I'm Breaking Up With Butter Because I Love the Earth

Subscribers to David Tamarkin's bi-weekly COOK90 newsletter get to read this article first—and they have the option to write back! Click here to subscribe to the newsletter yourself.

When I gave up eating beef for environmental reasons a few months ago, I felt almost nothing. No cravings. No jealousy when I saw my friends eating cheeseburgers. No regrets.

So I went a little further. I stopped eating chicken, pork, lamb, duck, and every other animal protein other than fish. And though I sometimes feel an urge to order a bucket of fried chicken, and sometimes fantasize about topping that bucket with a pound of pulled pork, generally it’s been no big deal.

That brings me to the next logical step in sustainable eating. But this time I feel paralyzed. I have no idea how I’m going to give up dairy.

So much focus is put on the environmental impact of beef that it can be easy to forget that dairy cows have many of the same problems. Dairy cows feed on grain, which is usually treated with chemical fertilizers that emit nitrous oxide; these cows release methane into the atmosphere when they digest that grain; and their manure emits even more methane (and, sometimes, contaminates local water supplies). These are just a few of the reasons that some reports put dairy as the second-highest emissions-emitting food group, higher than chicken, pork, and turkey (but lower, of course, than beef).

When I read these facts, it’s obvious that I’ve skipped a step. I gave up eating cows, but only halfway. I stopped eating burgers but continue to eat ice cream. So have I cancelled out my own attempt to make an impact? (There’s also the much bigger question of whether an individual choice can make an impact at all.)

The truth is I never really cut out beef completely. I just “cut back” like the UN report told me to, and I already ate so little beef to begin with that eating less became eating none. Now, I’m trying to do the same thing with dairy. No more butter in my scrambled eggs, no more cream in my greens; in both of these cases, I’ll use olive oil instead (most of the time).

That leaves me with one big category of dairy to grapple with: baking. Regular readers of this newsletter know that if I could, I would eat a diet consisting primarily of brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and lemon cake. (Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that I was gorging on shortbread?)

So just as olive oil is coming to my rescue for scrambling eggs, it will also be my solution for cake. A few weeks ago, when I set out to make a ginger-y, peppery apple cake, I reached for olive oil, and found that the cake was easier, longer-lasting, and maybe even more flavorful than if I had made it with butter. As I shoved thick slices of the cake into my mouth, I had a ridiculous thought: maybe I don’t need butter in my life after all.

That’s a lie—there is no life for me without butter—but because I’m pushing myself, it’s a little less of a lie than it used to be.

Olive Oil Apple Cake with Spiced Sugar

Originally Appeared on Epicurious