With more than 33,000 recipes, Epicurious is one of the world's largest food and cooking digital platforms for the home cook, with daily kitchen tips, recipes, and cooking videos. On April 26, Epicurious recently published an announcement that they won't publish beef recipes anymore. Not just recipes, but any beef content won't show up on their articles, newsletter, homepage, and Instagram feed as well. 


Although the news appeared only a month ago, it actually has slowly and 'secretly' been done since 2019. They have cut down a lot of their meat recipes and replaced them with vegetarian recipes and various dishes with alternative meat. Epicurious teams also admit that since they decided to publish alternative-meat recipes, the traffic and engagement numbers have risen by a lot showing that people are embracing their decision on ditching meat. 


Why Epicurious Left Beef Behind?




"We think of this decision as not anti-beef but rather pro-planet." a short and sweet statement they put on their official announcement that explains pretty much the whole decision. Anyhow, they did sum it up into five issues. Firstly, the beef industry creates a need for a massive quantity of corn and soybeans to feed cattle, which are grown using pesticides and fertilizer, which are produced using fossil fuels.  


The second issue is the way that cows digest their foods: "Via belching and flatulence (yes, in that order), cows release methane into the atmosphere. And methane is a particularly powerful climate polluter, Bergen notes. "It's actually about 80 times more powerful as a climate polluter than carbon dioxide," she says. "So that's another place where [cows are] producing lots and lots of climate pollution."


They also talked about deforestation caused by the industry. It takes a tremendous amount of space only for just one farm. As more and more farms are built, more and more forests are cut down to make ways for cows. They also talked about how beef is a very water-intensive product and about the manure that releases both nitrous oxide and methane into the atmosphere, responsible for 12 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in America


Why Beef? And How About Dairy?




Simply because beef is the biggest culprit for climate problems in the American diet, even though pork, chicken, seafood, and other food, including vegetables, have carbon footprints, those are still far less destructive to the atmosphere because they don't release methane. They said that dairy products are just as destructive as beef is; however, they didn't say whether they will or will not continue posting recipes that contain dairy. When they were asked about grass-fed beef, they said, "It's complicated, but in short, it's still beef."


How Public Reacts 



Despite the fact that this seems like good news and appreciated by many people, apparently, some are seen to express their disappointment in the comment section of Epicurious's Instagram post. Some of them are even vegetarians and vegans. "Very disappointing - I am a big fan of eating (and preparing) more plant-based options but not to the full exclusion of meat. I would have hoped that you would help people with an achievable approach to balancing their diet." 


As one of the largest and top food websites, this decision must have been well thought out. The resulting disagreement is inevitable, but it is another big breakthrough in efforts to save the planet. In an article called The Planet on the Plate: Why Epicurious Left Beef Behind, they clarified that they have no agenda besides being more sustainable. They can still access the beef recipes published in 2019 and before on their site. 


They also said, "Epicurious's agenda is the same as it has always been: to inspire home cooks to be better, smarter, and happier in the kitchen. The only change is that we now believe that part of getting better means cooking with the planet in mind. If we don't, we'll end up with no planet at all."