For the Love of Beef: The Good, the Bad and the Future of America's Favorite Meat

by Scott Lively

Overview

We don’t eat beef to stay alive, we eat it to feel alive.
We eat beef for the experience. We eat it for the texture, the aroma, the atmosphere. Whether it’s prepared in a backyard or a bistro, North Americans LOVE beef. Look at it this way: the French have their wine, the Germans have their beer—and the Americans have their beef.
From hamburgers to meatballs, briskets to ribeyes, the average American eats almost 60 pounds of beef every year. Yet, how well do you know the steak on your plate, the roast in your oven, or the ground beef in your freezer? Where does it come from—Texas, Nebraska, Uruguay, or Australia? Is it true that the meat from thousands of cows is in just one pound of hamburger? And, if so, how safe is it? And what about hormones and antibiotics?
Scott Lively, president of Raise American, cuts through the bull and brings you the truth about the Big Beef industry in this essential guide to all things beef. You’ll find out what packers, grocers, and the government know, but don’t have to tell you. You’ll learn how to look at a cut of beef and know whether it’s clean, green, and healthy, or came from an old dairy cow. You’ll find out what “grass fed” really means (and what it doesn’t), and how the USDA actually measures the quality of your beef. And you’ll understand what sustainable cattle farming is, and how it can benefit your health and the environment.
For the Love of Beef has the answers to the questions you never knew you had about your favorite meat, written by one of the foremost authorities in the beef industry. Whether you’re a budget-minded consumer or would-be connoisseur, you’ll never look at beef the same way again.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940164967154
Publisher:	Scott Lively
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Scott Lively, president of Raise American, is an organic food entrepreneur and an absolute freak about beef. Scott left a successful career in the IT industry to found the U.S.’s largest organic beef producer. Today, he oversees a broad portfolio of company and private label and brands. A self-professed beef geek, he boasts that he knows every cut of beef as if he cut it himself. He divides his time between Scottsdale, Arizona, and Martha’s Vineyard, where he is an owner of the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks, a collegiate baseball franchise that is part of the NECBL. Scott is an advocate of local economic development and regenerative farming practices applied to large agriculture.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 So What Is Organic, Anyway? 9

2 Why Your Beef Ain't COOL 15

3 Is Your Patty Safe? 21

4 What's Prime and Who Decides? 27

5 What Makes a Steak a Steak? 33

6 What Is Aged Beef? 39

7 What Should the Cow You're Eating Be Eating? 43

8 What's Good about Your Beef? 49

9 What's Bad about Your Beef? 55

10 The Life and Times of a Beef Cow 65

11 All You Never Wanted to Know about Processing 69

12 Following the Trail (of Boxed Beef) 77

13 Beef Is Food, but First It's a Currency 83

14 What's in a Brand? 85

15 What You're Allowed to Say, What You're Not Allowed to Say and What It Really Means 95

16 By the Way, What's a Byproduct? 105

17 A Change in the Beef World 111

18 When a Sixteen-Ounce Steak Is Not a Sixteen-Ounce Steak, and Other Lies 121

19 The Cuts You Probably Don't Know About (but Should) 129

20 Butcher the Butcher with Questions 135

21 Opinions Are Like Oxtails-Every Cow's Got One 145

Final Thoughts: Lively's Perfect World 157

Acknowledgments 165

Notes 167

Index 171