By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Living small is not going to sell with the public and the voters. And the call for a meatless cuisine is not even culturally correct.”
EuroNews’s Liam Gilliver (AP) summarized the new political reality in “Trump Tracker: How the US is Rolling Back Climate Progress in 2026“). In addition to
- withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement,
- withdrawing from the UN climate programs;
- liberating Venezuelan oil and gas; and
- cancelling or reversing renewable energy subsidies,
Gilliver also singled out New Dietary Guidelines, with the comment: “The US Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture have come under fire after releasing their 2026 dietary guidelines, which encourage American households to prioritise diets built on “whole, nutrient-dense food.”
The “Eat Real Food” pyramid recommends “significantly limiting highly processed items.” And real beef steak and dairy are at the top of the illustration.
Gilliver can only complain:
The new food pyramid puts an image of a red steak and ground beef at the top under the “protein” section, despite beef being responsible for 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions per gram of protein than plant-based alternatives such as beans and lentils.
Bad optics? “Neither of these foods appears on the food pyramid,” Gilliver allows, “but they are mentioned in the full dietary guidelines.” His article continues:
“While there are many ways to meet our protein needs, not all protein sources have the same impact on people or the planet,” says Raychel Santo, a food and climate researcher at the World Resources Institute (WRI). “Beef and lamb, in particular, have some of the highest environmental costs of any protein-rich food — with significantly higher greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and water pollution per ounce of protein than most alternatives.”
Once again, the self-interest of consumers in a free economy is at odds with the agenda of the Climate Industrial Complex. And with the decline in interest and sales of fake meat (Beyond Meat is a penny stock, down 99 percent) the political problem of the eco-busybodies is profound. [1]
Living small is not going to sell with the public and the voters. And the call for a meatless cuisine is not even culturally correct. Consider what Chris Tomlinson, the climate-obsessed business editorialist at the Houston Chronicle, stated five years ago in “Fighting Climate Change Requires Changing Texas Beef and Oil Culture”:
No wonder so many Texans refuse to acknowledge climate change; the planet’s fate relies on transforming not only our economy but our culture…. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that climate change might come to a screeching halt if all humans switched to electric transportation and a vegetarian diet by 2030.
How embarrassing! BBQ, beef fajitas, and char-grilled steak are clear victors over fake meat. Taste, texture, and smell matter in the real world, rain or shine.
[1] AI summarizes the problems of Beyond Meat:
Beyond Meat stock ($BYND) has crashed from over $200 in 2019 to penny-stock levels due to dwindling demand, high production costs, intense competition, and mounting financial losses. Consumers have shied away from the high-priced, highly processed products, leading to years of declining revenue and investor concern over the company’s long-term viability
This seems to be a win, win, win, win situation for Americans living in the real world: we’re encouraged to eat natural, tasty, and healthy food, we’re out of the reach of those grasping organizations, we’re enjoying a reprieve from the total onslaught of fearmongering, and we’re enjoying a good laugh.
I’ll celebrate that with a grilled medium rare rib eye.
Can’t argue against a ribeye, but I’ll add a Porterhouse now and then. Prime rib too.
Are bread and beer ultra-processed foods? Find a better word.
weird how climate and diet merge, huh?
Climate Diet? Diet Change?
Pseudo-scientific smorgasbord of small-sample studies and misapplied correlations.
Well, in essence, the Climate Fascists are attempting to get control over ENERGY USE. Which is simply a tool to get them control over EVERYTHING.
You thought what THEY ALLOW you to EAT was off that list?! Oh no!
Meatles cuisine isn’t biologically correct either.
Key Nutrients in Meat for Brain Health
Someone wants you dumb.
You think?
The education system is doing a pretty good job of dumbing down future generations.
As it was designed to do.
And feeble.
A couple of the wife’s friends are vegan , they are totally stupid to the point of abusing the privilege
“It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that climate change might come to a screeching halt”
Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. The only way “climate change” will come to a screeching halt is when the Sun turns into a Red Giant, and the Earth is swallowed whole. Hopefully the greenies will hold their breath waiting for that to happen.
I’d taken exception to the other half of the sentence… “if all humans switched to electric transportation and a vegetarian diet by 2030.”
Now when is the last time _all_humans_ did anything together?
If MacDonalds uses a downward demand spike as motivation for the ‘climate change extra value meal’ with two cheeseburgers and a petroleum-based plastic Captain Planet toy, I’m in!
These people are so fanatical, they’d probably force uncontacted Amazonian tribes to stop eating meat.
I wish McDonald would return to using beef tallow to cook their french fries.
Tallow makes the fries super crispy! They stopped using it in 1990. I don’t eat fries cooked in processed vegetable oil. nasty and inflammatory. The change was the result of Phil Sokolof’s idea that saturated fats raise a person’s LDL cholesterol and that cholesterol causes heart disease. The only is that the data simply doesn’t support that hypothesis.
example: eating chicken eggs are high in cholesterol. The human body breaks this down in the gut and make what ever it needs/requires. Human LDL is produced by the liver, and LDL is used by the brain and also makes HDL from LDL.
