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Tender Grassfed Barbecue: Traditional, Primal and Paleo by Stanley A. Fishman
By Stanley A. Fishman
Link to Tender Grassfed Meat at Amazon
By Stanley A. Fishman

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DISCLOSURE AND DISCLAIMER

I am an attorney and an author, not a doctor. This website is intended to provide information about grassfed meat, what it is, its benefits, and how to cook it. I will also describe my own experiences from time to time. The information on this website is being provided for educational purposes. Any statements about the possible health benefits provided by any foods or diet have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

I do receive some compensation each time a copy of my book is purchased. I receive a very small amount of compensation each time somebody purchases a book from Amazon through the links on this site, as I am a member of the Amazon affiliate program.

—Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat

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How Grassfed Meat Helps Weight Loss

By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat

Strip Loin Roast with Double Herb Crust from Tender Grassfed Meat Cookbook

Strip Loin Roast with Double Herb Crust, recipe on page 94, Tender Grassfed Meat Cookbook

Very few people think of grassfed meat and fat as a diet food. But eating grassfed meat and fat can satisfy your appetite so you eat less, stop your body from storing fat, and get your body to start burning fat. Grassfed meat and fat also give you many vital nutrients that you might not otherwise get while dieting. Most of the nutrients are in the fat. To paraphrase the title of one of my favorite books, you eat fat to lose fat. But it must be the right kind of fat—grassfed.

Where is the Fat?

The fat in meat is in two places, the exterior fat, which can be seen as a distinct slab on the top or side of the meat, and the interior fat, which is actually in the meat itself, often visible as small white specks (sometimes referred to as marbling).

Grassfed Meat is Different than Other Meat

The actual composition of grassfed meat is very different from that of conventional meat. Conventional meat has been fed large amounts of grain and other substances which are not the natural food of grassfed animals. This creates many changes in the meat, only some of which are known. For example, conventional beef fat has a much lower ratio of omega-3 fatty acids to inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids than grassfed beef fat. The ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 in conventional beef fat is often 1-20. The ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 in grassfed beef fat ranges from 1-1 to 1-4. Conventional meat did not exist prior to the 20th century. Grassfed meat has been nourishing humanity for uncounted thousands of years.

The Benefits of CLA

CLA, or Conjugated Linoleic Acid, has many benefits for someone who is trying to lose weight, as well as everyone else. CLA is abundant in the fat and meat of grassfed animals, and is easily absorbed in this form, making it available for your body to use.

  • CLA normalizes thyroid function, so your thyroid produces substances which help normalize your weight, while avoiding the weight gain which often results from hyperthyroidism.
  • CLA increases your metabolic rate, so your body burns more calories.
  • CLA actually signals your body to stop storing fat, and to start burning it.
  • CLA increases muscle mass while decreasing fat.
  • CLA decreases abdominal fat.

Grassfed Meat and Fat Satisfy Your Hunger by Nourishing Your Body

One of the hardest things for anybody on a diet is to eat less, or to give up foods that you are used to eating. The constant hunger can make it very difficult to lose weight. The main reason for most hunger is very simple. The body is not getting the nutrients it needs, so it wants to keep eating until it has what it needs. The problem is that modern foods do not contain all the nutrients your body needs, so eating them does not satisfy hunger.

Grassfed meat and fat are nutrient-dense, containing many of the nutrients we know about, such as vitamins D and A, most B vitamins, vitamin E, many minerals, most amino acids, the proper ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats, and high quality protein. Grassfed meat and fat also contain nutrients which have not yet been discovered, but which your body still needs. Your body is ready, willing and able to absorb the nutrients in grassfed meat, as your ancestors have been eating this meat for thousands of years and longer.

Grassfed meat is much denser and less watery, and it satisfies. When you eat a properly cooked serving of grassfed meat and fat, your body is nourished, you are satisfied, and the hunger disappears. I eat about half as much meat since I switched to grassfed, and I am satisfied. When my hunger is satisfied, I lose all desire to eat.

Grassfed meat and fat can really help any dieter, especially the low carb dieter, as grassfed meat and fat are allowed on such diets.

A very good book on weight loss is Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, PhD. Two great books that really support the low-carb dieter are: LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOW-CARB: My Journey From Flabby Fat to Sensationally Skinny in One Year and 21 Life Lessons From Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb: How The Healthy Low-Carb Lifestyle Changed Everything I Thought I Knew by Jimmy Moore.

