Americans are eating less beef | Hacker News Reader

Americans are eating less beef

nytimes.com

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Interesting choice of timeframe (2005-2014).

2005 marks the period where we had so much feed that we didn't know what to do with it all, leading to lots of cattle being raised and relatively cheap beef products produced as a result. Not knowing what to do with it all, by 2007 we implemented ethanol subsidies to try and use up some of the excesses. That helped spur on a huge commodities boom through 2008. Just as that was dying down, the US suffered a major drought, pushing feed availability and prices even higher. The result was that from ~2008-2013, especially towards the end, the number of cattle being raised diminished significantly and that sent the price of beef soaring to unprecedented levels by 2014.

It would be interesting to see if the trend actually continues through to the present, or if, now that beef stocks have started to recover, consumption will go up again.

Yeah this reminds me of a salebarn-sponsored dinner I attended last year. The speaker started out by saying "I'm sorry friends, but it won't be as good as it was last year again in your lifetime!" I think he was a bit pessimistic, but basing anything on 2014 or 2015 is silly at best and deliberately misleading at worst.

Most Americans have never eaten beef grown on a family farm where its grass fed, no hormones nor antibiotics ... even store bought expensive organic beef pales in comparison ... family friends own such a wholesome farm and I can say their beef is incredible and its not even beef cattle its Swiss Brown and Jerseys which are milk cows ... even beef from high end restaurants is no match for beef from such a caring gentle farm ... the quality of beef has suffered greatly in the name of profits due to industrial scale multinationals who dominate the mass market

What's the price difference between industrial beef and the beef from your friend's farm?

When my folks buy a half or whole beef creature from the farmer down the hill, it works out to be cheaper than buying the same cuts at retail. Last time I ran the numbers it was $3.50 - $4/pound; of course that's over everything, from stew meat and liver to ribeyes and tenderloin. The farmer takes the animal to the butcher shop, where it's slaughtered, hung, cut, packaged, vacuum-sealed, and flash frozen.

In every way, it's superior to grocery store meat. You just need to be able to purchase it in bulk and have an entire freezer to store it.

There's a startup called CrowdCow that sells this grade of beef but in smaller portions: https://www.crowdcow.com

I also had a friend raising grass fed organic beef. This was about 10 years ago when I was still in Canada, but I seem to remember that his prices were fairly comparable to the supermarket. Cheaper than a high end butcher anyway. He had a series of setbacks (a serial arsonist burnt down his barn, mad cow disease restricted his access to slaughter houses, foot and mouth disease in the area, etc...) In the end he had to cut down his herd fairly dramatically and he ended up doing a lot of vegetable farming to fill the gap. Not sure how he's doing now, but at the time there was a crazy waiting list to get his beef. And it was spectacular. I'm pretty sure he was going to try to build his herd back up, but then he was also pretty upset by all of the problems he had. The relative simplicity of high end organic veggies was growing on him.

Edit: misread your comment. Removing mine.

Not the OP, but I've been buying beef from a farmer I know (relative of a friend) for the last few years. It's grass-fed, high quality beef and I buy about 250 lbs at a time which lasts us about a year. Total cost per lb including butchershop costs (cutting into steaks, roasts, grinding, etc.) averages under $3/lb. Only the cheapest hamburger in the store is available at that price around here.

The few times I've needed to buy store bought I can instantly taste the difference.

And now that I'm almost out of beef I'm in the "annoying" position of having nothing left in the freezer but a few T-bone and ribeye steaks because I hid some in the bottom last year :-)

What part of the US do you live in? I'm looking at at the very least around $6.50/lb for a half a steer in the Bay Area.

That's insane.

I live outside the Minneapolis metro area. As far as I can tell, he's not giving me a special price. I buy a quarter; I'm sure a half would be a little cheaper. It's in line with what I've heard from other people. Bison is a little more expensive, but not by much.

I have and it can be very good but the best (and most expensive) cuts from a butcher can be just as good. There were also small farms that have gone into the grassfed boutique approach that sell direct or through farmer's markets and they tend to be better than my great uncle's ranch was (no offense to him). There were some dairy farms that tried something similar but still had trouble being too profitable. The milk from them came in glass bottles and was very good.

It's because the price has risen dramatically leading people to go to alternate proteins.

Even though I have far more money now than I did 10-15 years ago, I eat far less beef because it seems that the price has maybe more than doubled. This tracks in the commodity pricing for beef. In Feb 2002 beef was ~$1/lb at commodity pricing. Today it's about $1.85/lb. In 2015 it hit a high of $2.72/lb.

I'm not sure it's a bad thing to be honest. Beef isn't my favorite meat, and it's definitely not the healthiest protein.

However, chicken prices are way up as well.

