Grass is Good

Let's consider this post 'part two' in my food series.  The reason I'm going to talk about meat now is because that is where my own personal food revolution began.

About a year ago, PBS had a free screening of Food, Inc.  I love all things free, so MacGyver and I tuned in.  I'm pretty sure it is in the very definition of a documentary to be one-sided and political, and this one definitely followed suit.  Still, I was shocked by the facts the documentary claimed, and spent the next few weeks doing research.  I did a lot of Google-ing, but also visited the library, spoke to my granola friends, my farmer friends, and my doctor.

I could reach only one logical conclusion:  my family would only be eating local and appropriately-fed and well-cared-for meats.  The reasons are many and varied, but I'll do my best to explain them as best I can.

Local.  This is perhaps the most important aspect of meat for me.  Not just locally-grown, but locally processed, as well.  Many people don't realize (especially people that live in the farmland of America like I do) that locally-grown animals are usually sent to one of 13 major packinghouses.  A packinghouse is a facility where animals enter alive, and their products leave in boxes, ready to be shipped around the world.

These packinghouses are in business to make money, and have done anything and everything they can to cut costs.  We live in a nation with free enterprise (thank goodness!), which means that businesses operate under the system of supply-and-demand.  In case you slept through Econ 101, that means that businesses supply what customers buy.  Unfortunately, Americans are buying (and thus demanding ) a bunch of unhealthy stuff.

The biggest consumer of the packinghouses are fast-food restaurants.  These restaurants want their food to taste the same in California and Maine and Japan and Florida, so they pressure the packinghouses to supply meat that tastes consistent.  The result?  One hamburger that contains meat from dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of different cows.

The packinghouses employ practices that shocked me.  Studies have shown (source list at the bottom) that as much as 50% of the meat leaving these facilities is infected with a life-threatening food-borne illness.  The meat that leaves is often contaminated with feces, bone marrow, rodents, and human waste.  Seriously disgusting.

Another product of packinghouses is mechanically reclaimed meat.  This is what chicken nuggets are made from.  After they remove the breast and thigh from the chicken, they grind down the carcass.  This contains plenty of bacteria, so it is flooded with chemicals.  It no longer looks, smells, or tastes like meat, so it is injected with flavoring.  This mixture is then molded into familiar-looking shapes:  chicken nuggets.  Please stop feeding these to your children.

Buying local changes all of this.  Local butcher shops aren't perfect, but they are family-owned mom-and-pop shops that care about the community.  They don't produce at the rate that packinghouses do (some at 400,000 pounds of meat per hour), but the meat is healthy.

Appropriately-Fed.  I feel very passionately that in order to be healthy, we must eat healthy foods.  Food that is well cared for from the start, especially meat.  Cows, for example, are designed to eat grass.  If they had a choice, they would graze all day in a pasture.  Unfortunately, most cattle bred for consumption these days is fed a corn-based diet, which is heavily supplemented with growth hormones.

On the surface, this doesn't seem all that bad.  The problem is, a cow's digestive system just isn't equipped to handle corn in such large quantities.  The cow develops an infection, such as E. coli, and then that bacteria is present in the cow's manure.  Since the packinghouses don't properly protect us from these bacteria, it is easily passed on to the consumer.

Each animal has its own diet of preference; a diet that nature will allow the animal to easily digest.  I don't know what each diet consists of, but I've found that when meat is purchased from a local farmer (organic is best), your odds are pretty good.  Buzzwords to look for are 'grass-fed', 'free-range', and 'organic'.  Well-fed animals produce healthy meat.  Healthy meat makes for healthy humans.

Another item to note is that the USDA does not currently have the power to recall tainted meat.  They can recommend  that a company recall unsafe meat, but it can't enforce.  Many are quick to blame republican lawmakers, though I don't think the blame can be passed so easily.  We are operating with a broken system that is in desperate need of fixing.  Until then, I've made the choice to protect my family.



Making the switch to local and well-fed meat is not without its challenges.  One of the top questions I get is "How can you afford this?".  That's kind of a trick question for me, because I've since become vegetarian, but I can give you some insights.

For starters, it isn't as expensive as you'd think.  Check out your local resources.  Most farmers offer a deep discount if you buy a whole cow or a half a cow at a time.  Invest in a deep-freeze and store the meat, or split it with some friends and family.  My family has actually been doing this for years.  Chicken can be more expensive, but every community has a local co-op that will deliver fresh farm products weekly or bi-weekly, and those are more affordable than meats in a health-food shop.

Another solution is to introduce a few 'meatless' days to help with the cost.  Spaghetti with meatless sauce, rice and bean tacos, meatless lasagna, and lentil dishes are crowd-pleasers around here.  Your body does not need meat for every meal, every day.

I'll go into more detail about healthy eating on a budget in another food post, but those are some ideas to get you started.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, but this is what I've learned over the past year.  I'd be happy to (try to) answer any questions you have!


Sources:
Food, Inc.
Fast Food Nation (this book includes a fantastic source list, with studies that support the findings)
www.usda.gov
www.organic.org