Another Way to Improve Pork

By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat

Kimberly Hartke uses the ingredients from Stanley Fishman's wet pork rub recipe.

Wet Pork Rub Ingredients

Even the best pork I can find today is just too lean. Modern pork often comes out tough and tasteless because it is so lean. I have experimented with a number of different ways of improving modern pork. This wet rub does the job, giving a wonderful flavor to pork and making it tender.  I used a 2,000 year old seasoning tradition and the pork came out great. Here is the link to the article on Kim Hartke’s fine blog:

Wet Rub for Pork

Podcast Interview about Grassfed Meat

Link to Tender Grassfed Meat at Amazon

Low-carb expert and advocate, Jimmy Moore, interviews me on the Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show. We talk about all things grassfed—cooking, health, and nutrition. I really enjoyed the interview and think you will too. Here’s a link to the podcast:

Stanley Fishman Cooks Grassfed Meats the RIGHT Way!

The Cooking Advantages of Grassfed Meat

By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat

Grassfed Herb RoastGrassfed meat has many cooking advantages over other meat. Grassfed meat is tender and tastes much better than other meat. Grassfed meat is often easier to cook that other meat. Surprised? All of these statements are absolutely true, if you know how to cook grassfed meat.

Grassfed Meat Is Different

Grassfed meat, coming from animals that have been fed the diet they were designed to eat, is quite different from other meat. It is denser, with considerably less water in it, and leaner. It has much more flavor, right in the meat. These differences mean that grassfed meat can be cooked at lower temperatures, shrinks much less in cooking, does not release water into the pan, cooks much faster, needs little or no seasoning, and is much more satisfying, so you are satisfied with a smaller amount.

No More Smoke in the Kitchen

Conventional steaks are almost always cooked over very high heat, creating much smoke in the process. The high heat is necessary to deal with the large amount of water in the meat. Grassfed meat browns beautifully over medium heat, whether on the grill or in the pan or under the broiler.

No More Water in the Pan

Conventional meat will often release a fair amount of water into the pan when it is heated. This water can really interfere with the cooking process, and can ruin the taste and texture of the meat, while diluting the flavor of any sauce or gravy. The only way to prevent this is to use really high heat. Grassfed meat does not have this excess water, and will almost never have this problem.

Shrinks Much Less in Cooking

Grassfed meat retains most of its volume when properly cooked with a dry heat method. A conventional roast will shrink in size dramatically when roasted. Grassfed meat will shrink much less, because it is denser, with much less water.

Grassfed Meat Cooks Much Faster

Grassfed meat cooks much faster than conventional meat. You can cook a delicious roast with a roasting time of 30 minutes. Steaks, stews, and pot roasts also cook much faster. This gives you considerable saving, in time and energy costs, and is much more convenient.

Grassfed Meat Needs Less Seasoning

Grassfed meat, properly cooked, has great natural flavor right in the meat and fat. This flavor is so good that it does not need much in the way of seasoning to be outstanding. The recipes in Tender Grassfed Meat are designed to bring out the great natural flavor of the meat by using just a few traditional ingredients and flavor combinations. This tastes so good that I am getting very hungry as I type this, and I just had a big breakfast! Conventional meat has a bland, uniform taste that needs all kinds of seasoning and sauce to provide flavor.

Grassfed Meat Is Much More Satisfying

Grassfed meat and fat are full of nutrients, and have much less water in the meat. This makes grassfed meat very satisfying. When your body gets the nutrients it needs, hunger stops and you lose the desire to keep eating. Now that I eat grassfed meat, I eat half the amount of meat I used to. I did not make a decision to eat less meat, it just happened because grassfed meat is so satisfying. When I am satisfied, my desire to eat ends, and I stop eating.

Grassfed Meat Is Tender and Easy to Cook

I ruined the first grassfed meat I cooked, because I tried to cook it like conventional meat. After much research, I learned how to adapt the knowledge of our ancestors and developed several methods of making grassfed meat tender and delicious. I have found that cooking grassfed meat with these methods is easy. These methods are described in Tender Grassfed Meat, and they have worked for many people who knew nothing about cooking grassfed meat.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday, March 19th at Food Renegade.

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a Holiday Feast!

