People are used to seeing stark warnings on tobacco products alerting them about the potentially deadly risks to health. Now a study suggests similar labelling on food could help them make wiser choices about not just their health, but the health of the planet.
The research, by academics at Durham University, found that warning labels including a graphic image – similar to those warning of impotence, heart disease or lung cancer on cigarette packets – could reduce selections of meals containing meat by 7-10%.
It is a change that could have a material impact on the future of the planet. According to a recent YouGov poll, 72% of the UK population classify themselves as meat-eaters. But the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which advises the government on its net zero goals, has said the UK needs to slash its meat consumption by 20% by 2030, and 50% by 2050, in order to meet them.
“how can we shift responsibility to the consumer today?”
Eh, in all fairness the meat & dairy industry is one thing that we as consumers really do need to take a bulk of responsibility for. I say that as a devout meat eater.
BUT, governments could go a long way by not subsidising dairy and meat and instead subsidising protein alternatives. It’s fucking nuts to me that it costs more for me to buy plant protein.
(Before the die hard vegans come at me saying you don’t need to eat pseudo (plant) proteins to eat less meat, please remember you’re trying to convert people that are familiar and enjoy one diet to another. You’re not going to encourage anyone by advocating a cold-turkey or 0% meat approach. I hate that I have to put this disclaimer here, but I’m fed up with arguing with puritanical vegans that overshadow pragmatism.)
United States federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries
Apparently people consume a lot more meat than they need and even than it’s healthy to consume (though it heavilly depends on the country and the eating habits of the population) so there is room for huge improvement in greenhouse gas emissions from the industry AND health-outcomes by campaigning to reduce meat consumption (rather than the absolutist and rather moralist idea that people should become vegetarians or even vegans).
Also I’m quite weary about any proposed solution involving moving some of the current meat consumption to processed and ultra-processed protein alternatives: we keep getting study after study associating processed and especially ultra-processed food to all kinds of health problems.
No, we don’t.
Good point, you’ve convinced me.
the meat & dairy industry is one thing that we as consumers really do need to take a bulk of responsibility for
No, the capitalists that put profit before the well being of the planet, the consumer, and their products are to blame and should be held responsible, not the people just trying to live their lives under a system imposed on us for the benefit of a small few (and before the die hard vegans come at me - I am a vegan, I just don’t think the problems we’re facing are because other people eat meat, but because capitalism has made meat in to an industry).
Capitalism doesn’t endlessly produce, it produces to meet demand. Sometimes the “demand” can consist of subsidies to the industry with the intention of lowering price to consumers, but with the consequence of potentially creating more waste. I’ve read about farmers dumping excess product out because subsidies “bought” too much product to fit on shelves (aka consumers didn’t buy enough to satisfy the greed for profit). Heaven forbid that excess product help people in need, for that may hurt the bottom line.
You honestly said it best in the first thing you said. …“capitalists that put profit before”… everything else. Pure capitalists, while mostly if not entirely evil, do not pollute for the fun of it. They pollute because of greed. If they aren’t profiting from polluting, they’ll (try to) find another way to profit. It’s all they know, a literal one track mind.
That is definitely not to say that their carelessness while chasing profit is okay. It’s harmful and evil. But it is largely just that, carelessness. A pure capitalist cares of nothing other than personal gain. And a public corporation in capitalist society must put shareholder profits ahead of all else by law. The only things they must adhere to in pursuit of profit are other laws, and even then only if the penalty for breaking the law hurts profits more than ignoring the law. This is by design, however terrible that design may be. Examples of this are everywhere. Children illegally hired in packing plants, illegal union busting, etc.
Perhaps the most brazen examples are car manufacturers doing cost-benefit analysis on whether to issue a recall on defective cars. Literally teams of experts calculating whether it will be cheaper to recall and fix dangerous defects, or pay out lawsuits when people get hurt/die. Spoiler: they can, have, and do choose to eat the cost of lawsuits when it is calculated to be cheaper than a recall. And yes, if you live in a capitalist society your life has a dollar amount attached to it (roughly $7.5 million as of 2020 according to FEMA). Your social security number may as well be a barcode placed on product.
