"The interesting thing is, while we die of diseases of affluence from eating all these fatty meats, our poor brethren in the developing world die of diseases of poverty, because the land is not used now to grow food grain for their families"
About this Quote
Rifkin’s line is built to make comfort feel culpable. He starts with a sly bait-and-switch: “The interesting thing is” sounds like dinner-table trivia, then he pivots into a moral indictment that links the steak on one plate to hunger on another. The phrase “diseases of affluence” does heavy rhetorical work, framing overconsumption not as lifestyle choice but as pathology. It’s a clinical label for a cultural problem, suggesting that wealth can rot societies from the inside even as it advertises itself as progress.
The real pressure point is the parallel structure: we “die” and they “die,” but for opposite reasons. That symmetry collapses the comfortable distance between First World health crises and Third World famine. Rifkin’s subtext is that these aren’t separate tragedies; they’re connected by a single global agricultural machine. “Fatty meats” is shorthand for the resource-intensive food chain - land, grain, water, subsidies - that makes cheap animal protein possible, often by diverting arable land away from staple crops.
“Poor brethren” tips into moral language, a deliberate choice for an economist. He’s not just modeling incentives; he’s calling for solidarity, even shame. The context is the late-20th-century critique of industrial agriculture and global trade: grain fed to livestock in wealthy countries, cash crops prioritized for export, and developing economies pressured into market roles that don’t necessarily feed their own people.
The intent isn’t subtle: to reframe diet as geopolitics. Your meal, Rifkin implies, is a vote in a system that decides who gets to treat food as indulgence and who gets to treat it as survival.
The real pressure point is the parallel structure: we “die” and they “die,” but for opposite reasons. That symmetry collapses the comfortable distance between First World health crises and Third World famine. Rifkin’s subtext is that these aren’t separate tragedies; they’re connected by a single global agricultural machine. “Fatty meats” is shorthand for the resource-intensive food chain - land, grain, water, subsidies - that makes cheap animal protein possible, often by diverting arable land away from staple crops.
“Poor brethren” tips into moral language, a deliberate choice for an economist. He’s not just modeling incentives; he’s calling for solidarity, even shame. The context is the late-20th-century critique of industrial agriculture and global trade: grain fed to livestock in wealthy countries, cash crops prioritized for export, and developing economies pressured into market roles that don’t necessarily feed their own people.
The intent isn’t subtle: to reframe diet as geopolitics. Your meal, Rifkin implies, is a vote in a system that decides who gets to treat food as indulgence and who gets to treat it as survival.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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