[rhinoceraptor]

Beef actually has a pretty moderate groundwater footprint, from what I've read it's less than half that of almonds per pound. That number is even smaller for grass finished beef. The numbers cited for water use for beef include rainfall that is incorporated into the grass that cattle graze, which is highly misleading.

[ArnoVW]

That's like saying : our nuclear power plant didn't have such a horrible accident, it has only released half of Chernobyl.

It's the same sort of reasoning that is leading people to say that they shouldn't have to pay tax / reduce CO2 because "someone else is richer / more polluting".

[rhinoceraptor]

Everything we eat has some groundwater use. I'm just saying that for its nutrient and caloric density, beef is vastly overrated in its water use. We tend to compare pounds of food to other pounds of food, but that is a misleading comparison. The nutritional value of meat has been very undervalued in the past few decades, and meat has a lot of nutritional value that we as humans cannot get on our own from plants.

That's not to say you should eat it for every meal, but ethically, environmentally and nutritionally, I really believe it is the best choice in terms of meat. Even CAFO beef, which is ethically pretty bad, is still vastly superior in that dimension to poultry and pretty much everything else.

Methane is another issue but I believe there is also a good argument in favor of it there as well. There is actually quite a lot of methane release from crops like rice which do not get media derision, as does the methane release from cattle.

[ncmncm]

People eat way more beef than almonds, in sum. So, beef production is an enormously bigger drain on water than almonds.

That said, most of the almonds are grown by a billionaire on stolen water.

[anjel]

"Lynda Resnick and her husband, Stewart, also own a few other things: Teleflora, the nation’s largest flower delivery service; Fiji Water, the best-selling brand of premium bottled water; Pom Wonderful, the iconic pomegranate juice brand; Halos, the insanely popular brand of mandarin oranges formerly known as Cuties; and Wonderful Pistachios, with its “Get Crackin'” ad campaign. The Resnicks are the world’s biggest producers of pistachios and almonds, and they also hold vast groves of lemons, grapefruit, and navel oranges. All told, they claim to own America’s second-largest produce company, worth an estimated $4.2 billion." https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/08/lynda-stewar...

[_jal]

> That said, most of the almonds are grown by a billionaire on stolen water

Well, don't keep us in suspense. To which wealthy, wetfingered nut nut do you refer?