Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Bringing Back the Fat Cap – Restoring the Fat of the Land
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
Grassfed strip loin roast from U.S. Wellness Meats, cut from strip loin primal
Do you know what a fat cap is? Most people today do not. A fat cap was once considered absolutely necessary for roasting meat. Fat caps will greatly improve the nutritional qualities and taste of any grassfed meat.
Here is a link to my guest blog about fat caps on Kim Hartke’s great site, Hartke Is Online:
Fat on Grassfed Meat is Healthy, Claims Cookbook Author
Cooking Real Food — The Most Important Task
photo credit: stuartpilbrow
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
What if a drug was invented that would reduce the risk of cancer to almost nothing? What if the same drug was just as effective against heart disease? What if this drug also greatly reduced the risk of diabetes, asthma, birth defects, Alzheimer’s, depression, mental illness, ADD, arthritis, obesity, indigestion and every other chronic disease that plagues humankind? What if this very same drug strengthened your immune system to the point that the flu, colds, and infections became a thing of the past? What if the side effects of this drug were limited to a feeling of well-being, boundless energy, peaceful sleep, enhanced mental and physical ability? Wouldn’t you take this drug?
There is no such drug. But you can learn to do something that can provide all of the benefits I have described. You can learn to cook.
The human body is far more complex and intricate than anything invented by human science. There is much about the workings of the human body that is still a mystery. But we do know that the human body has an amazing capacity to protect itself, heal, regenerate, and rebuild. We also know that the body can fail, become very ill, and die.
What is the difference between a healthy body and a sick one?
Dr. Weston A Price, a dentist, noticed that each generation of his patients was less healthy than their parents. He decided to study the effect of diet on humanity, travelling to many countries to learn what healthy people ate. Dr. Price found that people eating the diet of their ancestors were healthy, with none of the chronic diseases that are so common today. These people did not have heart disease. They did not have cancer. They did not have mental illness. They did not have crime. They had no tooth decay, although they had no dentists. When the same people ate modern foods, their teeth decayed, and they suffered from all the chronic illnesses that afflict us today.
When the human body gets all the nutrients it needs, it is healthy. When the body does not get those nutrients, it is sick. Modern foods do not provide all the nutrients needed for good health. Supplements are not the answer, because the body takes its nutrients from foods, including a number of substances in the whole food called cofactors, which are often unknown, and are needed by the body to assimilate nutrients. Supplements do not have all the cofactors. The only way to get all needed nutrients is to eat real, unaltered food, prepared by somebody who knows how to cook it.
The most important task any of us can learn is to cook real food, as this is the only way we can provide the nutrients necessary for health.
Learning what to eat and how to cook takes time and work, but the rewards are worth it. To me, cooking has become more art than work. I truly enjoy it. When I cook, I am always aware that the food I am cooking will become part of me and the people I care about. I cultivate a happy, loving contentment when I cook — knowing that what I am doing will make me and my family healthier, while giving us the pleasure of a delicious meal. I cannot describe how good it feels to become healthier, and to see your family become healthier, and to know it is because of the good food you prepare.
Real cooking may seem difficult at first, but it gets easier and faster over time. If you cook enough, it will become as easy and instinctive as riding a bicycle, or driving a car.
I believe that food must taste good to be truly nutritious. The good taste and smell of real food, properly prepared, gives much pleasure while stimulating the salivary glands. The salivary glands produce substances that aid greatly in the digestion and absorption of food. Good taste helps good nutrition.
Dr. Price discovered what to eat, and what to avoid. I follow the Weston A. Price Foundation’s Dietary Guidelines. I have switched entirely to grassfed and grass finished meat, with wonderful results.
If you have decided to learn to cook real food — the most important task — I recommend the book Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD. This magnificent book covers just about every aspect of cooking real food, while providing a huge amount of information on what to eat and why. While the scope of the book may seem overwhelming, you don’t have to read the whole thing at once. I recommend using the book as a cooking encyclopedia, and looking up the specific issue or recipe you want to learn about.
