My brother-in-law is a professor of medicine, and his specialty is nutrition. He eats well, likes good wine, and doesn't eat too many sweets . He doesn't really have any special diet. It appears that apart from the @Mediterranean-diet of fresh fruit and vegetables, little else matters.
I like meat. 20 years ago, I decided to become a vegetarian. I just felt uncomfortable that so many animals were suffering for something which is not essential to my life. I believe one can have a perfectly tasty diet and do without a beef burger. I try not to talk about my diet very much . Invited out, I feel like a social nuisance imposing my standards on my host. But more recently my eating habits are becoming more fashionable. It is clear that meat requires more energy, water, and land resources than growing crops. What shocked me was an article in the @Economist a year ago which calculated the effect of meat on climate change. The article described beef as the ‘coal’ of the agricultural industry - in other words the most polluting and most damaging protein supply available. The figures are much worse for cows than they are for pigs and foul. If all cows were removed from this world our greenhouse emissions would drop by around 10%. The fact that cows belch a lot of methane is well-known. For the same amount of protein, one can grow crops at 20th of land space. In addition, large areas of the Amazonian rainforests have been cleared for cattle raising. Half of the wheat from Ukraine was exported for cattle -feed.
So, should we tax beef eating? Well, its effect on climate and food prices is clear. I have still to hear of a politician who is a willing advocate a beef tax. Yet I'm willing to bet anybody that within five years meat will be taxed somewhere. I would put my money on the Scandinavians being first.
