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The Case for Tofu

Joanne (Xin Yuan) N.

Debt Capital Markets, CIMB | UC Berkeley

发布日期: 2019年11月29日

Over 675 million lbs of turkey will be slathered with various spices, stuck into ovens, carved up and consumed today, in conjunction with the annual Thanksgiving (or T-day, for Turkey) celebrations. As millions of Americans continue the tradition of giving thanks and commemorate the harvest festival first celebrated by the Pilgrims, I would like to put forward a case for consuming less meat, and to turn to plant-based protein sources instead. Perhaps tofu next year?

Growing up, the most exciting thing about eating out was that my family and I would go to traditional Chinese restaurants, often featuring rows of glass tanks containing live crab and lobsters with their pincers bound with rubber bands, large shrimp, and a variety of fish swimming around, their impending doom unbeknownst to them. I love marine life, and would gaze mesmerized at the beautiful tanks before, after, and sometimes even during my meal.

You know the food's going to be authentic if the restaurant looks like this. (Source: jenius.com.au)

I was roughly ten years old when I finally made the connection between the unfortunate sea bass that my father pointed towards swimming happily in one of the mini aquariums on display, and the one that arrived on my dining table moments later - thoroughly steamed and lying on its side, covered in a blanket of ginger and soy sauce.

I refused to take a bite out of my new friend back then, because the idea that we were picking our dinner while it was watching us point at it was so disconcerting to me, and still is.

My family and I stick to dead fish these days, though we rarely eat meat if at all.

In other meat-related tales, I once saw a video detailing the production process of chicken McNuggets: trays and trays of cute, furry yellow chicks, chirping and hopping about as they tumble down the meat shredder to their deaths and are then magically transformed into the golden crispy morsels we all know and love. I don't eat nuggets any more too. (Fun fact: 10 nuggets cost $4.99, but 20 nuggets are $5.00 at the McD's at Berkeley - go figure).

The ethics of meat consumption have been well debated throughout the decades, and many may argue that it is natural for humans to consume other animals. However, as I browsed through the literature on the topic, I grew more interested in the economics of meat consumption. For the purpose of this article, I will discuss the economical and environmental impacts of meat consumption, focusing on the questions below:

Is it efficient? Is our growing taste and demand for meat sustainable?What is the future of meat?

Is meat production efficient?

In short, it is not.

When efficiency here is defined as resources used in producing one pound of meat per person fed, meat production is highly inefficient considering the amount of land, water and energy that goes into it.

J. Morris Hicks, Author, Healthy Eating, Healthy World: “When comparing our typical Western diet to a whole food, plant-based diet on a per calorie basis, we find that it requires over 10 times as much land, over 10 times as much water, and over 10 times as much energy.

Land needed to produce a typical meat dish, in m2 per person. (Source https://plantricianproject.org/food-math-101)

Water needed to produce a typical meat dish, in gallons. (Source: https://plantricianproject.org/food-math-101)

The production processes of some meats are more efficient than others, but still pale in comparison with plant based protein.

(Source: https://www.truthordrought.com/)

Is meat consumption efficient?

Are we supposed to eat meat at all?

T. Colin Campbell—director of the Cornell-China-Oxford Project on Nutrition, Health, and Environment and author of The China Study —says, “In the next ten years, one of the things you’re bound to hear is that animal protein is one of the most toxic nutrients of all that can be considered."

For a more in-depth summary of why humans technically do not need to eat meat, wellandgood's summary of The China Study explains why you should opt for the fork over the knife. PETA's article elaborates on how humans were at large vegetarian throughout the course of our evolutionary history, and modest amounts of meat were introduced into our diets following the discovery of fire.

Wait, what about vitamin B12, the vitamin so essential to human survival, that is only found in animal products?

As it turns out, the animals we consume may not naturally have B12 anyway. B12 is produced by bacteria found in soil and in guts of animals (including humans!), and then incorporated into animals' bodies. Unfortunately, human-produced B12 is not absorbable simply because it is produced is too far down our digestive system.

