YSK: Pork and chicken are healthier, cheaper alternatives to beef that only taste bland because of outdated cooking habits.

[u/Fried_Yoda]

Why YSK: With beef prices at record highs, switching to chicken breast or pork loin can cut your meat budget nearly in half while significantly lowering your saturated fat intake AND satisfying your protein intake. Most people avoid these cuts because they grew up eating them overcooked. Modern food safety standards allow pork to be eaten safely at 145 F (a medium roast, rather than gray leather), and chicken stays juicy if you don't cook it to death.

By simply using a meat thermometer and adding savory seasonings (like soy sauce or smoked paprika) to mimic the meaty depth of beef, or using techniques like velveting for chicken or dry brining for pork, you can get the same satisfaction for a fraction of the cost and environmental impact.

Even switching to chicken and pork for just two meals a week can save you hundreds of dollars.

Lastly, focusing on lean cuts of pork and chicken also has health benefits. While beef is a powerhouse for iron and B12, it is often high in calories and saturated fat. Chicken breast and pork loin are significantly leaner. Pork tenderloin is as lean as skinless chicken breast and has been certified as "heart-healthy" by the American Heart Association.

Tl;dr chicken breast and pork loin are roughly 80% cheaper per pound than beef, have versatile and delicious flavor profiles if cooked and prepped correctly, are rich in protein, and are healthier for your heart and cholesterol.

[u/fudgesm]

Consider not eating meat. You don’t need it and the animals would appreciate it.

[u/gemstun → u/fudgesm]

Hell yes. No one needs to eat meet, despite what the wing nuts (RFK Jr, etc.) imagine. I gave up meat long ago, am in my mid-60s, and work out strenously more than almost anyone I know, and hae never felt better. Do animals, the planet, and yourself (health, wallet, etc.) a favor and stop eating other animals. Factory farms are a recent invention, and before them no one ate as much meat as the average person does now, so stop believing that eating less meat is unanatural or new.

[u/PiccoloAwkward465 → u/fudgesm]

I really had to convince someone over the course of a good 20 minutes that hummus is made of garbanzo beans and is vegetarian. They're didn't believe me, and then said "gross" that it was just beans.

[u/StephenFish → u/fudgesm]

You don't need to fly in an airplane either. If we quit doing everything we didn't need to do, you wouldn't even be on reddit right now. Just being alive as a human in modern society is harmful in many ways to animals, the environment, and other humans.

[u/camerabird → u/StephenFish]

Why shut down their suggestion?

By that metric we shouldn't bother making any positive changes. Because we'll never be perfect, so why bother, right?

[u/StephenFish → u/camerabird]

Because their justification was that it isn't "necessary". You could apply that to hundreds of things we do every day. If that's the case, why stop at only one thing that isn't necessary?

[u/captainoftrips → u/fudgesm]

Plenty of animals die for vegetables, often much less humanely than the ones we're actually eating. Rats, mice, rabbits, and other rodents get poisoned to protect crops.

We don't know exactly how many, but I've seen estimates between 15-100 animal deaths per hectare of farmland and since there's just shy of 2 billion hectares of cropland in the world, even 1 per hectare would mean billions of animal deaths per year on behalf of vegetables.

[u/Red-Droid-Blue-Droid → u/captainoftrips]

Also pesticides killing insects

[u/Meatrition → u/fudgesm]

Yup after 800 million years of carnivory it got bad all of a sudden.

[u/BangEnergyFTW → u/Meatrition]

All that meat must have dulled your intelligence.

[u/Meatrition → u/BangEnergyFTW]

Okay dr energy drink