HOW TO EAT MORE PLANTS:
IT’S BEEF O’CLOCK SOMEWHERE

In America, there is nothing more taboo than politely, even gently, suggesting that we might each have to reduce our meat — and in particular, beef — intake just a little bit in order to hold onto the temperate conditions which allowed our species and so many others to flourish.

However much we are constantly pulled back to our puritan, Christian fundamentalist ways, neither sex nor religion can top beef .

Beef is our sex. 

Beef is our religion. 

Like Sunday school, child TV stars, alcohol, casting couches, the NFL, and the Department of Defense, beef is inseparable from who we are, and we are collectively loathe (at best) to question the externalities of how it gets to our plate.

And it isn’t because in the year of our lord 2024 there aren’t options. There are plenty, and we’ll talk about them below. 

It’s because we love (love) to shame each other.

(is this not what you came for?)

We are social animals, and as a pack, we do not make it easy to leave beef behind.

Most people who’ve tried to eat vegan, or vegetarian, or just less meat, or even just less beef run back eventually. Like ditching alcohol and/or football (hi, I did those, too), there is a real social shock/stigma/whatever to turning down our national food, in private or in public.

And it isn’t because there isn’t a safe space — a million veggie cooks and creators of every stripe have strove these past years to build a million intersecting, proud, welcoming, inclusive plant-based communities that present a real opportunity to walk away from the (mostly Boomers) meat cult.

And I know something about cults!

Not only was I barely a religion major, I did Crossfit. I (occasionally still do) yoga. Thirteen (13!) years ago, I trained for a year and then ran a marathon in those Vibram 5-toe shoes and, much to my wife’s disdain, I’m still talking about bringing them back. I’ve been fully vegan. I was the last person on earth to switch from buying MP3’s to streaming because I wanted to “own my music collection”. As much respect as I have for Edgar Martinez, I think the DH is criminal. 

I am a ticking time bomb of “most obnoxious guy to talk to”. Pick your poison.

But here’s the thing: 

Upgrade to an Important Membership to read the rest.