No meat is another watch out what you ask for and comes with unintended consequences like all the alarmists proclamations. A vegetarian world with no nitrates and CO2 from fossil fuels and the land covered with PV panels would mean famines without the bugs or climate.
“The new food pyramid puts an image of a red steak and ground beef at the top under the “protein” section, despite beef being responsible for 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions per gram of protein than plant-based alternatives such as beans and lentils.”
I live in rural NY. Down the road are my closest neighbors, a small herd of beef cows. I have nicknamed them the Bovinians. Nice family. Any suggestion about their digestion being bad for the planet is met with a perfect comeback to the complainers. A gift of pastry, so to speak.
FRESH PIES MADE DAILY.
I don’t know the UK equivalent but in the colonies we would say Liam Gilliver appears to have gotten his smarts from a Cracker Jack® box.
{ Frito-Lay announced in 2016 that the toy gift would no longer be provided; I’m stunned}
I read no toy because they could be choking hazards.
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As soon as someone inserts “Save the Planet” into the conversation
it’s time to not give them credit for much of anything.
Especially when they’re still using phones, computers, etc; all of which require a vast FF infrastructure to create and operate.
I know of one exception to objecting to “Save the Planet”.
On a Yuengling beer 12 pack it says:
“Please recycle.
Save the Planet.
It’s the only one with beer.” 😎
The whole meat/GHG thing is based on bad science.
The climate gang doesn’t like meat because ruminants like cattle produce methane (burps, not farts) as part of their digestive process, and methane is supposedly a potent GHG. The vegan gang doesn’t like meat, period, but latched onto the ‘climate science’ reason rather than just seem nutritionally silly.
It is true that methane is a potent GHG—IN THE LAB dry test atmosphere. But NOT in the real world averaging 2% water vapor (specific humidity). Methane’s two small (narrow width, low amplitude) absorption bands are completely overshadowed by just two of the much bigger (much broader, much greater amplitude) water vapor absorption bands. And that physics has been known for decades, illustrated many ways in many places.
I have to correct you Rud, it’s based on emotion and the desire to de-industrialize the West.
Well the anti-meat types are basically food Nazis, wanting to force their ill-guided views on what is “healthy” on everyone else.
They can never be happy doing what they think is best FOR THEM and be done with it. No, everyone must be “converted” to their way of thinking to give meaning to their lives.
And just for the record, Adolf (yes, that one) was a vegetarian.
In Mike Judge’s “The Goode Family” they fed their dog Che a strictly vegetarian diet. They then wondered why there were no squirrels in their neighborhood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goode_Family
Mm, beans, lentils, all that stuff causes flatulence! Maybe the state could subsidize a device to capture intestinal gas and collect the precious methane thus obtained, in exchange for financial compensation?… I have such good ideas. I could probably be a minister.
More seriously: give me a dish of lentils or some sauerkraut with good smoked meats, and I’ll be happy.
I seem to recall that even some leading alarmists believed that this fear of greenhouse gas emissions due to livestock was unfounded. To be checked.
It’s my understanding that all animals are “carbon neutral”, regardless of whether or not they’re domesticated.
Some degrowth-oriented environmentalists have tried to make people feel guilty about having dogs and cats, because they have to be fed and bought toys (even though my cats have a blast with a cork and couldn’t care less about plastic gadgets). The message is simple: CO₂ is everywhere in what you do, and you should weigh the pros and cons every time you take any action. Well, yes! We must “think about future generations!” Ideally by wrecking the economy enough through degrowth so that all the progress we’ve made over the past two centuries becomes nothing more than a distant memory within seventy years.
There is an injection of some sort of chemical poppycock that dairy farmers can give their cows to cut down on flatulence. Not sure I want that in my milk or meat.
My doctor told me to eat foods with lots of color in them. so I try to eat a bag of Skittles a day…
It should be noted, however, that there are vegan animal advocates who speak out against climate alarmism and environmental catastrophism: these people are respectful, pleasant, and well-educated.
That people may choose to refuse to eat meat and animal products for personal reasons is something I am perfectly fine with. It is coercion and the constant doomsday blackmail that disgusts me.
My fiancés middle son has been a strict vegan for about two decades now. He has to be very careful to get proper nutrition, and she worries about him constantly in that respect.
Yes, you really have to be careful not to become deficient when following this type of diet. It can happen very quickly. Oranges are not animal meat (what about blood oranges?…), but when you see the damage a lack of vitamin C can cause to an initially healthy body…
I wonder if the vitamin C thing is overblown. There are small traces of vitamin C in meat.
A medium size potato supplies half the RDA of Vit C.
FWIW- 8 oz of meat supplies 60 gm of complete protein and 500 cal….It takes over 2000 cal of rice, corn & beans to supply that same, healthy 60 gm of protein.
But a lot of animals would not have a life w/o human demand for consumption. Tenderness also means a life of leisure.
All most of us need to know is don’t eat too much, eat a variety of foods and drink plenty of fluids (be sure to drink some water).
Some exercise helps.
Yep.
You don’t need plants.
It’s more than protein.
Natural vitamins count.
