Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
When It Comes to Food — Quality Matters
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
My favorite grassfed butter, the very best butter I have found.
Henri Charpentier was once the most famous chef in America. He was born in France and became an orphan at an early age. He grew up in poverty, became an apprentice in a restaurant, and literally cooked his way into becoming one of the most famous chefs in France. Charpentier moved to the United States and started a small restaurant in a rural area, which was patronized by some of the most wealthy, famous, and powerful Americans of the day, who would travel for many hours just to enjoy the wonderful food he cooked.
He published the Henri Charpentier Cookbook in 1945. In the book, Charpentier shared his most important cooking secret. The secret was very simple. He advised his readers to buy the very best butter they could afford.
He did use a great deal of high-quality butter in his cooking and in his cookbook.
When I first read this simple advice, I laughed at it. It seemed like a joke. Everybody knew that butter was butter, and all butter was the same. I was very mistaken, but I knew no better. Americans had been told for many years that our modern American food was all very good, and all pretty much the same. Trying to find and buy an especially good type of butter seemed both foolish and extravagant.
I have learned a lot over many years of cooking. One of the most important things I have learned is that some varieties of a particular food are of a much better quality than others. Using the best butter I can find in my cooking has made an enormous difference, both in taste and in nutrition. And this distinction applies not only to butter, but to every kind of food.
Our ancestors were obsessed with quality and were always trying to find the best quality food they could afford, and spent a lot of time and effort in doing so.
Some years ago, I used small amounts of a relatively expensive olive oil to marinate meats and achieved excellent results. Over the years, I started using less expensive olive oils, which were also organic and traditionally made.
Yesterday, I found myself thinking about the wonderful olive oil I used to use and bought some. I used a little bit as part of a marinade for some grassfed lamb. The meat came out so tender, with an intensity of flavor that was far beyond what I expected. The good oil had somehow brought out and intensified all the flavors in the dish, making it much better than it had been when I used the less expensive oil.
I now realize that Henri Charpentier was right. The quality of the ingredients is the most important part of cooking a great meal. The oil I used was certainly not the most expensive olive oil out there, but it was so much better than the others I had used. It changed the quality of the dish from good to excellent, and was worth the extra expense and effort.
Price is not the only indicator of quality. Something is not necessarily better just because it costs more. You will only know the quality of the food when you taste it and digest it.
I am convinced that there is a huge difference in quality in the foods that we can get, and it matters very much. Our ancestors knew that, and as with so many other things about food, they were right.
Forbidden Breakfast, Delicious and Energizing Steak and Eggs
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Delicious grassfed steak and pastured eggs.
After a long night, I woke up to start my daily duties at six am, feeling tired and listless. As usual, my solution was based on food. It occurred to me that the original purpose of breakfast was to provide the nutrition needed to start the day.
But what would give me the energy I needed? I focused on it, and four different foods came into my mind. All these foods are forbidden by conventional food beliefs, as they are all high in animal fat. Yet this was exactly what I wanted, and I trust my body more than profit-based nutrition standards.
The Forbidden Foods
Grassfed Beef
Red meat, maybe the most demonized of all foods. Yet grassfed beef has always given me strength, and our ancestors used meat for this purpose. I had some rare leftover roast beef.
Whole Pastured Eggs
We are not supposed to eat egg yolks, but I always do. The yolks contain many nutrients, some of which are hard to get elsewhere, in a very delicious and digestible form. I got hungry just thinking of how good they would go with the meat.
Butter
Another forbidden food, real pastured butter is a nutritional powerhouse. The real sacred food of Europe, and I love it. I decided to heat the beef and eggs in butter, and put additional butter on the meat when served.
Full-Fat Cheese
We are told to eat low-fat cheese, but our ancestors never did, and neither do I. Cheese is fermented, which adds additional nutrients, and the Gouda cheese I decided to eat is very rich in Vitamin K.
The Meal
In no more than five minutes, I quickly fried the meat and eggs in butter, cooking the eggs just until the yolks set. I added more butter at the table, sliced some Gouda cheese, and happily ate this delicious, satisfying meal. I had so much energy that I got right to work, and was very productive. And I wrote this blog.
This forbidden breakfast was just what I needed.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday blog carnival.
Enjoy the Thanksgiving Feast Without Fear
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Classic roast turkey with its delicious skin. Credit
When a holiday approached, our ancestors, all over the world, anticipated the feast with great joy, happiness, and anticipation. The feast would be prepared by skilled cooks, from the best traditional foods available, and would provide a happy time where everyone would enjoy the fun, happiness, satisfaction and joy of sharing a special great meal.
