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[1] When I was a kid, we'd go visit my grandparents. And my Grandma Toots was a classic 1950s American housewife. She, though, was a terrible cook. She cooked everything in the microwave, even meat. And she had meat at every meal, even in her cottage cheese.
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[2] One time my brother brought his girlfriend to visit, and she was a vegetarian. And so my brother reminded Grandma Toots of this. And she said, "Oh, OK, what does she want for dinner then? Chicken or fish?"
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[3] I mean, Grandma Toots could not imagine that you would have a meal that didn't revolve around meat. And I can see why.
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[4] I mean, she grew up in a time where she was inundated by government promotions that meat was key to supporting your country and company ads that talked about it being essential for being strong and manly.
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[5] And it was cheap, too. It was subsidized by the government and partially explained as a way of bulking up malnourished men so that they could fight in World War II.
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[6] But what my grandma witnessed in the first half of her life was unprecedented. She saw the fastest and widest shift in diets that had ever occurred.
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[7] Within just a few decades, she saw the norm go from eating meat as a rare treat, to having it three times a day, to having meat named after our meals. So we had breakfast meats, we had lunch meats, and, well, beef, it's what's for dinner.
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[8] And that didn't happen because people just suddenly realized they really liked the taste of meat. What we eat is less about what we choose and more about what's offered to us.
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[9] And companies and governments today still make it really hard for us to choose anything other than meat. I mean, it's offered everywhere. It's often the only choice, and it's cheaper than other options.
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[10] So much so, if you took away all government support and subsidies for meat, a pound of ground beef would cost 30 dollars.
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[11] So now we eat more meat than ever before, and it's continuing to grow. And we got to this point thanks to the extensive and far-reaching efforts of governments and companies to push our diets towards meat.
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[12] What we need now is the same fundamental shift in what we eat, but in the opposite direction, back towards plants. I'm here today as a food and climate expert because diet shifts are critical for the planet.
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[13] The only way that we can reach climate targets and feed 10 billion people is by reducing the production and consumption of industrial meat.
