This chart, extracted from the NIH website shows the recommended amounts of nutrients the average person over 4 years should be consuming per day. Most Americans are consuming higher amounts than are recommended -surprise!

 

This graph shows that Americans are overall improving their meat consumptions, but  still are eating more (sometimes double) the recommended protein levels. Meat consumption is not an efficient way for humans to get energy. The energy goes from the sun, to plants, to live animals, and finally to human and energy is decreased at each point of the chain. It would be more efficient to get energy by eating plants directly. While there are many protein-heavy plants, most Americans are still inclined to get the majority of their protein from poultry, beef, and seafood. Although it is promising that the trend is going down for beef consumption, poultry and fish consumption are still rising. In comparison to the harms and inefficiencies the meat market makes to the world and to our own health, Americans need to decrease their intake of meats/poultry/seafood even faster and/or consume their proteins in other manners, such as from plants.

Additionally, this infographic shows that Americans have been consuming a lot of grains and sweeteners, many of which are corn based. Increased processed foods and added sugars are associated with health problems such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, and gout. Many artificial sweeteners are increasingly made from fructose corn syrup, increasing the demand for corn even more, and causing rippling affects in agricultural economies.

Ultimately, there needs to be a cultural change from consumers, corporations, marketers, government, and farms for America to eat the right amounts of foods to get the proper nutrients.

The way food is produced in this country is unsustainable. Whether you get your nutrients through a plant-based or meat-based diet, something needs to change if sustainability is to be met. In the United States a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet is the most common plant-based diet, which is only slightly more sustainable that the average American meat-based diet. Below is a table showing the energy consumption for the two diets. What is more important is the amount of feed produced for the both. Accounting for slight variations in the eggs and dairy we can assume that more than 400 kg of feed are used to make the meat consumed in a meat-based diet. The 400 kg of feed goes into 144.4 kg of meat and 480 kcal for one person for a year, that’s a loss of about 65% of mass and nutrients. The amount of feed it takes to support enough meat for the entire US population is enough to feed an extra 840 million people. Looking at it from a purely nutritional point of view the produced grains could be put to better use feeding people than growing livestock.

Food	Meat based diet (kg)	Energy (kcal)	Lactoovovegetarian diet (kg)	Energy (kcal)
Food grain	114	849	152	1132
Pulses (legumes)	4.3	40	7.5	70
Vegetables	239	147	286	155
Oil crops	6	71	8	95
Fruit	109	122	112	122
Meat	124	452	0	0
Fish	20.3	28	0	0
Dairy Products	256	385	307.1	473
Eggs	14.5	55	19.2	73
Vegetable Oils	24	548	25	570
Animal Fats	6.7	127	6.7	127
Sugars and sweeteners	74	686	74	686
Nuts	3.1	23	4	30
Total	994.9	3533	1001.5	3533
Feed grains	816	–	450	–

(from Pimental and Pimental 2003)