Yet in modern America, the approach of the holiday feasts is cluttered with a blizzard of cautionary articles, posts, and warnings that could ruin the joy of any meal. Avoid fat, avoid eating too much, avoid gaining weight, avoid eggs in the stuffing, avoid the skin on the turkey, avoid cooking the stuffing in the bird, avoid calories, avoid, avoid AVOID!
In other words, avoid the traditional joy of the feast and worry about what you eat, even on the holidays.
Most of the people who have lived on this earth would be puzzled by this kill-joy attitude.
I advocate enjoying the holiday feasts, and the traditional dishes that have been used to celebrate them.
The Claim that Animal Fat Is Bad for Us Has Been Debunked
Most of the fear of the feast is based on fear of fat. This fear is based on the debunked belief that animal fat is always bad for us. This is just not true, as documented in the book The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, and many other credible sources, including articles in the New York Times and Time magazine.
My Thanksgiving Plans
I have seen ads for Thanksgiving which featured mounds of different kinds of steamed vegetables. I have seen vegetarian “roasts” made mostly of soy, in the shape of a turkey. I have read articles advocating roasting a turkey breast instead of a turkey, with the skin to be trimmed off and discarded before serving. None of these things are traditional, and none of them are for me.
Instead, we will have a traditional Thanksgiving feast, including:
- Roast whole pastured turkey, brined in my secret apple brine, and basted repeatedly with pastured butter while roasting
- Stuffing made from homemade cornbread; roasted chestnuts; onion and celery which have been cooked golden in plenty of pastured butter; as many whole eggs as it takes to moisten the stuffing; various herbs; and the minced heart and liver of the turkey; roasted inside the turkey in the traditional way
- Sweet potatoes, roasted whole until meltingly soft, and served with plenty of pastured butter
- Fresh cranberry sauce
- Sliced onions, cabbage, and apple, sautéed in plenty of melted bacon fat, with the bacon
- Gravy, made from lots of fatty turkey drippings, and homemade turkey broth, and the flavor-rich scrapings from the pan the turkey is roasted in
- And finally, a homemade pumpkin pie
And we will most definitely eat every last bit of the crisp, buttery, wonderful turkey skin.
Now, that is a feast to look forward to!
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 o Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday 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.
Staying Smart with Food—a Family Tradition
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
My dad’s traditional breakfast included full-fat cheddar cheese, rye bread with lots of butter, marinated herring and onions, and smoked salmon.
I had four relatives in my family who lived long lives: my mother, my aunt, my uncle, and my dad.
Three of them had severe Alzheimer’s during the last years. But my dad, who lived to be ninety, (he should have lived longer, but that is another story) was sharp as a tack, right up to his last day. He had no signs of mental impairment.
I have often wondered why he was different. The other three took the advice of their doctors, and put themselves on low-fat diets. But my dad continued to eat a special breakfast that had been taught to him, which was full of animal fat. I think he kept sharp because of the special breakfast he always had, and the way he kept his mind active. I do not know if what he did will help others, but I have decided to share it.
The Food: Dad’s “Garbage”
Ever since I can remember, my dad always had the same breakfast. This was the menu:
- Two eggs with the yolks, fried in butter
- A small piece of rye toast, thickly spread with butter
- A thick slice of full fat cheddar cheese
- Several pieces of marinated raw herring
- Some smoked salmon
- Raw onions, that had been marinated overnight in vinegar
My mother, who was Russian, and felt she had a license to be rude, called this meal “garbage.” She ranted and raved at times about all the fat and cholesterol it contained. My dad continued to eat it every day, and eventually referred to it as “my garbage.”
I asked my dad why he ate it, especially when my mother was so mean to him over it. He said that his father told him that it would keep his mind sharp.
Interestingly enough, the butter, cheese, and egg yolks contributed valuable animal fat and other nutrients that are very important for nourishing the brain. Some studies have shown that eating eggs every day may be an important factor in maintaining mental function.
Both herring and salmon are very fatty fish. He ate them raw, though one had been fermented by smoking, and the other by marinating. Fermenting foods preserve and increase their nutrient value. Fish has been recommended for mental sharpness for thousands of years.
The ancient Egyptians believed that onions would heal and prevent all kinds of problems. Again, the onions were raw, somewhat fermented from the marinade.
Mental Activity
My dad never wrote down phone numbers. He always memorized them, keeping them in his head. And he always remembered them when he needed to make a call. He could hold hundreds in his mind at a time, and was always able to recall them.
My dad always followed the news of the world, keeping himself current on every issue. He would watch or read about the news many hours a day. And he would think about the issues, analyze them, and come up with ways to solve them that I thought were much more sensible than what the politicians actually did.
