Most inefficient food to produce

David Pimentel, professor of ecology in Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, New York, USA, published a study in 1997 in which he found that beef is the most inefficient type of food in terms of the resources it takes to produce. Cattle need to be fed plant-based food. Pimentel calculated that the ratio of plant protein consumed to animal protein produced is 54:1 for beef – even though beef protein is only 1.4 times more nutritious. The most efficient meat to produce is chicken, for which this ratio drops to 4:1. Pimentel found that if humans stopped eating meat, the amount of plant-based food produced by the USA alone would feed 800 million people.