I love meat. Oh, how I love meat. The worst thing about being pregnant (and for me, that was a looooong list) was having to eat beef well-done. Yuck. Even the best chef has trouble keeping a well-done steak tender. Don't tell the pregnancy police, but I ordered my meat medium when I was gestating Babydoll. I also ate Brie, lunch meat and drank coffee. Once, I had some spicy tuna roll. Shocking, I know. Before I go off on a tangent, let me get to the point of today's blog:
Grass-fed beef. Have you had it? It is beef at its finest. It is also expensive, and can be difficult to track down, especially if you live in a barren region like I do. The meat you buy at the grocery store is likely to come from factory farms. And guess what? Factory farms are bad news. Here's why (you know I love a list!):
1. Cows are herbivores. By nature, they eat grass. Animals raised in factory farms are fed an unnatural diet (soy, genetically modified grains), and sometimes their feed even contains garbage, candy, chicken by-product, and until 1997, by-products from other cows. Oh yeah, dude. I'm serious. How disgusting is that? Scientists are fairly certain that is how Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (aka Mad Cow Disease) came to be. Now that you're retching, allow me to continue.
2. If you've driven in the country, you've most likely passed by fields where cattle are strolling in the sunshine, grazing on grass, mooing contentedly. These are happy cows. The meat at your grocery store? It doesn't come from these cows. Cattle in factory farms are kept in confinement pens (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs). All the time. They don't graze. They don't roam. If the pen is outside, they might get some sunshine...if the cow on top of them falls down.
3. As you can imagine, animals confined this way are at greater risk of disease. Factory farmers combat this by adding antibiotics, hormones and steroids to their feed. Like rBST in your milk, those antibiotics, steroids and hormones end up in your meat. Ew. And when your body is exposed to a constant stream of antibiotics, it builds up a resistance. Resistance means that any antibiotics your doctor prescribes you may not work; resistance also causes bacteria to evolve into stronger and stronger strains.
4. Factory farm workers are often undocumented immigrants. The hazardous work environments present on factory farms go unreported because illegal workers think they have no employment rights. It's ironic, isn't it? Millions of Americans are against illegal immigration, but every cheeseburger you bite into supports it. In the words of my brother, "Check yourself, fool."
I could go into greater detail about the health hazards of factory meat, but Babydoll will be waking up soon, and I'd really rather get into the awesomeness of grass-fed beef. I'll keep it short and sweet:
1. Grass-fed beef is leaner. In fact, it generally contains about the same amount of fat as a boneless, skinless chicken breast. It also has fewer calories than grain-fed beef. Woot!
2. Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) is amazing. It's been shown to help reduce cancer risks, among other benefits. The meat from grass-fed cattle has five times more CLA than grain-fed beef. Woot!
3. Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant; it helps lower your risk of heart disease and cancer. Grass-fed beef is four times higher in vitamin E than grain-fed beef. Woot!
Now for the bummer: grass-fed meat is rarely available in a conventional grocery store. If you want to make the switch, or even just try it once, look for a Whole Foods in your area. Just a heads-up: be prepared to pay at least twice what you're used to paying for beef. It is completely worth it, I promise. Perhaps the cost will influence your family to go meatless once or twice a week (I'll write about that in the coming weeks). If you don't have a Whole Foods in your area, check out my new favorite website EatWild. It's a comprehensive list of pasture-based farms selling beef, pork, chicken, lamb, eggs and dairy either in your region or willing to ship to your door (I've found this be a cost-effective choice, if you have the freezer space).
*When you go to cook your super awesome grass-fed beef, make sure you cook it to about 10 degrees below your preferred temperature. I'm not sure why, and Babydoll is doing her "I'm awake, Mama!" cooing, so I can't Google it for you. I just know that I almost ruined a pair of very pricy filet mignon steaks on Valentine's Day by overcooking them. Our medium steaks turned out to be medium-well, even though my very accurate thermometer registered them at 135 degrees.
Got some meaty questions? Let me know.
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