Our closest relatives, gorillas, get their B12 from accidental eating of bugs, soil (and their own feces) containing B12 while maintaining a plant-based diet. Cows get B12 from clumps of dirt around the grass roots, and chickens get B12 from pecking around in soil for worms and other insects. These days, most mass-produced animals are kept indoors and never get to see even a day of sunlight, let alone peck around in the soil for worms, and so would certainly be deficient without supplementation.

In fact, around 95% of all B12 supplements manufactured are actually given to farmed animals.

So people who then consume the meat from these animals are just receiving the B12 which originally came from the supplements fed to the animals. In any case, many people around the world do not get enough B12 despite consuming meat. Maybe instead of getting our B12 from the middle man, we could simply take a B12 supplement, or, if you're like me, consume more bowls of the sugary goodness that is cereal since most cereals are heavily fortified with B12! (Fun fact: mashed bananas work well as a milk substitute in desperate times).

(Source: https://www.myfooddata.com/)

If you don't care at all for efficiency, let's look at the sustainability of meat consumption at the current rate.

Is our appetite for meat sustainable?

The growth in our appetite for meat itself is driven by economic growth, particularly in middle income countries (such as China and Brazil) that have seen increases in average income per capita as people can now afford to eat more meat.

While growth in demand for meat in richer countries such as the US, UK and Canada have at large tapered off, these richer countries still eat four times as much meat as the rest of the world.

According to a population growth study by Michigan State University Extension, the global meat production was 318 million tons in 2016, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that in 2050 the global meat production will increase to 455 million tons.

"The general consensus is that global agriculture production has to be increased by about 60-70 percent from the current levels to meet the increased food demand in 2050."

Countries driving demand for meat consumption globally (Source: https://modernfarmer.com/2014/02/meat-atlas/)

The general consensus across published literature on the topic of meat sustainability is that global agriculture production has to see a projected increase by about 60-70 percent from the current levels to meet the increased food demand in 2050, and industrialized farms will have to be set up everywhere in the world in order to meet the intensified feeding requirements.

This is simply because animals are not efficient converters of energy.

Land use for cows in comparison with pigs/chickens (Source: https://www.tes.com/lessons/TUJfX93FLDpDFg/methane-and-cows)

For example, in order to produce 1kg of meat, cattle generally need 8-10 kg of feed. In terms of calories, for every 100 calories fed to animals in the form of edible crops (or grain), the return is only about 25 calories in the form of meat and dairy products.

With growing awareness of climate change and an increasing need for forests and a reduction in greenhouse gases, our current meat consumption is not sustainable.

What is the future of meat, then?

There have been interesting developments in the meatless industry, with many companies based in California developing products that don't just claim to be like meat, but actually feel and even taste better than meat: Beyond Meats (one of the eleven companies that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust holds stakes in to this date, and has recently partnered up with KFC to serve non-meat nuggets), New Wave Foods (that is developing synthetic shrimp!), and my personal favorite, Tofurky, which is exactly what its name sounds like - turkey, but tofu.

Some more radical ways to go meatless include replacing our ground beef with ground crickets instead, with highly convincing evidence, too: insects are proven to be highly nutritious. While even the thought of entomophagy is nausea-inducing to many of us, it is in fact a common practice in many parts of the world.

Fancy a cricket for breakfast, anyone? (Source: https://www.edibleinsects.com/insect-nutrition-information/)

Regardless of what the future holds for meat, the decision to eat meat or not is a personal choice. However, I strongly believe that there are significant economical and environmental benefits of reducing our consumption of meat, in particular beef.

If there's one thing you take away from this very lengthy article, I hope that it is a heightened awareness of the impacts our choices have on our surroundings, and perhaps a consideration to swap out your beef bowl for a chicken bowl at Chipotle; substitute soy milk in place of fresh milk in your boba; and maybe just try that meatless burger on a whim - who knows, it could be life changing!

Oh, and eat lots and lots of tofu. I love tofu.