Wastefulness of Beef-Rich Diet

Excerpt

To the editor: The editorial "Expensive Beef: A Blessing in Disguise?" (Ann Intern Med 80:547-549, 1974) makes the points that (1) Americans eat much more beef than they really need for nutrition; (2) this is expensive and (3) the high saturated-fat (beef) diet may be contributing to our "national dietary hypercholesterolemia," with appropriate implications for development of vascular disease.

Missing, however, were the larger implications of our "beef rich" diet in terms of the world food situation now in the process of a sharp deterioration in supply. The startling fact is that the American beef-rich diet is very wasteful of