Should We Eat Meat?: Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory 1st Edition
by Vaclav Smil (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 66 ratings
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Vaclav Smil receives 2015 OPEC Award for Research
“Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” (Choice, 1 January 2014)
From the Inside Flap
Should We Eat Meat?
EVOLUTION AND CONSEQUENCES OF MODERN CARNIVORY
Meat eating is often a contentious subject, whether considering the technical, ethical,environmental, political, or health-related aspects of production and consumption.
This book is a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination and critique of meat consumption by humans, throughout their evolution and around the world. Setting the scene with a chapter on meat's role in human evolution and its growing influence during the development of agricultural practices, the book goes on to examine modern production systems, their efficiencies, outputs, and impacts. The major global trends of meat consumption are described in order to find out what part its consumption plays in changing modern diets in countries around the world. The heart of the book addresses the consequences of the "massive carnivory" of western diets, looking at the inefficiencies of production and at the huge impacts on land, water, and the atmosphere. Health impacts are also covered, both positive and negative. In conclusion, the author looks forward at his vision of "rational meat eating", where environmental and health impacts are reduced, animals are treated more humanely, and alternative sources of protein make a higher contribution.
Should We Eat Meat? is not an ideological tract for or against carnivorousness but rather a careful evaluation of meat's roles in human diets and the environmental and health consequences of its production and consumption. It will be of interest to a wide readership including professionals and academics in food and agricultural production, human health and nutrition, environmental science, and regulatory and policy making bodies around the world.
From the Back Cover
Should We Eat Meat?
EVOLUTION AND CONSEQUENCES OF MODERN CARNIVORY
Meat eating is often a contentious subject, whether considering the technical, ethical,environmental, political, or health-related aspects of production and consumption.
This book is a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination and critique of meat consumption by humans, throughout their evolution and around the world. Setting the scene with a chapter on meat's role in human evolution and its growing influence during the development of agricultural practices, the book goes on to examine modern production systems, their efficiencies, outputs, and impacts. The major global trends of meat consumption are described in order to find out what part its consumption plays in changing modern diets in countries around the world. The heart of the book addresses the consequences of the "massive carnivory" of western diets, looking at the inefficiencies of production and at the huge impacts on land, water, and the atmosphere. Health impacts are also covered, both positive and negative. In conclusion, the author looks forward at his vision of "rational meat eating", where environmental and health impacts are reduced, animals are treated more humanely, and alternative sources of protein make a higher contribution.
Should We Eat Meat? is not an ideological tract for or against carnivorousness but rather a careful evaluation of meat's roles in human diets and the environmental and health consequences of its production and consumption. It will be of interest to a wide readership including professionals and academics in food and agricultural production, human health and nutrition, environmental science, and regulatory and policy making bodies around the world.
About the Author
Dr Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical, and public policy studies. Dr. Smil has published in more than 30 books, over 400 papers, and contributed to more than 30 edited volumes.
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Product details
ASIN : 1118278720
Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell; 1st edition (May 28, 2013)
Language : English
Paperback : 276 pages
Customer Reviews:
4.2 out of 5 stars 66 ratings
Top reviews from the United States
Karthik Sekar
4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and exhaustive but not without flawsReviewed in the United States on November 9, 2018
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Smil's book was exactly what I was looking for - a potted history of how meat became industrialized and the numbers surrounding the phenomena. He breaks down numbers such as feed, productivity, yield, carbon dioxide emissions, and water usage with incredible nuance. I particularly appreciated the way he approached the water usage numbers, highlighting that we can't consider all water going into meat as the same (e.g. water from aquifers versus rainfall used to grow the feedcrops). I also think he explained well the major determinants in engendering industrial animal agriculture (e.g. advances in refrigeration and the Haber process).