On the other hand, pork is very cheap, ~$.70/lb wholesale, and has stayed pretty steady.

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=beef&months...

A significant percentage of the US beef herd is raised on range lands where they are a critical part of the natural ecosystem (replacing bison in that niche primarily). I have long argued that a moderate reduction in American beef consumption would allow the demand to be satisfied entirely with ecologically necessary cattle herds, which I view as a win-win. Ecosystem stays healthy and people don't have to give up beef entirely.

People tend to focus on feedlot beef but there is also a lot of range beef in the US. Absolutists on both sides tend to ignore the fact that balanced ecologically sound options exist.

Why not get rid of beef and graze bison? There's wild bison in Canada, as well as ranched bison. Cattle aren't natural to the ecosystem.

Bison are much harder to manage and haven't necessarily been bred for it as far as flavor. I've had a few burgers and they're nice, but somewhere between Venison and Cattle on the gamey scale.

On top of that, there aren't really any wild/purebred Bison as they all had some mixing with cattle after the herds were pushed to extinction.

Bison are raised in the US too. There are more bison in the US than Canada. As another said, most bison on ranches are cross bred with cattle. I have heard that bison are more aggressive than cattle.

http://canadianbison.ca/producer/About_Bison/present_trends....

https://bisoncentral.com/bison-by-the-numbers/

Isn't almost all range beef "finished" in feedlots? And feedlots are 50% of muscle mass? And the point is that it produces cheaper beef than all-grass? That doesn't bode well for achieving a balanced, ecologically sound option.

It depends. Not all range is equal in terms of forage and the flavor of the animal it produces, nor the weight. Some range regions have protein-rich grass that produces nice flavor and weight, other areas need a couple weeks in a feedlot to make the animal (relatively) edible. Similarly, some natural range adds a lot of weight and others are augmented with cereal feeds for the economics to pan out. For others, the economic sweet spot is at a lower weight. One of the critical economic inputs in the mountain west ranges (which tend to have high quality forage) is also water, which is sometimes ignored.

There is quite a bit of agricultural economics research on this and the results are surprisingly complex. There are also many areas where the forage is high enough quality that the feedlot finishing is arguably optional even if that is what they do today.

Sure there are lots of complexities, but the result is that when I visit federal lands in the West, it's obvious that they are all overgrazed. The price that ranchers pay to graze their cattle on public lands should be raised until overgrazing stops. Until then, my tax dollars are subsidizing my competition in the beef industry, while destroying the environment!

Source? I had the believe it is the exact opposite. As in beef shit poisons ground water and air

What do you think the bison did?

I assume they did not overpopulate themself in way to small areas without moving to other places ever.

Also, where did all the USDA prime meat go? I remember being a kid and seeing USDA prime in every grocery store as the standard meat for sale. Choice/select was always in a corner... Now when you go into any grocery store, USDA prime is missing or you need to ask for it. I believe only Costco sells it locally for me.

China?

Restaurants and Costco.

Butcher shops and Costco are the only two places I see prime anymore.

Costco is carrying a lot more prime beef than they did 5-10 years ago. Back then you'd only see a few cuts, now it seems like they have prime for almost everything that's not ground.

Worth noting that prime (and other USDA labels) are a measure of fat content in the form of marbling - not quality. And certainly not provenance.

Prime beef is only 2-4% of all graded beef(1). Of this, most is sold to restaurants. So I don't think it was ever the "standard meat for sale", but it is available if you look. Butcher shops and, as others have pointed out, Costco.

(1) http://www.threetreesranches.com/documents/pdf/USDA-percenta...

I've mostly cut out beef from my diet, but that's mostly because chicken is cheaper and because beef tends to be a bit fattier.

Helping against climate change is a nice bonus all the same.

You're not helping.

What's your beef with fat?

I would eat more beef, but the beef I've had in recent years tastes bad to me.

On visits overseas though the beef tastes good, so it's not that my tastes have changed.

I've pretty much given it up and switched to bison and ostrich, both which are good. I also think horse is not too bad, but it's not generally available in the US. I hope none of these become popular though because the factory farming industry will surely find a way to ruin them as well.

Have you tried rabbit? It's also hard to find in the US, but it is delicious if you like lean red meat.

I wouldn't call rabbit red meat, but I second this. It's a common food in France, often cooked in stew with wine, and it's delicious and very lean. So lean that an over consumption of rabbit (read: eating only rabbit) can lead to rabbit starvation[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_poisoning

I used to go to an SF restaurant that served rabbit, and it was quite good. Back in 1992, someone set up a fake Bunny Burger franchise as a very elaborate prank.[1] They were serving ground turkey, not real rabbit. The concept got a lot of people upset.

