Epicurious will no longer publish beef recipes and here’s why

Epicurious is a popular food and cooking brand that can be found online and in print. It was recently announced that there would be some changes in its publication and was quite a surprise.

As per CNN Business, the online food publishing declared on Monday, April 26, that it will be cutting out beef from its posts. This means that readers and followers of Epicurious will no longer see any food with beef or beef ingredients in its featured recipes, social media posts, articles, and newsletters.

Why Epicurious is eliminating the “beef”

Based on the report, the brand is implementing this change in its effort to help fight climate change. This is their small contribution to a greener world and become a pro-planet entity.

The publication’s senior editor Maggie Hoffman and former digital director David Tamarkin explained that because the production of beef emits sizeable quantities of greenhouse gas, so they have decided to omit beef in any of their works.

"We know that some people might assume that this decision signals some sort of vendetta against cows or the people who eat them,” the senior editor wrote in a post. “But this decision was not made because we hate hamburgers (we don’t!)."

Tamarkin and Hoffman added, "Instead, our shift is solely about sustainability, about not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offenders. We think of this decision as not anti-beef but rather pro-planet."

Beef and why it is bad for the climate

The Epicurious editors stated that the ways cows are raised are what make the production of beef not eco-friendly. Tamarkin mentioned a study from the Natural Resources Defense Council and said that livestock is responsible for almost 15% of the total greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and beef is the largest contributor to that pollution.

Meanwhile, it was said that Epicurious actually started to move away from environmentally harmful recipes almost two years ago. It said that since 2019, the publication rarely posts beef recipes, and now they are also offering alternatives for beef in every article or recipe they publish.