Eat more beef, save the planet.
Okay…that’s a very simplistic thought and grand start to this post but the idea is a solid one. Eating beef IS good for you and the planet but only if the animals are raised right.
If you’ve watched Food, Inc. or read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma you’ve seen the negative side of cheap meat. Factory farms are taking nature and systematizing it in such a way that every aspect of the process is ultimately a negative to the planet. The list of offenses, wrongs and horrors in factory farming is so long and depressing that it threatens to make me forget the point of this post which is the good that can come from raising animals in a positive way.
So the positives:
1. Did you know that cow manure fertilizes the grass they eat and as the cows trample it into the soil they are reducing their carbon footprints by keeping the carbon in the ground and out of the air. This makes the cows happy, I’m sure. Since their biological waste is the fertilizer then no fertilizer is needed to be added to the soil, no fossil fuels burned transporting any unneeded fertilizer and no chemicals to worry about. Cool.
2. Grass-fed animals live in the sun. This gives the end products that we eat from them…meat, eggs, milk…higher levels of vitamin D. Vitamin D is needed for strong bones. No need to add extra vitamins to the shopping list if you’re eating outside animals. (Heat processing of milk will be a later post.)
3. Grass-fed animals have an ideal ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 fatty acid profile. When cows live on grains (at best) on factory farms their fat profile is for crap. If you will remember from the nutrition clinics, Omega 3 Fatty Acids are anti-inflammatory and Omega 6 Fatty Acids are inflammatory. They are needed in balance but our grain based diets have our systems completely unbalanced toward the inflammatory side in an unhealthy, at best, 10-1 ratio.
Everyone and their doctor are recommending that we supplement with fish oil to correct this problem; however, this creates a problem of its own. We are over-fishing the very life savers that we need to correct our little grain habit and that is causing a rise in algae blooms and dead water in our oceans. Skip the cheap junk meat and you can skip most of the supplements also.
4. Rotational grazing leads to healthier animals, healthier land and a healthier planet. Rotational grazing allows the land to not be over-grazed by moving the animals from section to section, staying always on grasses mid-cycle which causes the grass to grow more dense which makes more for the animals and around and around it goes.
This is a very simplistic start to a whole “benefits of being smart about what we eat and how we manage our planet” conversation. There will be more posts in the future but check out the links in the paragraphs above in the mean time. There are so many things wrong with our food supply and so many things right.
Educate thy self!