'Better' Burgers Worse for Health, No Better for Climate (Op-Ed) 	Elliott Negin is the director of news and commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). This article is adapted from a piece that appeared on Huffington Post. Negin contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights  .	Like a lot of cities across the country Washington has been overrun by so-called better-burger joints over the past few years. One granddaddy of this craze Five Guys Burgers and Fries  which got its start here in the D.C. metro area back in 1986  is joined by Black & Orange Bobby's Burger Palace BGR: The Burger Joint Elevation Burger Fuddruckers Shake Shack and Smashburger most with locations just a few blocks from my downtown condo.  	Smashburger the newest premium burger establishment in my 'hood is  the third-fastest growing U.S. chain according to Nation's Restaurant News an industry trade publication. Founded in 2007 by the former owner of the Quiznos sandwich chain the Denver-based company expects to have more than 300 locations in 32 states and five foreign countries by the end of this year. That still pales in comparison to Five Guys which has more than 1100 locations nationwide and plans for 1500 more.    	These relatively new better-burger fast-casual restaurants are enjoying stupendous growth purportedly because Americans are looking for higher quality food than they can find at the big-three traditional quick-service chains: McDonald's Burger King and Wendy's. Although the big three accounted for 70 percent of the $75.9 billion in U.S. burger sales in 2013 according to the market research firm Technomic they have been steadily losing ground to more-upscale fast-casual chains including premium burger eateries. Last year the top 25 better-burger chains totaled sales of $2.7 billion a 12 percent jump from 2012.  	But aside from stupendous growth are better burgers really better than a Big Mac a Whopper or Dave's Hot 'n Juicy?  	Consumer Reports readers think so at least when it comes to taste. Of the 21 burger chains cited in the magazine's July survey of  the best and worst fast-food restaurants McDonald's scored dead last just ahead of Burger King. Wendy's meanwhile was ranked 16th well behind Five Guys Smashburger and Fuddruckers which came in at 7 8 and 9 respectively. (The California-based In-N-Out Burger was rated No. 1.)	But there are more important issues to consider. Are better burgers better when it comes to your health or the health of the planet? The short answer is no. When judged by those standards we would be better off if we ate fewer hamburgers plain or fancy.	Supersize Me	While beef consumption worldwide has been going up Americans have cut back considerably since the mid-1970s largely due to rising beef prices and a greater awareness of the health risks associated with consuming red meat. As of 2012 the average American was eating 52 pounds a year about 30 pounds less than four decades ago. Regardless we still consume more per capita than the citizens of every other country excluding the beef emporiums of Argentina Brazil and Paraguay.  	Eating less beef is a good thing. After all it's been linked to a host of potentially life-threatening problems including coronary heart disease and breast colon and prostate cancer. But instead of forsaking beef altogether financially strapped Americans are eating more ground beef instead of steak and other pricier cuts. Our hamburger economy has in turn created a market for better-burger chains which promise well better burgers.  	Jayne Hurley a registered dietician at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) cringes when she hears the food industry's better-burger label.  	These new upscale burger restaurants are serving more meat between the buns with at least twice the calories Hurley said. You would get a healthier meal at a traditional fast-food burger place like McDonald's or Burger King. The Big Mac and the Whopper look downright petite compared with the burgers coming out of these upscale burger joints.	In June 2010 Hurley and co-author Bonnie Liebman CSPI's nutrition director singled out Five Guys in  their annual Extreme Eating feature  in the organization's Nutrition Action Healthletter. They reported that a Five Guys Hamburger sans toppings is 700 calories considerably more than a Big Mac's 540 calories or a Quarter Pounder's 410 calories with everything. A Five Guys Bacon Cheeseburger meanwhile has 920 calories and 30 grams of saturated fat  one-and-a-half days' worth  without toppings. That's more calories than two Quarter Pounders.	These places aren't serving healthburgers Hurley said. And there are so many reasons not to eat beef. It's full of saturated fat it's high in calories it increases the risk of colon cancer and heart disease and then there's the threat of E coli. We don't recommend eating it.  	Grass-fed marginally better than grain-fed	According to a 2013 Technomic survey  a significant percentage of Americans are looking for healthy menu options  and are concerned about how their food is produced. The research firm found that 59 percent of respondents rated socially responsible as an important factor when deciding on a restaurant 58 percent said they would prefer that restaurants serve meat and poultry raised without hormones or steroids 45 percent favor free-range poultry and grass-fed beef and 41 percent are looking for natural and organic fare.  	To further differentiate themselves from traditional fast-food burger chains some premium burger chains have jumped on the sustainability bandwagon. BGR: The Burger Joint for example trumpets that its burgers are from grain-fed cattle; all natural no hormones fillers or antibiotics and most importantly they run free in the fields. Shake Shack's menu boasts that its burgers are 100-percent all-natural Angus beef vegetarian-fed humanely raised and source-verified. No hormones or antibiotics  ever. Elevation Burger goes even further promising 100-percent USDA-certified organic grass-fed free-range beef.	Hormones and antibiotics aside the biggest distinction when quantifying beef's marginal benefits to human health and nutrition  as well as a cow's well-being  is whether cattle end their brief lives in crowded confined feedlots eating genetically modified corn and soybeans or spend all of their time on pasture eating grass and other forage crops which is what they evolved eating. Feedlot cattle are prone to getting sick so producers routinely feed them antibiotics which also serve to accelerate growth. After they are weaned from their mothers and grazed on grass most cattle are shipped to feedlots to fatten them up quickly on a grain diet.  	