Once upon a time, say 15 years ago, when Mr. and Mrs. America went out for dinner on Saturday night, they ordered the filet mignon. At home, the babysitter dished up hamburgers. There would be a roast for Sunday dinner and on Monday a fast meal of Hamburger Helper.
So it went all week in those days when beef was king.
But that was before storms of data about cholesterol, fat, the environment and animal rights began to swirl about our heads, countered by the beef industry’s ads touting taste and protein.
Will king beef go the way of the dinosaurs? Or has it reached a plateau: Is it holding its own?
There’s little dispute about the core facts: Before 1977, average per-person consumption in the United States was 78 pounds of beef a year; by the early 1990s, the average was 67 pounds. The fall of beef sales was one of “gut-wrenching proportions,” thanks to nervousness about diet and cholesterol that started in the late ’70s and continued through the mid-’80s, says Wayne Purcell, an agricultural economist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.
In the last several years consumption has stabilized, Purcell says, but at a lower level.
He says it is possible for the beef industry to experience a resurgence, but he doesn’t see it happening. Americans have begun turning to chicken and turkey, perceiving poultry as lower in fat, more economical and more convenient. According to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, consumption of chicken rose about 30 percent from 1984 to 1991, from approximately 33.7 pounds per person per year to 43.9 percent. Meanwhile, beef consumption slid 13.5 percent during the same period. Turkey’s share of the plate started out small, but it has experienced the most dramatic rise of all, with consumption up 67.9 percent from 1984 to 1991.
Judy Putnam of the USDA accords health concerns and some price concerns with the move toward poultry but says that a key factor is convenience and packaging.
“It looks to me that if you don’t get something packaged so that the consumer can take it home and cook it in less than 2 minutes, it’s not going to sell,” she said. Chicken and turkey packagers have come up with cuts and packaging that promote their products’ convnience. Others-from Jim Mintert, an economist at Kansas State University who advises cattle growers, to Harry Balzer of the NPD Group of Park Ridge, Ill., which tracks consumer trends-see the real danger to beef’s future in today’s teen-agers, many of whom eat little or no meat at all.
But that’s the future. Who’s eating beef now? Has the product changed over the years? And what about Beyond Beef, the group campaigning for a 50 percent reduction in U.S. beef consumption?
Figures show most beef still is consumed at home, but restaurants that specialize in steak have had a strong showing in recent years despite the general sluggishness in the restaurant industry, said Scott Allmendinger of Restaurant Business magazine.
“People save their beef indulgences”-the filet mignon or sirloin-for restaurant meals, he says. “People generally trust higher-quality restaurants to cook beef correctly, but might be reluctant to throw a $10 steak on the grill.”
Kevin Leary, president of Hilltop Steak House, which has three Massachusetts restaurants and one each in New Hampshire and Connecticut, said the original restaurant in Saugus, Mass., serves 30,000 customers a week, 80 percent of whom order beef.
“I think in general the most popular item we have continues to be filet mignon,” Leary said. “I think people, particularly if they’re eating less red meat at home, indulge themselves when they go out.”
But if the beef industry sees this glass as half-empty, to some nutritionists it is half-full.
Dr. Joe Piscatelli of the Institute for Health and Fitness outside Washington, D.C., said the 1980s became the decade of cholesterol after the 1984 National Institutes of Health Report that tied saturated fat and cholesterol to heart disease. “Red meat, along with butter and cream, became the target, and the emphasis was to reduce high cholesterol by controlling that in the diet.”
Meat consumption may be down overall, Piscatelli said, but much of the reduction comes from women, not men, who were the original subjects of concern. And when men are asked their top five food choices, red meat is always up there.
In its latest recommendations on diet, the USDA suggests consuming no more than 3 ounces of meat a day, but Piscatelli adds that this recommendation is aimed particularly at men in this country who still eat large quantities of meat.
In recent years beef producers have done a good job of “leaning up products” and of educating the public, he said. When sales first started to drop in 1978, the beef industry-which comprises many groups, from cattle ranchers to feedlot owners to meatpackers to shippers to retailers-was slow to see the danger. After all, the reasoning went, who would want to eat a puny chicken when you could have prime rib? And tofu was un-American, wasn’t it?
