Have you been persuaded that beef is waning on the American plate because it’s too destructive to the ecosystem, too hormone-pumped and too corn-fed artery-clogging?
“American steak is here to stay — it’s iconic and you don’t bring down icons,” said Dr. Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University.
Betty Fussell, the food historian and author, most recently, of “Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef,” was emphatic that “meat is making a comeback, even among some vegetarians, thanks to the thoughtfulness” in the production of locally raised American beef.
They had gathered on Thursday in the Fales Library of New York University for a panel discussion on “The Changing Center of the American Plate,” and beef seemed right there at the bull’s-eye of the platter
“Meat is still at the center of a lot of plates,” Dr. Nestle said, adding that in Manhattan, “23-ounce steaks are not that unusual, even now.”
Ms. Fussell added that beef has always been an American staple “because steak is raw, violent, macho, sexy and big.” Her book offers an indictment of confined feeding operations where thousands of steer are raised, and the way that beef cattle became commodities. As panelist she traced the historical ascendancy of beef over pork in America “to the refrigerated railroad car, when people had the opportunity to taste fresh beef instead of the previous ho-hum salt pork.”
The moderator was the restaurant consultant Clark Wolf, and the other panelists were Jenifer Harvey Lang, who long ran the Café des Artistes restaurant in Manhattan; Mark Gillman, a Connecticut specialty cheesemaker who offers his $20-to-$30-a-pound product at three New York Greenmarkets; and Jeffrey Yoskowitz, a student of pigs and pork who identifies himself as a “swinologist” and who said he was “curious to see if, increasingly, American steak becomes a status symbol in China.”
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