The Capitalist Way to Make Americans Stop Eating Meat

For the past 50 years, Americans have responded to the case against eating animals mostly by eating more animals.

They have heard again and again about the moral and ecological costs of eating meat—from philosophers like Peter Singer and polemicists like Jonathan Safran Foer; from viral documentary footage of slaughterhouses and tortured poultry; from activist organizations like PETA and scientific reports on the fossil-fuel cost of producing a medallion of beef.

The collective sum of all these books and films and eco–guilt trips has made little difference. The share of Americans who in the past 20 years. In the 1970s, the typical American ate about 120 pounds of meat each year. In the 1990s, she ate about 130 pounds annually. Today, she eats more than 140 pounds a year, or about 2.5 pounds of meat every week—a record high, according to .