell’s work. Campbell’s work tends to refute his contention that meat without the nasty fat, or at low levels of consumption, is not a health hazard. Even more alarmingly, he still evidently believes in the idea that vegetable proteins are inadequate, a view relying entirely on informal dogma that is completely lacking in scientific backing. He doesn’t cite any evidence to support this idea, and there isn’t any. The whole concept of “inferior vegetable protein” hasn’t even been coherently formulated, a point about which Smil is blissfully unaware. See A Vegetarian Sourcebook: The Nutrition, Ecology, and Ethics of a Natural Foods Diet, chapter 2, for a discussion.
What’s going on here? My guess is that Smil started out with an ideological predisposition to the middle of the nutritional road: not too much meat, not too little meat, just right. Then he went out and found some data to support his position. Finding some, he turned out a book which is essentially a data dump of what was on his desk or in his brain at the time. Because we live in a carnivorous culture, “moderate meat consumption” sounds pretty middle of the road, so most scientists and intellectuals are going to give him a pass without looking any further. The result: a carelessly researched and badly written mess.
His vegan scientific opponents, fortunately, don’t write this badly and are better informed. Check out How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease or nutritionfacts.org if you want to become better informed about the vast amount of scientific study which bears on the topic of meat eating.
The most likely hypothesis is that we are a naturally vegetarian species that got into meat-eating for essentially economic reasons, not nutritional reasons. That is: it was easier to kill something than to grow something, and tribes that hunted successfully had more leisure time in which to hone their hunting techniques, discover fire, invent the wheel, and so on. It’s possible that after 100,000 years or so that our DNA has substantially changed, but my suspicion that this sort of change takes much, much longer, perhaps on the order of millions of years. The science seems to be pretty clear that humans are the healthiest on a whole foods plant-based diet. In this respect we aren’t that much different, genetically, from our australopithecus ancestors many millions of years ago.
November 27, 2017
I am always on the lookout for solid arguments against veganism. This one, like every other I have encountered, flounders. ‘Our ancestors ate meat tho’ is the best rationale the author has for why we should eat meat. He acknowledges that humans can be perfectly healthy without exploiting animals but just says ‘humans like meat too much to stop so, therefore we won’t stop... so therefore it’s justified for us to continue’. Circular reasoning much?
October 18, 2016
Carnivory. Given the perfect storm of interdisciplinary complexity and passionate rhetoric on both sides of this debate, the question of meat-eating is a daunting topic to approach. With such a diverse bundle of issues (nutritional aspects, environmental impact, animal rights, etc), I've been on the look out for someone with serious academic cred to speak with authority and objectivity on this. Vaclav Smil! Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba, he is pretty much an expert in all the right things. This book nearly melted my eyeballs with its endless cataloging of studies and citations, but this also assured me that as far as neutrality and objectivity are concerned, Smil is about as fair as they come.
Spoiler: theoretically, we don't all have to become vegans. After making the case for our evolutionary adaption to omnivorous diets, then reviewing the problematic state of the current meat industry, Smil arrives at a defense for "rational meat-eating". Plenty needs to change for this to work, yet when addressing the transgressions of deforestation, overgrazing, emissions, water pollution, and extreme confinement, he notes that "those practices are not inherent prerequisites of large-scale meat production; they are essentially malpractices committed as a part of a short-sighted quest for maximised meat output at minimized cost."
Smil includes a lot of ideas for how global meat outputs could be decreased: making meat prices a truer reflection of environmental costs, and encouraging an increase in consumption of animal protein with a better energy-conversion ratio (like dairy and eggs), to name just two.
This isn't the type of book that ends with Smil telling you what to think. Makes me think of the old adage: "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." Conclusion: stay humble, stay open-minded, and definitely don't consider this a question fully answered. But plenty to chew on. Pun intended.
Spoiler: theoretically, we don't all have to become vegans. After making the case for our evolutionary adaption to omnivorous diets, then reviewing the problematic state of the current meat industry, Smil arrives at a defense for "rational meat-eating". Plenty needs to change for this to work, yet when addressing the transgressions of deforestation, overgrazing, emissions, water pollution, and extreme confinement, he notes that "those practices are not inherent prerequisites of large-scale meat production; they are essentially malpractices committed as a part of a short-sighted quest for maximised meat output at minimized cost."
Smil includes a lot of ideas for how global meat outputs could be decreased: making meat prices a truer reflection of environmental costs, and encouraging an increase in consumption of animal protein with a better energy-conversion ratio (like dairy and eggs), to name just two.
This isn't the type of book that ends with Smil telling you what to think. Makes me think of the old adage: "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." Conclusion: stay humble, stay open-minded, and definitely don't consider this a question fully answered. But plenty to chew on. Pun intended.
November 3, 2019
As a person who eats a mostly vegetarian diet, I have been looking for a book which dedicated itself to look at the actual facts known about meat and its consequences on our health, on society, and on our environment. This was that book for me.
The other readers have commented/complained about the density of numbers and references in Vaclav Smil's book. I admit, the reading will be slow, and it will probably be hard going at times. That said, personally, I appreciated that this was written like a graduate thesis. It was important for me that I could dig deeper into the references on any topic of interest and I could keep the figures he quoted in mind for when it came time to make my own conclusions.
Another point I could also make in defense of Vaclav Smil's style is that, for me personally anyways, a little sober number peddling is a welcome alternative to the polarized debate between meat lovers and vegetarians. I wanted someone who would take a researchers accounting of the facts when I picked up this book. I wasn't disappointed.
Apart from that, a little about what's actually in the book:
1. The Ancient History of People and Eating Meat
If you have an unquestioning ideological bend against the idea that meat has ever been a part of the healthy human diet then, thankfully, the first part of the book will turn you off and you won't have to waste any more time. Vaclav Smil says the simple truth. At our basic biology (e.g. our intestinal tract, our teeth, the essential amino acids our body does not produce itself) we are fine tuned to include meat as a substantial part of our diet.
Also, despite what other readers say, Vaclav Smil doesn't suggest that we can't live with a meatless diet, he just notes what is obvious for any serious anthropologist - us and our ancestors have been eating meat for a long time. You can live a healthy life while meatless but the consensus about our evolution as a species stays the same.
2. Livestock's Historical Role in Human Civilization
Vaclav Smil touches on what type of animals human beings picked as their ideal livestock. The topic is facinating. For instance, a bear would make a terrible livestock. A bear needs meat as part of its healthy diet. Similarly, anything but a herd animal would be too unruly and more dangerous to its handlers.
Then he discusses the historical advantages that ancient farmers took use of to make their subsistence living just a little easier. Large livestock could do work in the field. Also, horses and cows were able to eat the parts of crops that humans can't digest (the cellulose in plants is undigestible in humans and a lot of other animals). Cows were able to turn this inedible roughage into nutritious milk for human beings.
Separately, pigs and chickens could be relied on to either eat the garbage left over from human cooking or forage for themselves for their feed. I particularly liked the example of chickens or geese being flocked over a recently harvested field to eat any left over seeds.
3. The Manufacturing of Food - Feed Crops, CAFOs, Balanced Feed
This part of the book is the section that most surprised me. Like most other people, I'd seen the images of chickens in small cages, cows shoulder to shoulder at a feeding trough in giant facilities. Those images are the tip of an iceberg. The whole operation is much more industrial, more globalized, and enormously sophisticated.
Smil quickly does away with the terms "industrial farming" or "factory farming" and introduces the term Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). This is the term that describes the terrible living conditions of cows, pigs, and chickens who will live in the minimum space mandated by law in large feeding facilities. For chickens, that space is slightly larger than a legal sheet of paper per chicken. For pigs, and cows, often they are close enough that they are almost just rubbing against the animal next to them. Some of these facilities have only as much light in the animal areas as you would find on a moonlight night outside. Often the feces is not removed until the animals have been cleared. Smil documents all of this in extraordinary detail. Meat in modern society is for the first time cheaply and readily available to almost anyone. The tragedy, as Smil notes, is that it is born on the suffering of these animals.
The other, and as Smil points out, more environmentally significant aspect of modern meat production is feed crops and compound feeds. I ended up visualizing compound feeds as the Clif bars of animal feed. It is a food substance, often pelleted (I assume for easy portioning) of a balanced portion of macro and micro nutrients from various whole food sources and additives. Making this requires high yield crops such as corn and soybean to be sourced, often across national borders, to facilities for the large scale mixing. The net effect of this work - the farming, the transport, the industrial processing, and the feeding to animals rather than feeding directly to humans - results in a high energy cost for each pound of meat eaten by a person. This translates to a large contribution to the global warming of our environment.
The couple of chapters that deal with that in depth are worth reading twice to learn about the fascinating globalized web that brings meat to our tables.
