Why beef prices are higher than ever (and shoppers are finally resisting)

I stopped eating beef years ago as it gives me gout. I now only eat chicken, pork, turkey, and healthy fish. Red meat is bad for you anyway.

I rarely eat beef and I'm trying to move away from meat entirely, but I'm still boggled how expensive even cheap cuts of beef are

A steak is nearly $30 now. That's insane.

We don't buy much beef anymore. Plus, it gives me gas.

I quit eating beef about 25 years ago - it tastes fake now. I can’t explain it. I grew up on a farm where we raised beef cattle, and chickens.

Beef started tasting weird about 25 years ago and I quit eating it. Rarely, I will have a cheeseburger.

R6 beef still tastes the same to me but so many eggs lack flavor now.

I was never an egg eater, r7, but I’ve heard the same from chicken raising friends.

I can tell the difference in chicken, too, but it’s not as bad as the way beef tastes. It’s weird, but there it is.

I had eggs with orange yolks recently in London and the favor was amazing. Eggs in the US, even the expensive kind which I tried just to see if I could repeat the London experience, are flavorless.

I don't often buy beef anymore, but the cooler season draws ever closer and my thoughts have turned longingly to beef stew (there's a Spanish one I love to make) and cottage pie.

That said, I took at look at chuck roast and ground beef prices recently, and I couldn't believe how goddamn expensive it was from the last time I made either of those things. Oof. I've put both of those at the bottom of the menu for now because of the huge price tag.

Stew is probably the only beef I eat and only in cold weather. Time to find alternatives

Chuck roast is still a good deal. I pay $8.50 a pound for Choice boneless chuck at a gourmet grocery story. Plus, a 3 lb. chuck roast will feed one person for a week.

I’m married to someone with heart-disease genetics and I buy Beyond “beef” (the vegan fake-burger product) for heart-healthy versions of recipes, and it’s been flying off the grocery shelf lately. There was none available last time. I’m sure the surge in real burger meat $$$ is at least part of the reason.

r12 the last time I looked (a couple weeks ago), Safeway, Lucky and Raley's all had chuck roast at $9.xx per lb and that was the SALE price.

However, there is an actual Butcher shop not far from me that had a fairly good price (in the $8something p/lb range) when I looked, I just didn't make it over there and it ended up getting hot again so I put it off.

I'll check out what their chuck roast price is running and maybe take a trip over to get some.

R9, they’ll cost you but try pasture-raised eggs from a farm if they’re available near you. There’s a good brand at our local produce market and the difference in taste and texture is noticeable. I keep two kinds of eggs now, one for when egg quality matters (like a 2 egg veg scramble in the morning) and another for when it doesn’t (like baking recipes that call for 1 egg to make the batter).

I'm r10 / r14 and I recently got some chickens (within the past month) because I have a large backyard, the coop was already there and I like animals (grew up with horses, pigs, chickens, goats). Also, eggs are so damn expensive now and why the hell not.

Due to chicken math, the two hens I originally picked up turned into three on the day I picked them up, and within the next 6 days became 5 hens. They are all under a year, but the third hen I bought (to be there for the other hen in case one of the original two died) was laying when I picked her up. The other two (original) hens are due to start laying any time now. The last two (who are only about four months old now) probably won't be laying until around the end of the year.

I bake a lot during the non-hot part of the year, and I love breakfast, so whatever eggs I can't use will go to neighbors or I'll sell. And at least I know that these eggs are coming from well cared-for/well-fed chickens. Also, chickens are hilarious.

Toldja!

R16, is the poop as big a chore as I hear?

r18 they have an extremely large space to wander around in so it's not really all that concentrated. That said, I've cleaned it twice in the (almost) four weeks I've had the chickens. It's not really that big of a deal, and it goes into my compost tumbler to make compost for the garden.

The coop gets the most poop actually, but I'm using something I found called "deep coop composting" which essentially means I go in each morning and sprinkle more shavings on top of the night's droppings. This eliminates any smell by (or at least makes it nominal) by drying it out, and coop cleaning is cut down to once every couple months, at which time I'll have composted/aged manure/fertilizer for the garden and plants around my property. It's really not a big deal to me, although when I was growing up, we had daily farm chores so I am accustomed to a level of animal caretaking that someone else might think distasteful or off-putting.

