Meat Hunger Part 1

In 1981, the government announced a 20 percent cut in subsidized meat rations and then had to declare martial law to restore order.  “The patience of the housewife has snapped.  Used to queuing for hours, clutching empty shopping bags and waiting for meat deliveries that sometimes never come, several thousand of them have taken to the streets in noisy banner-waving marches in Kutno, Lodz, Warsaw and other major towns.”  

The crowds demand, “Give us meat.”  Wait a minute.  Aren’t the starving masses supposed to ask for bread or rice?  These people get desperate over a shortage of what many nutritionists consider to be a luxury and what others increasingly condemn as bad for your health.  What gives?  Are they malnourished?  

The World Health Organization says that a 176-pound adult male needs about sixty grams from animal foods (meat, fish, poultry, and dairy products) to satisfy the recommended daily allowance without counting on proteins from plant foods at all.  The Poles were consuming over 3,000 calories per day.  In the United States, citizens were consuming sixty-five grams per day per person in 1980, only four grams more than in Poland.  Calorie consumption was equal.  The “calories is a calorie is a calorie” crowd should be pleased.

However, this covers up some serious details.  In Poland, the supply of meat and other animal foods is erratic.  Shipments to butchers are made available to the public upon arrival.  Some people get much and some get very little.  Panic buying only explains part of the story.  These Poles are not in danger of malnourishment yet they are willing to spend a good part of their lives in an exasperating pursuit of more meat and other animal products.  Why?

Rather than argue with the people that the dietary regulations are adequate, the government just promises more meat.  At great cost to the economy, the government increased meat, fish and fowl production by 40 percent between 1970 and 1975.  By 1980, the monthly ration of low-cost meat in the state shops was costing the government $2.5 billion in subsidies, about half of the total national food subsidy bill.  

The Soviets do likewise in that in 1981, the people of the Soviet Bloc consumed 126 million tons of grain while their animals consumed 186 million tons.  From a Western viewpoint, the big grain imports are a failure.  From the vantage point of the Soviets, they prove that the government is doing all it can to put more meat on everyone’s plate.   They also have a routine surplus of grain each year for human consumption.  The problem with the Soviet agricultural system is that it cannot feed the people and the animals.  It costs more to raise animals for food than to raise plants for food.  It takes four grams of protein to raise one gram of animal protein.  

In order for the United States to sustain its meat habits, 80 percent of the grain grown on farms has to be fed to animals.  

On July 27th, 1935, Polish and Black housewives picketed Hamtramck butcher shops, carrying signs demanding a 20 percent price cut throughout the city and an end to price gouging in Black neighborhoods.  When men, taunted by onlookers who accused them of being “scared of a few women” attempted to cross the lines, they were seized by the pickets…their faces slapped, their hair pulled, and their packages confiscated.  A few more were knocked down and trampled.”  That night the Hamtramck butchers reported unhappily that the boycott had been 95 percent effective.

Anthropologist Marvin Harris, in his book, Good to Eat, argues that animal and plant foods play fundamentally different biological roles in humans.  Despite the many weak associations between animal fats and cholesterol and the diseases of civilization (that’s right, mere associations) animal foods are more critical for sound nutrition than plant foods.  It is not an arbitrary cultural fact all over the world, just as in Poland, people honor and crave animals foods more than plant foods and are willing to lavish a disproportionate share of their energy and wealth on producing them.

The vegetarians supposedly prefer plant foods over animal foods but the term vegetarian is misleading.  While significant numbers of people spurn meat, fish, fowl and other flesh, only a tiny minority of cultists, monks, and mystics has ever professed a bias against all foods of animal origin – a bias against eggs, milk, cheese, or other dairy products as well.  True vegetarians are known as vegans who aim to exist on nothing but brown rice, soy sauce, and herbal teas.  They are few and far between with good reason.  Vegans do not refute the existence of a universal preference for animal food.

Worldwide, the consumption of grain by livestock is rising twice as fast as the consumption of grain by people.  Within most societies (developed and undeveloped), the higher the income bracket, the greater the proportion of animal products in the diet.  A classic study of this relationship showed that in over fifty countries higher-income groups derive far more of their fats, proteins, and calories from animal sources than do lower-income groups derive far more of their fats, proteins and calories from animal sources than do lower-income groups.  Worldwide, wheat flour is the number one source of protein for the poorest 25 percent of the population, with chicken and beef ranked tenth and thirteenth.  

However, among the top 25 percent, beef and chicken rank first and second while wheat flour ranks seventh.  Many different kinds of hunter-gatherer bands to industrial elites all exhibit similar preferences for animal foods.  In South America, this is especially common and striking because they have no domesticated animals that could provide animal products.  Janet Siskind recounts how the daily life of the Sharanahua, a jungle village people of eastern Peru, revolves around the problem of meat shortages.  Sharanahua women relentlessly cajole and taunt their menfolk to go hunting and bring back more meat.  If two or three meatless days go by, the women get together, put on their beads, and face paint, and corner each man in the village one by one.  They gently tug at the man’s shirt or belt and sing him a song:  “We are sending you to the forest, bring us back meat.”  The men pretend not to hear but they go hunting the next morning.  They know that the women will not sleep with them if there is no meat in the village.  The Sharanahua are continually preoccupied with meat and the men, women and children spend an inordinate amount of time talking about meat, planning visits to households that have meat and lying about the meat they have in their own households.  