4. The Potential Role for Meat in a Future with Many More Mouths to Feed
Smil takes his time to make his case but I'll be up front about it, he sees meat as a necessary part of any future solutions that make better use of current farm lands to feed even more people. Unlike what I saw some other readers claim, Smil doesn't say that the world can't be well nourished on a vegetarian diet with the current farm lands we have. What he says, which is obvious, is that most people are not willing to stop eating meat. If anything, the more money that individuals in developing countries have, the more likely they are to regularly buy meat. Smil is being pragmatic in his predictions.
What he does make a case for, is being more rational with our meat production. For instance, cows eating plant matter that is inedible to humans anyways could be a larger part of their diet with no detriment to farmland dedicated for producing crops directly for human consumption. Those cows could also produce milk, which is much more energy efficient per pound of feed for a cow.
He also talks about the benefits of growing fish aquafarms and the relatively much more efficient feeding of such. He talks about ways to extend ground meat with portions of soy. He also, and I appreciated this, talked about all of us eating a little less meat. There is already a trend to that in developed countries. He makes a lot of sensible suggestions for the reader to consider.
TL;DR This is a great book. There is much to learn about how meat gets from a farm to the grocery store, the treatment of animals, the role of animals in mankind's history. I think any vegetarian or would be vegetarians should pick this up, if only to hear the perspective of an academic who has seriously researched the topic of humanity's relationship to meat.
The other readers have commented/complained about the density of numbers and references in Vaclav Smil's book. I admit, the reading will be slow, and it will probably be hard going at times. That said, personally, I appreciated that this was written like a graduate thesis. It was important for me that I could dig deeper into the references on any topic of interest and I could keep the figures he quoted in mind for when it came time to make my own conclusions.
Another point I could also make in defense of Vaclav Smil's style is that, for me personally anyways, a little sober number peddling is a welcome alternative to the polarized debate between meat lovers and vegetarians. I wanted someone who would take a researchers accounting of the facts when I picked up this book. I wasn't disappointed.
Apart from that, a little about what's actually in the book:
1. The Ancient History of People and Eating Meat
If you have an unquestioning ideological bend against the idea that meat has ever been a part of the healthy human diet then, thankfully, the first part of the book will turn you off and you won't have to waste any more time. Vaclav Smil says the simple truth. At our basic biology (e.g. our intestinal tract, our teeth, the essential amino acids our body does not produce itself) we are fine tuned to include meat as a substantial part of our diet.
Also, despite what other readers say, Vaclav Smil doesn't suggest that we can't live with a meatless diet, he just notes what is obvious for any serious anthropologist - us and our ancestors have been eating meat for a long time. You can live a healthy life while meatless but the consensus about our evolution as a species stays the same.
2. Livestock's Historical Role in Human Civilization
Vaclav Smil touches on what type of animals human beings picked as their ideal livestock. The topic is facinating. For instance, a bear would make a terrible livestock. A bear needs meat as part of its healthy diet. Similarly, anything but a herd animal would be too unruly and more dangerous to its handlers.
Then he discusses the historical advantages that ancient farmers took use of to make their subsistence living just a little easier. Large livestock could do work in the field. Also, horses and cows were able to eat the parts of crops that humans can't digest (the cellulose in plants is undigestible in humans and a lot of other animals). Cows were able to turn this inedible roughage into nutritious milk for human beings.
Separately, pigs and chickens could be relied on to either eat the garbage left over from human cooking or forage for themselves for their feed. I particularly liked the example of chickens or geese being flocked over a recently harvested field to eat any left over seeds.
3. The Manufacturing of Food - Feed Crops, CAFOs, Balanced Feed
This part of the book is the section that most surprised me. Like most other people, I'd seen the images of chickens in small cages, cows shoulder to shoulder at a feeding trough in giant facilities. Those images are the tip of an iceberg. The whole operation is much more industrial, more globalized, and enormously sophisticated.
Smil quickly does away with the terms "industrial farming" or "factory farming" and introduces the term Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). This is the term that describes the terrible living conditions of cows, pigs, and chickens who will live in the minimum space mandated by law in large feeding facilities. For chickens, that space is slightly larger than a legal sheet of paper per chicken. For pigs, and cows, often they are close enough that they are almost just rubbing against the animal next to them. Some of these facilities have only as much light in the animal areas as you would find on a moonlight night outside. Often the feces is not removed until the animals have been cleared. Smil documents all of this in extraordinary detail. Meat in modern society is for the first time cheaply and readily available to almost anyone. The tragedy, as Smil notes, is that it is born on the suffering of these animals.
The other, and as Smil points out, more environmentally significant aspect of modern meat production is feed crops and compound feeds. I ended up visualizing compound feeds as the Clif bars of animal feed. It is a food substance, often pelleted (I assume for easy portioning) of a balanced portion of macro and micro nutrients from various whole food sources and additives. Making this requires high yield crops such as corn and soybean to be sourced, often across national borders, to facilities for the large scale mixing. The net effect of this work - the farming, the transport, the industrial processing, and the feeding to animals rather than feeding directly to humans - results in a high energy cost for each pound of meat eaten by a person. This translates to a large contribution to the global warming of our environment.
The couple of chapters that deal with that in depth are worth reading twice to learn about the fascinating globalized web that brings meat to our tables.
4. The Potential Role for Meat in a Future with Many More Mouths to Feed
Smil takes his time to make his case but I'll be up front about it, he sees meat as a necessary part of any future solutions that make better use of current farm lands to feed even more people. Unlike what I saw some other readers claim, Smil doesn't say that the world can't be well nourished on a vegetarian diet with the current farm lands we have. What he says, which is obvious, is that most people are not willing to stop eating meat. If anything, the more money that individuals in developing countries have, the more likely they are to regularly buy meat. Smil is being pragmatic in his predictions.
What he does make a case for, is being more rational with our meat production. For instance, cows eating plant matter that is inedible to humans anyways could be a larger part of their diet with no detriment to farmland dedicated for producing crops directly for human consumption. Those cows could also produce milk, which is much more energy efficient per pound of feed for a cow.
He also talks about the benefits of growing fish aquafarms and the relatively much more efficient feeding of such. He talks about ways to extend ground meat with portions of soy. He also, and I appreciated this, talked about all of us eating a little less meat. There is already a trend to that in developed countries. He makes a lot of sensible suggestions for the reader to consider.
TL;DR This is a great book. There is much to learn about how meat gets from a farm to the grocery store, the treatment of animals, the role of animals in mankind's history. I think any vegetarian or would be vegetarians should pick this up, if only to hear the perspective of an academic who has seriously researched the topic of humanity's relationship to meat.
May 23, 2022
Let's see....I can't really say I read it in full, rather skimmed parts to get a sense of this book. The author, a prolific researcher and academic of international renown, and a professor emeritus at the U of Manitoba, has attempted to analyze rigorous research from a wide range of fields related to the evolution and consequences of modern carnivory. It is well laid out in sequence, with the concluding section an examination of " Possible Futures". The book is relatively unemotional and unbiased with considerable data transformed into useful information. However, be prepared to concentrate through the level and quantity of information. Excellent source of information for making personal and policy decisions!
September 10, 2023
This is a really well-research, comprehensive study on meat. The TL;DR is
A) meat is not bad: it provides nutrients that vegetarian diets cannot; hominids have always been omnivores; and meat eating certainly contributed to bigger brain and socially to humans; only excessive consumption of saturated fat is associated with cardiovascular diseases, not meat per se.
B) Cost: Meat production (esp. CAFOs) carries environmental costs and unnecessary cruelty to animals; every unit of weight gain requires 7-9 units of feeds for cattle, 5-6 for pig, 1.5-1.6 for chicken; and only 38% of live weight end up for human consumption.
C) Possible future: complete avoidance of meat is unnecessary and in-vitro production is still challenging. About 25% of meat consumption can be substituted by other means. E.g., fungi have high-quality proteins; milk is great and has a highly efficient conversion of human-indigestible cellulosic substance to protein; fish has an efficient 1.1:1 ratio of converting feed into body weight, (but the feed has to be other fish). With better management, we can supply meat to significant portion of world population w/o significant impact on environment, but a lot of change in practice is needed.
A) meat is not bad: it provides nutrients that vegetarian diets cannot; hominids have always been omnivores; and meat eating certainly contributed to bigger brain and socially to humans; only excessive consumption of saturated fat is associated with cardiovascular diseases, not meat per se.
B) Cost: Meat production (esp. CAFOs) carries environmental costs and unnecessary cruelty to animals; every unit of weight gain requires 7-9 units of feeds for cattle, 5-6 for pig, 1.5-1.6 for chicken; and only 38% of live weight end up for human consumption.