By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat

Fresh herbs for grassfed prime rib Holiday Recipes for St Patricks Day and Christmas

Fresh green parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme

People in the United States think of corned beef and cabbage as being the traditional fare for St. Patrick’s Day. In Ireland itself, however, people are far more likely to eat the best grassfed beef they can get, green cabbage, and the well beloved potatoes. The recipes in the following link were developed as a Christmas menu, but are just as appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day.  They include fine grassfed beef in the form of a magnificent prime rib roast, crispy roast potatoes, and a particularly fine cabbage dish. There is much green in this menu from the fresh parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme—to the cabbage. Enjoy this wonderful meal, and here’s the link to the recipes, at Kimberly Hartke’s fine blog:

Cooking for the Holidays with Stanley Fishman

Who Was Weston A. Price?

By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat

Who was Dr. Weston A. Price? He was the man who saved my life and restored my health even though he died before I was born.

Dr. Price was a dentist in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a very distinguished dentist who was also the research director of the American Dental Association. After many years of practice, Dr. Price realized that the teeth and health of his patients were getting worse from year to year. Even more disturbing was the fact that each generation of his patients had worse teeth and was sicker than their parents. Dr. Price decided to find out why.

The Question

After several years of research, Dr. Price decided that the problem was caused by the absence of some essential factors from the modern diet. But he did not know what those factors were. Dr. Price did know that many so-called primitive peoples had excellent teeth. In fact, these “primitives” had much better teeth than the “civilized” peoples who had far superior technology. Dr. Price decided to study those people who had excellent teeth.

The Search

Dr. Price decided to travel directly to where these healthy people lived, so he could study them first-hand and learn why they were healthy. Dr. Price traveled all over the world during the 1920s and early 1930s. He visited isolated, healthy people from Switzerland, the Scottish islands, Australia, Africa, Polynesia, Peru, Native Americans in Canada, and others. He also studied the close relatives of each of these peoples, who were not isolated and lived in more “civilized” circumstances.

The Answer

In every case, Dr. Price learned that the traditional people who ate the diet of their ancestors, which consisted of unprocessed foods, from hunting, gathering, herding, fishing, and natural farming had excellent teeth, without cavities, even though they had no dentists. Not only did these people have excellent teeth, they were free of the chronic diseases that were common in civilization. They did not have cancer. They did not have heart disease. They did not have diabetes. They did not have tuberculosis. They had none of the chronic diseases that plagued the so-called civilized world. They also did not have crime or mental illness. They had no need for police or psychiatrists. Their children were born healthy, without defects. Dr. Price also found that members of the same group of people, when they ate a modern diet, had terrible teeth and were plagued by every one of the chronic diseases that were common in more advanced countries. The only difference was what they ate.

The Solution

Dr. Price discovered that the key to good health is to eat a traditional diet of unprocessed food, and to eat the same kinds of foods that the healthy, isolated people ate. Dr. Price discovered that while the diets of these widely scattered peoples were quite different, they had many elements in common. Dr. Price discovered what these elements were, especially the dietary factors that were essential to good health. He recorded his findings in a book entitled Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, which was published in 1939. This book described exactly what people should and should not eat in order to be healthy.

Ignored and Rediscovered

Unfortunately, Dr. Price’s work was largely ignored. However, his work was preserved by the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, which devoted itself to keeping his book in print, and keeping his knowledge alive. The Weston A. Price Foundation was founded in 1999. They have done a magnificent job of spreading Dr. Price’s knowledge all over the world and the Internet. Sally Fallon, the founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation, wrote Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, a comprehensive cookbook which teaches the reader to cook traditional food that can restore their health. Nourishing Traditions also explains the teachings of Dr. Price in a way that is easy to understand.

How Weston A. Price Saved My Life

I had been chronically ill for most of my life with many illnesses, including life-threatening asthma. I was told in 1998 that I would only get worse, and that my lungs would never heal. Instead of accepting this medical death sentence, I searched desperately for a way to save my life. The website of the Weston A. Price Foundation gave me all the knowledge I needed. I adopted the Weston A. Price diet and became healthy. Once I switched to grassfed meat, I became robustly healthy. If not for Dr. Price, I do not believe I would be here today to write these words.

You can find out more about Dr. Price here.

A Plea for Naturally Fed Pork

By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat

Raw pork roast with a good fat cap.

This became a delicious pork roast.

