The beef beef: Epicurious puts burgers and steaks on notice
“Could an empire of the kitchen quietly stop cooking with beef and leave none the wiser?” asked Derrick Bryson Taylor and Christina Morales in The New York Times. Epicurious.com, a Condé Nast recipe website, delivered a shock to the hearts of red-meat lovers last week by announcing that it will no longer publish new recipes that include beef. But the other surprise was that the site had already been practicing its no-beef diet for a year. Calling the policy “pro-planet” rather than “anti-beef,” the editors said they were simply choosing to cease promoting consumption of “the biggest climate offender in the American diet.” Producing a pound of beef generates almost three times more greenhouse gases than chicken or pork—and 20 times more than beans. Though lamb is more harmful than beef, it’s far less popular in the U.S.
The Beef Question is “shaping up to be the dietary drama of the time,” said Jaya Saxena in Eater.com. A false report circulated on conservative news sites last week that President Biden wants to cut America’s beef consumption down to the equivalent of a burger a month per person. But the Epicurious announcement drew backlash from less-expected sources as well. Some animal lovers asked why chicken and pork, which require more killing per pound, weren’t also banned. Some opponents of industrial agriculture argued that beef raised sustainably on independent farms should be endorsed as a planet-friendly alternative. But Epicurious isn’t scolding readers, or even removing existing beef recipes from its site. It’s “asking readers to rethink beef, something they’ll only be prompted to do more and more in the coming years.”