C) Possible future: complete avoidance of meat is unnecessary and in-vitro production is still challenging. About 25% of meat consumption can be substituted by other means. E.g., fungi have high-quality proteins; milk is great and has a highly efficient conversion of human-indigestible cellulosic substance to protein; fish has an efficient 1.1:1 ratio of converting feed into body weight, (but the feed has to be other fish). With better management, we can supply meat to significant portion of world population w/o significant impact on environment, but a lot of change in practice is needed.
February 7, 2016
Wow. I brushed through this one today and boy oh boy. Lots of interesting data about the past and all the way up to present day. Historically I've been quite the carnivore and it's extremely difficult for me to not eat a small amount of bacon once a week (although I try to eat uncured, natural). Within the last year I've shifted my diet to a higher consumption of vegetables and less red meat. I'm a huge sushi fan. And I find myself victim of the "truffle grass fed medium rare burgers" from time to time. This book will impact my diet further, as I'm already focusing on eating more super foods in addition to protein supplements. This book is absolutely jammed packed with interesting statistics and data points. It's a very interesting look at the evolutionary side of food consumption. This trend away from farm fresh food and reliance on restaurants for food consumption is alarming. I think that there should be a huge emphasis on driving quality across the restaurant spectrum because honestly, I don't see the eating habits changing much here in the USA over the next 20 years, at least from the standpoint of where the food is actually consumed. Overall, I think this is a great book and should help you think about meat, and the entire supply chain process, and how the past has come to impact our current and future state.
February 17, 2019
As others have already noted, this reads more like a lengthy research paper than a book. For readers more inclined towards mainstream "pop science" books, this type of text could prove rather daunting. For myself, the more number heavy the text became, the more likely I was to skim through those paragraphs. However, I appreciated the use of statistical analysis throughout, as it gave me the confidence that Smil has done the necessary research for such a complex and layered topic.
What I most appreciate about Smil is that he looks at the material from a very broad viewpoint, and in the process will often point out common misconceptions or "debunk" widely dispersed beliefs, the kind that are so easily reinforced through misleading headlines and clickbait online articles. Here are just a few examples.
1) One of the first things he does is discuss the arbitrariness of what is commonly defined as "meat". I have found this myself in reading studies that highlight negative health effects of meat, only to find the fine print distinguish that this only includes red meat, or in some cases, only red processed meat.
2) He distinguishes between saturated and monounsaturated/polyunsaturated fats. "A common misconception has been to see meat as a dangerously high source of SFA, while their amount, even in red meat, is actually lower per edible portion than the combined quantities of MUFA and PUFA."
3) He points out that most studies that highlight negative health effects of meat only actually find "convincing causation" in the population that is consuming the highest amounts of meat. He discusses this for studies of risk for cardiovascular diseases as well as colorectal cancer.
4) He discusses the absurdity of paleolithic diets, for many reasons, but mostly for the vast differences in wild game vs today's domesticated meat.
I could go on and on, as he continues to make these (what I see as incredibly rational) points throughout the book. This isn't to say I agreed with ALL of his lines of thinking, but for the vast majority I found his research to be sound and well analyzed. The only other negative for me was that sometimes Smil would make mention of a seemingly important/interesting fact, and then not discuss or investigate it any further. The one example that immediately comes to mind is on page 64, where he states "Specific meat taboos have often denied high quality protein to women and even children." He then says nothing more about the subject, such as the reason behind these taboos or where in world history this practice has taken place.
Overall I would say this is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to delve deeper into the established facts of both past and current meat eating practices.
What I most appreciate about Smil is that he looks at the material from a very broad viewpoint, and in the process will often point out common misconceptions or "debunk" widely dispersed beliefs, the kind that are so easily reinforced through misleading headlines and clickbait online articles. Here are just a few examples.
1) One of the first things he does is discuss the arbitrariness of what is commonly defined as "meat". I have found this myself in reading studies that highlight negative health effects of meat, only to find the fine print distinguish that this only includes red meat, or in some cases, only red processed meat.
2) He distinguishes between saturated and monounsaturated/polyunsaturated fats. "A common misconception has been to see meat as a dangerously high source of SFA, while their amount, even in red meat, is actually lower per edible portion than the combined quantities of MUFA and PUFA."
3) He points out that most studies that highlight negative health effects of meat only actually find "convincing causation" in the population that is consuming the highest amounts of meat. He discusses this for studies of risk for cardiovascular diseases as well as colorectal cancer.
4) He discusses the absurdity of paleolithic diets, for many reasons, but mostly for the vast differences in wild game vs today's domesticated meat.
I could go on and on, as he continues to make these (what I see as incredibly rational) points throughout the book. This isn't to say I agreed with ALL of his lines of thinking, but for the vast majority I found his research to be sound and well analyzed. The only other negative for me was that sometimes Smil would make mention of a seemingly important/interesting fact, and then not discuss or investigate it any further. The one example that immediately comes to mind is on page 64, where he states "Specific meat taboos have often denied high quality protein to women and even children." He then says nothing more about the subject, such as the reason behind these taboos or where in world history this practice has taken place.
Overall I would say this is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to delve deeper into the established facts of both past and current meat eating practices.
March 2, 2016
if only Smil was a better writer and found a better editor :?
Fascinating insights and very laboriously created book - like most of Smil's books.
Conclusion:
Cattle / Beef is extremely inefficient when you consider water use, 'evapotranspiration', waste, gases and stuff like, 40% of live weight goes to other pet feed and fertilizer
Chicken and Pig seem surprisingly efficient - quick turnaround
But efficient production is still lacking in the world.
The book gives no simple answer to questions, but instead one has to come to one's own conclusions.
Difficult book to read.
Fascinating insights and very laboriously created book - like most of Smil's books.
Conclusion:
Cattle / Beef is extremely inefficient when you consider water use, 'evapotranspiration', waste, gases and stuff like, 40% of live weight goes to other pet feed and fertilizer
Chicken and Pig seem surprisingly efficient - quick turnaround
But efficient production is still lacking in the world.
The book gives no simple answer to questions, but instead one has to come to one's own conclusions.
Difficult book to read.
December 9, 2015
Vaclav Smil Should We Eat Meat? 2/5
- generic POV on eating meat. not learn much
Humans can live without meat but that doesn’t mean that we must or should. While today’s methods and rate of meat production involve a variety of environmental impacts and animal rights issues, the answer is not to stop eating meat altogether but to produce it more rationally.
- generic POV on eating meat. not learn much
Humans can live without meat but that doesn’t mean that we must or should. While today’s methods and rate of meat production involve a variety of environmental impacts and animal rights issues, the answer is not to stop eating meat altogether but to produce it more rationally.
August 4, 2020
This reads like a middle schoolers presentation that tried to cram all of the numbers he found on Wikipedia into a book. Not enjoyable at all.
March 13, 2022
I think this is probably the most detailed case study into meat and civilization that I have read and while it is packed with numbers, Smil goes back to the very beginning and takes the reader through each and every aspect step by step. He states from the outset that he has thoroughly researched every aspect of carnivory and notes clearly that his assessment does not include dairy products as that is a whole different set of issues and discussion points (which I hope he will address in another book). He also notes that he has undertaken this work as objectively as possible and expects the same from the reader, although acknowledges that this can be difficult given some of the subjects covered. Smil starts with how we as a species began eating meat and why, including the importance of this in developing the larger brains that have allowed us to arrive in our current state (for better and worse). He then covers meat production in great detail, the pros, the cons, and the inbetweens and while this is largely US focused, he does make comparisons to the wider world, particularly where there are notable differences in what is and is not permitted (the US is rather lenient in a lot of ways).
He then wraps up with the future role of meat in human diets. Now this is where things become sticky for a lot of people given the issues that Smil covered in the prior section. He does lean towards a future of continued inclusion of meat within human diets, but this is heavily caveated that it needs to be a much smaller proportion than it is currently and produced in a much more environmentally sustainable and far more humane manner. He does note that it would be quite possible for humans to be entirely well nourished on a vegetarian diet, although he is less supportive of a vegan diets due to the constraints in obtaining sufficient digestible protein and other certain nutrients which he explains while acknowledging it is a ever changing situation. But as part of his assessment he considers humans themselves (ourselves?) and the likelihood of a large scale change of attitude, one that has yet to occur in the decades since the damage caused by modern meat production became widely known (a depressing yet accurate statement). His conclusion is for a more rational approach to carnivory based on low intakes of meat, based on animal husbandry and farming that works with the environment on smaller local scales, for which he provides some interesting proposals and suggestions, including how to maximise the efficiencies, such as feeding animals with crops that we cannot eat, such as grass feeding, rather than producing high energy feeds that require acres of monoculture to produce leaving little for other direct food stuffs or wildlife. While this may not be the answer that many readers would want, it is a rational one as presented by the research and evidence to date, including that of human behaviour which is ultimately the main factor in the success or otherwise of any large scale changes.