Sorry, I got a little sidetracked. What I’m ultimately trying to get at is, we as consumers will have to take responsibility for consuming less because industry will do its’ best to meet demand as long as it is profitable to do so. I think switching subsidies to alternative, less polluting foods is a great solution because it (in theory) works on multiple fronts.
By not subsidizing the meat & dairy industry, industry will be forced to raise cost to consumers or lose money. A higher cost to consumers means consumers will be more open to alternative options. If the options that are better for the environment are then subsidized to lower cost to consumers they become an attractive option.
Example: If the average meat eating, non-eco minded consumer has the choice between paying $50 for a pound of real meat, or $50 for a pound of meat alternative that tastes identical, they’ll choose real meat nearly every time. Now give that same consumer an option of $10 for a pound of meat alternative (whether it tastes identical or not) and the mental math changes considerably. And honestly I doubt the price difference would have to be that drastic to have a noticeable impact on consumer buying habits. Especially when you take into account that people are trending towards being more eco aware.
I’m gonna end this here before I go on ranting all day. /Rant
Tldr; capitalism sucks. Subsidizing meat alternatives seems like a decent idea. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. I hope you all have a wonderful day, and achieve all of your dreams. Please leave me alone :)
The thing is, you don’t have to eat as much meat. If people cut their meat intake by 25%, we would cut GHG emissions from the food industry by 25%.
Business execs are cloaked reapers. It’s pretty interesting that these people continue to reproduce though, while still fully railing against any chance at a decent world to live in. I guess I’m not surprised they wouldn’t care or have the foresight to worry about even their own blood’s future - it’s exactly what led us here.
Some upstanding citizen with a terminal illness should use the opportunity to make an example out of these worthless parasites.
Whose responsibility is it what to consume, if not the consumer’s?
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Please focus on curbing your own satisfaction, so the oil industry can continue to be the biggest polluter AND make money hand over fist.
The Guardian is very much a neoliberal newspaper (some people confuse it with being Leftwing because, like most neolibs, they’re also liberal on moral subjects) so it is usually against regulatory solutions and heavilly favours using Nudge Theory to influence the masses.
So yeah, you’ll see a lot of articles about how people should become Vegetarian because of the emissions from livestock farming and very few demanding, for example, regulation of aircraft emissions (though there is a single Opinion writter there which does not suffer from profitability-prioritizing-thinking when it comes to ecological subjects).
The oil industry is, of course, doing all that polluting for the sheer fun of it. Our collective consumption habits, esp. in the PRIVILEGED western countries, have absolutely nothing to do with it.
There is no sustainable way to eat the amount of meat we do, no matter how much or how little capitalism gets involved. Even assuming the absolute best (aka unrealistic) stats for grass-fed cows, we’d still have to reduce our meat consumption to 1/7 of where it currently is. Do you think that is doable just by destroying some companies? Do you think people would just accept that???
Ban lobbying and see how fast the whole justification falls apart. There’s a reason why west is so car dependent and there’s no public transport in sight.
This seems like rather an optimistic headline, seeing as the article also says that the results from the study were “not statistically signifiant”.
Considering how meat is in most things, you’d think that it would just oversaturate people with warnings, and they would just end up ignoring it. Similar to how people more or less ignore California’s Proposition 65 in the USA, because it’s so broad, and the thresholds are so low that basically everything has a label saying “This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer”. Anything significant gets lost in the noise.
Why dont we do this also every time someone buys a car?
Every car is the same shape and only comes in one shade of brown. They are required to have large, graphic advertisements across the sides warning about the environmental impact.
I actually think that would be very effective. It would also make every city very depressing to live in. However, we could mitigate that by populating the streets with colorful plants and art.
Ha! Love it! Do it! Not like there is any lack of studies to show the health dangers of meat.
- Conclusion: Red and processed meat intakes were associated with modest increases in total mortality, cancer mortality, and cardiovascular disease mortality.
- The study found that people who ate two servings per week of red meat or processed meat had a 3% to 7% higher risk (respectively) of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke, and a 3% higher risk of death from all causes.
- observed strong correlations of dietary HCA intake and consumption of fried and processed meat with DNA adduct levels in breast tissue of 44 women
Won’t ever happen in the US tho. The meat industry is so protective that a lot of states have food libel laws, as well as gag laws that’s limit filming of slaughter houses. If something is so obviously safe, weird how you can’t talk about it’s risks or show its production.
