汉堡和牛排已经象征着全美饭菜和破坏性的美国意识形态的核心，这可能解释了今年以肉类为中心的争议，例如科罗拉多州州长波利斯的肉一天和拜登总统不存在汉堡禁令。表明我们少吃肉通常会遇到困惑的愤怒，尽管美国牛肉的消费量是气候紧急情况的主要驱动力。
Like apple pie, burgers have become icons of Americana. But unlike apple pie, beef reveals the dark side of American consumption:greenhouse gases, degradedgrazinglands, and the grim realities ofslaughterhouse impacts。那么，汉堡包（在德国的一个城市之后）是如何被纳入美国身份的呢？下一步我们的环境未来悬而未决？
Beef production is historically rooted in western colonialism. Cows and colonialists on frontier ranches流离失所的土著人和野生动植物展示对自然的主导地位。也许这些牛肉的殖民地起源解释为什么许多美国人过度放纵肉类来庆祝独立日。每七月四日，people in the United States consume 150 million hot dogs and 190 million pounds of red meat or pork.根据U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization，美国是每年吃超过220磅肉的少数几个国家之一。
That eat-meat-or-die mentality didn’t come about by chance.With the rise of drive-ins and the advent of fast food, beef overconsumption变得越来越标准化。This was furthered by government subsidies for beef producers and clever marketing slogans that became a part of the American lexicon, raising questions about whether meat producers meet demand or drive it.
虽然过度放纵肉被认为是传统的美国实践，但这种观点忽略了一些关键的食物史。我们的食用肉changed when our access to it changed. Where once meat had been the provision of small farmers and hunters, industrialized production sent meat to grocery stores across the country. With it came a way of producing meat that depended on industrial crop production to feed farmed animals, clearing vital swathes of carbon-storing grasslands to grow monocrops drenched in toxic pesticides.
食品拥护者兼革命书的作者弗朗西斯·摩尔·拉佩（Frances MooreLappé）小星球的饮食，称之为美国对动物蛋白的迷恋是“固定的”。在摩尔·拉佩（MooreLappé）在得克萨斯州的童年时期，牲畜饲养场是永远存在的背景。她说：“我知道肉神秘。”“没有肉的饭菜的想法并不是真的可以想象。”这种心态依赖于这样一种错误的信念，即人们在不吃肉的情况下无法获得足够的好蛋白质。她说：“甚至没有讨论或质疑，这只是给定的。”然而摩尔·拉佩（MooreLappé以植物为中心的饮食与寿命更长有关。
我们的牛肉过度消费也使IT的价格在环境上无法承受。这最近的IPCC报告stressed the importance of reducing agricultural methane emissions to stem the tide of climate change, and cattle are a leading contributor to agricultural methane.一些studies showreducing beef consumption by 90 percent is necessary to mitigate the climate crisis.和报告发表在Nature今年9月表明，基于肉类的产品的温室气体排放量是植物性食品的两倍。我们的环境未来取决于改变肉类消费周围的文化规范。
气候科学家兼项目DARDDown执行主任Jonathan Foley博士指出，没有银弹气候解决方案。但是在2017年的书中Drawdown, nearly half of the proposed solutions are agricultural. Foleyrecommends他说，除了恢复土地并采用储存碳并促进生物多样性的农业技术外，一个关键的气候解决方案是少吃肉，“尤其是减少我们吃的红肉和乳制品的数量，”他说。
Moore Lappé describes this as a shift in thinking from a plant-centered diet to a planet-centered diet, which brings food back into its rightful place in communities and the ecosystems that produce it. “It’s not only unethical to waste precious food by this very inefficient production system of grain-fed meats in our diet,” Moore Lappé says. “It’s also destructive of the entire web of life as it eradicates species.”
Although wider change is needed, like aligning U.S. food and climate policy, individual diets matter too. “When we act in ways aligned with the world we want, we feel more credible to ourselves and therefore to others,” Moore Lappé says. In other words, if we want to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, we need to change what it means to eat like an American.