I asked him once why he spent so much time on the news, and why he memorized the phone numbers instead of writing them down. He said that he liked to use his mind.
Some studies have shown that older people who are mentally active are far less likely to get Alzheimer’s.
Now, this is what he did, on advice from his father, who was also mentally sharp until the day he died. I do not know if this will work for anyone else.
But I am so grateful that he kept a sharp mind throughout his entire life.
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.
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.
Tax Fat, Get Fat — and Sick
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Pastured butter is a great way to get healthy animal fat.
The proponents of a truly bad idea never give it up if it fails. Especially if they are in the medical profession. Even if totally fails. Especially if it totally fails.
A case in point is the fat tax. The idea is that you can make people thinner by heavily taxing the purchase of foods containing the “ultimate evil”—animal fat. This truly bad idea was tried in Denmark in 2011. A tax ranging as high as twenty percent was placed on foods containing saturated animal fat, like butter and cheese. The Danes did not reduce their consumption of these foods at all, often buying them from other countries. After a year of total failure, the Danish government admitted failure and abandoned this stupid, tyrannical tax.
Yet medical voices in the U.S., completely aware of the Danish failure, are still calling for a fat tax in America. A tax that would have to be high enough to stop people from buying foods containing animal fat.
Reducing the Consumption of Healthy Animal Fats Will Make People Malnourished, Not Thinner
The basic idea behind the fat tax, that forcing people to eat less fat will make them thinner, is just not true. A huge campaign to reduce the eating of animal fats has been waged in the U.S. for over fifty years.
Americans eat much less saturated animal fat than they used to, which is the goal of the fat tax. And what is the result of this “success”?
- Americans are much fatter and sicker than ever before.
- Seventy five percent of young Americans who try to join the military are rejected as physically unable to serve.
- Chronic illness, especially among young people, has greatly increased.
- The U.S. spends far more money on medical costs per person than it did before fat restriction was advocated.
Reducing the amount of animal fat eaten by Americans will only get us more of the same. More obesity. More illness. More medical costs.
The truth is that fat from healthy animals is perhaps the most needed and vital food we can eat. (See The Skinny on Fats.) Restricting this vital food only results in malnutrition, and the illness that it brings.
Americans are suffering greatly from malnutrition, due in large part to not getting enough healthy animal fats. Taxing animal fats will only make this worse, and make food even more expensive, making it almost impossible for the poor to get the nutrition they need.
Eat Healthy Animal Fats, Lose Weight
Before fat was demonized, doctors treated obesity by prescribing a diet high in animal fats. These diets worked, and nobody needed a diet industry. This fact has been carefully concealed by various industries, which thrive on sickness and people trying to lose weight.
The solution to obesity and illness is not to intensify the same methods that made the problem much worse, but to make it easier for people to afford and get the nutritious traditional food they really need.
An educational program teaching people the truth about food—that the unmodified foods of our ancestors is what we need to be strong and healthy—would greatly increase the demand for such food, which people already crave. Subsidies should be stopped to industrial farmers and chemical makers, and given to sustainable farmers who raise real food, to increase the supply. People who give up factory food and eat only real food almost always become much healthier and happier. I have seen it happen time after time, with my own eyes.
Factory foods are far inferior to real food, and chemicals in food can do great harm. True health and normal weight come from real food, the food of our ancestors. That is the only proven solution to the problem, and we should take it.
People Have a Right to Choose their Food
It is a basic human right to decide what food you will eat, and how much. No one has the right to make that decision for you. Not the government, not the corrupt medical profession, not the greedy food industry, not anybody or anything. Many people make horrible food choices because of propaganda and misinformation. In my experience, when people actually learn the truth about food, they change what they eat and become much healthier.
Education is the answer, not coercion.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Our Ancestors Thrived on High-Fat Diets
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Grass-fed beef with its natural fat cap.
If you study the history of food, and read what contemporary people wrote and said about it, you will be struck by one inevitable fact—our ancestors considered fat a vital nutrient, and loved to eat it. The only bad thing about fat was the difficulty in obtaining it, as it was often expensive and hard to get.
This fact is shocking to modern people, who have been subject to a propaganda campaign that labeled most fat as bad, unhealthy, and the cause of most illness. This propaganda campaign began in the 1960s, and became accepted as absolute fact in the 1980s. Even though there never was any real evidence to support the all-animal-fat-is-bad theory, nearly everyone believed it. Even today, most people believe that fat, especially saturated animal fat, is bad for health and should be restricted.
This belief remains common even though it has never been proven and many studies and much research has totally discredited it.