Jules Henry reported on the Kaingang: “meat is the principal article of diet, everything else is garnish.”  Robert Caneiro on the Amauhaca: “No Amahuaca meal is really complete without meat.”  Allan Holmberg on the Soriono:  ‘Meat is the most desired item of the Soriono.”  David Mayberry Lewis on the Shavante:  “Meat far and away transcends other forms of food in the Shavante esteem and in their conversation.”  

Reports about band and village peoples from other continents paint a similar picture.  In his study of the !Kung bushmen of Africa’s Kalahari desert, Richard Lee states that both men and women value meat more highly than plant food.  “When meat is scarce in the camp, all people express a craving for it, even when vegetable foods are abundant.”  The natives of Australia and the South Pacific islands express similar sentiments.   In New Guinea, despite the ready availability of yams, sweet potatoes, sago palm flour, taro, and other vegetable foods, people devote an inordinate amount of time to raising pigs; they relish pork more than any other food and hold great pig feasts at which they stuff themselves to the point of nausea. 

Out of necessity, meat portions are more likely to be small and to be eaten in connection with grains and starchy tubers, but the presence of a few ounces of animal food can make people feel good.  Hunter-gatherers and village horticulturalists complain commonly of “meat hunger” which is a condition their languages denote by words that are different than words for ordinary hunger.  

The preoccupation with meat has another side to it.  Meat hunger can be a powerfully disruptive as well as harmonious force.  In band and village societies, especially those which do not possess significant domesticated sources of animal flesh, eggs, or milk, lack of success in the hunt may lead to quarrels, a split in the community, and the outbreak of warfare between neighboring camps and settlements.  There need not be any actual “scarcity” of meat or animal or plant protein from a nutritional point of view in order for meat distributions to take a quarrelsome turn.  As among the Poles, groups such as the Yanomamo are generally well nourished, average as much as seventy-five grams of animal protein per capita per day, and show few signs of protein deficiency disease.  

But when the population of a village gets bigger, its hunters deplete the nearby game.  There are more meatless days, complaints about meat hunger increase, and some men find it increasingly difficult to fulfill their obligation to reciprocate the gifts of meat they have received.  The “web of mutual obligation” turns into a web of mutual suspicion.    Portions must be cut smaller and smaller, and some villagers may have to be left out altogether.  Resentments build and soon hunters begin to slight each other deliberately.  As their communal supply of meat dwindles and tensions mount, groups like the Yanomamo split up into hostile factions that move off to establish new villages in areas that have more game.  Or they may step up their attacks on enemy villages as a means of gaining access to additional hunting grounds.  Recent studies show that the problem of dwindling animal resources lies behind much of the endemic warfare found in native Amazonia and other tropical habitats.

In addition, we seem to have descended from a long line of meat hungry animals.  Not so long ago, anthropologists believed that monkeys and apes were strict vegetarians.  Now, after closer and more meticulous observation in the wild, most primates turn out to be omnivorous just like us.  And many species of monkeys and apes are not only omnivorous but they further resemble humans by making a big fuss when they dine on meat.   

Being rather small creatures, monkeys prey mostly on insects rather than game.  But then expend much more time on capturing and eating insects than anyone previously believed.  This has cleared up a long-standing puzzle about the way monkeys feed in the wild.  As they make their way through the forest canopy, many species of monkeys send down a constant rain of half-chewed pieces of leaves and fruit.  Further study of the morsels they consume versus the morsels they discard indicates that they are not being sloppy but finicky.  Monkeys do a lot of sniffing, feeling, exploratory nibbling, and spitting out before they pick the fruit they want.  But they are not looking for the perfect ripe, unblemished piece of fruit; they are trying to find the ones with the worms inside.  In fact, some Amazonian species are more interested in the insect larva than in the fruit.  They open a weevil-infested fig, eat the weevil, and discard the fig.  Some eat both fruit and larva, spitting out the portion that hasn’t been spoiled.  Some simply ignore fruits that show no signs of insect-induced decomposition. 

We now know that several species of monkeys not only consume insects but they actively pursue small game.  Baboons are especially keen hunters.  During a single year of observation in Kenya, Robert Harding saw baboons kill and eat forty-seven small vertebrates including infant gazelles and antelopes.    The reason most baboons only consume small quantities of meat may be out of necessity rather than choice.  Where there is a choice, claims William Hamilton, they prefer to feed on animal matter first, roots, grass seeds, fruits and flowers second; and leafy materials and grass third.  During seasons when insects were more abundant, Hamilton found that baboons spent as much as 72 percent of the time eating them.   

Tune into our next post when we further delve into meat hunger.

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