These transformations are tied to the changing American diet. Since the early 1980s, America’s per-person cheese consumption has doubled, largely in the form of mozzarella-covered pizza pies. And last year, for the first time, the average American ate 100 pounds of chicken, twice the amount 40 years ago.
I don’t think reducing human culinary culture down to only what is the most efficient per calorie per acre food is a laudable goal. If there is a ground water crisis, maybe the solution is to produce food in sustainable locations, ban food exports, and profit from food.
Some foods like cheese can also be made much more efficiently than with cows milk with new biotechnologies. There are a handful of companies that turn sugar water into cows milk using specially engineered yeast. https://perfectday.com/process/
