Too Much or Too Little?
Food choices vary from country to country, but as incomes rise, people almost invariably eat more meat, along with milk and eggs. North Americans and Europeans consume more than 83 kilograms of meat per person yearly, com- pared with 58 kilograms in Latin America, 28 kilograms in East Asia and the Pacific, and 11 kilograms in Africa south of the Sahara. Initially, eating more meat may improve the quality of poor people’s diets and their nutritional status. But humans don’t seem to have a good sense of how much is enough. “When people can afford more access to meat, they often start consuming amounts that exceed their needs,” says Marie
where for most consumers the problem is a shortage of meat, not a surplus.
“Meat is especially important for young chil- dren, who go through a critical phase of acceler- ated physical growth and brain development in the first two years of life, and for women, who have high iron requirements during their reproductive years” says Ruel. “Meat and dairy products contain micronutrients, including iron, zinc, calcium, and vitamins A and B12, in forms that are readily available and taken up by the body more easily than when they are obtained from plant sources.”
“Meat is especially important for young children, who go through a critical phase of accelerated physical growth and brain development in the first two years of life.” – Marie Ruel, IFPRI
Ruel, director of IFPRI’s Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division.
Demand growth for animal products is gradu- ally flattening in wealthy countries because of factors including market saturation, slowing income growth, and health concerns. Diets heavy in meat and dairy products have been linked to excess intake of calories and saturated fats and to increased risk of a variety of cancers, heart diseases, and stroke. Organizations like the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Heart Association routinely encourage people to reduce consumption of red meat and high-fat dairy products, but change has been slow. In the United States, after several decades of health warnings, red meat still represents the largest share of meat consumed.
Over the next several decades, virtually all growth in demand for meat will come from the developing world. According to IFPRI model- ing, annual per capita meat consumption will jump to 77 kilograms in Latin America, 52 kilo- grams in Asia and the Pacific, and 24 kilograms in Africa south of the Sahara by 2050. Tat shift could improve nutrition in developing countries,
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Even when animal products are available, it can be difficult to get them into poor people’s diets. Milk and eggs are steady income sources for farm- ers, so they may sell these products instead of con- suming them. For
nonproducers, their high cost limits access. And cultural beliefs may intervene: in Ghana, for ex- ample, a longstanding belief holds that children who are fed eggs will become thieves.
Infrastructure can also pose challenges. Recent work by IFPRI’s Ethiopia Strategy Support Program shows that consumption of meat and dairy products is extremely low in Ethiopia, even by African standards, although the country has one of the largest livestock populations in the world. Options for boosting meat consump- tion in rural areas (which currently averages 4 kilograms per person annually) include creating more markets and storage systems for meat in rural areas.
Changing the Menu
Reallocating global meat supply and consump- tion on a large scale would improve nutrition in poor countries, but not as much as proponents of low meat consumption might expect, ac- cording to Mark Rosegrant, director of IFPRI’s Environment and Production Technology Division. Using IFPRI’s IMPACT model, Rose-
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