As with any Smil book, it can be a bit dry and a slog at times. I think numbers are a good start, but numbers ultimately should be culminating to some sort of wisdom. I didn't always find such in this book. Also, I think he makes numerous fallacies: For example, he contends that malnutrition in India is due to not eating enough meat. Couldn't this also be explained by a general lack of calories? Secondly, he often qualifies meat eating due to evolutionary reasons. Often, his arguments rest on the fact that because humans are evolutionarily optimized to eat meat, we should. This is a fallacy. Modern society routinely dispenses evolutionary goals (e.g. monogamy, having fewer children). We have adopted other values to take its place (such as moral considerations).
26 people found this helpful
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Gypsykin
3.0 out of 5 stars Well researched and fact basedReviewed in the United States on December 21, 2017
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This is a difficult read thanks to the plethora of facts and figures shared by the author. To his credit he has analyzed and critiqued a number of myths and misconceptions using hard data. This is probably the most well researched book I have read about meat eating and the planetary impact of the meat industry. However the writing style and excessive listing of facts and data makes it a difficult read. Not a book for the casual reader or layman.
5 people found this helpful
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AlchemystAZ
5.0 out of 5 stars Consider the W.H.O. recommendation and then read this Science.Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2015
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Very thorough science, but gives beef a passing grade as opposite to the latest World Health Organization recommendation. Beef made us who we are. He suggests how to handle the overwhelming task of getting people at least to cut down before the Earth is finally destroyed. A heavy read. Not for the weak of spirit or the scientifically ignorant. Few politicians are up to the task, unfortunately.
10 people found this helpful
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Philippides
4.0 out of 5 stars Yes, we should eat meatReviewed in the United States on December 15, 2015
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I liked this book. It is pretty well informed and well documented. The answer I get from the question that titles the book is a big YES, we should eat meat, and the reason resides in the fact that a lot, really a lot of what humans cannot process from our food -cereal stalks for example- is recycled by livestok that produce rich, wholesom proteins.
If interested in this topic, I highly recommend this reading.
7 people found this helpful
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ahall
4.0 out of 5 stars GreatReviewed in the United States on January 28, 2014
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I really liked the factual perspective of the argument "Should we eat meat?" The author makes really good points about what it takes to produce meat, many things that I never thought about. The environmental impact is vastly significant. The only thing I didn't like is that the author gets too much into the nitty gritty of nutritional facts and the history of meat eating.
4 people found this helpful
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Sean T.
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United States on January 5, 2015
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Excellent book, filled with very in-depth analysis.
3 people found this helpful
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Frankly BT
4.0 out of 5 stars It'll make you think....Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2013
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If you're looking for some light reading to pass the time....don't read this book. BUT....if you're looking for some serious insight into all aspects of carnivory and its relation to humans.....then this is the book for you. Brought to light much that I was unaware of.
9 people found this helpful
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Ron Guillot
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United States on June 13, 2016
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Unbiased and incredible approach to a very controversial topic with various positives and negatives
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Mohammad Noroozi
5.0 out of 5 stars A deep dive into meat and its impact on our health, on society, and the environmentReviewed in Canada on March 12, 2019
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The below is copied from my Goodreads review about the book.
As a person who eats a mostly vegetarian diet, I have been looking for a book which dedicated itself to look at the actual facts known about meat and its consequences on our health, on society, and on our environment. This was that book for me.
The other readers have commented/complained about the density of numbers and references in Vaclav Smil's book. I admit, the reading will be slow, and it will probably be hard going at times. That said, personally, I appreciated that this was written like a graduate thesis. It was important for me that I could dig deeper into the references on any topic of interest and I could keep the figures he quoted in mind for when it came time to make my own conclusions.
Another point I could also make in defense of Vaclav Smil's style is that, for me personally anyways, a little sober number peddling is a welcome alternative to the polarized debate between meat lovers and vegetarians. I wanted someone who would take a researchers accounting of the facts when I picked up this book. I wasn't disappointed.