I have more objection to eating beef than rabbit. I used to have a horse at a stable that also had a cow, a big Hereford, that the owner was fattening up. When I went by the cow, I'd scratch the big white blaze on the face, which the cow liked. After a few days, the cow recognized me and greeted me with the lowing sound cows make. I haven't eaten much beef since.

Chicken is fine; chickens are too dumb to worry about.

[1] https://myriadicity.net/musings-and-amusements/amusements/bu...

The cow is going to die regardless, if it is treated with kindness and culled mercifully, where is the wrong?

Ultimately the real crime in my opinion is the industrialized system of raising animals that is beholden only to the almighty dollar.

I like the taste of rabbit, the main problem is that (source dependent but usually) it is lean and also a little tough. If we could either fatten them up or soften their meat that would do a lot.

Rabbit and other non-traditional and game meat can be found at Asian markets around most large cities. I live near to an H-mart, and their prices and variety almost always beat the local butchers'.

If you know someone who owns or runs a restaurant, you can also ask them to purchase any of a large variety of novelty meats and products through their vendors. Our reps loved to showcase those lines, and I've always gotten a kick out of the idea that there are people whose jobs are to create interesting products around these unpopular or inexpensive ingredients.

We don't eat much meat at all in our household because it seems like all meat, beef especially, has become simply too expensive. Ground turkey remains pretty cheap, so when we eat meat that's pretty much what's for dinner.

The consumption could be cut in half if we start eating the whole animal again. Eating just muscle tissue is so wasteful.

Many of the other parts are even more unhealthy though. E.g. you can eat the skin, and it's considered a delicacy in Ghana and South Africa, but it's not exactly good for you. Especially when it's doused in poison to keep insects off the cows.

C.f. these videos on Ponmo: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ponmo

It would be easier to raise healthier herd with smaller population. Going 100% would be unrealistic I agree..

A lot of the organ meats are very rich in both micro and trace nutrients that are quite important. Cooking with skin and bones impart a lot of new flavors as well, even if you discard those parts after cooking.

You are totally correct. It's not just cows either, there are parts of many animals that I did not even know existed until I ate them outside the US. The skin, intestines, blood, heart, lungs, tendons, etc. of most animals taste great yet are hard to find in the US.

When I was a kid, the heart and gizzard were the best parts of our chickens. I only had cow heart once but it was delicious. I never did like liver though.

Last I checked much of the leftovers from animal slaughter made their way into pet food as protein filler, so I wouldn't call it wasted.

What's your source on parts of the animal going to waste? I was under the impression that absolutely as much as possible was being sold or used somehow (rendering plant, pet food, chicken nuggets...) -- anything wasted is just lost profit, after all.

A local butcher who throws away perfectly good beef fat! jokes aside I understand it not all thrown away (some parts are) and used in pet feed, cosmetics, fertilisers etc.. But the primary reason those cows are grown is a human consumption - other uses are an attempt to utilise "free" leftovers. So to reduce number of animals we should eat more other parts.

I don't eat beef as casually any more. It's expensive and often bad.

I do enjoy it at a nice restaurant though. And I don't really avoid it, but I don't seek it out either.

What makes beef good? How do I find it?

It often depends on people who run the restaurants as anything. They have to find a good supplier who knows beef and they have to be able to cook it correctly. Mostly it's about getting a cut that has a good balance of fat and muscle and cooking it to where it's done, but still tender.

In the case of roasts, mostly it just takes time as even a modest cut can come out very good if you give it enough time and care.

Beef is expensive. Which is strange considering the factory nature of it, plus the subsidies on the feed.

Raising cattle requires a lot of land (both for the cattle themselves and to grow the feed they eat). Land is a finite resource.

Depends on what you're buying. "Good" cuts of steak are expensive, but chicken breast is more expensive than hamburg, which is oddly more expensive than "lesser" cuts of steak or roasts. Chicken thighs tend to be dirt cheap, but so is pork.

It doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but that's how it is. I like the taste of chuck steaks and London broils, so I'm glad those are some of the cheapest options.

The title feels a bit misleading. Americans are eating less beef because it is more expensive. As a side effect (not a significant motivator in and of itself), this is helping the fight against climate change. The increased price has definitely driven down beef consumption in my house.

We took "helping fight against climate change" out of the title. Normally we'd ask the submitter not to editorialize but I suspect this was just NYT up to its usual title tricks.

Definitely. With the recent oversupply of beef (as well as dairy products) and subsequent price drop, I would not be surprised to see this trend reverse.

This is how Trump got elected.

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Chicken is better than beef, both in flavor and versatility.

I prefer chicken enchiladas from some Mexican restaurants and very much prefer beef enchiladas in others. It depends on the quality and how it's prepared...

That's totally subjective.

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