Why didn’t you include pork in your book? That is the most frequent question I get about Tender Grassfed Meat. The answer is simple. It is very hard to find pork that has enough fat. And it is even harder to find pork that is not fed a substantial amount of soy. Lean pork needs a lot of help or it invariably turns out dry and tasteless. Even with a lot of help, it is hard to do better than mediocre, which is not good enough. Soy fed meat is something I try to avoid. The problems are interrelated, because feeding soy to pigs makes their meat leaner. That said, naturally fed, fat pork is one of the most delicious meats you will ever eat.

The Popularity of Pork

Pork has historically been one of the most popular and widely eaten meats. The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese had one thing in common. They all loved pork, which was their favorite meat. Pork was also the favorite and most widely available meat in Europe, and Polynesia. The Georgians of the Caucasus, a people famed for their longevity, love to eat pork, the fatter the better. Pork was without doubt the favorite meat in America, until the 20th century.

The Natural Diet of Pigs

Pigs are omnivores, who will eat anything. Pigs are forest animals, and their natural diet was based largely on nuts, fruits, and seeds that fell to the forest floor, as well as insects. Pigs used to be raised around forests, which allowed them to feed on the nuts of various trees, such as acorns and beechnuts, (also known as mast). When the forest wasn’t available, pigs were often fed surplus crops, table scraps, and nut crops such as peanuts. Both of these diets made it easy for the pigs to get fat, which gave their meat succulence and kept it from drying out. Pigs fed on mast had a particularly fine flavor, often varying depending on the predominant tree in the area. For example, acorn fed pork had a different flavor from beechnut fed pork. However, pigs fed crops, such as peanuts and apples, also had plenty of fat, and a wonderful flavor based on the crops they were eating. Smithfield hams, which were made from peanut fed pork, were renowned for their fine flavor all over the world. The taste of the pork was heavily influenced by the diet of the pigs.

Soy Rears Its Ugly Head

The wonderful quality of American pork was destroyed by an event and a new kind of feed. The event was the advent of the so-called lipid hypothesis, which claimed that heart disease was caused by eating saturated animal fat. This hypothesis was never proven, but was accepted as fact, first by the manufacturers of vegetable oils and artificial fats, then by the marketing influenced medical profession, then by the government, then by the media, and then by almost everybody else. Since the pork of the time had a good amount of fat, (which is one of the main reasons it tasted so good), pork sales plummeted. The pork industry decided to greatly reduce the fat in pork. They learned that feeding soy to pigs would make the meat much leaner. Soy feed was very cheap. They also bred pigs for leanness. The pork industry succeeded in developing much leaner pork—pork that was so lean that they compared it to chicken breasts. This “success” is the reason that most American pork is lean, dry, tough, and tasteless. It takes a great deal of work to make this pork even mildly tender and tasty.

The Difference

On a very few occasions, I have been lucky enough to eat pork that had the traditional amount of fat, and was not fed soy. This meat was so tender and delicious that it is hard to believe it is even remotely related to soy fed lean pork. I truly believe that soy feeding ruins the taste of pork.

A Request to Farmers

I ask you to make good, fat, naturally fed, soy-free pork available again. I think you will find that there is a great market for this product. There are so many of us that want to get soy out of our diet. If you will make quality pork available, I will recreate recipes for this pork that will do it justice. That’s a promise.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday Blog Carnival at Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

A Sample of Tender Grassfed Meat

By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat

Herb Crusted Strip Loin Roast from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat

Herb Crusted Strip Loin Roast

Tender Grassfed Meat is a different kind of cookbook. I designed the book to provide a lot of information about grassfed meat, why it is healthier, why it is best when cooked differently, and how to cook it. I also filled the book with delicious recipes. The following blog post is a sample of the book, containing information about grassfed meat, why it should be cooked differently, and a delicious recipe that demonstrates how to cook it.

Here is a link to the post, at Hartke is Online, one of my favorite blogs:
At Last, The Secret to Tender Grassfed Meat, Revealed!

Stop Senate Bill 510 — Save Organic Food

Fractal Cauliflower - CERES Market
Creative Commons License photo credit: avlxyz

By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat

We do have serious food safety problems in this country. There have been a number of large food illness outbreaks and recalls. But the bill currently before the Senate, “The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act” (S. 510) would do nothing to stop the real cause of foodborne illness, and would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to destroy the small organic farmer once and for all.

Who could be against food safety? I am all for food safety, but just because they call a bill a food safety act does not mean that it does anything to improve food safety.