He then wraps up with the future role of meat in human diets. Now this is where things become sticky for a lot of people given the issues that Smil covered in the prior section. He does lean towards a future of continued inclusion of meat within human diets, but this is heavily caveated that it needs to be a much smaller proportion than it is currently and produced in a much more environmentally sustainable and far more humane manner. He does note that it would be quite possible for humans to be entirely well nourished on a vegetarian diet, although he is less supportive of a vegan diets due to the constraints in obtaining sufficient digestible protein and other certain nutrients which he explains while acknowledging it is a ever changing situation. But as part of his assessment he considers humans themselves (ourselves?) and the likelihood of a large scale change of attitude, one that has yet to occur in the decades since the damage caused by modern meat production became widely known (a depressing yet accurate statement). His conclusion is for a more rational approach to carnivory based on low intakes of meat, based on animal husbandry and farming that works with the environment on smaller local scales, for which he provides some interesting proposals and suggestions, including how to maximise the efficiencies, such as feeding animals with crops that we cannot eat, such as grass feeding, rather than producing high energy feeds that require acres of monoculture to produce leaving little for other direct food stuffs or wildlife. While this may not be the answer that many readers would want, it is a rational one as presented by the research and evidence to date, including that of human behaviour which is ultimately the main factor in the success or otherwise of any large scale changes.
Read
November 2, 2022YES ✔️
Discover the pros and cons of eating meat and how we could produce it in a more responsible way.
Ever since our ancestors hunted game together on the African savannah, eating meat has played a key role in human evolution and culture. Although a vegetarian diet can provide sufficient nutrition, meat is still superior when it comes to providing valuable proteins and fat, which is especially important for growing children.
The rise of modern technology has made it possible to produce staggering amounts of meat every year, which has led to an explosion in meat consumption around the world. Unfortunately, this has come at considerable cost to the environment. Still, vegetarianism is not the solution to these problems. As this book will show you, the solution lies in lowering consumption and producing meat in a more rational way.
---
High-quality meat proteins are essential for human development and health.
As a kid you probably learned about the food pyramid and the importance of carbohydrates and proteins for healthy growth and sustained energy. But did you know that some proteins are better than others? They’re called high-quality proteins and you get many of them by eating animal products.
In fact, humans evolved to eat other animals. For instance, a human’s digestive tract is clearly different from that of a herbivore because it has enzymes which developed specifically to digest meat.
But how does meat fit into our diets?
You can think about eating as the process of supplying yourself with the things necessary to sustain your metabolism and maintain, as well as grow, your body. To do that you need both macronutrients like carbohydrates, fats and protein, and micronutrients like vitamins. It just so happens that meat is an excellent source of both macro- and micronutrients, and proteins in particular.
For example, the high-quality protein in meat is essential for young children and serves a crucial function in brain growth. In addition, the energy per gram of fat in meat is more than double that of carbohydrates, clocking in at a whopping 39 kilojoules per gram as opposed to 17.3 for carbohydrates. Meat is also a superb source of iron, which is important because iron deficiency is a major global issue, affecting up to 1.6 billion worldwide. It can lead to impaired brain development and even maternal death.
But despite all the beneficial aspects of including meat in your diet there are some drawbacks. Meat production has a negative impact on the environment. That’s because the per-capita supply of meat available in many nations is higher than the average grown adult weight of 65 kilograms to 80 kilograms. This is an issue because the agricultural processes tied to meat production use a lot of energy and incur a variety of other costs. We’ll find out more about these.
---
Meat played an important role in human evolution.
Have you ever noticed how prevalent meat eating is throughout history? It’s not a coincidence. In fact, meat served a crucial role in human evolution.
For instance, while historical meat consumption has fluctuated, purely vegetarian societies are few and far between. That’s because most cultures saw meat as an indicator of privilege and social status – a reasonable association, given that meat played an important function in the evolution of the human species, and especially our brains. All that protein and iron helped us grow bigger and better grey matter.
But meat didn’t just affect the structure of our brains, it was also key to our social development. The biologist Craig Stanford has linked human intelligence to meat consumption thanks to his observations of chimps. Like chimps, humans hunted in groups to distribute the risk involved, and because when they joined forces they could kill larger animals like bison or mammoths that were higher in fat and had a bigger nutritional pay-off. That meant finding ways to communicate and get along.
So the collective activity of hunting these big creatures helped humans develop language, begin socialization and engage in strategic thinking – sometimes even trading meat for sex.
Since meat was hard to get, people who had it were exalted to greater social heights, reaping status and privilege along the way. In this way, meat became a central facet of religious ceremonies and language, with the leader entitled to the finest cuts.
Meat consumption has also changed with society. When humans first started eating meat they ate everything they could get their hands on from a colossal mammoth to a measly finch. But today humans consume a much smaller variety of species, a result of domestication – the controlled breeding of a species to affect its function or productivity. It began with goats and sheep around 11,000 years ago and moved on to cows about 1,000 years later.
As society and technology have gone on developing, the way we keep and consume domestic animals has changed, too.
---
Increased meat production and consumption are symbols of the transition to modernity.
OK, so all this evolution happened millennia ago, but there has been a more recent evolution, and it all began in the nineteenth century.
Why?
Because in the 1800s global trade intensified, which meant that animal fodder could be imported more cheaply and more meat animals raised on it. And once the first US patent was issued for a refrigerated train car in 1867, and the Frigorifique became the first ship to transport refrigerated meat from Argentina to France in 1876, large-scale and long-distance transportation of refrigerated and frozen meat led to higher production to satisfy a new world market.
As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, this change accelerated. The staple consumption of carbohydrates like cereal and legumes continued to decline, whilst consumption of animal products – and meat in particular – achieved unprecedented heights. In short, meat consumption rose again when meat production improved yet again. How?
First, animals used to serve a crucial function as labor in agriculture and transportation. That all changed when the internal combustion engine took over their role. Second, crop production and animal husbandry used to go hand-in-hand because the nitrogen in animal manure was necessary for agriculture. But artificial nitrogenous fertilizers eliminated that need. Third, these new fertilizers and mechanized farming meant that higher crop yields were achieved on less land and with fewer workers, making crops for animal feed easier to come by.
Demand rose again in the mid-twentieth century, especially when middle-class women left the home and started to work. Not only did they have a greater disposable income, they also had less time to cook, and sought out easily prepared meat to make nutritious meals for their families.
---
In the twenty-first century, meat is produced on a huge scale.
For thousands of years domesticated meat production was done by either a farmer making use of grasslands in the country or by practitioners of mixed farming who integrated animal husbandry and crop production seamlessly into one another. But these methods are mostly a thing of the past.
Today, we have a systematic chain of meat production from breeding to raising to slaughtering to processing to distribution.
The scale of this production chain is enormous. To give you an idea of just how big it is, consider the fact that in 2010 alone humans slaughtered 55 billion chickens, 3 billion ducks and turkeys, 1.4 billion pigs and 300 million cows, most of them in out of sight, large-scale facilities and oftentimes at the hands of unskilled workers, who have little job or financial security.
Any businessperson knows that higher production always has a down side, and meat is no exception. When per capita meat consumption was relatively low, livestock production didn’t cause any major transformations to the environment at local, regional or global levels. But that all changed forever as people came to expect more meat on their table.
---
Meat alternatives all have limitations.
So, you’ve seen how meat production plays a role in global warming and deforestation. But what’s the alternative? Is not eating meat the only option? Maybe not.
If the number of vegetarians increased, that would help, but given the centrality of meat to our diet this wouldn’t be a wise move. For instance, a vegetarian diet can be as nutritious as one that includes meat but it requires more effort. That’s because vegetarians are hard pressed to ensure their diets include enough metals. Since one kilogram of vegetables isn’t nutritionally comparable to one kilogram of meat, it’s much easier to achieve a balanced diet by eating meat, especially for a young child.
So, while vegetarianism is common in some Asian cultures, there is no Western culture with a rate of vegetarianism and veganism higher than four percent. Although these numbers could go up, vegetarianism will never replace meat eating or become a common practice in the West.
But what about meat substitutes or meat made in a lab?
Meat substitutes have long been consumed in cuisines including Indian, Chinese and Japanese – think of tempeh or seitan. In fact, sales of such products are on the rise in the West, and in 2011 they increased ten percent in the United States alone. However, consumption of meat substitutes in the United States in 2010 amounted to only $270 million, a mere 0.2 percent of the country’s annual meat sales of $160 billion. So it’s highly unlikely that meat substitutes replace the real thing. Even Asian cultures are experiencing a rising demand for real meat.
