Conversion ratio is a very misleading number. Beef cattle very inefficiently convert corn, that's true. That's because beef cattle evolved to eat grass. When fed grass, they convert it efficiently. You can get a low more calories by growing hay, feeding the whole plant to a cow and then drinking the milk; than by growing grain, throwing away the stalk, feeding the seeds to a chicken, and then eating the chicken.

20 years ago we were talking about shellfish aquaculture as the answer to this problem (which was obvious even then). The lower on the food chain you go, typically, the lower the production costs. Filter feeding mussels, scallops, and oysters are about as low as you can get and still call it "meat". Many producers were touting these creatures as the answer to getting protein in the future. Since then water pollution has seriously curtailed the growth of that industry. It is still worth exploring as an option though.

I don't know if the problem is just water pollution; according to NOAA aquaculture is 20-30% of shellfish production. In the U.S. at least the preference for chicken and beef has displaced our willingness to eat "critters" in most of the country.

We've also got a marketing problem; quick frozen seafood is actually pretty good compared to seafood that's been lying in a display case for a week. (Also, it's less likely to give you worms if you undercook it) Any Asian market has a frozen seafood section that dwarfs any Midwest megasupermarket. Basically, Americans by-and-large have forgotten how to seafood.

> Since then water pollution has seriously curtailed the growth of that industry.

Interesting. I'd like to know more. Do you have a source for that?

The BBC Horizons documentary I mentioned above also looked into mussels as a source of meat. I don't recall pollution being mentioned as an issue, but it gave other reasons why even optimistic outlooks could only consider them a partial replacement, given the numbers we have for meat consumption today (not to mention decades from now).

I don't - offhand. Back when I was taking classes in it, the industry was collapsing in China because of water pollution. I have been reading about blue-green algae tides and chemical spills and other issues affecting the industry these days, but I don't have a specific source detailing its impact. Sorry. (Good one for calling me out on that!)

Not sure where you are, but it's the same story in the UK. I rarely eat beef or lamb nowadays just because it's so expensive, and instead eat more chicken, pork and local game.

In the UK it's really noticeable how beef has shot up in price, chicken is starting to climb a price/quality tradeoff (cheap mystery chicken is everywhere, nice standalone chicken breast quite pricey), and pork is still cheap. Lamb I'm less interested in but is all imported from NZ anyway. Venison is becoming a thing. Ostrich didn't, to the disappointment of a number of early investors.

Try going with whole chicken and separating the pieces yourself. You can even throw it into a slow cooker completely frozen if you're lazy. The downside is the time it takes to do the separation, but I've found that in aggregate it's actually a marked convenience, even compared to buying already separated chicken breasts. 1 whole chicken = 8 meals for me, and prepping it only takes about half an hour.

Last year I essentially switched to chicken as my only meat source for meals eaten at home, mostly by default. I sort of ditched that around Christmas after becoming bored of it, but I've found that after doing 1 hour of prep time (half an hour for chicken, half an hour for packing salads) twice a week with the whole chicken approach, it's hard to go back spending 1-2 hours a day in the kitchen, 5-7 days a week--which is a routine I managed for years up until then.

I prefer to pepper after cooking because it can burn and taste bad