Food Safety Problems Have Not Been Caused By Small Farms

All of the food safety problems that have made the papers in the last few years have been caused by the large, industrial food system. The problems have arisen in large food processing plants, or have been caused by the importation of tainted food from China (food products contaminated by the poison melamine) and Mexico (salmonella on imported peppers). Not one of the problems has been caused or contributed to by a small, local food producer. The effect of S. 510 is to ignore the large food processors, while enabling the FDA to target small, local farmers, something the FDA has been very prone to do in the past.

Paperwork Does Not Make Food Safer

But the bill does nothing to effectively address the problems caused by the large industrialized food industry and food imports. S. 510 relies largely on the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point System, commonly known as HACCP. HACCP requires all food producers to develop and maintain extensive and detailed written records and plans, which results in a huge amount of paperwork which is extremely burdensome for a small farmer. If you’re wondering how creating written records and plans improve food safety, they do not. Creating paperwork is not the same as having a food plant actually inspected. Currently, large meat packing plants are not inspected by federal agencies. Instead, the federal agencies review the paperwork submitted by the large meat packing plants. One of the worst food safety outbreaks occurred in a large meat packing plant that was not inspected, but had submitted paperwork. At the same time, federal agencies have punished small meat processors for paperwork violations that have not harmed the health of anybody.

The only effective method we have had to improve food safety at processing plants is to have frequent, unannounced, independent inspections of the plant. Actually inspecting a food processing plant can prevent food safety problems, but reviewing paperwork cannot.

Paperwork Can Crush the Small Farmer

Filling out paperwork is easy for large, industrial operations, as they can employ people whose only job is to fill out the paperwork. Small farmers cannot afford to do this, and to force them to produce the same kind of extensive paperwork as a large industrial operation is extremely burdensome and could drive many small farmers out of business.

The FDA Would Have the Power to Destroy Organic Farming

But perhaps the worst part of S. 510 is giving the FDA the power to completely regulate every detail of how farmers grow and harvest produce. It has been said that the power to regulate is the power to destroy. The FDA could require all farmers to use harmful pesticides, thus destroying organic food forever. It could require farmers to use only certain varieties of seeds. It could even require farmers to use GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). Since the FDA has in the past been extremely friendly to large industrial agriculture operations and to the companies that make pesticides and GMOs, this is a serious concern. This bill would give the FDA the power to greatly increase the profits of large agriculture corporations by forcing all farmers to use their products. The FDA could even require that all produce be irradiated, supposedly to improve food safety. If you think this is farfetched, consider the fact that federal agencies have already advocated the use of irradiation as the best means of improving food safety. There is no justification for giving the FDA such power.

While the House version of S. 510 orders the FDA to “consider the impact” of its regulations on small-scale and diversified farms, this requirement is so vague that it is meaningless. Nothing prevents the FDA from making any regulations it wants, regardless of the impact on small farmers. The FDA can always say it “considered the impact” of its regulations.

The Bill Could Make Food Less Safe

This bill will do little or nothing to improve the actual safety of food in the United States. It could be used to unfairly burden small farmers and drive them out of business, while giving the FDA the power to destroy organic, sustainable produce. It must be defeated, or at least modified so it does not affect small farmers. It could deprive all consumers of the ability to purchase organic produce in the United States. In fact, it could make food even less safe, by allowing the FDA to force the use of dangerous substances such as pesticides, and dangerous procedures such as irradiation of food.

How You Can Help

I urge you to contact your senators and congressperson and ask them to either vote against the bill, or to insist that it be modified to exempt the small farmer from all its provisions. You can also send an email through the Western Organization of Resource Councils’ automated system.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday Blog Carnival for Friday, March 12th. at Food Renegade.

Related Post

S 510 Threatens Our Freedom

Why I Eat Organic or the Equivalent

By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat

Organic food is better for health and taste. Fresh cabbage and onions shown here.I strongly recommend the use of organic ingredients in Tender Grassfed Meat. The reason is simple. I want to eat the most nutritious food I can, and the tastiest food I can. Dr. Weston A. Price discovered that people eating the traditional diet of their ancestors were healthy. All of the food contained in these traditional diets was organic or the equivalent. My health was restored by trying to copy the diets described by Dr. Price. After I restricted my diet to organic or the equivalent, I learned something. The food tasted better — much better.

The human body is made to process natural, unaltered food.

