Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Why I Do Not Fear Grassfed Meat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
A delicious grassfed roast.
An endless array of studies claim that eating meat, or too much meat, will cause all kinds of harm. I am not sure that there is a disease or chronic condition that has not been blamed on eating meat.
But I find that all these studies share certain flaws. Fatal flaws. As an attorney, I have decades of experience in analyzing evidence and evaluating arguments. And I find the case against meat to be based on flimsy evidence, at best, and the arguments are either based on this poor evidence, or on ideology, not fact.
And every one of these fear-all-meat-studies share the same fatal flaw—they never distinguish between the pure, grassfed meats developed by nature, and the factory meat that has been developed for profit.
The two meats are very different in their composition and content. A study that fails to distinguish between them is worthless, in my opinion, when it comes to grassfed meat.
And I believe that the most comprehensive, unbiased, and hands-on study of all exonerates the grassfed meat of nature.
The Fatal Flaws
There are many common problems with the anti-meat studies, such as asking the participants to remember everything they ate over a period of years, when most people cannot remember what they ate over the last week. I do not have the space to describe all the problems, but three stand out.
First Flaw: Most of the meat eaten in the modern world is factory meat. This is meat that has been raised with the use of chemicals, such as growth hormones, antibiotics, steroids, and other substances that were never part of the raising of meat animals until the twentieth century. These animals were also fed a diet that is not natural to their species, consisting in part of GMO plants that were grown with the aid of pesticides and artificial fertilizers, or non-GMO plants also grown with chemicals. Part of the diet could also consist of a huge variety of human-created feed such as restaurant plate waste, expired bakery items, or even plastic balls. None of these are the foods of nature. If this meat is harmful, and I am not saying that it is, we have no way of knowing as to whether the harm is caused by the meat, or the chemicals it contains, or the combination of both.
Second Flaw: The studies focus on meat as the only causative factor, but many other factors are just as important, such as the other foods the people in the study ate. This usually includes a huge variety of modern foods that are raised, or prepared, or preserved in completely unnatural ways, utilizing a huge variety of human-made chemicals. Many of the people in these studies are inactive, or suffer great stress from their jobs or other factors, or smoke, or drink too much alcohol, or take illegal drugs, and most of them take one or many prescription drugs, and over the counter drugs.
All of these factors are known to have drastic effects on human health, and we have no way of knowing whether it is the meat, or the combination of these factors, or some of these factors, or the interaction with one or more of these factors with the meat, that causes the harm.
The third fatal flaw is that these studies never distinguish between the effects of eating factory meat, or the grassfed meat of nature, which has nourished humanity from the beginning. In fact, these studies treat all meat as being the same, which it is not.
Dr. Weston A. Price Established that Eating the Meat of Nature Does Not Cause Disease
Dr. Weston A. Price did the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever done, traveling around the world for ten years to visit, in person, the healthy peoples eating their traditional diet. Dr. Price, a very spiritual man, expected to find that the healthy peoples were eating a plant-based diet. What he found instead, and had the integrity to report, was that all of the healthy peoples he found ate plenty of animal foods, including meat. None of these peoples had any of the diseases of the modern world, and all were free of illness, as long as they ate the diet of their ancestors.
While the diets of the various healthy peoples differed in many ways, some of them ate only animal foods, and one of the groups he spent the most time with ate only meat and fat, for most of the year.
The natives of northern Canada lived in a climate so cold that fish could not live in the rivers, and there were no edible plants for most of the year. These people survived entirely on the meat, organs, and fat of the animals they hunted, especially moose. They were free of all disease, and had perfect teeth. This could not happen if natural meat was harmful.
For these reasons, I feel perfectly safe in eating all the grassfed meat my body wants, and my health has improved greatly since I have done so.
Our government says that factory meat is safe. I choose not to eat it because I dislike the way it tastes and how I personally feel after eating it. But I always feel good after eating grassfed meat.
Disclaimer: Information found on the Tender Grassfed Meat site, including this article, is meant for educational and informational purposes only. Any statements or claims about the possible health benefits conferred by any foods or anything else have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. None of the content on the Tender Grassfed Meat site should be relied upon for any purpose, and nothing here is a substitute for a medical diagnosis or medical treatment.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Dr. Weston A. Price Did Not Advocate Plant-Based Diets
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
One of the healthiest traditional fats, pastured butter.
Dr. Weston A. Price was, in my opinion, the greatest nutritional researcher of all time. He spent ten years actually visiting healthy traditional peoples, studying and recording what they ate first hand, and comparing the health of people eating their traditional diet with their relatives who ate modern foods. He discovered that people eating the traditional diet of their ancestors were much healthier than their relatives who ate modern foods.
Dr. Price recorded his findings in a book entitled Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, published in 1939. The book is difficult for many people to read and understand, as are many academic works.
Somehow, the rumor is spreading on the Internet that Dr. Price was an advocate of eating only plant foods. This is simply not true, as Dr. Price addressed the issue directly in his book.
