Food consumption, class and health
Production and consumption are closely related. The capitalist food system is based on supply and demand. Producers would argue that the reason they produce what they do is because consumers want their products. However, it is not so simple. What appears to be consumer choice is usually the result of class inequalities and marketing. People can only buy what they can afford. With widely unequal incomes, most people do not get much choice at all. Marketing and advertising are also used to create and manipulate eating habits, often cleverly using the local culture and tradition. Production decisions are based on what will make the most profit. If it costs more to produce healthy food or if entrenched industries will lose out, then then agri-capitalism will continue to produce food that not only does not enhance human health but actively causes ill-health and even death. The end result is people end up making very unhealthy ‘choices’.
Meat Eating and Health
Clearly, if the world’s population didn’t eat meat, apart from those who have no other alternatives due to climate and geography, many of the zoonoses, including avian flu and coronaviruses, would not exist. However, though many more people are becoming vegetarian or vegan and many cultures still have a largely vegetarian diet, eg Hindus in South India, there are obstacles to giving up meat and many would argue that we don’t need to. However, the problems created by meat, both for health and ecological reasons, mean that cutting down drastically on meat consumption is imperative.
Meat eating has massively expanded over the past 50 years. On average, every person on Earth currently consumes 43.5 kilograms of meat per year. In 2013 (the most recent year data is available), US citizens consumed 115 kilograms of meat and people in the UK 81 kilograms, while citizens in India only ate 3.7 kilos. In general, men eat more meat than women. In the EU, including the UK, though meat consumption has stagnated recently, with a growing number of people switching to vegetarian and vegan diets, it is still a main part of most people’s diet, with pork and chicken rising in popularity compared to beef.
Marketing has created a culture in which meat-eating is a status symbol for many, copying the USA cowboy culture where meat-eating is a symbol of wealth and virility. The average American man eats more than his own weight in meat every year (even as that weight has increased by 30 pounds since 1960). Americans eat meat in quantities that are double the global average
The Actual Reason Meat Is Not Healthy.
The US’s obsession with meat could be seen during the coronavirus pandemic. Trump declared meat processing plants to be an essential part of the infrastructure and attempted to intervene to stop closures when there were many coronavirus cases (
The real reason Tyson is shutting down its largest pork plant).
Meat eating is closely linked to the Americanisation of global culture. The spread of fast food joints, with meat (burgers and fried chicken) the main products on sale, is testament to the cult of the USA. Though there are now more vegetarian and vegan alternatives at the fast food outlets in many countries, it is still he meat options that dominate.
In the UK, the BBC Good Food Nation Survey (2016) found that most people ate fast food on average two days per week. But in the 16 to 20-year-old category, one in six ate fast food at least twice a day, with one in eight among 21 to 34-year-olds eating as frequently. The study of more than 5,000 people found that half of them thought "a meal isn't a meal without meat". However, the same proportion were unaware of how much meat is a recommended daily amount, considerably overestimating the amount needed. The survey found that a fifth of men (21%), and 32% of 16 to 21-year-old men and women, ate meat at least three times a day. The typical adult now eats meat at least twice a day and has only six meat-free days a month
Some teens eat fast food 'twice a day'.
Though the increase in vegetarianism and veganism is now on the rise among many young people, the amount of burger and chicken takeaways is evidence that meat eating is still very much the norm in the UK and elsewhere.
China, Brazil and India have all massively increased their meat consumption as more of the population becomes well-off and aspires to an American lifestyle of steaks, burgers and fried chicken. China is also the biggest consumer of pork. Since 1965, per capita meat consumption in China has increased six-fold. Since the population almost doubled to 1.4 billion people over the same period, global demand for meat and animal feed has exploded.
China is also one of the main sources of the trade in wildlife for consumption. Consuming wild meat had once been the preserve of the nobility but now it is a status symbol for the rising middle classes- culinary adventure seekers. It is the demand from these well-off consumers, largely based in the Guangdong province in southern China just north of Hong Kong, that is behind the existence of the wild life farms and trade, out of which emerged the corona virus. The demand for meat is bolstered by (totally unscientific) folk beliefs in the medicinal power of dead animals such as bats – another probable coronavirus source - which reputedly restore eyesight, civets ‘cure’ insomnia. This market is fuelled by the spending power of the world’s fastest growing middle class.
It is hard to say which came first- the increase in supply of cheap factory farmed meat which then had to find a market, or the increase in demand based on cultural and social factors, that led to the intensification of animal farming. It is likely a combination of the two. Whatever the cause, the increase in meat eating has led to the kind of health issues we have been facing in terms of zoonotic diseases. However, meat eating, along with other consumption habits has led to a number of other health problems.
Non-communicable Diseases and other health issues linked to diet
These health issues relate to issues of consumption rather than production and have nothing to do with the amount of food produced. Instead, they arise because production is not geared to provide the
type of food people need to have a healthy diet and because distribution is so incredible unequal.
According to WHO estimates, 1.9 billion people age 18 or above were overweight in 2016. Of this number more than 650 million people were obese, plus 41 million children under the age of 5. Meanwhile, 821 million people go hungry (undernutrition) and 2 billion suffer from one or several micronutrient deficiencies
Fact sheets - Malnutrition.
Hunger is a complex problem that will be discussed in another pamphlet in this series. Here we will explore the causes of obesity which is a key problem in the UK and other western countries, but increasingly a problem in the Global South as well. Obesity may normally be associated with being well-off but not always. It can be the result of eating the wrong foods so poor people can also be obese. Obesity is a major factor in non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, strokes, diabetes and some cancer. It was also cited as one of the factors that might make coronavirus symptoms more serious. We will first look at what kinds of food lead to obesity and then consider the socio-economic factors which cause people to eat unhealthily.
Meat Eating Again
Excess meat consumption is a contributory factor to a number of health issues.
Processed Food
Globally there are huge profits made from processed food, such as crisps, sausages, biscuits, by multinational companies such as Unilever. Chemicals are added for a variety of reasons, all prioritising profit over health. Salt and sugar are added to virtually every foodstuff: salt as a preservative, but also to make food hard to resist. The most ‘addictive’ foods combine salt, sugar and fat (ideally fried) – yes, its Mcdonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Burger King. Big food companies have diverted people’s attention from the deadly effects of sugar (heart disease, diabetes ) by getting them to focus on unhealthy fat instead. They systematically smashed the reputation and career of a leading food scientist in the 1960s who was highlighted the harm done by sugar.
Health and Inequality
Though being rich does not guarantee that you will eat healthily, it at least gives you the choice. Being poor means that you end up eating food that is unhealthy because it is often cheaper. A healthy diet is meant to be balanced, with plenty of fresh fruit and veg. Poor people may also want to eat meat because other alternatives are more expensive. Factory-farmed chicken is produced in such awful conditions that it can be sold cheaply either to have at home or as a takeaway. Working class and poor people often cannot afford healthy food, including fresh fruit and vegetables. Food is the biggest driver of NHS spending as a result of obesity, diabetes and heart disease; despite this it is only allocated £2.5 billion of the £130 billion annual NHS budget.
Poor and working class people often cannot afford healthy food such as fresh fruit and vegetables; many do not have physical access sources of decent food due to them being too far away, and transport poverty (e.g. lack cars, no/poor public transport).
