I looked at the study (https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795) and you're right. As far as I can tell the data source asks people to recall the food they ate on a previous day. The authors are aware of this limitation - they write that "One limitation of this work is that it was based on 1-day diet recalls, so our results do not represent usual intake." But on the other hand the abstract ends "Efforts to address climate change through diet modification could benefit from targeting campaigns to the highest consumers of beef, as their consumption accounts for half of all beef consumed" which implies that they're thinking of this as being a consistent group. What they've shown is that there are 12% of person-days that represent half of all the beef-eating (subject to that their data is based on people remembering what they ate) - but that doesn't mean that those 12% of person-days are concentrated among 12% of people. I'm sure that 50% of the beef is eaten by less than 50% of the people, but it's probably more like 30% than 12%.

I am tired of this people "shamming"/virtue signalling. You have a handful of corporations fucking up the environment but let's blame average Joe for eating beef. We are literally throwing away a sustainable future for the next quarter earnings. If things are to change we need to stop prioritizing money over anything else.

Blaming corporations alone isn't enough; individual choices fuel their actions. It's a dual responsibility: pressuring corps for change while adopting sustainable choices ourselves. Only collective action can drive the shift we need.

I disagree. We should start at placing the blame where it needs to be. Not gaslight people.

One example is the whole plastic straws debacle. Let's virtue signal and blame the peasants for the plastic in the oceans. In reality more than 50% of the plastic that ends up in the oceans is from commercial fishing nets. Oh... Did you know that the paper straws that you are hailing as a solution have even more PFAs than your regular dumb straws?

Carbon emissions? Let's slap that on the suckers and demand that their cars do 100mpg while not emitting a single CO2 molecule. Meanwhile... How much emissions do the top 10-20 diesel powered large ships in the world put in the atmosphere?

This needs to be done systematically and at policy level considering a multitude of social factors. Telling everyone how bad beef is? Not helpful

The beef industry is an enormous producer of greenhouse gases, both directly and indirectly. They manipulate the government to make their product cheaper, and they manipulate their customers to consume more than is healthy for them.

We should absolutely fight their government abuses, but we can also push back at the consumer level. It's bad for them personally, as well as for the environment.

Even at best that would only fix a tiny fraction of the problem, and we do need to push at the corporate level. But unlike the stupid straw thing, reducing meat consumption really does have environmental benefits.

> One example is the whole plastic straws debacle

That demonstrates not only that governments are unable to solve the problems at the production side but also that they're choosing the minimum they can do to pretend they're making an effort, all while minimizing disruptions to the markets. I'd argue that the capitalism and the need for growth is the problem.

> In reality more than 50% of the plastic that ends up in the oceans is from commercial fishing nets

> This needs to be done systematically and at policy level considering a multitude of social factors. Telling everyone how bad beef is?

It's the same problem as with beef. If everyone insists on eating beef and fish, governments won't regulate the industries or remove their subsidies. The population has to want those regulations, otherwise it won't ever happen.

So the solution is the same as with beef. Switch to plant based diets personally, then demand changes on the political level.

In case of the straws where people tried doing something that something is worth very little. You don't solve the tragedy of the commons by shaming people to fish less.

I'm not shaming anyone by talking about the need to switch to plant based diets. That's just your subconsciousness speaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Meat-eati...

Plant-based diets are the only way to feed 10 billion people sustainably.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471

How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets?

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449

What humanity should eat to stay healthy and save the planet

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03565-5

THIS. The HN Title:

> 12% of Americans eat half the nation's beef

The article's full title:

> How a mere 12% of Americans eat half the nation's beef, creating significant health and environmental impacts

The first para:

> A new study has found that 12% of Americans are responsible for eating half of all beef consumed on a given day, a finding that may help consumer groups and government agencies craft educational messaging around the negative health and environmental impacts of beef consumption.

The quality and quantity of actual facts heads downhill fast from there. Even ignoring the article's dreary left-wing political agenda...if a mentally-competent grown-up actually wanted beneficial (for the climate & environment) changes in American eating habits (vs. yet more performative activism, and sermons to the choir), then he might take into consideration the huge number of Americans who identify as being on the opposing side of that sensitive culture war issue, and plan accordingly.

I have yet to see any sign, anywhere, of that last bit.

> How a mere 12% of Americans eat half the nation's beef, creating significant health and environmental impacts

110 characters, way over HN's 80 chars limit

> rest of the drivel

Your opinions are a result of targeted propaganda. Try to think for yourself.

https://newrepublic.com/article/171781/meat-culture-war-cric...