But by the mid-1980s, falling sales began to hit home. And by 1989 when beef prices in supermarkets were slashed by as much as 30 percent, consumption still didn’t increase, Purcell said.
In the last several years, the Beef Industry Council, a promotional arm of the National Live Stock and Beef Board, has waged a $42 million advertising campaign to push beef.
“We’re working to create in the minds of the consumer a higher value,” said Mary Adolf of the Beef Board. She says that although consumption is down, consumers are willing to pay for and eat beef if they perceive it as having nutritional and budgetary value. The Beef Council not only plans ad campaigns, but sends out reams of information on calorie counting, nutrition and recipes.
“The producers of the country have responded to consumer demand for leaner beef,” Adolf said. “We’ve seen a 27 percent decrease in the amount of fat on an average steak, primarily through cutting off exterior fat.”
Purcell agrees that the industry’s emphasis has to be on nutrition. “I’m not willing to dismiss that fears about fat and cholesterol changed the way the vast majority of us eat.”
Getting leaner beef won’t be instantaneous, he said. “We need to take the knife and do whatever we can to trim fat, and then, over time, we need to change the genetics” to produce a leaner animal.
But, Purcell said, there is a paradox here, because although the consumer is crying for leaner beef, the taste of marbled beef (with fat embedded in the muscle) usually is preferred. In blind taste tests, the marbled steak always wins, he said.
Beef’s flavor is definitely a matter of taste, Purcell admits, and the animal’s diet and age, as well as marbling, have lots to do with how the meat will taste. Organic beef producers, such as Coleman Natural Meats Inc. of Denver, claim that beef raised without antibiotics tastes better, saying consumer taste tests bear this out. Coleman beef and other organically raised beef costs more, but, said Mack Graves, president of Coleman, sales rose 15 percent last year and 11.5 percent the previous year.
Organic beef is a niche market that accounts for a small portion of total beef sales. But, as Graves points out, organic takes longer to raise because the animals grow more slowly and more space is needed for grazing. This results in higher prices, but Graves argues that this is more humane for the animals and healthier for the environment.
That’s not enough, however, for author Jeremy Rifkin, and his Beyond Beef movement, which began a campaign last spring to cut U.S. beef consumption by 50 percent. Beyond Beef, located in Washington, D.C., portrays beef production as a “major cause of world hunger, pollution, deforestation, desertification and species extinction. Cattle literally threaten the future of the Earth.”
Cattle use a disproportionate amount of resources, including land that could be planted with crops, Beyond Beef argues, and asserts that cattle also are treated inhumanely.
Beyond Beef is planning a drive next spring in which volunteers will distribute literature and talk to patrons outside McDonald’s restaurants across the country. The goal is to tell customers “the real cost of eating hamburger.”
Beef industry people and economists counter that Rifkin uses faulty science, that there’s already a U.S. surplus of grain and that land used to raise cattle isn’t suitable for crops anyway. Because cattle are their livelihood, beef growers have no reason to mistreat them, said Adolf of the National Live Stock and Meat Board; Coleman’s Graves concurs.
However, Beyond Beef executive director Howard Lyman reports an enthusiastic response to a nationwide speaking tour and said the “issue is moving much faster than we had ever anticipated.” Not only does he think Beyond Beef will reach 1,000 McDonald’s patrons, but Lyman also thinks the goal of halving beef consumption by the year 2000 will be accomplished ahead of schedule.
Even so, Mr. and Mrs. America probably are not going to stop eating beef, said marketing consultant Balzer. “Generational changes are unusual,” he said. In tracking consumer trends, Balzer says, “what you want to look at is the glacial but steady changes.”
And that is what has happened to beef consumption. We eat less than we used to, and beef is getting pummeled in the public consciousness as being bad for health and the environment-and it isn’t as convenient as boneless chicken breasts.
But the real change may be before us. According to NPD Group’s National Eating Trends, the average household served beef 91 times during 1991, more than poultry (83) or pork, ham and bacon (83). NDP’s Balzer points out that because changes in eating habits happen so slowly, the next generation will be more influenced by today’s shifting attitudes toward beef consumption.
