NEW YORK, June 3, 2011 (The New York Times): Once, we humans had to combine hunting skills and luck to eat meat, which could supply then-rare nutrients in large quantities. This progressed — or at least moved on — to a stage where a family could raise an annual pig and maybe keep a cow and some chickens. Quite suddenly (this development is no more than 50 years old, even in America), we can eat animals at will.
Those who were born in mid-to-late 20th century America take this for granted; this is the new normal. But the phenomenon is global: there’s more than twice as much meat available per person than there was in 1950. Citizens of most developed nations have gone down the same path, and as the poor become less so, they buy more meat, too.
Animals today are produced badly, cause immeasurable damage to both our bodies and the earth, and — highly processed– they don’t taste that good.
In much of the world, the local fish is mostly gone. A restaurant in Istanbul that had blown my mind 10 years ago with its local variety of fish was offering a few fish that the waiter kindly un-pushed: “These are from the fish farm,” he said, “so why bother?” Indeed. His advice — “why bother?” — holds true for at least 90 percent of the animal products we’re offered, even if we are not vegetarians.
[HPI note: Though meat consumption in India is growing, this growth is from a very small base. Fast-food outlets may be opening, but Indians are not consuming on a western level. If India and China were both consuming at western levels, that would have serious impacts on global food supply. According to 2007 FAO data, Indians consume around 3.3kg of meat per capita, per year. An American consumes that amount in about 10 days (122.8kg per capita); an average Chinese citizen would take about a month (53.5 kg per capita). See the source here].