Governments have long sought to warn people of the dangers inherent in eating too much meat. Their tack, normally, is to point towards the increased health risks associated with gorging on dead animals.
In Argentina, however, politicians have a different strategy. They highlight how eating meat is not so much a risk to your health as a danger for your wallet.
Ten days ago the Argentinian president, Néstor Kirchner, caused a huge commotion by banning the export of beef for 180 days and warning that the economy could be nobbled by rising inflation unless meat eaters curb their hunger.
Mr Kirchner is desperate to stop the upward creep of inflation, a consequence of the exchange rate devaluation in 2001 during Argentina's latest economic crisis. From being pegged on a par with the dollar, the rate was allowed to set its own market level and has stabilised at around 3 pesos to a dollar.
The result has been that Argentinian producers have concentrated on exporting more produce, knowing that they can get a better price - in the case of meat - in London's Smithfield market than in Buenos Aires. Since Argentina is one of the world's largest meat and soya producers - helped by genetic modification and a willingness to cut down forests - this rampant exportation has done wonders for the country's balance of payments and helped the marvellous economic recovery.
But, as students of economics will tell you, devaluing a currency leads to its own problems. With less supply at home, so demand and therefore prices have also increased. Also, tourists have flooded into the country to find that their spending money goes three times further than it did five years ago while hoteliers and restaurateurs have discovered they can whack up tourist prices without noticeable effects on foreigners' demands, causing just complaints from the locals who've found their pay packets have not kept pace with inflation.
While government pleading might have some success in cutting domestic consumption of soya, it is, as Monte Reel points out in the Washington Post, a Herculean task to reduce people's meat consumption in a country which takes its beef as seriously as its claim on the Falklands.
"Unthinkable," Guillermo Ugartemendia, 35, told the Post correspondent after polishing off a rack of ribs at a steakhouse. "It's not a viable option."
"People here eat more beef than in any other country - about 140 pounds a year per person, or about 50% more than the average American," Ms Reel writes. "A juicy slab of marbled steak is more than a meal for many of Argentina's 39 million citizens, it's part of their national identity."
A British chef might reckon on around 200g of meat per head. His Argentinian counterpart would calculate around half a kilo per person for an "asado" or barbecue, and that is still less than it used to be.
Quite what effect Mr Kirchner's latest measure will have, other than reducing the government's tax income to the tune of around $165m and 10,000 workers losing their jobs, remains to be seen.
