MAHA’s Meat Obsession Exposes the Movement’s Delusions

Robert F Kennedy Jr. and his acolytes say we should eat more meat, but that would only worsen the very problems Make America Healthy Again claims it is trying to solve.

Meat is back.Not that it ever really went anywhere—but for a few years around the turn of the decade, the centrality of meat in the American diet came under real scrutiny. A slew of highly publicized academic papers detailed the massive environmental toll of animal agriculture, including its outsize contribution to climate change. Plant-based burgers popped up on menus around the country, and oat milk became a coffee-shop staple. Greta Thunberg extolled the virtues of veganism, while conservatives wrung their hands about the Green New Deal taking away their hamburgers. American meat consumption, which had been growing for decades, dipped ever so slightly.

What a difference a few years, and a change in administration, can make. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services and a proudly ravenous meat eater, has turned the principles of the growing Make America Healthy Again movement into government policy: The Trump administration’s new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, promoted to the public as “Eat Real Food,” enshrine a national obsession with consuming more protein and fewer processed foods. Meat (ideally red, usually beef) and milk (ideally whole fat, potentially raw) are now being lauded as saviors of the American diet.

It’s an expensive diet. Beef prices are skyrocketing as cattle herds have shrunk to their lowest level in 75 years, owing to drought, increased costs to ranchers, industry consolidation, and international competition. President Trump responded last week with a proclamation pausing tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of beef that will be sold to the U.S. at a 25 percent discount. Agricultural economists don’t expect the move to make a meaningful difference in the cost of a hamburger. Not that it matters. Americans are spending record amounts on meat and are projected to eat more meat than ever this year. Meanwhile, sales of plant-based meats and even plant-based milks are declining.

This is an unfortunate vibe shift. The case against meat has not weakened. It is still unhealthy to eat in excess, environmentally damaging to produce, and extremely profitable for the industrial farms and multinational conglomerates that make up Big Agriculture. Therein lies the contradiction at the heart of MAHA’s meat fixation: Eating more of it will only exacerbate the very problems that the movement purportedly wants to solve.

Meat is by far the most environmentally damaging part of the American diet. Most animals are raised on industrial farms, not on open pasture—and even still, livestock grazing accounts for about 85 percent of all American land. Livestock make up about half of all agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, or 5 percent of all national emissions, most of that coming from methane belched by cows and manure expelled by factory farms.

Now consider the damage caused by growing feed for livestock. Cropland for feed—mostly hay, corn, and soy—accounts for another 8 percent of all land, and more water is used to grow........

© New Republic