Where Do Humans Really Rank on the Food Chain?

[marble falls]

Where Do Humans Really Rank on the Food Chain?

We’re not at the top, but towards the middle, at a level similar to pigs and anchovies.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/where-do-humans-really-rank-on-the-food-chain

Joseph Stromberg


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On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the score of a primary producer (a plant) and 5 being a pure apex predator (a animal that only eats meat and has few or no predators of its own, like a tiger, crocodile or boa constrictor), they found that based on diet, humans score a 2.21—roughly equal to an anchovy or pig. Their findings confirm common sense: We're omnivores, eating a mix of plants and animals, rather than top-level predators that only consume meat.

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The researchers, led by Sylvain Bonhommeau of the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea, used FAO data to construct models of peoples' diets in different countries over time, and used this to calculate HTL in 176 countries from 1961 to 2009. Calculating HTL is fairly straightforward: If a person diet is made up of half plant products and half meat, his or her trophic level will be 2.5. More meat, and the score increases; more plants, and it decreases.

With the FAO data, they found that while the worldwide HTL is 2.21, this varies widely: The country with the lowest score (Burundi) was 2.04, representing a diet that was 96.7 percent plant-based, while the country with the highest (Iceland) was 2.54, reflecting a diet that contained slightly more meats than plants.

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Unfortunately, like the garbage problem, the meat problem doesn't hint at an obvious solution. Billions of people getting wealthier and having more choice over the diet they eat, on a basic level, is a good thing. In an ideal world, we'd figure out ways to make that transition less damaging while still feeding huge populations. For example, some researchers have advocated for offbeat food sources like meal worms as a sustainable meat, while others are trying to develop lab-grown cultured meat as an environmentally-friendly alternative. Meanwhile, some in Sweden are proposing a tax on meat to curb its environmental cost while government officials in the UK are urging consumers to cut back on their demand for meat to increase global food security and to improve health. Time will tell which approaches stick.

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Joseph Stromberg was previously a digital reporter for Smithsonian.