Why Right-Wingers Are So Afraid of Men Eating Vegetables

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/03/beef-ind...

Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay

https://www.salon.com/2022/11/11/the-meat-industry-is-borrow...

The meat industry is borrowing tactics from Big Oil to obfuscate the truth about climate change

Some real facts:

https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability...

... study estimates it would take just over 5 Earths to support the human population if everyone’s consumption patterns were similar to the average American ...

Do you know how many cattle we have?

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204892120

The total mammal biomass:

- livestock (≈630 Mt)

- humans (≈390 Mt)

- wild marine mammals (≈40 Mt)

- terrestrial wild mammals (≈20 Mt)

Do you know how much land animal agriculture occupies (cattle being the most land-demanding)?

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land...

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

Do you know that animal species have experienced a 70% decline in just last 50 years, that we're driving nearly one million species to extinction, that we're in the sixth mass extinction which we'll manage in just 100 years probably, and that cattle is the main driver of both deforestation and biodiversity loss?

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...

Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-7...

Animal populations experience average decline of almost 70% since 1970, report reveals

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4

Humans are driving one million species to extinction

https://phys.org/news/2023-04-climate-crisis-biodiversity-ap...

The climate crisis and biodiversity crisis can't be approached separately

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/brv.12974

More losers than winners: investigating Anthropocene defaunation through the diversity of population trends .. of 70,000 monitored species, some 48% are experiencing population declines from anthropogenic pressures ... ... global biodiversity is entering a mass extinction, with ecosystem heterogeneity and functioning, biodiversity persistence, and human well-being under increasing threat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

The biomass decrease is 80% for marine mammals, 50% for plants and 15% for fish. Currently, livestock make up 60% of the biomass of all mammals on earth, followed by humans (36%) and wild mammals (4%). As for birds, 70% are domesticated, such as poultry, whereas only 30% are wild.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2216573120

Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/

Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption

https://xkcd.com/1338/

https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation

https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/weve-lost-35-pe...

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/blog/terrible-trade-burger-...

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8622

The drivers and impacts of Amazon forest degradation

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/argentina-lost-one-f...

Argentina lost one-fifth of its Atlantic Forest in the last four decades

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/19/colombia...

Cattle, not coca, drive deforestation of the Amazon in Colombia – report

https://earth.org/major-companies-responsible-for-deforestat...

13 Major Companies Responsible for Deforestation

https://news.mongabay.com/2023/05/3-million-hectares-of-colo...

3 million hectares of Colombian Amazon deforested for illegal pasture: Study

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/whats-driving-deforestation

What's Driving Deforestation?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/02/more-tha...

More than 800m Amazon trees felled in six years to meet beef demand

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/27/destruct...

Destruction of world’s pristine rainforests soared in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge

https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-023-02599-1/index.ht...

Trouble in the Amazon - "we are killing this ecosystem"

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06391-z

Tropical forests are approaching critical temperature thresholds

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471

Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable

A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming practices and technologies are required to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/21/14449

How Compatible Are Western European Dietary Patterns to Climate Targets?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03565-5

What humanity should eat to stay healthy and save the planet

Lordy...

> way over HN's 80 chars

Please assume that I know about HN's character limit.

> > rest of the drivel

Please do not quote me as saying thing which I did not say.

> Your opinions are a result of... {mile-tall wall of text and links}

I don't think you have any idea of what my actual opinions are. But you appear to be a pro at "more is better" performative activism in the current culture war. Hopefully that was your intention.

> Your opinions are a result of... {mile-tall wall of text and links}

TLDR: Insisting on a particular diet, regardless of how destructive it is, is selfish, short-sighted, and unfair to the rest of the population, to future generations, and to the world we should be taking care of.

I think that’s bad phrasing in the article. The paper (https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795; open access) talks about equivalent ounces of beef per 220kcal consumed (thus ≈scaling by body size)

Are they saying that the same 12% of people eat half of the consumed beef each day? Or that 12% of beef consumers eat half of the daily consumption but that group’s membership changes each day?

If I eat a steak and cheeseburger in the same day, am I part of that group or am I never part of the group because I only eat beef 1x per week?

I mean, even if it was that 12% of Americans eat 50% of the US's beef—over a year and not just a day—number wise, that's not at all that strange or unexpected, and it doesn't really mean anything.