Humans are becoming more carnivores, especially in emerging economies

The human being is eating more and more meat and switching to a diet increasingly "Carnivore" is being driven by emerging economies such as China or India.

The conclusion is of a group of French researchers, who studied the relationships between the development indicators from the World Bank and the food in different countries to complete the relationships between socio-economic conditions, environmental and health requirements and changes in the patterns of food. One of the main conclusions is that the human being is becoming more carnivorous. However, the study also concluded that we can no longer be considered top predators.

The study, which analyzes the feeding habits of different countries, is the first to calculate the trophic level of humans â€" an indicator, in the field of ecology, which determines the level of the human species in the food chain.

Algae and plants are in the first trophic level, since they create their own food, while herbivores are at level two and the animals that feed on herbivores on level three. The carnivores that feed on smaller carnivores are at level four and the carnivores with few predators, like lions or bears, are at level five.

Sylvain Bonhommeau, of the French Institute for Exploitation of teh Sea, who directed the study, concluded that the trophic level of the human race was 2.21 in 2009, which puts us closer to herbivores than carnivores. "We are closer to that of herbivores carnivores. It changes the perception of being a top predator, "says the researcher to Nature.

However, this situation may be changing. In the survey were analyzed data on 102 types of foods to calculate the trophic level of 176 countries between 1961 and 2009. In the course of these 50 years it was found that the consumption of meat and fat on the part of the world's population has increased, which made the human species move 3% into the food chain or 0.06 points.

Although it seems a little variation, experts believe that is a big change. Thomas Kastner, Alpen-Adria University in Vienna, indicates that the fact that the trophic level of an animal being calculated from the sum of the different animals that consume, which in turn may belong to different trophic levels, a variation of 0.1 means that a predator at the top of the food chain â€" which includes humans-is consume more meat.

However, this increase is not linear in all countries. Countries such as China or India, which traditionally have a rice-based diet, are consuming more and more meat, once through a business cycle of strong growth, allowing them to buy more expensive products, such as meat.

Foto:  mccun934 / Creative Commons

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