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Major food website Epicurious is removing all recipes featuring beef to ‘encourage more sustainable cooking’.
The publication says the red meat, notorious for its environmental impact, will no longer feature on its website, newsletters, or Instagram feed.
‘Why Epicurious left beef behind’
It announced the move in a recent blog post entitled The Planet on the Plate: Why Epicurious Left Beef Behind.
“We know that some people might assume that this decision signals some sort of vendetta against cows—or the people who eat them,” Epicurious wrote.
“But this decision was not made because we hate hamburgers (we don’t!). Instead, our shift is solely about sustainability, about not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offenders.”
The company then concluded: “We think of this decision as not anti-beef but rather pro-planet.”
‘Environmentally friendly’ cooking
Epicurious cited a study from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which states nearly 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock.
Moreover, it added: “61 percent of those emissions can be traced back to beef. Cows are 20 times less efficient to raise than beans and roughly three times less efficient than poultry and pork.
“It might not feel like much, but cutting out just a single ingredient—beef—can have an outsize impact on making a person’s cooking more environmentally friendly.”
You can read the full blog post here
