The attached chart from article is bullshit and here's why.
It turns out that a steer requires around 15 gallons of water a day growing for, let's say, 400 days before being killed and processed. Let's assume 500 pounds of beef are harvested from the steer (that's a small cow, by the way).
That's (15 gallons * 400 days) / 500 pounds or 12 gallons per pound, or 20.6 liters per kilogram.
So, how do they get 16,000? By attributing the water use of the grain to the meat! Corn, for example, requires about 2,500 gallons per bushel (56 pounds) of corn. It takes about 4.5 pounds of corn to produce 1 pound of usable beef, so now we add 100,446 gallons of water, bringing it to 212.9 gallons per pound.
Agriculture takes water. Fortunately, nature provides through rain, filling thousands of square miles with the most expensive ingredient: grain. What's left is water for the cows, which can largely be provided through streams. Clearly, there's a very big difference between free range cattle and some desert feed lot beasties.
I think the most important thing to take note of is that it takes 12 gallons of water and 4.5 pounds of corn to make 1 pound of beef. Not bad, really!
Meat is the most complete food for humans, beside mother's milk, of course. No single vegetarian source could sustain people like this:
swizec.com
The other very good reason is heritage. I strongly believe that the different racial groups are suited towards different diets. Conflating one race's nutrition with another is a huge problem in the nutrition field, but to not do so means acknowledging the vital importance of race in behavior.
When I looked into this in some depth, I found the following broad discoveries about regional food consumption:
* Europeans eat far more meat and dairy than any other racial group. They also eat a good amount of grains (but less than Middle Easterners) and fruit. They have the lowest vegetable consumption. In some areas, the consumption of fish is high, but not throughout Europe.
* Asians eat the most vegetables by far and quite little meat and almost no dairy. There is a high fish consumption among the Japanese, similar to coastal Northern Europe.
* Africans eat a lot of vegetables, grains, and fruits, but little meat.
If you look at historical foods of Europeans, you see that this is even more true. Meats of many types, but especially pork and beef, are the main food source, supplemented by plenty of dairy, bread, noodles, and fruits, plus a bit of vegetables for flavor but not nutrition.
Meat, including and even especially red meat, is our heritage and is very healthy for us. Let the Chinese eat vegetables, it's presumably quite good for them. I'll have a steak fried in butter - which also is nice for warding off certain peoples!
(Just watch out for beta-agonists being put in the animals and the new regulations hiding where the meat is from and processed!)