[quote] I’m married to someone with heart-disease genetics and I buy Beyond “beef” (the vegan fake-burger product) for heart-healthy versions of recipes, and it’s been flying off the grocery shelf lately. There was none available last time. I’m sure the surge in real burger meat $$$ is at least part of the reason.

I ate a lot of that stuff, r13, until I really thought about what it was. - Beyond Beef is a miracle of marketing over truth. It has virtually the same calories, saturated fat and protein levels as beef, but with more carbs, and a whole chemistry set thrown in.

Ingredients of Beyond Beef Plant-Based Ground: Water, Pea protein, Expeller-pressed canola oil, Refined coconut oil, Rice protein, Natural flavors, Dried yeast, Cocoa butter methyl cellulose, Potato starch, Salt, Potassium chloride, Beet powder color, Apple extract, Pomegranate concentrate, Sunflower lecithin, Vinegar, Lemon juice concentrate, Zinc sulfate, Niacinamide (vitamin B3), Pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), Cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12), Calcium pantothenate

Ingredients of Ground Beef: ground beef

Thanks r19

[quote]Beyond Beef ... has virtually the same calories, saturated fat and protein levels as beef, but with more carbs, and a whole chemistry set thrown in

A lot more sodium, too.

Steak prices are insane these days

R20 and R22 — true about the high sodium, but it’s a fairly clean product otherwise, as ingredients go. There is no cholesterol (whereas beef is high in cholesterol), and there’s now an avocado oil option instead of coconut oil, to remove the saturated fat issue.

I switched to center loin pork chops, which are a third of the price of beef, and I actually like them better. I get them for $6.99 lb. on sale at the gourmet grocery store. There's nothing better in the Fall and Winter than a pork chop with roasted vegetables or mashed potatoes.

[quote] Ingredients of Beyond Beef Plant-Based Ground: Water, Pea protein, Expeller-pressed canola oil, Refined coconut oil, Rice protein, Natural flavors, Dried yeast, Cocoa butter methyl cellulose, Potato starch, Salt, Potassium chloride, Beet powder color, Apple extract, Pomegranate concentrate, Sunflower lecithin, Vinegar, Lemon juice concentrate, Zinc sulfate, Niacinamide (vitamin B3), Pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), Cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12), Calcium pantothenate

That right there, folks, is an example of highly-processed food. And highly processed food is what is causing the explosion of cancer cases in young people and early deaths. You only need to watch some of the videos these younger people are "creating" for "content" with their "dump" video recipes (dump in a can of this, sprinkle in a bag of that, add a billion pounds of cheese and butter, add this gravy mix) to see that some people eat so much highly processed food as their normal diets that they'd actually be healthier if they stuck to unfettered, minimally-processed foods with minimal ingredients. It's scary to me to see all of those ingredients in a meat substitute, even if many of them look innocuous enough. All of those separate ingredients go through their OWN set of processing...and if that's what you are eating every day, it's really not healthier.

Those tariffs that Dump put on Australian beef are really showing us up. What a dipshit. All it’s done is drive up the price everywhere.

[quote]I quit eating beef about 25 years ago - it tastes fake now. I can’t explain it. I grew up on a farm where we raised beef cattle, and chickens.

I am not a picky eater. I never ate that much beef in the states. Now that I moved abroad I eat more of it here since it doesn't feel heavy. And it's weird now when I return and make food for my mom. The smell of American meat is so strong. I can smell it across the room. I make stuff for her but I can't eat it, and I was never like that before.

I stopped eating beef, years ago, and I lost 30 pounds.

R26 funny you should say that: It's exactly what made me go back from meat replacements to real meat. I thought I was doing myself (and the environment) a favour by eating fake meats, but then you are eating such insanely, heavily processed foods — can't be good for you, either.

I heavily moderated my beef intake by creating more dinner portions out of what I would normally eat in one sitting.

On the weekend I will be cooking a French recipe that I haven't done in a very long time: Pork filet with red wine prune sauce + baked potatoes with a sprinkling of rosemary. Served with homemade mayonnaise, of course.

But I digress...

It's Trump's fault. Everything wrong in the US right is because of him.

right now.

r31 / r32 - well, if the shoe fits.