We can’t forget how wasteful meat is as a food supply. Which is sorta obvious when you think about it for 5 seconds. Feeding cows edible food, drinkable water, on farmable land for several years to only get a handful of meals out of them is just silly inefficient.
And that’s just the data, not even going in to ethics. Which, come on. Cut a cow, they bleed, yell and flee. If you cut their young, they attack. Just like we do. Does it matter if they can’t talk? The question is, can they suffer? (yes)
I wonder who is your target audience for posts like this. People who made the choice to eat meat on the basis of rational deliberation but are missing some key facts?
Pretty much everyone hopefully knows that meat is not great for the environment, is more wasteful to produce simply due to thermodynamics, that red meat is not very healthy, and that the ethics of eating meat are pretty clear cut.
We just don’t care cause it’s tasty as fuck. No amount of facts and sound ethical arguments will make a steak not taste amazing.
edit: for what it’s worth, I don’t care if they put warnings on meat. Doesn’t make it any less tasty.
No amount of facts and sound ethical arguments will make a steak not taste amazing.
You love to see it folks. Full support for your selfish, sadistic, nihilism in the face of science, empathy or reason. Long as you are enjoying yourself then who cares about the details?
Just gotta hope no one with more power, influence or capitol feels simmiliar when it’s time to consider others. Might be a rough world if everyone says “fuck it, lol idc”.
I take selfish and nihilistic but not sadistic. I don’t enjoy the fact that animals suffer for my enjoyment. It just doesn’t bother me all that much. It’s just part of life.
I wonder who is your target audience for posts like this.
Their own righteous self-aggrandizing ego.
Yep. 100% this. I’m not going plant based. I’m well aware meat isn’t great for the environment, but my single personal choice won’t make any difference to the industry, and will only result in me hating the little food I eat even more.
Plant based in general is textures that are so repulsive to eat that I’d rather starve.
That’s cool and all but I’m gonna keep eating meat lol
Are you a bot?
lmao
No. Just a vegan who has been around awhile and keeps a cheat sheet of sources. Poke around in my history, I talk to lots of people about lots of things.
From a health perspective, absolutely.
From a climate perspective? Just tax carbon and give the proceeds back as UBI.
To the extent that health warnings work, it’s because it affects the consumer directly. A climate warning is saying “this burger is going to make life slightly worse for someone halfway around the world.”
It may change consumption slightly but also risks a blowback of denial. People don’t like feeling guilty and are perfectly capable of sticking their head in the sand so they can enjoy a steak.
Ughhhh UBI is flawed because it makes government spending astronomical even with a carbon tax. A Means Tested Basic Income works better than UBI because it prioritizes those who need help the most (e.g. those who are impoverished rather than everyone). I’m not an econ expert but the topic from the National Speech and Debate Association is on fiscal redistribution so I’ve been studying it a bit. I feel really pretentious saying this but UBI doesn’t work as well as Means Testing does.
I think this is a case where worse is better. For the sake of argument I am willing to assume that means-tested basic income creates better outcomes than UBI, but UBI sidesteps things like perverse incentives (“I can’t afford to work because I’ll lose benefits”), administrative overhead, and incentivizes support because it’s basically bribing everyone.
Means-tested will be fought because “why should my carbon tax pay for lazy/those people to not work?” UBI is about compensating everyone for the harm that is being done to the climate.
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Carbon tax credits are not a carbon tax. Carbon tax is adding a tax to pollution. Gas for cars, methane (“natural gas” ugh) for homes, coal for power plants, etc. all get taxed. Keep raising the tax until we hit neutrality.
It’s a market-based solution so the right wingers will love it, just like they loved Obamacare. /s
But you can breath warning labels?
