A comprehensive overview of the evolution of the modern beef and dairy cows/bulls and the role they've played in inspiring, industrializing and feeding us over the centuries. Rimas and Frazer blaze a wide trail for such a compact book including detailed information on bovine influences in ancient cave art, traditional African Masai tribal customs, iconography in world religions, Spanish bullfighting, international trade law, bioscience/ethics, the settlement of the Americas and world ecology. The authors have successfully strung together a lot of far-flung theology and research reporting into one relatively compact space, but the book devotes a lot more of its early chapters to the historical religious/spiritual significance of cows than I anticipated given the more secular title of the book. Later chapters gravitate to scientific considerations, but they seem just a tad rushed given the expansiveness of the earlier chapters. I must say I appreciated the whimsical inclusion of "Culinary Interludes" and a couple eclectic photographs at regular intervals--it was a nice touch for the foodies. Personally, besides the segments on the Masai, I found the most interesting tidbits at the near end of the book (I don't want to spoil it, but it has to do with water consumption). Bottom Line: It's not quite as well-written as "Salt", but this book will definitely make you appreciate the meat you consume (or don't) a lot more, plus it makes the strongest case for grassfed beef I've heard yet. A definite recommend for anybody with a cattle-related/agricultural career path. ( )

Very informative and readable account of the domestication of cattle through the ages. I really enjoyed it. ( )

Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World by Andrew Rimas & Evan D. G, Fraser

In the tradition of Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire and other recent histories of food, Andrew Rimas's and Evan D.G. Fraser's Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World examines the intricate evolutionary relationship between humans and cows. The relationship has been a long and honored one. Indeed, Rimas and Fraser highlight the Judeo-Christian creation story, the golden calf built by Moses' brother Aaron that resulted in the Israelites wandering in the wilderness for forty years, and the sacrifice of the fatted calf to honor God. Perhaps even more intimately, the authors describe the Viking creation story of humans being brought forth by a cow licking saltpeter. This relationship between bovine and Homo sapiens extends far back into pre-history and proceeded from not only the bounty of meat and milk but also the sheer power and bulk of these ancient animals.

The power and strength of the bull have been revered in paintings, music, literature, dance, and bullfighting. Rimas and Fraser weave these artistic forms into their history, from the earliest known art work in the Lascaux Caves of wild aurochs, the predecessors of the domestic cow, to modern Picasso's Guernica, cubist artwork of the Spanish Civil War and Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. Perhaps the quintessential art form of the relationship between man - for it is truly a masculine ritual - and bull is the Spanish matador and the bullfight. The reader has front arena seats at the event as children and teens dash from the bull's angry might, the flash of the matadors' capes, to the horrible ordained conclusion.

The final honor of these pampered, powerful beasts are the five-star restaurants where each bone, muscle, organ, and sinew is marinated, sautéed, or poached to tempt the palates of gourmands. Indeed, the greatest delicacy of the sacrificed bull is a bowl of Bull's Tail Stew. Rimas and Fraser reveal the recipe, so the true beef foodie can enjoy its pleasures, although surely from an inferior bovine source. Indeed, the historical and artistic analysis is sprinkled with recipes such as the Prodigal Son's "fatted calf" or Vitellina Fricta (veal), Homeric Roast Beef, the Ribs of Henry IV's Coronation Feast "Boef y-Stywyd."

Filet mignon and steak have been the feast of the powerful and wealthy - pharaohs, kings, czars, and emperors - since prehistoric days. At first this power may have stemmed from supreme hunting ability, the cunning and valor to bring down these magnificent powerhouses for the tribe or clan. As cows became domesticated, their ownership became a symbol of affluence. Rimas and Fraser trace the linguistic relationship between cattle and money and relate one Irish epic where the "keeping up with the Jones" competition between two rulers in Connaught came down to one supreme breeding bull. This desire for possession has inspired kidnapping, murder, and warfare. In fact, cattle rustling may have been the first form of bank robbery.

As beef has trickled down to the common man and become a daily household staple in the form of Big Macs, Whoppers, and "Milk, It Does a Body Good" advertisements, the cow is evolving yet again. To feed the tremendous demand for dairy and beef, cows are spending their entire lives on feedlots where they are bulked on genetically modified corn and soybeans - foods that cows are not even biologically able to digest - antibiotics, and hormones. If cows no longer feed on the grasses that form their very essence and purpose, are they even cows anymore?

Descriptive and accessible, Beef is fascinating historical reading for foodies, literature and history buffs, and cow lovers. ( )

Where’s the Beef?

Kim Stallwood

Beef: How Milk, Meat and Muscle Shaped the World by Andrew Rimas and Evan D.G. Fraser. Mainstream Publishing. 250 pp. £12.99.