The methods that the human body uses to sustain, nourish and rebuild itself are many, and very complex. Nutrients are not processed in isolation, but together. For example, it is now known that an oversupply of one B vitamin can actually cause a deficiency in other B vitamins, because the body is set up to process these nutrients together, the way they are present in food. When you get your nutrients from unaltered food, everything is present that is needed to fully assimilate the nutrients. Our ancestors learned which foods were good to eat, and all of the nutrients and cofactors in those foods are necessary to properly assimilate the nutrients. Our ancestors also learned to combine foods to ensure proper nutrition. While they could not identify specific vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids, they knew what to eat. This knowledge was passed from generation to generation, over thousands of years.

Non-organic foods are altered and different from traditional foods.

Modern food raising practices have altered the very chemistry of food. For example, feeding grain and other non-grass substances to cattle change the balance of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids dramatically, from one to one to twenty to one. When you eat meat from an animal made to eat grass, your body expects the food to have the proper ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. When the meat does not have the proper ratio, your body is not getting what it is ready to process. We do know that an excess of omega-6 fatty acids can cause inflammation and a host of illnesses.

Vegetables that are sprayed regularly with pesticides, which they absorb, are different from the vegetables humankind has eaten for most of history. Artificially fertilized soil lacks many of the nutrients and minerals present in naturally rich soil, and food grown with artificial fertilizers is different from food grown in naturally rich soil. This forces your body to process substances that either have never existed before (artificial chemicals and pesticides), and/or lack the substances the body expects to find in the food, which may be necessary to properly process and assimilate the nutrients.

GMOs did not exist in nature, and were not eaten by our ancestors.

None of the healthy peoples studied by Dr. Price ever ate GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms), because GMOs did not exist at the time. GMOs are plants that are changed in a laboratory, sometimes having insect genes and other foreign components added to them. This once again presents your body with substances that it does not expect. Most GMO crops are designed with an internal pesticide, or designed to absorb and tolerate huge amounts of pesticides, amounts that might kill a normal plant. The presence of these pesticides in the crops once again forces your body to deal with a substance it does not expect, or know what to do with.

Modern science has identified only some of the nutrients and cofactors needed by our bodies.

Scientists keep discovering new nutrients as time goes on, from vitamin K2 (which used to be unknown), omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, which were also unknown decades ago, and a number of other substances. Vitamin K2, omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids all are very important nutrients. The point is that there are dozens, maybe hundreds of nutrients and substances necessary to process nutrients that are currently unknown. Since conventional agricultural practices change the very chemistry of food, it is impossible to know what nutrients are altered or missing, since so many nutrients have not even been discovered.

How to get all the nutrients and cofactors.

How can we get all of the nutrients and cofactors we need, if science has not identified all of them? The answer is very simple and I know it works because I have done it. Eating the nutrient-dense food enjoyed by our ancestors will give us all the nutrients and cofactors we need. Foods that are organic or the equivalent are the closest we can get to the food that was actually eaten by our ancestors.

What is the equivalent of organic?

The phrase “organic or the equivalent” is often used. “Equivalent” means food that has been raised according to organic food practices, but has not been certified organic by an authorized agency. The food is the same, it just doesn’t have the stamp of approval, which can be quite expensive and time-consuming to obtain. Food meets my definition of “organic or the equivalent” if it is raised without the use of pesticides, artificial fertilizers, chemicals, or ionizing radiation. It cannot be GMO. Animals must be raised without the use of growth hormones or antibiotics. I add another requirement to the meat that I eat. The food that is fed to the animals must be species appropriate, meaning that it is very similar to the natural diet of the animal. For ruminant animals, such as cattle, bison, and lamb, this means 100 percent grassfed.

Organic food tastes much better.

There is another benefit to using ingredients that are organic or the equivalent. They will make your food taste much better. Vegetables grown in good soil, without the use of pesticides or artificial fertilizer, have much more flavor. You can really taste this when you use a recipe that has only a few ingredients. Organic spices grown in good soil that contains the full range of minerals and nutrients have a depth of flavor that is far superior to the conventional varieties. The meat of grassfed animals who have eaten lush, green grass, grown in good soil has a deep, wonderful flavor that no feedlot meat can equal.

I eat organic or the equivalent because it is healthier and tastes better.

This post is part of the blog carnival: Fight Back Friday. Click here to read more great posts at FoodRenegade.com

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