In last month’s article, we explored a sampling of the environmental issues related to growing and eating corn. We also talked about the importance of teaching your students about the economic concept of opportunity costs, which means if you decide to do one thing you often cannot do something else.

We are looking at beef and its opportunity cost in this article. There are some basic opportunity costs, such as if beef is ground into hamburger a cook can’t serve the same piece as a roast or stew. There are more complex opportunity costs, such as feeding cow corn instead of grass increases the cow’s methane production and decreases the corn available for food or ethanol.

Why are we writing this co-authored environmental series? We hope to provide you with teaching tools to help educate students on these complicated issues which do not necessarily have precise, clear or definitive answers. You and your students must make your own decisions about food and the environment. It may happen when your students begin working in cafes, restaurants, corporate dining, cruise ships, or stadiums where those organizations have differing environmental views. Your former student will either learn to work within the organization or seek employment elsewhere.

Another reminder about this series. We are not experts on cows or the cattle industry. Stephanie and I are two people who between us have extensive teaching experience and teaching credentials, a long history of service in commercial kitchens and front of the house operations, as well as extensive environmental issues training.

There is no denying that beef is, and will be, a key ingredient for home cooks and the foodservice industry. Americans consume close to 60 pounds of beef per person each year. That is a high average considering the number of vegetarians, vegans, babies, and people who don’t eat much beef. Even though your students and their families may be in the high-consumption group, it is still important for them to know every time beef is prepared a decision was made that affects the short- and long-term impacts on the local community, state, country and world. Again, as mentioned last month, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Let’s begin with a summary of feeding cattle. From our internet research, it appears a mature cow needs approximately 25 to 30 pounds of food a day. Cows are usually fed grass and/or corn. Again, remember we are not experts on cows or cattle raising, grass fed beef in its simplicity means cows are fed grass. This could either be free range or they are served grass and grain. A combination of the two is quite common. Proponents of this method claim this is what cows eat in nature and thus produces a truer beef flavor. Opponents point out that this yields more expensive beef and a gamey flavor. Grass fed beef is often less fatty, so overcooking it will make it tough.

Corn fed cows are just that – fed corn. Proponents claim this produces better-tasting and better-marbled beef. It is probably the beef that most people ate growing up. Opponents of this claim say this is not a natural diet for cows and, amongst other issues, makes the cows produce large amounts of methane. (Read this NASA article, "Which is a bigger source of methane: cow belching or flatulence?," on what produces the most methane.

All joking aside, methane is a greenhouse gas and a major cattle industry issue. Each cow produces about 220 pounds of methane a year. More importantly for this article, producing a pound of beef involves a cow creating approximately 3.5 ounces of methane. Methane is a serious greenhouse gas issue because–although it stays in the atmosphere for less time than carbon dioxide–it traps heat 80 times better than carbon dioxide. Trapped greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere create environmental problems such as global climate change. For an article addressing how to work with students or parents who do not acknowledge global climate change, see "Teaching Climate Change in a Culinary Classroom."

A third option involves feeding cows grass and moving them to a feedlot where corn is added to their diet to fatten them before slaughter. The pros and cons of this technique are similar to the pros and cons of grass vs. corn feeding. One additional environmental concern with this option is that large feedlots with many cows may cause major water, air and soil pollution on and around the feedlot.

Cows also need large amounts of land, particularly compared to vegetables, chickens and pigs. They use large amounts of water, as high as 1,800 gallons to produce a pound of beef. It also requires a large amount of fossil fuels to get a cow from birth to market. Opponents claim the same land, water and energy could be more effectively and efficiently used to produce other crops or products less expensively.

(Note, these concerns and issues are not new. For example, Meatless Mondays started 20 years ago as a movement to help save the environment by people giving up eating meat on Monday.)

What can you do?

1. If there is a 4H club at your school or in a neighboring school, ask the club to come and talk about what is involved in raising animals.
2. Challenge your students and have them take a favorite beef dish and make it beef-less. For example, instead of carne asada tacos make chicken tacos. Instead of traditional sliders, make pork or chicken sliders. What about making a combination stew using several proteins including tofu instead of beef?
3. Start a Meatless Monday at your school or in your classroom.
4. Have your students do a blind tasting of a beef burger versus an Impossible Burger or chicken vs Chik’n etc.
5. Instruct students to locate and identify 10 different meatless meat products in their grocery store. Which products would they be interested in trying? Which products are they confident they can cook? Which products can they make better tasting based on what you have taught in your class?

Want to learn more? Start with the California Science Academy which has several units on food and climate change.
https://www.calacademy.org/educators/our-hungry-planet-food-for-a-growing-population
https://www.calacademy.org/educators/think-before-you-eat
https://www.calacademy.org/educators/what-is-the-environmental-impact-of-feeding-the-world

Next month we visit sustainable seafood, arguably where the food environment movement started. Teaser: no chef imagined guests would walk into a restaurant and demand to know where and how their seafood was raised or caught.

Adam Weiner, JD, CFSE, has been a culinary instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 17 years.