Another potential change is the production of cultured meat, that is meat made on an industrial scale in laboratories. Naturally this would mean less animal mistreatment and a decrease in the transportation burden of the whole enterprise, but progress is slow and animal muscles are incredibly complex. To replace just ten percent of current annual meat production, 30 million tons per year would need to be lab made. Therefore, cultured meat is nothing but a science fiction.
However, there is one other way.
---
The best solution is to continue producing meat but to do so rationally.
The truth is, current levels of meat production and consumption are not fixed. Although eating huge quantities of meat has become a mass phenomenon, it doesn’t have to remain one. We don’t even need to sacrifice our vital protein intake to do this.
That’s because there are other fantastic sources of protein beyond meat, like dairy products and eggs. While these can’t replace meat entirely, they can certainly put a dent in our consumption.
But what about lactose intolerance?
Actually it’s a smaller issue than you’d think. Japan and China are increasing their dairy intake, and even those with lactose intolerance can enjoy some milk.
Another great source of protein is fish. While the world’s oceans are already in peril, freshwater or farmed fish are viable alternatives. By combining them with dairy and eggs we can substantially decrease our meat consumption, but we won’t be able to cut it to zero.
That’s because current meat consumption per capita in many areas is off the charts at an average of 40 kilograms a year and over 100 kilograms a year in places like the United States, Spain and Brazil. This fact, combined with a growing global population and increasing numbers of developed countries makes higher meat intake very likely. However, by replacing some consumption with meat substitutes like seitan and eggs, this increase can be curbed. So the real question is, how much meat can we produce with minimal impact?
The rational production of meat will require improvements to efficiency, reductions in waste and a minimization of environmental impacts. To do so we’ll need to produce more animals with better grain to body mass conversion rate, like chicken, which have a two kilograms of feed to one kilogram of meat ratio.
By producing meat rationally we would be able to produce something between the output of France at 16 kilograms per year per capita, and Japan – the country with the highest life expectancy – at 28 kilograms.
---
Humans can live without meat but that doesn’t mean that we must or should. While today’s methods and rate of meat production involve a variety of environmental impacts and animal rights issues, the answer is not to stop eating meat altogether but to produce it more rationally.
Discover the pros and cons of eating meat and how we could produce it in a more responsible way.
Ever since our ancestors hunted game together on the African savannah, eating meat has played a key role in human evolution and culture. Although a vegetarian diet can provide sufficient nutrition, meat is still superior when it comes to providing valuable proteins and fat, which is especially important for growing children.
The rise of modern technology has made it possible to produce staggering amounts of meat every year, which has led to an explosion in meat consumption around the world. Unfortunately, this has come at considerable cost to the environment. Still, vegetarianism is not the solution to these problems. As this book will show you, the solution lies in lowering consumption and producing meat in a more rational way.
---
High-quality meat proteins are essential for human development and health.
As a kid you probably learned about the food pyramid and the importance of carbohydrates and proteins for healthy growth and sustained energy. But did you know that some proteins are better than others? They’re called high-quality proteins and you get many of them by eating animal products.
In fact, humans evolved to eat other animals. For instance, a human’s digestive tract is clearly different from that of a herbivore because it has enzymes which developed specifically to digest meat.
But how does meat fit into our diets?
You can think about eating as the process of supplying yourself with the things necessary to sustain your metabolism and maintain, as well as grow, your body. To do that you need both macronutrients like carbohydrates, fats and protein, and micronutrients like vitamins. It just so happens that meat is an excellent source of both macro- and micronutrients, and proteins in particular.
For example, the high-quality protein in meat is essential for young children and serves a crucial function in brain growth. In addition, the energy per gram of fat in meat is more than double that of carbohydrates, clocking in at a whopping 39 kilojoules per gram as opposed to 17.3 for carbohydrates. Meat is also a superb source of iron, which is important because iron deficiency is a major global issue, affecting up to 1.6 billion worldwide. It can lead to impaired brain development and even maternal death.
But despite all the beneficial aspects of including meat in your diet there are some drawbacks. Meat production has a negative impact on the environment. That’s because the per-capita supply of meat available in many nations is higher than the average grown adult weight of 65 kilograms to 80 kilograms. This is an issue because the agricultural processes tied to meat production use a lot of energy and incur a variety of other costs. We’ll find out more about these.
---
Meat played an important role in human evolution.
Have you ever noticed how prevalent meat eating is throughout history? It’s not a coincidence. In fact, meat served a crucial role in human evolution.
For instance, while historical meat consumption has fluctuated, purely vegetarian societies are few and far between. That’s because most cultures saw meat as an indicator of privilege and social status – a reasonable association, given that meat played an important function in the evolution of the human species, and especially our brains. All that protein and iron helped us grow bigger and better grey matter.
But meat didn’t just affect the structure of our brains, it was also key to our social development. The biologist Craig Stanford has linked human intelligence to meat consumption thanks to his observations of chimps. Like chimps, humans hunted in groups to distribute the risk involved, and because when they joined forces they could kill larger animals like bison or mammoths that were higher in fat and had a bigger nutritional pay-off. That meant finding ways to communicate and get along.
So the collective activity of hunting these big creatures helped humans develop language, begin socialization and engage in strategic thinking – sometimes even trading meat for sex.
Since meat was hard to get, people who had it were exalted to greater social heights, reaping status and privilege along the way. In this way, meat became a central facet of religious ceremonies and language, with the leader entitled to the finest cuts.
Meat consumption has also changed with society. When humans first started eating meat they ate everything they could get their hands on from a colossal mammoth to a measly finch. But today humans consume a much smaller variety of species, a result of domestication – the controlled breeding of a species to affect its function or productivity. It began with goats and sheep around 11,000 years ago and moved on to cows about 1,000 years later.
As society and technology have gone on developing, the way we keep and consume domestic animals has changed, too.
---
Increased meat production and consumption are symbols of the transition to modernity.
OK, so all this evolution happened millennia ago, but there has been a more recent evolution, and it all began in the nineteenth century.
Why?
Because in the 1800s global trade intensified, which meant that animal fodder could be imported more cheaply and more meat animals raised on it. And once the first US patent was issued for a refrigerated train car in 1867, and the Frigorifique became the first ship to transport refrigerated meat from Argentina to France in 1876, large-scale and long-distance transportation of refrigerated and frozen meat led to higher production to satisfy a new world market.
As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, this change accelerated. The staple consumption of carbohydrates like cereal and legumes continued to decline, whilst consumption of animal products – and meat in particular – achieved unprecedented heights. In short, meat consumption rose again when meat production improved yet again. How?
First, animals used to serve a crucial function as labor in agriculture and transportation. That all changed when the internal combustion engine took over their role. Second, crop production and animal husbandry used to go hand-in-hand because the nitrogen in animal manure was necessary for agriculture. But artificial nitrogenous fertilizers eliminated that need. Third, these new fertilizers and mechanized farming meant that higher crop yields were achieved on less land and with fewer workers, making crops for animal feed easier to come by.
Demand rose again in the mid-twentieth century, especially when middle-class women left the home and started to work. Not only did they have a greater disposable income, they also had less time to cook, and sought out easily prepared meat to make nutritious meals for their families.
---
In the twenty-first century, meat is produced on a huge scale.
For thousands of years domesticated meat production was done by either a farmer making use of grasslands in the country or by practitioners of mixed farming who integrated animal husbandry and crop production seamlessly into one another. But these methods are mostly a thing of the past.
Today, we have a systematic chain of meat production from breeding to raising to slaughtering to processing to distribution.
The scale of this production chain is enormous. To give you an idea of just how big it is, consider the fact that in 2010 alone humans slaughtered 55 billion chickens, 3 billion ducks and turkeys, 1.4 billion pigs and 300 million cows, most of them in out of sight, large-scale facilities and oftentimes at the hands of unskilled workers, who have little job or financial security.
Any businessperson knows that higher production always has a down side, and meat is no exception. When per capita meat consumption was relatively low, livestock production didn’t cause any major transformations to the environment at local, regional or global levels. But that all changed forever as people came to expect more meat on their table.
---
Meat alternatives all have limitations.
So, you’ve seen how meat production plays a role in global warming and deforestation. But what’s the alternative? Is not eating meat the only option? Maybe not.
If the number of vegetarians increased, that would help, but given the centrality of meat to our diet this wouldn’t be a wise move. For instance, a vegetarian diet can be as nutritious as one that includes meat but it requires more effort. That’s because vegetarians are hard pressed to ensure their diets include enough metals. Since one kilogram of vegetables isn’t nutritionally comparable to one kilogram of meat, it’s much easier to achieve a balanced diet by eating meat, especially for a young child.
