Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Even Delicious MyPlate Meal Results in Hunger
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
A meal without good protein and fat has a lot in common with an empty plate.
MyPlate, the new federal guidelines telling us what to eat and how much, will leave you hungry, and malnourished.
The truth of this was brought home to me recently. I had an absolutely delicious meal in a new restaurant. A restaurant that only used organic ingredients. A restaurant that featured grassfed meat, and organic meat. A restaurant that featured traditional food, and boasted about it.
In other words, this sounded like a perfect restaurant for me. And I must say, everything was perfectly cooked, the food was of the highest quality, and everything I ate was delicious.
Yet I left the restaurant much hungrier than I was when I went in, and had to eat a second lunch.
What was the problem? The problem was that the restaurant followed the MyPlate government guidelines in determining the contents and amount of food they served. Guidelines that leave us hungry and malnourished, based on my own experience.
Taste is not enough.
The Meal
The restaurant served Mexican food, and it was much better than Mexican fast food. We ordered empanadas, which were described as having a wonderful filling of “organic, grassfed, Piedmontese beef,” braised with various vegetables and spices. Sounded delicious. The price was $11.95.
The plate arrived. It contained a single empanada, of medium size, surrounded by empty white plate. Also included was a clump of raw greens, which covered a third of the plate, a small dish of guacamole, holding about a tablespoon, and a couple of tomato slices. A bowl of beans was brought in, which contained about a quarter cup of beans in a broth. That was all of it.
When I cut into the empanada, I realized that there was a lot of empty air under the crust. I looked at the filling, and determined it consisted of no more than a tablespoon of ground beef, and a few tablespoons of finely chopped vegetables, in a small amount of sauce.
Now the empanada and its scanty filling was delicious. It seemed to have been prepared with a very small amount of fat. The tomatoes were good, and the beans, the first beans I had eaten in five years, were very tasty, which was a huge surprise to me. I did not touch the greens, as I did not recognize them, and some raw greens can block nutrient absorption. I finished everything else.
At the end of the meal, I was much hungrier than when I came in.
The meal Conformed to MyPlate Standards
MyPlate essentially demands that we eat mainly vegetables and fruits, filling up on legumes and grains. Very little protein or fat is allowed by these faulty standards.
The meal was almost entirely vegetables and grain, with the crust of the empanada being made of grain. There was far more crust than filling. The meat content, which was no more than a tablespoon, conformed with the low protein standards of MyPlate, and the fat content seemed non-existent, again in conformance with MyPlate.
Why I Was Hungry
I had received almost no fat or protein in this meal, nearly all of it being vegetables and grains, which, while delicious, just did not provide me with the nutrients I needed. I became much hungrier because my body was crying out for the fat and protein it expects at every meal, and because we need good fat to absorb and properly digest nutrients.
This absurd imbalance of nutrients made me much hungrier because the foods it contained needed the fat and protein that were missing to be properly absorbed and digested. When we passed a couple of fast food places on the way home, I got very hungry and wanted to eat their food, which normally never tempts me. When I got home, I quickly ate a fair amount of butter, cheese, and some leftover grassfed beef, being ravenously hungry. Only after I had eaten a lot of this was I satisfied.
The lesson I relearned was this—MyPlate is an unbalanced, starvation diet. Much better to eat the traditional unmodified foods of our ancestors, rich with healthy animal fat.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.