“I am a great eater of beef,” pleads Sir Andrew Aguecheek in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, “and I believe that does harm to my wit.” Wit isn’t the only thing harmed by the consumption of beef and other meats and dairy products. But you wouldn’t know it from reading Beef: How Milk, Meat and Muscle Shaped the World by Andrew Rimas and Evan D.G. Fraser. Like skimming off the unwanted fat from the surface of simmering beef stock, the authors discard what they don’t want to spoil the taste of their tale of how beef built civilisation. A more appropriate title for a less romantic book may have been Beef: How Fat and Flatulence Put at Risk Our Health and the Planet. But, I suspect, this Beef is targeted for an audience of readers who wish to continue savouring the social and cultural delights of meat without wanting to spend too much time thinking about the political and environmental consequences. Reality forces the authors to talk seriously at the end but this diversionary discursion from the pro-meat perspective left this reader with a bitter after taste as too little too late. No doubt, our intimate relationship with the animals, including those we eat, plays a significant role in shaping the world we live in. The question is how we chose to see and write about it as well as where do we go from here. Whose story are we telling, anyway? As the authors unwittingly ask, “Imagine our world without cattle, and you’re not imagining our world. Cattle, second only to the ingenuity of humanity itself, built this astounding complexity of fields and cities, letters and money, banks and kings. And, indeed, of gods.” (p.33)

The authors, a freelance journalist with extensive international travel now based in Boston and a lecturer on farming and the environment at the University of Leeds in England, tell the “story of cattle and of the people who made them what they are.” (p.23). Beef is a collection of creative non-fiction essays arranged in the linear narrative theme of humanity and its development over the ages. So, we start with “From Horn to Hoof” (prehistory to 8000 BC) and end on “The $300 Sirloin” (twentieth and twenty-first centuries). The authors skip anecdotally through the millennia from pre-historic times in Africa and nomadic tribes and their herds of cattle to contemporary Japan and Wagyu raw meat at $300 per pound.

This should’ve been a road less travelled as with the passing of each chapter there is a growing sense that what we’re reading is an arbitrary collection of a bit of this and a bit of that. Functioning as some overarching theme connecting us with the dawn of civilisation (read: real men killing cows) and the unknown fate of our futures (the consumer’s choice: “walk the meat aisle with an eye for qualities like provenance, ecological impact and sustainability, or look to canned beans” [p.220]), the authors weave in and out of their narrative account visits to Africa and the Masai. They end up at Nairobi’s Carnivore Restaurant.

We chewed for an hour, commenting solely on the food. Chicken livers, ostrich balls, Chinese spare ribs and roasts of every barnyard denizen except for the cat. A waiter carved a beef rump at swordpoint, about half an inch thick. Then came lamb. And sausage. And turkey. And more beef. No storied gluttons – not Lucullus, not Henry VIII, not even Elvis – had ever swamped themselves with so many pounds of flesh. We ate our way past satiety and into hazy tracts of stupor. (p.187)

No sooner do the authors put down their knives and forks after this celebration of unrestrained excess, they wag their fingers and call upon consumers to “learn restraint” in their consumption of meat but even this is problematic. (p. 203)

Restraint has been the mantra of environmentalists since the dying days of the passenger pigeon, but the most effective tool for forcing consumers to rethink their habits is to raise prices. With lower beef production, this will happen anyway. The real question is how to remodel the industry itself so that it’s profitable, sustainable and capable of filling the millions of hamburger buns left vacant by the shuttered feedlots. (p.203)

Vegetarianism, not even a “meat-free” diet of part-time vegetarianism, is a serious consideration fort these authors. They reveal their bias with such ill-informed observations as these.

To be meaty means to possess merit and conviction. To be vegetal means to be practically dead. (p. 15)

Spartan in simplicity, yes, but the result should debauch the staunchest vegan. [referring to a recipe for rib-eye steak] (p. 18).

Beef is like one of those cheap but attractive cookbooks that dare you to impulse buy them at the local supermarket checkout. You just know, however, when you get home there won’t be a recipe worth trying. Indeed, Beef does include recipes, well, what are called “Culinary Interludes.” But who’s going to want them in the age of cancer and heart disease, saturated fat and E. coli outbreaks, factory farming and mad cow disease and water wars and global warming?

Suggested alternative titles to consider include

Meat by Nick Fiddes
Meat Market by Erik Marcus
The Meat You Eat by Ken Midriff
Beyond Beef by Jeremy Rifkin
Beef and Liberty by Ben Rogers
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options by Henning Steinfield
Cow by Hannah Velten

The sub-title of Beef hints of an "untold story". Actually, it turns out, there is not a single story, but many stories, each from 1 paragraph to a few pages long. These wide ranging mini stories, encyclopedic snippets really, are categorized into chapters along chronological order, from pre-history to the present. Such a presentation, without a central narrative, would not hold many readers attention, so the authors also took some trips to exotic locations and weave in travel tales related to beefy places and people. This is a standard creative non-fiction technique commonly found in books like Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History although the overall effect here is muted because there is no "mystery" to create tension. We also get some recipes, including how to make cheddar cheese.

The last chapter of the book is the best, from the 20th century to the present. It suggests the current industrialized methods of raising beef are unsustainable and the future will see changes. The earlier chapters about the history of beef are interesting, but prior to the 19th century, I found it somewhat meandering. It's not a scholarly or definitive treatment. I noticed a few mistakes; the authors use the term "Dark Ages", which has been largely deprecated by medieval historians; and they mistakenly use "sweetmeat" to refer to offal.(*)

Sort of like how a cow is made up of many cuts of beef, Beef is a a number of styles and techniques weaved together. History, travel, journalism, recipes. Some parts are more interesting than others, and it will largely depend on what the reader already knows and is interested in. It's a short book that can be read easily in a day (or cross USA plane trip).

(*) Sweetmeat is bread, sweetbread is meat. Strange as it sounds, the Oxford English Dictionary confirms it. Since I am reading an Advanced Readers Copy, this may be corrected in the final edition.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd ( )