So, while vegetarianism is common in some Asian cultures, there is no Western culture with a rate of vegetarianism and veganism higher than four percent. Although these numbers could go up, vegetarianism will never replace meat eating or become a common practice in the West.
But what about meat substitutes or meat made in a lab?
Meat substitutes have long been consumed in cuisines including Indian, Chinese and Japanese – think of tempeh or seitan. In fact, sales of such products are on the rise in the West, and in 2011 they increased ten percent in the United States alone. However, consumption of meat substitutes in the United States in 2010 amounted to only $270 million, a mere 0.2 percent of the country’s annual meat sales of $160 billion. So it’s highly unlikely that meat substitutes replace the real thing. Even Asian cultures are experiencing a rising demand for real meat.
Another potential change is the production of cultured meat, that is meat made on an industrial scale in laboratories. Naturally this would mean less animal mistreatment and a decrease in the transportation burden of the whole enterprise, but progress is slow and animal muscles are incredibly complex. To replace just ten percent of current annual meat production, 30 million tons per year would need to be lab made. Therefore, cultured meat is nothing but a science fiction.
However, there is one other way.
---
The best solution is to continue producing meat but to do so rationally.
The truth is, current levels of meat production and consumption are not fixed. Although eating huge quantities of meat has become a mass phenomenon, it doesn’t have to remain one. We don’t even need to sacrifice our vital protein intake to do this.
That’s because there are other fantastic sources of protein beyond meat, like dairy products and eggs. While these can’t replace meat entirely, they can certainly put a dent in our consumption.
But what about lactose intolerance?
Actually it’s a smaller issue than you’d think. Japan and China are increasing their dairy intake, and even those with lactose intolerance can enjoy some milk.
Another great source of protein is fish. While the world’s oceans are already in peril, freshwater or farmed fish are viable alternatives. By combining them with dairy and eggs we can substantially decrease our meat consumption, but we won’t be able to cut it to zero.
That’s because current meat consumption per capita in many areas is off the charts at an average of 40 kilograms a year and over 100 kilograms a year in places like the United States, Spain and Brazil. This fact, combined with a growing global population and increasing numbers of developed countries makes higher meat intake very likely. However, by replacing some consumption with meat substitutes like seitan and eggs, this increase can be curbed. So the real question is, how much meat can we produce with minimal impact?
The rational production of meat will require improvements to efficiency, reductions in waste and a minimization of environmental impacts. To do so we’ll need to produce more animals with better grain to body mass conversion rate, like chicken, which have a two kilograms of feed to one kilogram of meat ratio.
By producing meat rationally we would be able to produce something between the output of France at 16 kilograms per year per capita, and Japan – the country with the highest life expectancy – at 28 kilograms.
---
Humans can live without meat but that doesn’t mean that we must or should. While today’s methods and rate of meat production involve a variety of environmental impacts and animal rights issues, the answer is not to stop eating meat altogether but to produce it more rationally.
December 15, 2018
کتاب درباره رژیم غذایی بشر از ابتدای مرحله شکارچی شدن بود
مزایای مصرف گوشت در طول تاریخ برای رشد مغز انسان که منجر به پیشرفت بشر شد از مواردیه که کتاب بهش پرداخته
در اواخر کتاب مضرات تولید بی رویه گوشت پس از انقلابات صنعتی که بوجود اومد رو برای طبیعت توضیح میداد
راه حل پیشنهادی کتاب در نهایت ترک گوشتخواری نیست بلکه مصرف گیاه همراه با گوشت در حد و اندازه معقوله
مزایای مصرف گوشت در طول تاریخ برای رشد مغز انسان که منجر به پیشرفت بشر شد از مواردیه که کتاب بهش پرداخته
در اواخر کتاب مضرات تولید بی رویه گوشت پس از انقلابات صنعتی که بوجود اومد رو برای طبیعت توضیح میداد
راه حل پیشنهادی کتاب در نهایت ترک گوشتخواری نیست بلکه مصرف گیاه همراه با گوشت در حد و اندازه معقوله
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 7, 2020
Excellent work, looking at pretty much all aspects of eating meat.
Starting with nutrition and what animal based food provides, to evolution, to what it helped us gain, which also ties into why it is needed, especially for children and infants during their high growth years.
Smil then moves to what it takes to produce meat and a very quantitative analysis of meat itself - how heavy is a cow or pig when it is killed, how much it provides. Wastage, processing. How much food it needs to eat. The different kinds of meat, fat content, protein, marbling. Basically everything you want to know about the meat industry and the numbers of it.
And then he moves to the problematic parts - the pollution, the treatment of animals, environmental cost, the diseases, all the bad parts - in the form of methane, deforestation, pollution. The best part of his analysis is that he covers the whole gamut of meat coming to your plate. Right from the part where the feed that is grown for a cow, to the water it consumes, the grass it grazes on, the power its final plant uses, the water needed to clean it, the power needed to slaughter and process the meat. Every bit of power, water and land is accounted for, based on existing data and research. In many ways he puts them all together to tell you how much of what it takes per Kg of meat.
This was the most interesting section for me, I confess.
The last section was about what can be done with all this. And he offers some really good options of how things can be taken forward - by consuming more diary which is pretty efficient for animal protein, eggs, and aquacultured fish. And how much meat can be produced ethically without cost to the environment. He concludes at a number of around 40 Kg / yr in carcass weight, so I guess around 65 g per day as edible meat. But even there given usage, adult men under 60 tend to eat more, so around 55 kg/year when compared to women and kids who's consumption would be lower, to get to the average of 40. So, this is the number that can be produced ethically and sustainably, and also healthy for people. Of course, not that just because you are consuming that much, the meat automatically becomes sustainable. Long ways to go for that. And of course, this apart from milk, eggs and aquacultured fish.
Veganism and vegetarianism are considered, and even though he agrees that vegans know what they are eating and can ensure nutrition, it might not work for infants and young kids who'd need the protein for max development. Also, it is practically impossible to convince the rest of the world to go vegan.
And then he also looks at what could happen in the future, where he considers that most of the affluent countries are anyway aging, and also suggests that meat consumption is likely to go down, as at some point you will end up paying the price for what it takes to produce in terms of money. Which is true of food in general, where the prices have been kept low by not paying the farmers.
Excellent book, loved the treatment of the subject.
Starting with nutrition and what animal based food provides, to evolution, to what it helped us gain, which also ties into why it is needed, especially for children and infants during their high growth years.
Smil then moves to what it takes to produce meat and a very quantitative analysis of meat itself - how heavy is a cow or pig when it is killed, how much it provides. Wastage, processing. How much food it needs to eat. The different kinds of meat, fat content, protein, marbling. Basically everything you want to know about the meat industry and the numbers of it.
And then he moves to the problematic parts - the pollution, the treatment of animals, environmental cost, the diseases, all the bad parts - in the form of methane, deforestation, pollution. The best part of his analysis is that he covers the whole gamut of meat coming to your plate. Right from the part where the feed that is grown for a cow, to the water it consumes, the grass it grazes on, the power its final plant uses, the water needed to clean it, the power needed to slaughter and process the meat. Every bit of power, water and land is accounted for, based on existing data and research. In many ways he puts them all together to tell you how much of what it takes per Kg of meat.
This was the most interesting section for me, I confess.
The last section was about what can be done with all this. And he offers some really good options of how things can be taken forward - by consuming more diary which is pretty efficient for animal protein, eggs, and aquacultured fish. And how much meat can be produced ethically without cost to the environment. He concludes at a number of around 40 Kg / yr in carcass weight, so I guess around 65 g per day as edible meat. But even there given usage, adult men under 60 tend to eat more, so around 55 kg/year when compared to women and kids who's consumption would be lower, to get to the average of 40. So, this is the number that can be produced ethically and sustainably, and also healthy for people. Of course, not that just because you are consuming that much, the meat automatically becomes sustainable. Long ways to go for that. And of course, this apart from milk, eggs and aquacultured fish.
Veganism and vegetarianism are considered, and even though he agrees that vegans know what they are eating and can ensure nutrition, it might not work for infants and young kids who'd need the protein for max development. Also, it is practically impossible to convince the rest of the world to go vegan.
And then he also looks at what could happen in the future, where he considers that most of the affluent countries are anyway aging, and also suggests that meat consumption is likely to go down, as at some point you will end up paying the price for what it takes to produce in terms of money. Which is true of food in general, where the prices have been kept low by not paying the farmers.
Excellent book, loved the treatment of the subject.