The Physical Degeneration
Dr. Price was a dentist, in Cleveland Ohio. He noticed that each generation of his patients was less healthy than their parents, with decayed teeth, badly formed and crowded mouths, and deformed arches in the mouth. Clearly, something was very wrong. Dr. Price noticed how the American diet was changing, with more and more processed factory foods being eaten. Dr. Price believed that this change in diet might be responsible for the physical degeneration he was observing. But, what should people eat to be healthy? One day, Dr. Price saw a photo of a “primitive” man, who was grinning. The man had superb, perfectly formed teeth, with no signs of decay. Dr. Price decided that the diets of the so called primitive peoples might have the answer.
The Plant Food Desire
It is true that Dr. Price, before he set out on his ten year journey, believed that he would find that the traditional healthy peoples would eat plant foods only. Dr. Price, a gentle and very spiritual man, disliked the killing of animals for food, and thought he would find that people could thrive on plants alone.
Dr. Price, however, was a true scientist, more interested in learning the truth than proving his theory.
The Animal Truth
Dr. Price found, contrary to his expectations, that animal foods were crucial to a good diet. He stated that he had never found a group which was building and maintaining excellent bodies by eating only plant foods. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, page 279.
There it is. All the peoples he found with excellent health from a traditional diet ate animal foods, especially the fats demonized in modern nutrition. This is described in detail in his book, where every healthy people he found ate plenty of animal foods, and animal fat.
And Dr. Price also commented on the plant food only groups of his day, noting that they all had signs of dental degeneration, if they had been on the diet for an extended time. He also noted that their children had deformed dental arches. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, page 279.
As we can see, there is nothing new about the belief that people should eat only plant foods, as Dr. Price did most of his research in the 1930’s.
Dr. Price found that we need animal foods to be healthy, good real foods, not the foods of industry.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
The Power of a Good Grassfed Steak, Pastured Butter, and Pastured Sour Cream
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Grassfed Butter Steak, Tender Grassfed Barbecue, page 76
Sometimes life presents us with difficult challenges. Not that we want them, but sometimes they are there, and must be dealt with. I am in the middle of dealing with a very difficult challenge right now. Not to worry, it is not a matter of life and death. And I am doing well with it, considering. And a good end is in sight, more likely than not.
Yet it takes a huge amount of energy and time to deal with, and often leaves me feeling worn out and discouraged. And I admit, I really hate to deal with it. But there it is.
However, I have found help in the wisdom of our ancestors. Their solution for so many problems was to eat the right food. For me, yesterday, it was a thick grassfed beefsteak, cooked rare, juicy, tender and delicious, served with pastured butter and sour cream.
Modern Solutions
The modern way to deal with mental stress is to take a drug, often a prescription drug, hoping it will somehow relieve or fix the problem. But, my body has fought every drug I have ever taken, over the counter or by prescription, and it always felt bad. While I have never taken anti depressants or any kind of psychiatric medication, I know they are not for me. I have not taken any kind of drug for over ten years, and I am much the better for it. Obviously, our ancestors never had these kinds of medications.
Some people will eat a lot of sweets and factory desserts, which may give them temporary relief but creates a craving for the product, and other problems. Not a solution for me either, as I have felt much better since I gave up eating that kind of thing.
Traditional Solutions
Our ancestors had two major solutions for relieving mental stress, one good, and one bad, in my opinion.
The bad option was to get drunk. I got drunk exactly once in my life, and I hated the experience so much that it never happened again, and never will.
The good option was to eat the right food, which was always real. So many cultures would serve food at times of stress, such as wakes. And the food would usually have a good amount of pastured animal fat, of one kind or another. The belief was that the food would help the stressed person feel better. Research has shown that butter and other animal fats provide important nutrients to the brain, which is probably why our ancestors served such foods at stressful times. My belief is that the food provided nutrients that helped the brain cope with the stress, which resulted in feeling better. I also believe that we require more nutrients at times of stress, so I decided to eat more of what would help nourish my brain.
My Solution
I made a really thick, grassfed steak, served with plenty of butter and sour cream. I was almost too tired to cook it, but I made it with one of the easy recipes in my cookbook, Tender Grassfed Meat.
After a couple of bites of the delicious tender meat, combined with pastured butter and sour cream, I started to feel better. My exhaustion began to fade, and I just felt better. At the end of the meal, I felt fine. I had energy! I felt confident that the resolution of the challenge would go well, and I felt ready for it. So I will continue to follow the way of our ancestors and nourish my brain with plenty of pastured animal fat and grassfed meat.
A truly delicious solution!
Disclaimer: Information found on the Tender Grassfed Meat site, including this article, is meant for educational and informational purposes only. Any statements or claims about the possible health benefits conferred by any foods or anything else have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. None of the content on the Tender Grassfed Meat site should be relied upon for any purpose, and nothing here is a substitute for a medical diagnosis or medical treatment.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.