If we make them out of little bits of plastic, the answer is shockingly yes
No it won’t
Yeah it’s going to stop people from eating what ever shit that’s available for the cheapest price to continue living. I’m pretty sure this is just another bullshit study to talk about how people should eat healthy while they don’t have budget or means to…
Edit: It seems many of you missed the meaning of what I’m talking about! Poor people who eat fast food, chicken or whatever processed meat products available for cheap not going to give a fuck about what their meat is labeled. Meat just doesn’t mean the steak people buy from the market! If this is so hard for you imbeciles to understand without getting triggered because someone said something you don’t understand than there is no need for further discussion. Processed meat consumption (including all kinds of meat beef, lamb, pork, chicken even fish) is the cheapest protein source for poor people. This study is disregarding how poor people do their food shopping. Until so called I can’t believe it’s meat type of vegetarian alternatives come to the point of real meat poor people going to continue to eat meat. And all you butt hurt so called activist can’t even see the difference because you have your head up so high up your high horses to realize what the fuck is normal people going through. Now kindly please go fuck yourselves and don’t comment any more unless you have an actual and feasible solution.
have you seen the prices of beans and rice?? i save a lotta money by not eating meat. even with the outrageous subsidies poured into meat it can still hardly compare.
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It’s weird hearing my dad and sister complain about how expensive meat is. Today i shopped pretty cheap, although i didn’t have to buy meat.
And i just sit there and think: oh man if only there was any alternative.meat simply has better protein options
what kinda high protein low fat and carb options are there for veggie folk?
id like to substitute chicken breast occasionally. i looked into tofu but its super fatty for pretty mid protein. beans high carb mid protein. lowfat plain greek yogurt and cottage cheese are NICE protein but taste like literal dogshit though its so close to being worth trying to stomach.
im on the search for more macro friendly foods that don’t taste like sour liquid chalk
Meat is cheap because of govt subsidies. And lab grown meat will soon be able to undercut slaughtered meat in price without those subsidies, so the whole “let poor people eat what they can afford” argument will switch sides in the coming years without new protectionist governmental policies.
How soon? Last I heard, they had insurmountable scaling issues.
Problems are always insurmountable until they aren’t. Scaling is one of the last challenges businesses face when bringing new products to market. I don’t have any inside information, but investment is still trending up and companies aren’t throwing in the towel, so they still think they will be able to solve it. Once they do, the industry will change incredibly fast, especially with a market estimated at close to $100b per year.
I’m watching with great interest.
Sure there’s people that just buy what’s cheaper. But there’s also people who consciously make the choice of eating meat having the possibility of not doing so. It makes sense to target that part of the population.
Now, if subsidies to the meat and dairy industry was redericted to plant-based farming, then the only reason left to consume animals would be people’s choice of personal pleasure over ethical and environmental factors
Meat is cheap now huh?
is that what you managed to understand what I’m saying here? If so please go away and waste oxygen somewhere else.
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This is a salty comments section. Can’t even tell who’s salty or why, but they definitely are.
You should salt, generally season, your board, not the steak. Unless you actually brine/marinate the thing.
Ah, so that’s why this message board is so salty
The cigarette warnings don’t do anything though. The shock images were scary to me as a child but by the time I was 18 I was so used to it that it was like I couldn’t see them anymore.
I was thinking this. There was an accompanying cultural shift in general. The labels weren’t telling them anything they didn’t already know. In the case of smoking, the data was unambiguous and directly impactful.
With meat, I’d suspect most of the target audience would roll their eyes and buy anyway. Especially since the labels would be on almost every package, and that asks folks to decide that every single food they’ve eaten their entire lives is a dire existential threat to humanity. That’s asking a lot of folks. While it’s occasionally tossed about in the media about meat having climate impact, it is nowhere near as ubiquitous as the smoking is bad. Besides, folks have been told again and again that fossil fuels are “the” problem, and that sounds nicer and easier and thus for most people there is an inclination to decide that is sufficient.
Thankfully due to the stagflation I’m doing some austerity efforts regarding my grocery procurement. This has resulted in my diet having consisted of the majority of vegetables with some eggs here and there.
Weird, vegetables are more expensive than meat.
You must have been getting ripped off.
Who says I’m living in US?
I hate this idea. My appetite can be ruined by stuff like this, and that would suck to throw away food since I can’t eat it
You probably wouldn’t buy it, which is the point.
YOU WILL EAT THE BUGS
…or plants.
No
I ate fried grasshoppers once and it was seriously good. The buggers tasted like shrimps.
🫘🫛
I remember when these were introduced on cigarette packs. For a while there was a trend of “collecting all the pics”, while other found a nice business in selling “cigarette pack holder” that would just mask the pictures. I’m not sure any of that was the initial goal.
I wonder how applying this to food would turn out, seeing that a fair share of people are well informed of the effect we have on the climate already but simply don’t care.
