Facts about Beef (and Burgers)

If any food is an iconic culinary staple in American culture, surely the hamburger can claim the title. A convenient hand-held food on the go, the burger has become the quintessential dish to serve at cookouts and picnics, not to mention the fast food industry. While there is no exact accounting of burgers Americans eat, one report indicates there are about 50 billion consumed annually - that’s 800 per person, three hamburgers a week. Over 71 percent of all beef consumed in restaurants is in the form of a burger. Wonder what it takes to produce that ubiquitous beef on a bun? Here are some statistics to chew on.

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1. Meat from more than 50 cows can go into a single burger patty. Supermarket ground beef typically comes from many cows, and is ground and packaged before it's shipped to the store. A butcher shop usually sells freshly ground in-store beef from one animal, or maybe two to three, not hundreds.

2. It takes 1,800 gallons of water to produce one pound of grain-fed beef. 

3. We use eight times more land to feed animals in the U.S. than we use to grow crops to feed humans.
 
4. The 500 million tons of manure created each year by American cows releases nitrous oxide, a gas that has 300 times the global warming effect of carbon dioxide.
 
5. In total, 6.5 pounds of greenhouse gases are released to produce just one quarter pound burger.
 
6. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, 14.5 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions globally come from livestock. Beef production makes up 65% of livestock emissions, which total about 7.1 gigatonnes globally.
 
7. Grass-fed cows eat (mostly) grass, while grain-fed cows eat (mostly) an unnatural diet based on corn and soy during the latter part of their lives.
 
8. Grass-fed beef usually contains less total fat than grain-fed beef, which means that gram for gram, grass-fed beef contains fewer calories.
 
9. Most ground beef for hamburgers is from chuck (front of cow) or round (rear leg of cow) cuts.