Some Meaty Math

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Nina Teicholz is fond of portraying the modern American diet as "near-vegetarian", and that we need to "return" to our meat eating ways of a century ago.  But even her most exaggerated statistic lists meat intake at 200 lbs per year.  

[200 lbs/year]  * [16 ounces/lb] ÷ [365 days/year] = 8.77 ounces/day 

or 0.55 pounds or 250 grams of meat per day

Now to pick a fatty meat ... Prime Rib


This works out to just under 800 fat calories and just over 200 protein calories, roughly 75% fat, 25% protein. 

Now you have around 1000 of your daily calories.  What else was on the plate to provide the additional 1000 to 1500 or 2000 if the men from the Minnesota Starvation Study intakes are used for reference?

Comments

MacSmiley said…
Is 200 lbs a year what Teicholz claims we need to return to? Or that 200 lbs a year needs to be increased to what she thinks Americans ate 100 years ago?
February 27, 2015 at 5:31 PM
carbsane said…
She runs with some paleos but she's not paleo that I'm aware. :)
February 27, 2015 at 6:27 PM
carbsane said…
I have no idea. She's claimed we are eating a lot less meat than we did in the 1800's and the data from the early 1900's is unreliable b/c it doesn't account for meat raised and eaten locally (e.g. farmers). So she has made the case that 150 and up to 200 lbs/year was the norm "before", so I'm guessing htat's what she thinks we need to "return" to.

Cordain's ridiculous paleo diet is much much higher

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6IcOX8IUM0s/Uo4EcEohyrI/AAAAAAAAFKE/1KWxPiV5LQo/s1600/Screenshot+-+11_21_2013+,+8_01_29+AM.png
February 27, 2015 at 6:34 PM
MacSmiley said…
She may have a partial point, especially where hunting is, but not to the extent she thinks.

Besides, it took a whole lot longer to grow animals back then without hormones and antibiotics to speed things up. Industrial meat production is nothing like small family farms were back in homespun times.
February 27, 2015 at 9:57 PM
carbsane said…
For fun: http://www.laurasprairiehouse.com/recipes/
February 27, 2015 at 10:18 PM
MacSmiley said…
Funny, I have friends here whose father owns a farm in De Smet.

More fun:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0984504176/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/187-9639395-9559033

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-laura-ingalls-wilder-real-life-memoir-20140820-story.html

http://www.npr.org/2015/01/28/382160369/little-house-big-demand-never-underestimate-laura-ingalls-wilder

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/08/20/341852953/book-news-laura-ingalls-wilders-memoir-to-be-published

Were Nina and us all transported back 150 years ago, we'd all starve!! Life was rough back then. Immigrants who lived in American cities wrote home about having meat frequently, but still, it was only the rich who ate massive amounts of meat.
February 27, 2015 at 11:24 PM
charles grashow said…
http://www.colostate.edu/Dept/GDPE/Distinguished_Ecologists/2006/Smil/Eating%20Meat.pdf
Eating Meat: Evolution,
Patterns, and Consequences

Check out


FIGURE 5 Absence of correlation between life expectancy at birth and average per capita meat supply (carcass weight) in 30 countries with highest scores on the Human Development Index
February 28, 2015 at 9:42 AM
Nutrivorous said…
According to USDA figures, 100 grams of "Elk, free range, ground, cooked patties" provides approximately 143 kcal, 29.5 g protein, 2.8 g fat. This would peg it at 16.7% of calories from fat. So you should be able to eat that entire pile of elk hooves and still be compliant with the guidelines to limit fat to 30% of calories.
March 1, 2015 at 7:34 PM

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