This is a propaganda piece extolling the virtues of so called
naturally raised meat products with the usual gratuitous attacks on
GMO foods and modern husbandry practices. It is all taken on faith
that these are all bad things. The substance is something else.
All the meat that we eat has passed through the world of animal
husbandry and must continue to do so. For that matter, that is why
we can eat most of it. Otherwise, all meat except fish effectively
largely needs to be boiled in order to make it fit to consume. Fifty
years ago, beef was often a chancy buy simply because it was tough.
We never have that problem now.
Animal husbandry is steadily improving and it will respond to market
pressure. What is needed is labeling regulation. The moment that
happens, the consumer will start paying a premium for preferences.
That is good. Farmers know what is needed to respond to market
signals. Give it to them.
Healthy meat
consumption - How to distinguish good meats from bad meats
Tuesday, September 04,
2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Learn more:
(NaturalNews)
Vegetarians who personally avoid eating meat for health reasons will
sometimes suggest to their friends that, in general, eating meat is
harmful to health. But the all-encompassing term "meat" is
a misnomer, as there are many different kinds of meat that a person
can eat -- conventional, feedlot-based meats; organic, grass-fed
meats; and everything in between -- and some meats are actually
healthy, while others are not.
Most of the meat sold in the meat section at your local grocery store, whether it is beef, chicken, pork, or fish, comes from animals that have been raised in an industrial environment, and fed artificial foodstuffs that would not otherwise have been a part of their natural diet. Conventional beef, for instance, typically comes from cows raised in confinement, that have no access to pasture, and that are fed an unhealthy diet comprised of genetically-modified (GM) corn and soy byproducts during the final stages of their lives.
Throughout their lives, these same conventional cows are often pumped up with artificial growth hormones, including antibiotics that help them develop faster and preliminarily avoid the diseases they would otherwise not develop if they were raised in an unconfined environment. Because their living environments are routinely infested with feces and filth, conventional cows are much more susceptible to disease than, say, pasture-raised cows.
Unnatural diets
destroy animal health, quality of meat
Cows are ruminant
animals, which means they are meant to eat grass, not corn and soy.
When cows eat the latter, their digestive systems largely reject it,
making them more prone to developing chronic illness. The term
"feedlot bloat" refers to the digestive disorder
characterized by the unnatural development of foam in the rumen --
the rumen is the first compartment of a cow's stomach -- that is a
result of eating unnatural feed.
Corn and soy byproducts, in other words, so disrupt cows' digestive systems that the poor animals develop a severe inability to breathe, and sometimes even die. High-grain diets are disastrous for ruminant animals like cows, and yet it has become common practice in today's industrial food system to feed cows high amounts of grains in the last few months prior to their slaughter.
The situation is much the same for chickens and pigs, which are typically held and confinement and fed an unnatural diet that changes the composition of their meat. Even fish meat, much of which is now "farm-raised," comes from fish that are not allowed to feed and develop naturally, which results in a significant compositional change in the quality of their meat.
Choose meat from wild,
grass-fed, pasture-raised, organic, unconfined, non-grain-fed animals
The end result of such
atrocious animal husbandry practices is that the final meat product
is filled with antibiotics, hormones, and various other toxins, as
well as imbalanced fat profiles that promote chronic illness and
obesity. Industrial meat, in other words, is a serious threat to
human health, and humanity would do well to take a more
proactive approach in avoiding conventional meats for their own
well-being.
So what about things like grass-fed beef? Or pasture-raised chicken and eggs? Or wild salmon? These healthy meats often get lumped in with the unhealthy meats into a single category known as "meat," which is both confusing and inaccurate. It turns out that animals raised in their natural environments, whether that be pasture for cows and chickens or streams and oceans for fish, produce meat that is rich in essential nutrients, healthy fats, amino acids, and high quality proteins.
A simple rule of thumb is to avoid meat from animals that were fed GMO feed, and that were raised in confinement, and instead choose grass-fed, pasture-raised meat from organically-tended animals.
To learn more about the benefits of grass-fed, pasture-raised meats, visit:
Sources for this article include:
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