This is Your Brain. This is Your Brain on Government Meat.
Sunday, October 7, 2012As I took this photo, it reminded me of all those government Ad Council spots, or the “this is your brain on drugs” ad from the Partnership For a Drug-Free America.
Today I was preparing some superb grass-fed hamburgers, from Oliver Farms in Fastoria, Michigan, for the grill. At the same time, I was also boiling some ground chuck for my dog’s lunch. Industrial beef prices are so high that it has been hard to find decent cuts of meat for her, so in my last shopping trip I had to settle for this gross ground chuck, which was still costly at almost $3.50 per pound. Still, it’s better than the industrial machine’s corn-and-soy dog food diet. My grass-fed ground beef costs me between $5 – $6 per pound.
The patty on the left is grass-fed. The meat is lean with muscle integrity, as is the defining characteristic of beef from cows that aren’t force-fed the federal food pyramid diet for cows. The color is healthy and vibrant. The meat is so firm that I could form “beef balls” and throw them a great distance without them separating. (And I have done this.) The patty on the right is grain-fed beef from the industrial machine, from a cow living in confinement, being kept fat and alive with hormones, steroids, and subsidized grain. The meat is water-logged, with no integrity or firmness. It is like mush. Seeing the disparity in a side-by-side visual is an eye opener for folks who may not think much about the quality of meat they ingest, or even care about the inferior standards of the federal food pyramid health & wellness paradigm in general.
As the funny “brain on drugs” ad would say in conclusion, “Any questions?”
DavidBrennan says:
October 9th, 2012 at 1:08 am
Yeah, I don’t dispute that grass-fed meat is better.
But at the same time, many of us can’t afford it, and eating even processed meats is still miles ahead of grains and such. Robb Wolf was saying that there was a very good study presented at the Ancestral Health Symposium comparing grain to grass fed. Wolf summarized the findings to say that grass fed, while better, is not so much better that people on tight budgets should necessarily pay the premium. I think he described the superiority of grass fed as, “Significant, but not a deal-breaker.”
Still, I think your overall point is well-taken. But people on tight budgets shouldn’t be discouraged from eating standard, processed, grain-fed meat. (Although that means that your dog is eating better than us, but that’s okay.)
Pam Maltzman says:
October 17th, 2012 at 11:33 am
This summer I adopted a little female cat right in the middle of her second pregnancy. This critter is the feline equivalent of a teen mommy… I adopted her at 9 or 10 months, and it was her second pregnancy.
Well, she had the kittens (4 out of the 5 made it to about 10 weeks, where they are now). For all her youth, she has been an excellent cat mama. I have given away the two male kittens and so far still have the two females. While 3 of the 4 kittens have been happy to slurp down whatever mama Millie eats (darned near anything), one kitten didn’t like that. She’d not only meow at me, but she’d shriek at me; I could tell that sometimes she was hungry, but she just didn’t seem like a happy camper. Long story short, it turns out that this one little fussbudget prefers any kind of human-type food. And she’s eating some dry food (Innova Evo, one of the high-end grain-free, low-carb dry foods). So, I am feeding her supermarket-grade ground beef (not the pink slime, but the same stuff I put in m own mouth). Since I can’t afford the grass-fed stuff, I make do with supermarket ground beef that is $3.00 per pound and under. And I feed it to them raw. She will also eat cooked leftover meat of many kinds. Also likes chicken and leftover meat from our meals. She also likes canned salmon and tuna. I get canned salmon from the 99 Cent Only Store; they have pink salmon part of the year. I decided I didn’t like canned salmon because of the bones, but if I pick out as many bones as I can, she is happy to do a face plant into a glass pie plate full of the stuff. She ewas also having a goopy/boogery face for a little while, but that has cleared up. I have been eating a higher-animal-fat diet for a while, too, and it took care of my problem with dry eyes. I have a book about raw feeding of cats, entitled “Raising Cats Naturally” by Michelle T. Bernard. I think the argument for raw feeding is sound, but haven’t started to do that yet, although I got a hardly-used grinder off eBay in preparation for that. It’s my understanding that if people are worried about possible parasites in meat, freezing the stuff for 2 weeks before thawing and feeding will take care of it. I also give this baby goats’ milk (pasteurized). I have also drunk raw cows’ milk. Got hold of some raw goats’ milk once, drank the quart quickly, and got gut cramps, which surprised me. Anyway, I can’t afford the pastured meats currently, but that might eventually change. We’re hoping to move to northern Arizona, where I will be able to buy some of our foods from local producers. Where I am now (high desert in California), we do have a farmers’ market once per week, but I haven’t gone there yet during its hours of operation.