For a detailed and user-friendly cookbook on grassfed meat, designed for people who have never cooked grassfed meat, I recommend Tender Grassfed Meat. That is why I wrote it.
This post is part of the Real Food Wednesday blog carnival, hosted this week by Cheeseslave blog. Go see other homages to real foods, good fats on Cheeseslave.com!
Real Foods that Healed Me
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
I recently wrote a blog that describes in detail the foods that I ate to become healthy, following the recommendations of the Weston A. Price Foundation. Here is a link to the article at Moms for Safe Food.
Real Foods that Healed Me
Health Benefits of Grassfed Meat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat
English Style Prime Rib, page 86, Tender Grassfed Meat.
Why did I spend three years writing a book on cooking grassfed meat? Why did I read over 300 cookbooks and novels? The answer is very simple. I wanted to improve my health by enjoying the immense health benefits of grassfed meat. Grassfed meat and fat are so nutritious that they can literally rebuild your body. They certainly rebuilt mine.
Grassfed meat is a completely different product from conventional meat. The natural food of cattle, bison, and lamb is grass and meadow plants. That is all they should be eating. When the animals are raised on grass, their meat is packed full of nutrients in the perfect proportion for good health, in a form that can be easily assimilated by the human body.
Meat that is not 100 percent grassfed and grass finished is fed a mixture of grain, soy, and many other things that were never a part of the natural diet of these animals. The “other things†can include rendered restaurant waste, various animal parts, cement dust, plastic balls, chicken manure, and many other unsavory ingredients. Some producers only feed a 100 percent vegetarian diet to their animals. However, even these diets usually consist of a large amount of grain and soy, which are not part of the natural diet of grass eating animals.
Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acids
The meat of grain finished animals is very different in composition than the meat of grassfed animals, and lacks many of the wonderful nutrients that are present in grassfed meat. For example, the natural balance of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids should be no more than four to one. In grassfed meat, the ratio is usually one to one. In meat that is not exclusively grassfed, the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is often twenty-to-one. The omega-6 excess in the American diet has been associated with a greatly increased risk of cancer, heart disease, obesity, rapid aging, and many other health problems. Many doctors advise their patients to take fish oil capsules to try to help with the imbalance. Grassfed meat has the same ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 as wild fish.
The Benefits of CLA
In addition to having the proper ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, grassfed meat contains a large amount of CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid). The amount of CLA goes down when the animal is fed grain. The more grain fed to the animal, the less CLA. Various studies have shown that CLA:
- Increases the metabolic rate
- Increases muscle mass while reducing fat
- Decreases abdominal fat
- Strengthens the immune system
- Reduces the risk of cancer
- Reduces the risk of heart disease
- Reduces the risk of diabetes
- Reduces the risk of hyperthyroidism
- Normalizes thyroid function
More Nutrients in Grassfed Meat
But that is not all. Your body does not use nutrients in isolation, but is accustomed to receiving them together with other substances that are present in the food and necessary for your body to assimilate and use the nutrients. These substances are known as cofactors. When the cofactors are missing or altered, the ability of your body to use the nutrients is greatly reduced. This is why vitamin supplements are often ineffective, because your body needs the cofactors present in real food to properly assimilate nutrients. When you eat 100 percent grassfed and grass finished meat, you know you are getting all the cofactors, in their proper form.
Grassfed meat also provides a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. All of these nutrients are present in proper proportion to each other, along with the cofactors needed for your body to properly assimilate them.
My health has improved enormously since I made the switch to eating only 100 percent grassfed and grass finished meat. Learning how to cook grassfed meat was worth all the time, trouble, and expense. Good health is worth it!
Disclaimer:
I am not a doctor, and the above is not intended to be medical advice. Grassfed meat is a food, not a medicine. By all means, see a doctor if you want medical advice. The above is just a description of my understanding of the nutritional benefits of grassfed meat.
This post is part of GAPS Friendly Friday blog carnival. Read more great Real Food Wednesday blogs at Kelly the Kitchen Cop.
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