Here’s a shocking number that speaks to the USA’s love for meat (and pizza): Americans eat so much pepperoni per year that if you put the slices side-by-side, they could circle the Earth 50 times over. The fact bit comes from Bill Gates look at Vaclav Smil’s interesting book Should We Eat Meat? That’s, uh, a lot.
Some more interesting points that Gates raises from Smil’s book:
As usual, Smil offers up some intriguing statistics along the way. A quarter of all ice-free land in the world is used for grazing livestock. Every year, the average meat-eating American ingests more than enough blood to fill a soda can .
There’s also a look at how much water is needed to make a kilogram of boneless beef (it measures in the several thousands of litres) and how much meat an average US citizen eats a year (over 113kg in carcass weight).
You can read Bill Gates’ review of the book here or buy Smil’s book here. Here’s Smil talking about eating meat in the video below.