June 27, 2017
"June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""So, while vegetarianism is common in some Asian cultures, there is no Western culture with a rate of vegetarianism and veganism higher than four percent. Although these numbers could go up, vegetarianism will never replace meat eating or become a common practice in the West.""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""That’s because vegetarians are hard pressed to ensure their diets include enough metals. Since one kilogram of vegetables isn’t nutritionally comparable to one kilogram of meat, it’s much easier to achieve a balanced diet by eating meat, especially for a young child.""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% "" They also reach their maximum weight in six weeks, a feat that used to take six months to accomplish!To do this they need to be treated with more drugs – both to speed their growth and keep them healthy in crowded barns – and that means that their manure is often toxic. Getting rid of that waste means more environmental degradation...""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""The result?As factory farming became more prevalent it led to specialization, meaning that animals used for breeding were separated from those for slaughter, and the gene pool narrowed. Animals themselves were altered to increase output.For instance, a chicken living today will reach sexual maturity in 18 weeks as opposed to their natural maturation of 25 weeks, which means they can produce more offspring.""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""...Then the method was used to farm pigs, and spread from wealthy countries to Asia and Latin America. Today this method of animal production dominates everywhere but Africa. CAFOs even play a role in cattle raising, but almost exclusively in the United States and Canada.""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""Does the acronym CAFO ring any bells? It stands for Confined Animal Feeding Operations – the kind of production plants that churn out all that cheap meat to meet demand.Factory-style farms in affluent countries began producing chickens raised on standardized feed after World War Two...""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""That’s because most cultures saw meat as an indicator of privilege and social status – a reasonable association, given that meat played an important function in the evolution of the human species, and especially our brains. All that protein and iron helped us grow bigger and better grey matter...""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""Have you ever noticed how prevalent meat eating is throughout history? It’s not a coincidence. In fact, meat served a crucial role in human evolution. For instance, while historical meat consumption has fluctuated, purely vegetarian societies are few and far between...""
June 26, 2017 –
30.0% ""To give you an idea of just how big it is, consider the fact that in 2010 alone humans slaughtered 55 billion chickens, 3 billion ducks and turkeys, 1.4 billion pigs and 300 million cows, most of them in out of sight, large-scale facilities and oftentimes at the hands of unskilled workers, who have little job or financial security.""
June 26, 2017 –
20.0% ""...But these methods are mostly a thing of the past. Today, we have a systematic chain of meat production from breeding to raising to slaughtering to processing to distribution.The scale of this production chain is enormous...""
June 26, 2017 –
20.0% "I am suprised from the stats
"For thousands of years domesticated meat production was done by either a farmer making use of grasslands in the country or by practitioners of mixed farming who integrated animal husbandry and crop production seamlessly into one another...""
June 26, 2017 –
20.0% "5/11"
June 26, 2017 – Started Reading"
50.0% ""So, while vegetarianism is common in some Asian cultures, there is no Western culture with a rate of vegetarianism and veganism higher than four percent. Although these numbers could go up, vegetarianism will never replace meat eating or become a common practice in the West.""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""That’s because vegetarians are hard pressed to ensure their diets include enough metals. Since one kilogram of vegetables isn’t nutritionally comparable to one kilogram of meat, it’s much easier to achieve a balanced diet by eating meat, especially for a young child.""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% "" They also reach their maximum weight in six weeks, a feat that used to take six months to accomplish!To do this they need to be treated with more drugs – both to speed their growth and keep them healthy in crowded barns – and that means that their manure is often toxic. Getting rid of that waste means more environmental degradation...""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""The result?As factory farming became more prevalent it led to specialization, meaning that animals used for breeding were separated from those for slaughter, and the gene pool narrowed. Animals themselves were altered to increase output.For instance, a chicken living today will reach sexual maturity in 18 weeks as opposed to their natural maturation of 25 weeks, which means they can produce more offspring.""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""...Then the method was used to farm pigs, and spread from wealthy countries to Asia and Latin America. Today this method of animal production dominates everywhere but Africa. CAFOs even play a role in cattle raising, but almost exclusively in the United States and Canada.""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""Does the acronym CAFO ring any bells? It stands for Confined Animal Feeding Operations – the kind of production plants that churn out all that cheap meat to meet demand.Factory-style farms in affluent countries began producing chickens raised on standardized feed after World War Two...""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""That’s because most cultures saw meat as an indicator of privilege and social status – a reasonable association, given that meat played an important function in the evolution of the human species, and especially our brains. All that protein and iron helped us grow bigger and better grey matter...""
June 26, 2017 –
50.0% ""Have you ever noticed how prevalent meat eating is throughout history? It’s not a coincidence. In fact, meat served a crucial role in human evolution. For instance, while historical meat consumption has fluctuated, purely vegetarian societies are few and far between...""
June 26, 2017 –
30.0% ""To give you an idea of just how big it is, consider the fact that in 2010 alone humans slaughtered 55 billion chickens, 3 billion ducks and turkeys, 1.4 billion pigs and 300 million cows, most of them in out of sight, large-scale facilities and oftentimes at the hands of unskilled workers, who have little job or financial security.""
June 26, 2017 –
20.0% ""...But these methods are mostly a thing of the past. Today, we have a systematic chain of meat production from breeding to raising to slaughtering to processing to distribution.The scale of this production chain is enormous...""
June 26, 2017 –
20.0% "I am suprised from the stats
"For thousands of years domesticated meat production was done by either a farmer making use of grasslands in the country or by practitioners of mixed farming who integrated animal husbandry and crop production seamlessly into one another...""
June 26, 2017 –
20.0% "5/11"
June 26, 2017 – Started Reading"
February 5, 2020
Smil is an internationally acclaimed academic, whose research stretches from energy, food, demographic and public policies. And in this book he does not pretend not to be an academic, the arguments are well argued with a strong empirical backbone.
Ranging from anthropological, historical, biological, demographics, nutrition sciences and agricultural policies, this book is very comprehensive and attempts to answer the question "Should We Eat Meat"? To give a bit more context to this question, the subtitle could be: "how should we change our behavior- in terms of breeding and eating meat in the 21st century. "
This book reads like a long review paper, and it has dutifully satisfied this premise. If ever you need a quick mastery of the topic of meat eating from a geographical perspective, I would say that this is the perfect book to read and reference. So I intend to keep this book as a reference book on my shelf for many years to come.
But precisely because this book is immaculately argued, this is not an easy read and one might sometimes be overwhelmed by the numbers and statistics. Nor does it offer a detailed moral argument for or against meat eating, which I noticed is a source of disappointment for some of the other reviewers. There are one or two subsections in which Smil did venture into moral arguments, but the brief commentaries certainly cannot satisfy those who are for/against veganism for moral reasons.
Nevertheless, if we do not judge the book for what it is not, it is an excellent book and shows the breadth and depth of the author's understanding of the topic from a public policy perspective. For this reason, I absolutely enjoyed the book and would recommend it to those who are interested in the empirical analysis of contemporary meat eating.
Ranging from anthropological, historical, biological, demographics, nutrition sciences and agricultural policies, this book is very comprehensive and attempts to answer the question "Should We Eat Meat"? To give a bit more context to this question, the subtitle could be: "how should we change our behavior- in terms of breeding and eating meat in the 21st century. "
This book reads like a long review paper, and it has dutifully satisfied this premise. If ever you need a quick mastery of the topic of meat eating from a geographical perspective, I would say that this is the perfect book to read and reference. So I intend to keep this book as a reference book on my shelf for many years to come.
But precisely because this book is immaculately argued, this is not an easy read and one might sometimes be overwhelmed by the numbers and statistics. Nor does it offer a detailed moral argument for or against meat eating, which I noticed is a source of disappointment for some of the other reviewers. There are one or two subsections in which Smil did venture into moral arguments, but the brief commentaries certainly cannot satisfy those who are for/against veganism for moral reasons.
Nevertheless, if we do not judge the book for what it is not, it is an excellent book and shows the breadth and depth of the author's understanding of the topic from a public policy perspective. For this reason, I absolutely enjoyed the book and would recommend it to those who are interested in the empirical analysis of contemporary meat eating.
December 29, 2017
I was really excited to read this book; it's been a while since I made the choice to stop eating red meat for environmental reasons and I thought this book would help fortify my decision and maybe even give me some more information to share with people who ask me about my choice. And the book did do that for me, for the most part, though it wasn't the easiest or most enjoyable read.
If you're looking for the answer to the title of the book, I recommend skipping to the last chapter. Here, Smil provides a quick summary to all the information presented in all the previous chapter and actually begins to form his opinion on whether or not we should eat meat. And (I don't consider this too much of a spoiler, because he does actually say the answer in the first chapter) the answer is "in moderation". The rest of the book is citation heavy evidence to support that answer. Which is definitely a strong suit of the book - I never got the feeling that Smil didn't do his research or had any strong biases - however, this can make the book very hard to get through. I sometimes got lost in the numbers being thrown at me and had to reread some sections several times as I lost focus.
