If you like to cook and if you like tips to learn how to cook better, chances are you’re very familiar with the food site Epicurious. The site is a great place for anyone looking for expert food advice or a new recipe to try for dinner.

Recently, Epicurious announced that they are making a big change to their site. They are no longer going to be posting recipes that include beef as an ingredient. They will not actively take down any recipes already on the site that contain beef, but no new recipes with this ingredient will be added.

Obviously home chefs might wonder why beef was literally taken off the table. The answer? Climate change. David Tamarkin and Maggie Hoffman wrote a detailed explanation about why Epicurious has made this decision. In short, “In an effort to encourage more sustainable cooking, we won’t be publishing new beef recipes on Epicurious.” They went on to explain, “This decision was not made because we hate hamburgers (we don’t!). Instead, our shift is solely about sustainability, about not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offenders. We think of this decision as not anti-beef but rather pro-planet.”

Watch the video below for more details about how climate change led Epicurious to make such a surprising decision.

The decision to stop posting about beef on Epicurious is not a recent decision. The site actually stopped posting recipes that included beef over a year ago. They just didn’t announce it. It seems that nobody really noticed and home chefs loved the recipes that were posted instead. Tamarkin and Hoffman wrote, “We actually pulled the plug on beef well over a year ago, and our readers have rallied around the recipes we published in beef’s place.”

Do you eat a lot of beef? Did you know that cutting back on beef could help the planet? What do you think of Epicurious’s decision to stop posting any recipes or content that include beef as an ingredient? Do you think this decision will encourage Americans to cut back on eating beef?