With a name like “The Secret Life of Beef,” you’d think there’d be more images of stumbling, sickly corn-fed cows, but this optimistic 6-minute doc from Inform instead takes a look at the environmental impacts of eating beef, both too much of it and from unsustainably run feedlots. We also see those in the industry that are moving in the right direction, namely our New York butchers at Marlow & Daughters in Williamsburg, where most meat is sourced as locally as it can be and all of it is from grass-fed-and-finished operations. (Check the close-up of a healthy slab of sirloin: Now that’s food porn.)
“The Happy Meal isn’t really that happy,” says Sean Rembold, chef of Marlow & Sons and Diner, whose meat is provided by Daughters, all of which are part of the same small restaurant company. Daughters’ Adam Danforth adds that, as a butcher, it may be odd for him to tell you to eat less meat, but the only way to make the industry sustainable is for us to do just that — much like the sentiment of Meatless Mondays, also featured in the video, where kids take on the more colorful menu options in their cafeterias, meaning vegetables. The idea is to have meat not as the main course but as flavoring for a meal, kinda like the way our grandfolks did it. Watch below, and hey, feel free to spam — pun intended — friends after.