Apart from that, a little about what's actually in the book:
1. The Ancient History of People and Eating Meat
If you have an unquestioning ideological bend against the idea that meat has ever been a part of the healthy human diet then, thankfully, the first part of the book will turn you off and you won't have to waste any more time. Vaclav Smil says the simple truth. At our basic biology (e.g. our intestinal tract, our teeth, the essential amino acids our body does not produce itself) we are fine tuned to include meat as a substantial part of our diet.
Also, despite what other readers say, Vaclav Smil doesn't suggest that we can't live with a meatless diet, he just notes what is obvious for any serious anthropologist - us and our ancestors have been eating meat for a long time. You can live a healthy life while meatless but the consensus about our evolution as a species stays the same.
2. Livestock's Historical Role in Human Civilization
Vaclav Smil touches on what type of animals human beings picked as their ideal livestock. The topic is facinating. For instance, a bear would make a terrible livestock. A bear needs meat as part of its healthy diet. Similarly, anything but a herd animal would be too unruly and more dangerous to its handlers.
Then he discusses the historical advantages that ancient farmers took use of to make their subsistence living just a little easier. Large livestock could do work in the field. Also, horses and cows were able to eat the parts of crops that humans can't digest (the cellulose in plants is undigestible in humans and a lot of other animals). Cows were able to turn this inedible roughage into nutritious milk for human beings.
Separately, pigs and chickens could be relied on to either eat the garbage left over from human cooking or forage for themselves for their feed. I particularly liked the example of chickens or geese being flocked over a recently harvested field to eat any left over seeds.
3. The Manufacturing of Food - Feed Crops, CAFOs, Balanced Feed
This part of the book is the section that most surprised me. Like most other people, I'd seen the images of chickens in small cages, cows shoulder to shoulder at a feeding trough in giant facilities. Those images are the tip of an iceberg. The whole operation is much more industrial, more globalized, and enormously sophisticated.
Smil quickly does away with the terms "industrial farming" or "factory farming" and introduces the term Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). This is the term that describes the terrible living conditions of cows, pigs, and chickens who will live in the minimum space mandated by law in large feeding facilities. For chickens, that space is slightly larger than a legal sheet of paper per chicken. For pigs, and cows, often they are close enough that they are almost just rubbing against the animal next to them. Some of these facilities have only as much light in the animal areas as you would find on a moonlight night outside. Often the feces is not removed until the animals have been cleared. Smil documents all of this in extraordinary detail. Meat in modern society is for the first time cheaply and readily available to almost anyone. The tragedy, as Smil notes, is that it is born on the suffering of these animals.
The other, and as Smil points out, more environmentally significant aspect of modern meat production is feed crops and compound feeds. I ended up visualizing compound feeds as the Clif bars of animal feed. It is a food substance, often pelleted (I assume for easy portioning) of a balanced portion of macro and micro nutrients from various whole food sources and additives. Making this requires high yield crops such as corn and soybean to be sourced, often across national borders, to facilities for the large scale mixing. The net effect of this work - the farming, the transport, the industrial processing, and the feeding to animals rather than feeding directly to humans - results in a high energy cost for each pound of meat eaten by a person. This translates to a large contribution to the global warming of our environment.
The couple of chapters that deal with that in depth are worth reading twice to learn about the fascinating globalized web that brings meat to our tables.
4. The Potential Role for Meat in a Future with Many More Mouths to Feed
Smil takes his time to make his case but I'll be up front about it, he sees meat as a necessary part of any future solutions that make better use of current farm lands to feed even more people. Unlike what I saw some other readers claim, Smil doesn't say that the world can't be well nourished on a vegetarian diet with the current farm lands we have. What he says, which is obvious, is that most people are not willing to stop eating meat. If anything, the more money that individuals in developing countries have, the more likely they are to regularly buy meat. Smil is being pragmatic in his predictions.
What he does make a case for, is being more rational with our meat production. For instance, cows eating plant matter that is inedible to humans anyways could be a larger part of their diet with no detriment to farmland dedicated for producing crops directly for human consumption. Those cows could also produce milk, which is much more energy efficient per pound of feed for a cow.