Much more so the proper mix of amino acids some of which are only available in meat, real meat.
Which ones? Don’t think this is right. Complete protein (proper balance of all the required amino acids) from any one food is rare outside of animal based foods, which include fish, eggs, dairy.
But its not unknown, and the right combination of vegetable foods will supply complete protein at a given meal. The reason for many traditional dishes, for instance corn treated with lime and eaten with beans.
Don’t think there are any amino acids that are available only in meat. A vegetarian diet, ie meat free, can be perfectly healthy, It can also supply enough B12. A vegan diet (no animal based foods at all) much less so, if at all.
B12 is the greatest argument against veganism. We make it, like other animals, in the gut, but we make it at a stage in the digestive process when absorption of nutrients has ended. Following a vegan diet would have been impossible before the 20C because of this, and following a vegan diet today without B12 supplements is a recipe for child development issues and malnutrition of both adults and children. As well as being, on the evidence, less healthy than a vegetarian one.
By the way – people sometimes cite the case of Indian vegan diets. Yes, but these evolved in circumstances in which food storage meant contamination of grains with insects. You get B12 from that. Not a lot, but you don’t need a lot. A real strict vegan diet without B12 supplements really is impossible, and there really are not cultures anywhere that practice it.
And without meat, the person is insufferable.
Chewing, especially meat, is instrumental in proper jaw and tooth formation and strength plus tooth a
alighnment. Chomping on nuts doesn’t do much and are responsible for gut problems in many plus the roasting in nasty seed oils. Many vegan foods don’t supply that important process. Why so many kids end up in braces now.
I might be mistaken but, the only non-animal source for B12 is brewers yeast. (I think even the B12 in supplements?)
A B12 deficiency takes about 5 years for the symptoms to show up. Schizophrenia-like behavior can be one of the symptoms.
That presents a real moral dilemma for the extreme vegans. (Think ALF and others that would, say, ban insulin because animals are used in its production.)
(I’m open to correction.)
Yes, this is right. We make B12, like other animals, but we make it after the absorption phase. And the only other source is indeed supplements.
A side question here. Do normal people follow these ever-changing food pyramids?
I asked AI to tell me the evolution of the USDA food pyramids over 75 years. Here is the summary:
Key TakeawaysThe overarching trend across 75 years is clear:
Industry lobbying (especially from meat and dairy) has played a documented role in shaping these guides throughout their history.
I remember the one presented to me by Mrs. Harney in 3rd grade at a public elementary school. That was all the way back when kids said pledge of allegiance at the start of a school day. That was the last time I remember one clearly. I remember -hazily- seeing one on a screen in the early 2000’s, I think presented by Arnold Schwartzenegger?
Cows eat plants (grains and grasses mostly), and plants fix ‘carbon’ out of the atmosphere. Somebody explain how that affects the climate? It’s a cycle.
Why didn’t Beyond Meat do abalone?
Or truffles? Morel mushrooms?
It’s mind boggling that some moron who thinks we should put in millions of acres of solar and wind farms to replace a few acres required for the same energy output from gas, are somehow concerned with cows pooping on grass.
It is now more accurate for those who understand the keto diet and the carbs that swarm the stores and food choices. Beware the bread, rice, potatoes, and assorted sugars.
“And the call for a meatless cuisine is not even BIOLOGICALLY correct.” FTFY
Anyone claiming humans don’t need to eat animal tissue are not following the scientific facts of our obligate omnivore biochemistry.
If a doctor pushes (or eats) a vegetarian or vegan diet, stay away from that one. Doctors should know better.
Any time you hear of a female celebrity who is an outspoken advocate of vegetarian/vegan then admits to eating a proper diet when they get pregnant, you know it’s because their doctor told them to eat a proper omnivore diet if they want their child to be healthy – but they rarely own up to that publicly.
Ah, the mandatory confusion of diet and climate. I still don’t eat climate.
Michael Pollan:
Eat food (ie what your grandmother would recognize as food)Mainly plantsNot too much of it
The problem with the most common modern American (and British) diets is they are so considerably based on the heavily processed products of the corn and soy industries made into prepared dishes. Where, as with fast fermented white bread, the requirements of a rapid manufacturing process have been given priority over everything else, including nutrition.
Meat for me, bugs gras and crap for thee.
There settled, get lost ecotards…
Humans area 100.000 year species. Farming started 7000 years ago. Farming only delivers during harvest. Because storing of plant food was not possible up until very very recently, the harvest had to be consumed rapidly by man and beast.
The absurd amounts of carbohydrates from this feasting was stored as fat. Right in time for the lean months of winter when hunting does not deliver.
That’s how mankind survived until modern times.
So eating plants today is very dumb and not necessary.
You will die if you do not eat meat, fish, dairy etc.
Why do these vegans feel the need to hate normal people as well as themselves? Is it because of their diet?
“It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that climate change might come to a screeching halt if all humans switched to electric transportation and a vegetarian diet by 2030.”
Wow, climate change might come to a screeching halt! Stupid scientifically and just stupid, bad writing.
climate change might come to a screeching halt
So if we did what they’re asking, the climate will never change?