Grocery

The Most Inefficient Food To Produce Is Something Most People Take For Granted By Willow Roberts Aug. 7, 2025 3:20 pm EST

Humans are omnivores, which means we can eat a wide range of foods. However, we also have pretty specific preferences, and this leads us down a very inefficient path when it comes to food production. Take the soy plant, for example. We use it for tofu, vegan milk, umami-packed miso , edamame, soy sauce, and more, but out of all the soy we produce, only around 7% of it gets turned into food products for humans to eat (per Our World in Data ). The majority of soy (up to around 77%) goes toward producing the most inefficient food: beef.

To get one cow's worth of beef into our supermarkets, it has to be fed soy and other grains for around 18 months,

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