He also talks about the benefits of growing fish aquafarms and the relatively much more efficient feeding of such. He talks about ways to extend ground meat with portions of soy. He also, and I appreciated this, talked about all of us eating a little less meat. There is already a trend to that in developed countries. He makes a lot of sensible suggestions for the reader to consider.
TL;DR This is a great book. There is much to learn about how meat gets from a farm to the grocery store, the treatment of animals, the role of animals in mankind's history. I think any vegetarian or would be vegetarians should pick this up, if only to hear the perspective of an academic who has seriously researched the topic of humanity's relationship to meat.
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Benjamin Parry
4.0 out of 5 stars A comprehensive overview but lacking a holistic approachReviewed in Canada on February 27, 2021
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This is the first book I’ve read by famed Manitoban researcher Vaclav Smil, much beloved by Bill Gates. The book’s intent is to provide the data needed to answer its stated question. It is a compendium of facts and figures and each page is loaded with references, yet it lacks the holistic view needed for a satisfying answer.
Smil’s method is reductive: nutrition becomes the composition of protein, fat & carbohydrate with some micronutrients; environmental impact becomes land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and some observations on heavy metals. This approach is dangerous. The systems in question are too complex for closed models to accurately describe their operation. If we focus only on the ways these systems can have engineering resilience around specific components we will miss their ecological resilience. That said, knowing this, and duly discounting certain recommendations, the book is useful for covering what we have been able to glean from this approach. As an overview of the scientific literature for meat production it appears comprehensive.
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Manu dJ
5.0 out of 5 stars Gran trabajo de investigación y exposiciónReviewed in Spain on October 13, 2016
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El libro de Smil presenta un análisis exhaustivo del consumo de carne desde diversas perspectivas. Trata desde su función en la evolución del hombre actual hasta su papel como elemento de las diferentes culturas. Hace un gran análisis del coste de la producción de carne, especialmente centrado en su impacto ambiental, valorando diversas medidas de este impacto y discutiendo las que no son adecuadas. Finaliza presentando diversos escenarios de adaptación para reducir el impacto del consumo de carne sobre el medio ambiente.
Es un trabajo académico de gran valor que incluye estudios hechos desde distintas perspectivas. Es un libro para leer con la mente abierta y sin una idea preconcebida al respecto. Si así se hace, se aprende mucho y permite formarse una opinión propia al respecto del tema tratado. MUY RECOMENDABLE.
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Tanguy P
4.0 out of 5 stars Make an informed decision about whether to eat meatReviewed in France on January 10, 2018
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After watching the 2014 documentary Cowspiracy, whose rather depressing conclusion was that anyone concerned about the environment should become a vegan, I set out to search for a book which would provide me with a more detailed analysis of the matter, and would allow me to make an informed decision about my consumption of animal products.
And that is exactly what I have found in this book. The scope of Vaclav Smil's analysis is mind-boggling: how much meat is produced in the world today? How much meat do people consume in different countries, and how are those statistics built? How are animals raised and slaughtered? What are the impacts of animal husbandry in terms of water consumption, land use, GHG emissions, etc.? What are the positive and negative effects of meat consumption on our health?
In just over 200 pages, the author successfully deals with all these questions, and many more, answering pretty much every question I might have had about meat consumption, in a very documented, scientific manner. And he debunks many hasty arguments that are often made against meat consumption, the kind that you can see in Cowspiracy.
And he's not just throwing numbers around and describing a situation: he provides a very concrete conclusion that we should draw from all those facts.
The book explores so many different fields, it's a tough read, unless you're well versed in biology, agriculture, etc. But if you have a basic scientific culture, and are willing to look up from time to time a concept that you're not familiar with, then you should definitely not be daunted!
Taking off one-star half-heartedly because the presentation of the book could have been better (e.g. it would have been nice to have annexes that recap commonly used figures, such as the average live weights of cows/pigs/poultry, or feed conversion ratio) and because some factual errors have slipped through.
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