Pam Maltzman says:
October 17th, 2012 at 11:35 am
Okay, in California there is at least one producer of chicken (Foster Farms). I buy it because it’s locally grown and not shipped in from halfway across the country. Zacky Farms no longer raises chicken, but does turkeys. There are a couple of other producers of turkeys. I have sometimes been able to buy several turkeys at a time after the holidays from the grocery stores, and I freeze them, to eat throughout the year. My last turkey from last year is still in the freezer. I appreciate locally-sourced foods, and buy them as I can find them and afford them.
Pam Maltzman says:
October 17th, 2012 at 11:45 am
Haven’t found any local producers of grass-fed butter yet (other than ordering it from Organic Pastures), Trader Joe’s markets sell Kerrygold Irish Butter, which is great. I get the unsalted. Not as good as Organic Pastures’ raw butter, but about $3.00 for an 8-ounce package. Organic Pastures’ raw butter is over $10.00 per pound by now, and my local health food store doesn’t stock their stuff anymore.
Al Sledge says:
November 3rd, 2012 at 1:46 pm
Karen,
After seeing this post originally on LRC awhile back, I book marked it in order to respond at a later date. I have had quite a bit of experience with cattle, both beef and dairy, dating from the 1950 to the early 1960s. By 1965 I went into the military, was discharged in 69, and became a “city slicker” ever since. In those days dairy cattle needed only TB vaccinations. We milked 40 head twice a day, winter and summer. No one ever died. It sold for 50 cents a gallon (in silver coin). I grew up putting whole cream on my corn flakes. It never occurred to me that other folks used milk! A real shock when I went into the military!
We would also raise 5 to 20 head of beef cattle and generally 5 to 15 hogs every year. Our family and our close neighbors split one of the cattle and 2 hogs for our own use and sold the rest at the Omaha stockyards. As a result the cost of the meat approached zero except for the labor. We also grew our own corn and alfalfa for the animals, again at low cost except for fuel, labor, and seed. In the winter, there is no such thing as “grass fed”. Both the cattle types got alfalfa and some cracked corn. Some sixty days prior to slaughtering the beef cattle, they received extra corn. Our “feed lot” was about 2 acres, not a pen. The corn was to fatten them up, or “marbleize” the meat with fat as my dad claimed. One of our beeves would go to a local slaughterhouse, killed, skinned, split (in half, also called a “side of beef”), and hung for 30-40 days at 33-34F temperatures. We would then pick it up, put it in what we called the “ice house” to keep it cool, then four adults and 4 kids would spend from 5am till 10pm cutting, wrapping, and freezing the meat. A lot of work! But fed two families for a year.
A huge difference today in processing is not between grass fed or corn fed, but rather aged meat and what commercial meat packers call “kill and chill”. Properly aged beef cannot compare to kill and chill for flavor, texture, appearance, etc. Aged beef has a lot of waste as it develops a dried “skin” that cannot be used except for feeding hogs.
In your meat photo, the left one certainly appears to be aged beef, the right photo appears to be grocery store kill and chill, also with too much fat added.
We did not feed the beef cattle solely for the weight gain, but more for the flavor and quality. The meat flavor is in the fat, not the meat tissue. I have eaten a lot of elk when I lived in Colorado, and we were always careful to cut away as much fat as possible so as to get rid of the gamey taste that the fat imparts.
The finest steak houses in Omaha raise and process their own beef. I miss these places a lot as I now live in the Florida Keys.
Grass fed beef is cheap beef for the producer. You may want to investigate quality aged, corn fed beef to see if you reach the same conclusion.
Yours in Liberty,
Al Sledge
Karen De Coster says:
November 3rd, 2012 at 6:40 pm
Al – you differ from me, and the rest of the eco-agricultural world, on grass-fed vs grain-fed. Grain fed does not offer quality or taste. Grass-fed beef is never fed corn, btw, unless it is specifically grain finished.