Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was ridiculed en masse Monday night after recommending Americans consider alternatives to beef amid an extraordinary spike in ground beef prices.“If [beef] is too expensive, unlike fuel, you can eat chicken, pork, salmon, eggs… there are other sources of really g...

Rollins’ claim that prices for other protein sources were “coming down” is inaccurate. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of eggs, while lower than in 2025, has increased in recent months, increasing by 4.3% from May to June, falling by 0.5% from June to July, and then increasing again by 2.9% from July to August. Pork and chicken costs both increased by 0.4% from July to August.

Meanwhile, prices for ground beef hit a new record after reaching an average price of around $7.16 per pound as of August, an increase of 0.6% from July and 7.9% when compared with the previous year.

“If Joe Biden said anything close to this, MAGA would’ve had a total meltdown,” argued Democratic influencer Harry Sisson in a social media post on X to his more than 400,000 followers. “Now this is just part of Trump’s messaging. Hypocrisy at its finest.”

Others, like the progressive media organization MeidasTouch, jokingly argued that Rollins was “about two weeks away from telling people they can always eat bugs.”

“You will eat the bugs, you will live in the pod,” quipped Damin Toell, a New York-based attorney, in a social media post on X.

A multi-millionaire telling people to eat other protein that they also cannot afford is about as close to a “let them eat cake” moment as we’ll probably get.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    1 day ago

    It’s so weird how people avoid the obvious choice. The idea that you’d have to process rice and beans through insects first, LOL.

    As a vegetarian, I get to answer the “where do you get your protein?!!” question all too much. Before I switched, I used to think this was just a trope that never really happened, given I switched over 20 years ago, but even then, I figured most adults had at least some rudimentary grasp on nutrition. The answer to that is apparently: No, no they do not.

    I’ve literally been in the process of eating something with beans in it, and was asked that question, LOL. Given that this question is frequently mocked in the veg-n world, I sometimes think these might be people in on the joke, but nope.

    There is just tons of delusion around the notion of “protein” in this country.