TRYING TO MAKE BEEF APPETIZING AGAIN Watch out, chicken. The beef industry is out to convince consumers that you-know-what isn't a bum steer anymore.
By - Edward C. Baig

(FORTUNE Magazine) – ''WHAT DO YOU expect for 300 calories?'' asks the narrator of a new set of commercials running on television screens across the country. With Beethoven's ''Ode to Joy'' providing background flavor, the surprising answer comes: beef, as depicted in a dozen concoctions from shish kebab to stew. The ads are part of a $10-million promotional campaign cooked up by the Beef Industry Council, the trade group that has taken on the formidable task of turning around a product gone lame. Says John Francis, director of marketing for the council, ''We've got to make our meat trendy.'' Beef has been losing ground to chicken, leaving many ranchers in financial trouble. Because the red meat has come to be perceived as expensive, time- consuming to prepare, full of fat, and generally unhealthful, per capita consumption has fallen from a high of 94 pounds in 1976 to an estimated 75 pounds this year. Over the same period, per capita poultry consumption rose from 43 pounds a year to 70 pounds. Although 90% of the population still typically have red meat in the fridge, the percentage of respondents who characterized themselves as ''meat lovers'' in surveys conducted by the opinion research firm of Yankelovich Skelly & White dropped from 22% in 1983 to 10% in 1985. In fighting back, beef's proponents point out that their product is leaner, the result of 25 years of improved livestock. Indeed, the council is making much of new Department of Agriculture data that put beef in approximately the same nutritional ballpark as chicken -- a well-trimmed three-ounce sirloin steak has 185 calories and 75 milligrams of cholesterol; a three-ounce piece of boneless chicken breast has 140 calories and 72 milligrams of cholesterol. At many supermarket meat counters, display charts supplied by the industry will show a cut's calorie and cholesterol levels, together with other nutritional information, right alongside dietary standards recommended by the American Heart Association. In addition to the TV spots, which are running in the ten largest U.S. cities, ads in magazines such as Bon Appetit, Glamour, and Parents will blazon the industry's tag line: ''Beef. Good news for people who eat.'' (No news, presumably, for those who don't.) The council is asking restaurants like New York's trendy America to include meat recipes in the low- cal section of the menu, and is stressing lean, three-ounce portions, far from the hefty slabs that steakhouses still typically serve up. While the principal thrust of the campaign is to get demand for beef up again, it should also complement the efforts of companies out to develop beef products with fatter profit margins. Large meatpackers such as IBP and Monfort of Colorado are thinking about introducing brand-name beef cuts for consumers, a tactic that benefited poultry giants like Cookin' Good and Perdue. The council hopes beef finger foods, precooked roasts, and prepared beef dishes designed specifically for microwave ovens -- all products under development -- might appeal to yuppies on the run. Beef and goat cheese casserole, anyone?