Does Buying Local, Pasture-Raised Meat Really Matter?

I’ve seen several posts around the Paleo community recently asking if it really makes much difference whether you buy run-of-the-mill supermarket meat or expensive, hard-to-find pastured meat. These people are generally Paleo converts already: they are sold on the idea that industrial hot dogs are bad; they’re simply– and justifiably– worried that their budgets will collapse under the weight of that costly grass-fed beef and pastured chicken they see for sale at the farmers market.

Today I’m going to tell you why it does matter. To do that, I’m going to upset you. I don’t mean I’m going to make you mildly cranky, either. I mean that I’m going to make you cry, if you’re the sort of person who is prone to tears. I’m going to make you feel nauseous. I suspect I’m going to make a whole bunch of you hit the “back” button and never return to this blog. And I’m sorry about that– I really am. But the truth is, you need to be aware of this information.

If you want to spare yourselves all of that, you probably need to stop reading here. Because in just a moment, I’m going to show you what you’re eating. Almost every single day, most of you take meat from the animals shown in the following videos, cook it, cut it up, put it in your mouths, chew it, and swallow it. Their muscle tissue (or ova, in the case of the eggs) is broken down in your digestive tract and becomes part of your bodies. Right?

In the Paleo lifestyle, we understand that things like stress and poor diet negatively affect our body’s health and ability to function adequately. Now, I’d like you to imagine what state the bodies of the animals in the following videos are in at the time that they are butchered. Do you think they can rival the body of the stereotypical overweight, diabetic desk jockey when it comes to ill health? I bet they can– the stereotypical desk jockey lives in paradise by comparison.

So, yeah, final warning. The following videos, except for the last one, are extremely graphic depictions of institutionalized animal cruelty, and accurately reflect the meat industry in the United States and some parts of Europe. Please do not watch them if you don’t want to be upset, and don’t let your kids watch them without first viewing them yourself and deciding if you want your children to know about this stuff, or not.

This is what you are eating.

Beef:

Pork:

Chicken:

Eggs:

I’m always amazed by the sheer, overwhelming number of people who have no idea that this kind of stuff goes on every day so that they can have cheap meat. I have a degree in agricultural science, so I have known in a vague way about it since I was in college. It took me until five years ago to internalize it and take action, in the form of raising all of our own meat– chicken, beef, duck, goose, rabbit, and as of this year, pork, lamb, and goat. I suspect this makes me guiltier, ethically speaking, than the millions who simply have no concept of factory farming, because I ignored the knowledge and carried on as per usual for fourteen years.

But I’m not ignoring it now. And I’m not going to let you ignore it, either. Completely aside from the moral argument (and no, I can’t believe I just typed that sentence, either), EATING THIS STUFF IS KILLING YOU. Can you even imagine how many stress hormones and toxins are floating around in that burger you just threw on the grill? And that’s before we even get into the issue of antibiotics and growth hormones.

So, bottom line– please, please buy your meat from someone like the guy below if you’re going to eat domestic birds and mammals. And if you can’t afford to do that, change over to fish and shellfish, which are cheap, highly nutritious, and do not suffer nearly to the degree of a factory-farmed domestic animal during the harvesting process.

In conclusion, here’s a final video of humane farming guru Joel Salatin and his son Daniel on their diversified farming operation in Virginia, to wash the horrible taste out of your mouth.

Technorati Tags: grass fed meat, healthy eating guidelines, pastured meat

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Healthy Eating Guidelines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.