If you want a no-nonsense (except for the times Smil's a bit sassy towards vegans and vegetarians...) book that answers the question "Should We Eat Meat?" with all the data to help you form your own answer - then this is it! But be prepared to read it as you would a research paper - as that's essentially what it is.
If you're looking for the answer to the title of the book, I recommend skipping to the last chapter. Here, Smil provides a quick summary to all the information presented in all the previous chapter and actually begins to form his opinion on whether or not we should eat meat. And (I don't consider this too much of a spoiler, because he does actually say the answer in the first chapter) the answer is "in moderation". The rest of the book is citation heavy evidence to support that answer. Which is definitely a strong suit of the book - I never got the feeling that Smil didn't do his research or had any strong biases - however, this can make the book very hard to get through. I sometimes got lost in the numbers being thrown at me and had to reread some sections several times as I lost focus.
If you want a no-nonsense (except for the times Smil's a bit sassy towards vegans and vegetarians...) book that answers the question "Should We Eat Meat?" with all the data to help you form your own answer - then this is it! But be prepared to read it as you would a research paper - as that's essentially what it is.
Read
June 10, 2020Probably one of the more difficult books I have read. Although possessing virtually no prior knowledge of the topic, I was drawn to it because I had heard a lot about the author and his expertise on interdisciplinary subjects.
As a scientist himself, Smil does a great job of decomposing and evaluating this query in different subsections with objectivity. I found myself having to re-read numerous sections to get an idea of what he was talking about. Although only ~200 pages, the text is so dense that it reads more as a dissertation than a novel.
At the same time, I appreciated Smil's approach in providing raw data from numerous studies while also commenting on the reliability of it. This is rare and attests to his adherence to the scientific method as well as his ability to interpret evidence. Although he comes to the conclusion of eating a moderate amount of meat, it is clear that this book is an investigation into an open question rather than a rigid thesis.
Unfortunately, I borrowed this book from the library, and was not able to read it as leisurely as it required. This book is a great reference book and perhaps merits more than one read to fully digest.
As a scientist himself, Smil does a great job of decomposing and evaluating this query in different subsections with objectivity. I found myself having to re-read numerous sections to get an idea of what he was talking about. Although only ~200 pages, the text is so dense that it reads more as a dissertation than a novel.
At the same time, I appreciated Smil's approach in providing raw data from numerous studies while also commenting on the reliability of it. This is rare and attests to his adherence to the scientific method as well as his ability to interpret evidence. Although he comes to the conclusion of eating a moderate amount of meat, it is clear that this book is an investigation into an open question rather than a rigid thesis.
Unfortunately, I borrowed this book from the library, and was not able to read it as leisurely as it required. This book is a great reference book and perhaps merits more than one read to fully digest.
March 3, 2021
Vaclav Smil doesn't just answer the question "Should we eat meat?" He gives you more information than you can ever imagine. I hope this is on a reading list for a college course on meat production in the Ag college. If not, it should be. This book is chuck full of facts, figures, studies, data, etc. etc. It's so much information it was overwhelming and I'm usually up to the task of overwhelming data. This includes the history of meat eating, facts about protein, meat production, land utilization, meat consumption over the eons of time and across the world. The short answer to the question is "Yes, but in smaller amounts." The long answer is that we can never give it up no matter how hard we try and the best we can do is cut back a bit. This looked at every aspect of meat that could be looked at. I admit I got bogged down a little in all the statistics and skimmed through pages from time to time. It was truly like a college course. It was NOT just someone's biased opinion.
August 13, 2017
This is an important book to read but I deducted one star because the books is promiscuously dense with numbers in some parts. One has to skim through these parts to get the gist of what Smil is trying to convey. Still, it is a fascinating tour through the history of meat production, its role in human evolution and options for rational consumption and alternatives for the future. What I really liked about the book is that it takes a pragmatic approach to meat eating rather than an ideological one. The chapter on the ethics of meat eating is quite short and those looking for an exposition on these aspects are going to be disappointed. Instead, what the book offers is tools and ways of thinking about conscientious meat eating such that animal suffering and the impact it has on the environment is minimized.
May 14, 2018
This is a book rooted in facts and realities, not in predetermined posturing and sermonizing. This is a book that looks at benefits of meat eating as well as at the failures and drawbacks. The author doesn't advocate any particular practice or point of view but merely presents the best evidence to its logical conclusions. To my mind, this book is haphazardly written and has soporific effect as I painstakingly tried to leaf through the pages of the book. Much of the book is crammed with numbers, rates, and comparison. However, it seems that the author has done hours and hours of stern research on the consumption of meat, and its ramifications, while he criticises the extant conclusion drawn in the literature and philosophical debates on meat-eating which probably can broach the subject for further investigations!
January 22, 2018
Super insightful read into modern agribusiness, and a hint into it cost, not only to our wallets, but also the environmental impact as well as the depletion of resources. My interest in the book came from its appearance on Bill Gates' reading list, and while I would recommend it to anyone with even a modicum of interest in the topic, this isn't a beach read. It reads much more similarly to a textbook, and should be read with minimal stimuli because of the amount of information covered, and the level at which it is dove into. While you may not necessarily find the answer to the question that the title presents, I doubt that you will walk away without thinking something new about the subject and it's implications.
December 8, 2020
This is an extremely dense academic book, very difficult to absorb and get through. Although the author does reach a conclusion in the end, there is no guidance through the chapters on applicability of facts nor interim discussion nor practical take aways that would make this work appeal or be of use to the general public. I could only deduce a level of meat consumption that is optimal for health, and that reduced/moderate meat diet from responsible meat production sources would be optimal way forward. What this means exactly for individuals, governments, meat producers and other interested parties is largely left for interpretation. 3 stars due to the quality of research... but only 2 for readability.
May 24, 2018
Personalmente esperaba encontrar razones sustentadas del porqué debería volver a comer carne desde un enfoque global donde contribuya a un bien social pero no las encontré. El título curiosea al respecto así que me sentí decepcionada.
Si buscas responder POR QUÉ NO DEBERÍA COMER CARNE aquí encontrarás muchos pero muchos datos concretos y estadísticos de todas las razones de no comer carne: empatía, medio ambiente y salud.
Si buscas responder POR QUÉ DEBERÍA COMER CARNE no encontrarás la respuesta. Aunque si responde cómo contribuyó eso al estado actual de la humanidad en cuanto a evolución económica, humanista y comercial.
Si buscas responder POR QUÉ NO DEBERÍA COMER CARNE aquí encontrarás muchos pero muchos datos concretos y estadísticos de todas las razones de no comer carne: empatía, medio ambiente y salud.
Si buscas responder POR QUÉ DEBERÍA COMER CARNE no encontrarás la respuesta. Aunque si responde cómo contribuyó eso al estado actual de la humanidad en cuanto a evolución económica, humanista y comercial.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 12, 2018
This book is pretty much like a long research paper full of facts and data points. While Smil injects a huge objective side to the whole story, the book lacks a soul, a perspective, a story to bind it all. I'm sure Smil could have written a fantastic dissertation but writing a book with a compelling narrative is a different ball game and Smil seems, a tad out of sorts. A decent read, I wanted a more compelling and subjective view either in favour of meat eating or against it. A neutral approach with a few arguments against both sides leave an unsatiated feeling. This book can be given a pass.
August 24, 2021
Whew! Statistics and how the watch was made! Working in the food industry, much of the book supplied documentation supporting many dynamics that I already knew or strongly suspected. There were enough surprises to keep it interesting and much background to some of the dynamics that I enjoyed, but wow. It became a bit of a slog and my skimming percentage increased progressively as I neared the end. A summary at the end of each chapter would have been helpful as I often lost sight of the forest through the trees.
A super interesting topic nonetheless and he writes from a pragmatic point of view which is refreshing.
A super interesting topic nonetheless and he writes from a pragmatic point of view which is refreshing.
March 20, 2018
The reader might feel overwhelmed by the amount of numbers and multiple sources, without any graphs or comparative tables. Nonetheless the writer's work is to be respected: a deep and reasonable research into the impacts of meat consumption. Do not expect a deep scoop on the impacts of being vegan or vegetarian, though. The book focus on meat.
February 21, 2019
Incredibly rigorous and comprehensive evaluation of the question posed in the title, with lots of surprising insights and refutation of common misconceptions. However, the book is extremely dense with statements of numerical figures, making it hard to read, and the writing style does not have a great sense of flow.
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