Where's the beef? Make that where's the beef coming from.

I'm not a huge consumer of beef. Once in a while, I'll have a steak - and one of those whiles is coming up tomorrow, as I head out to a steak house to celebrate a friend's birthday. And I really do like a burger now and again.

Last year, I tried an Impossible (non-meat) Buger, and it was okay. A bit too well done to my liking, but if you put enough toppings on it, it's fine. So's a nothing-burger. Decades ago, my husband and I were snowed in and didn't feel like braving the elements. We had hamburger rolls around for some reason. And condiments. Just no hamburger. So we concocted what we called Fake Burgers: hamburg roll with mustard, kethcup, pickles, lettuce, cheese and tomato. It actually tasted an awful lot like a McD Quarter Pounder.

I could probably convert to the Impossible Burger to meet my burger needs, and feel very virtuous about not contributing to the cow gas methane that's killing the environment. Or so I thought.

Turns out that even if you switch to plant-based meat, you're not likely to be saving a cow. 

For one thing, no one will miss my burger consumption:

Despite cattle ranchers’ deep fear and antipathy for plant-based meat, per capita consumption of beef has been increasing since 2015. U.S. beef sales reached an all-time high in 2019, with a similar outlook for 2020, according to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. And the debut of high-profile, plant-based burgers doesn’t appear to be a zero-sum game: Burger King’s parent company reported a 5 percent sales increase in its third quarter last year after the launch of the Impossible Whopper, the strongest growth since 2015. But sales of its beef burgers increased as well. (Source: Washington Post)

But it's not just that my "sacrifice" is outweighed by more people eating beef. There's also this: a lot of the beef that goes in to hamburger production comes "from Holstein or Jersey cows, which frequently are decommissioned dairy cows past their prime." And from male calves that used to go for veal, before we stopped cosuming veal. 

Well moo to that.

With the exception of a once-a-decade backslide, I've already bid adieu to veal. Looks like if I want to save the world from methane, I need to give up dairy. No cheese on my toasted cheese sandwich. No milk in my tea. No fro-yo snack in the evening.

Of course I can live without. But why is everything so damned hard these days?