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How America’s Diet Is Feeding the Groundwater Crisis | As dinner tables and snack menus feature far more chicken and cheese, farms are expanding where water is scarce. (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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These transformations are tied to the changing American diet. Since the early 1980s, America’s per-person cheese consumption has doubled, largely in the form of mozzarella-covered pizza pies. And last year, for the first time, the average American ate 100 pounds of chicken, twice the amount 40 years ago.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I don't think reducing human culinary culture down to only what is the most efficient per calorie per acre food is a laudable goal. If there is a ground water crisis, maybe the solution is to produce food in sustainable locations, ban food exports, and profit from food.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Some foods like cheese can also be made much more efficiently than with cows milk with new biotechnologies. There are a handful of companies that turn sugar water into cows milk using specially engineered yeast. https://perfectday.com/process/