Where's the beef? Our betters’ prescription for the Little People’s diet will offer no real solution to the MAGA problem, because there’s a bug
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crickets
Vanity Fair Torched for Ridiculously Blaming MAGA for Americans Wanting a Protein-Fueled Diet
The article was titled “Why Are Americans So Obsessed With Protein? Blame MAGA” by author Keziah Weir. In it, Weir calls out those in the “manosphere” led by President Donald Trump and supported by “influential podcast bros” like podcaster Joe Rogan and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., along with the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement.
By 2015, psychologists were finding that the overconsumption of protein among men could constitute an eating disorder. Was it correlation, coincidence, or some lean-meat canary in the proverbial coal mine that it was into this proteinous landscape that Donald Trump—burger loving, locker room talking, and all—announced his bid for the presidency?
And now, amid a shrinking economy, following strides and setbacks for women’s rights via #MeToo and its backlash (including the overturning of Roe v. Wade), as well as marriage equality, visibility, and media representation for queer and trans people with a similar subsequent “anti-woke” recoil—we have a second Trump term, MAHA, and what menswear commentator Derek Guy calls the “slim-fit revolution” of the manfluencer sphere.
Weir concludes her piece with the bizarre statement that reads, “Whether our current protein path leads to an accidental brush with transcendence, or face down on the pavement as gunshots ricochet nearby, remains to be seen.”
But here’s the bad news: Bugs can have more protein than meat.
[T]he protein content of edible insects ranges from 35 to 60 percent dry weight (after being processed) or 10 to 25 percent fresh weight, which is higher than plant protein sources like cereals, soybeans, and lentils and can sometimes be greater than meat and eggs, says Antonette Hardie, a registered dietitian nutritionist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus. Their fat content ranges widely, from 10 to 60 percent, and it’s mostly healthy, unsaturated fats, she adds.
Ultimately, however, converting the serfs’ diet to grub worms and locusts is both a bug and a feature, despite the impending disappointment of Vanity Fair’s readers, because the real goal of the people who wish to rule is to return the mass of surplus humans to the poverty-stricken conditions of the pre-industrialized world, and a diet of insects, distributed sparing and grudgingly, will accomplish that neatly, protein or no.
ClimateNews 5 February 2018: [Bolding added]
Developing world cannot sustainably achieve same living standards as West
Wealthy nations must 'dramatically reduce resource use' as planet does not have sufficient resources to maintain highest quality of life for everyone, say researchers
High standards of living for all the world’s inhabitants would require up to six times as many resources as the planet can sustainably provide, a new global study has found.
Basic needs such as adequate food to eat, access to electricity and sanitation could likely be met for the entire world population, researchers at the University of Leeds discovered .[“discovered” Uh huh — Ed]
“However, achieving the high standards of living of the type enjoyed by people in many Western countries is not feasible.”
“It’s also not really possible for the developed world to continue having their standards of living,” said Dr Daniel O'Neill, a sustainability researcher at the University of Leeds who led the study.
“So really we need to reduce resource use substantially in wealthy nations and at the same time we need to increase resource use in developing countries," Dr Daniel O'Neill said.
The results suggested that some of the United Nations’ “sustainable development goals” – designed in 2015 to “end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all” – could undermine each other, the study said.
“Pursuing the highest levels of wellbeing for all, for example, could negatively impact efforts to combat climate change.”
“We need to take the lead in wealthy countries like the US and the UK, and dramatically begin to reduce our resource use,” he said.
While problems undoubtedly still exist in developed nations, he said they are unlikely to be solved with more resource use. Instead, other measures such as better distribution of income would help those countries.
“Achieving life goals that go beyond basic needs for everyone, such as universally high levels of life satisfaction, would require between two and six times the sustainable level of resource use.”
The research took into consideration several “planetary boundaries” which, if exceeded, could lead to catastrophic damage.
Previously, earth system scientists have described these boundaries as essential for maintaining the relatively stable conditions the planet has experienced for the past 10,000 years. They define a “safe operating space” in which the Earth can exist.
[The earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old — only in the past 10,000 years has it enjoyed climate conditions in which it can exist? — Ed]
By comparing these boundaries to national resource consumption, the scientists established how sustainable the resource use of each of the 151 countries they studied was. They also considered how well met the social needs of those countries’ citizens were.
“The results revealed that no country was able to both meet its citizens’ needs and maintain a sustainable level of resource use.”
“In general, the more social thresholds a country achieves, the more planetary boundaries it exceeds, and vice versa,” said Dr William Lamb, one of the study’s co-authors from the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change.
"Radical changes are needed if all people are to live well within the limits of the planet,” said Dr Julia Steinberger, another of the study’s co-authors. “These include moving beyond the pursuit of economic growth in wealthy nations, shifting rapidly from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and significantly reducing inequality.”