If you're going to eat beef you want the grass-fed variety. A 2010 study in Nutrition Journal reviewed three decades of research comparing the nutritional profiles of grass-fed and grain-fed cattle. It turns out that  grass-fed beef has lower levels of unhealthy fats and higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids which are better for cardiovascular health. It also has lower levels of dietary cholesterol and provides more vitamin A and E as well as cancer-fighting antioxidants.	Not many better-burger chains offer  grass-fed beef   however because there's not a lot of it around  making it more expensive  and because  it has a grassy flavor that Americans accustomed to fatty grain-fed beef find unfamiliar. Elevation Burger which has 33 restaurants in 11 states and D.C. is the lone grass-fed burger purveyor in my town and a cursory Internet search turned up only three other premium burger chains featuring grass-fed beef: Bareburger with 19 locations in four states; Burger Lounge with more than a dozen locations in California; and Yeah! Burger which has two locations in Atlanta.  	Beef is the worst meat for the climate	Before you begin searching high and low for a grass-fed burger however there is something else to consider. Free-range grass-fed cattle may be slightly better for your health than those that are grain-finished at feedlots but both are bad for the climate.  	Agriculture accounts for about 6 percent of total U.S. global-warming emissions and  beef production alone accounts for 2.2 percent of the total according to a 2011 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report Raising the Steaks. That's roughly equivalent to the annual heat-trapping emissions from 33 average-sized coal-fired power plants. Beef cattle and stored cattle manure also are responsible for 18 percent of U.S. methane emissions which have nearly 25 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide. So while the emissions from beef production may seem relatively small it is not an insignificant part of the problem.  	The more beef Americans eat the worse global warming gets said Doug Boucher director of UCS's Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative. Americans would protect their health and the climate if they replaced beef with poultry or pork  or ate less meat altogether.	Beef is what scientists call an inefficient protein Boucher said. It requires substantial resources to produce compared with what it contributes to the human diet. A 2012 UCS study Boucher co-authored Grade A Choice? Solutions for Deforestation-Free Meat found that  beef production uses about 60 percent of the world's agricultural land but produces less than 5 percent of the protein and less than 2 percent of the calories that feed the global population.	A July study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) which focused specifically on the United States echoed Boucher et al.'s analysis. It found that  beef requires 28 times more land and 11 times more water to produce than the equivalent calories from pork or poultry and produces at least five times more carbon pollution. The contrast between beef and such staples as wheat rice and potatoes is even more stark. Beef requires 160 times more land and results in 11 times more heat-trapping emissions.  	The U.S. beef industry is not convinced.  	The PNAS study represents a gross over-simplification of the complex systems that make up the beef value chain a point which the authors acknowledge Kim Stackhouse-Lawson director of sustainability research for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association said in a statement. The fact is the U.S. beef industry produces beef with lower greenhouse gas emissions than any other country.  	Stackhouse-Lawson is not entirely off base. Methane and nitrous oxide emissions from livestock in the United States and other developed countries  peaked in 1970 and have fallen 23 percent since according to a July study in the journal Climatic Change. That decline however has been offset by rising livestock emissions in developing countries which more than doubled largely due to increased domestic demand for meat. The study found that worldwide livestock emissions jumped 51 percent from 1961 to 2010. Beef cattle were responsible for more than half of the emissions followed by dairy cattle at 17 percent.	That doesn't let Americans off the hook however. Even though we're eating less beef these days  which explains the drop in U.S. livestock emissions  we're still No. 1 in the total amount of tonnage. Last year  we put away 11.6 million metric tons of beef and veal  according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Brazil was a distant second at 7.9 metric tons and the European Union's 28 member countries  which collectively have a larger population than the United States  came in third at 7.6 metric tons.	Americans' love affair with beef has consequences beyond our borders. According to Boucher's 2012 study  U.S. beef consumption helps drive tropical deforestation which is now responsible for about 10 percent of the world's carbon emissions. As demand for beef goes up worldwide so does deforestation.  	If U.S. consumers ate less beef Boucher explained U.S. producers would have more to export to other countries. And those exports would displace exports from Latin American beef producers reducing incentives to cut down tropical rainforests for cattle pasture land.	The bottom line is U.S. demand for beef plays a substantial role in global markets Boucher said. If U.S. consumers want to eat 'better' burgers they should consider turkey burgers veggie burgers and other alternatives. All of those are much better for the environment whether you're talking about climate emissions land use water use or nitrogen pollution.	Lowering demand he added also could help cut production here at home where beef cattle account for more than a third of all U.S. agricultural heat-trapping emissions.	Ken Caldeira a co-author of the July Climatic Change study wound up coming to the same conclusion Boucher and his colleagues did two years ago.  	The tasty hamburger is the real culprit Caldeira an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science said in a July 21  press release. It might be  better for the environment if we all became vegetarians but a lot of improvement could come from eating pork or chicken instead of beef.  	Negin's most recent op-ed was Montana: Big Sky Shrinking Glaciers Fading Wildlife . This article was adapted from 'Better' Burgers Worse for Your Health No Better for the Climate which first appeared on the Huffington Post. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates  and become part of the discussion  on Facebook Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.