Big news: McDonalds announces new plant-based burger - the #McPlant. Here's why I'm excited.

Total US beef consumption is higher than in any other country. We eat nearly 25 billion pounds of ground beef and other beef products each year, equivalent in weight to about 50 skyscrapers (!!!).

Beef has a disproportionately large environmental footprint. Pound for pound, it has a higher carbon, land, and water footprint than other widely consumed foods

Over half of beef in the US is sold as ground beef, much of it hamburgers. Typically, about half of that is sold in retail (though COVID has changed that). That means over one-quarter of beef in the US is sold by restaurants and fast food chains as burgers and ground beef.

If people switch out just half of their burgers when they eat out with the #McPlant, the #ImpossibleBurger and other plant-based burgers, that would reduce US beef consumption roughly 4%, reducing GHG emissions, land use, water use and more.

Although not a huge reduction in GHG emissions, it would be meaningful change—the equivalent of taking over 1 million cars off the road. If other ground beef was replaced, as @DelTaco and others are doing, the impact would be even larger. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/wheres-the-fake-beef

Note: This is very back-of-the-envelope math rough estimates of hamburger's and retail's share of beef, using EPA estimates just for methane and manure emissions from beef (excluding feed), and LCA values noted here: https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/cultivated-meat

The #McPlant offers large potential to reduce the impacts of meat. But plant-based meat also can't fix everything. People will keep eating beef. So McDonalds & co should still improve meatpacker worker standards and aim to cut GHGs & other pollution from the beef they source.