Now, I am not a doctor, or a nutritionist, or a scientist. But I am an attorney, and I have been one for a very long time. Attorneys are experts in evaluating evidence. I have evaluated the available evidence on fat, and it is my opinion that animal fat from healthy animals eating their natural diet is one of the healthiest, most vital, and most needed foods we can eat.
The Case Against Traditional Animal Fat
The claim that fat is bad and causes illness began with the infamous “lipid hypothesis “developed after World War II. This unproven theory tried to connect cholesterol with heart disease, and eating fat with the creation of excess cholesterol.
This theory was of great benefit to the makers of factory vegetable fats and modified foods, who had to find a way to get Americans to drop the healthy traditional foods of their ancestors, so they would buy the new products. It also created a whole new set of illnesses and medical conditions, which increased revenue for the medical profession and the drug industry. These powerful forces supported the lipid hypothesis and the related belief that eating saturated animal fat caused too much cholesterol, and therefore, heart disease. Since eating factory foods makes people fat, a huge diet industry grew and added its money and power to the propaganda campaign. Eventually, these industries were able to persuade most people and institutions that eating traditional animal fats caused many other illnesses. Since these industries have a great deal of influence over government, they were able to get government agencies to support the fat and cholesterol myths.
A number of careful reviews of the studies supporting the lipid hypothesis have shown that there is no real evidence to support the theory. The same is true of the theory that eating animal fat is unhealthy. A number of these reviews are available at the website of the Weston A. Price Foundation. The lipid hypothesis is believed not because it is true, but because it has been marketed so effectively.
The Case for Traditional Animal Fat
Human history and even animal history establishes conclusively that traditional animal fat is a vital nutrient. The very first part of the animal eaten by predators is the fatty liver, followed by the other fatty organs. Caves which sheltered prehistoric peoples are full of bones that have been cracked open to get at the fatty marrow. Nearly every traditional people valued natural animal fat as one of their most important foods. Pemmican, the traditional survival food of the Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains, was one-third bison fat. European poets wrote poems about their love and appreciation for fatty foods. There are countless other examples.
Dr. Weston A. Price, a dentist and researcher, became aware that each generation of his patients had worse teeth than the preceding generation. He noticed how healthy some traditional peoples seemed to be. He decided to visit a number of them, all over the globe, and learn what made them healthy. Dr. Price was convinced that nutrition was the key, and expected to find that these people were vegetarians. He spent ten years travelling the world, visiting these healthy peoples in person and learning what they ate, and did not eat.
He learned that none of them were vegetarians, and all of them relied heavily on what he called sacred foods—which were always foods rich in animal fats, including butter, the back fat of moose, fish eggs, seal blubber, cod livers, milk that had six times the fat content of American milk, and other similar foods.
These people were healthy, having perfect teeth, no degenerative diseases, no mental illness, and no birth defects. When the very same people began to eat the processed foods of civilization, their health collapsed, they lost their teeth, and became the victim of many horrible illnesses, like tuberculosis.
Dr. Price had thousands of traditional foods studied in labs, and concluded that the most important nutrients were found in traditional foods rich in animal fat.
I find Dr. Price’s research convincing, and adopting a high animal fat diet based on his research brought me from being very ill to being free of all illness.
My cookbooks, Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue, are true to the principles discovered by Dr. Price, and make full use of traditional animal fats in the recipes.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday , and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Great Traditional Animal Fats
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Real pork lard, one of the most tradtional fats of all.
Americans have been told that eating saturated animal fats will clog our arteries and kill us. We are told that we need to eat only fats made from vegetable oil, modern oils, such as corn oil, soy oil, canola oil, safflower oil, and other oils that could not even be made before the twentieth century.
The truth of the matter is that fat from healthy animals eating their natural diet is very good for us, providing vital nutrients in the right proportion, and supporting the natural functions of our bodies.
Modern vegetable oils have a huge imbalance of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids. This imbalance contributes to many illnesses, and causes inflammation in many people. Our bodies have never tried to digest or use these oils before the twentieth century, because they just did not exist. These oils are often processed with chemicals, and subjected to pressures and high heat, which makes them even stranger to our bodies. Some of these oils stink so bad in their natural state that chemical deodorizers are used to hide the bad smell.
Humans crave healthy animal fats, because we know instinctively that they are good for us.
Most people think only of butter when they think of an animal fat they might use in cooking. Pastured butter is great, but there are many other animal fats that are great for cooking and eating.
Grassfed Beef Tallow
Beef tallow is one of the oldest human foods, used for cooking and added to all kinds of foods for countless thousands of years. In its real form, from grassfed animals, beef tallow is full of vital nutrients. It was traditionally used for every form of frying, with potatoes fried in beef tallow being a favorite food all over Europe and America. It was used to brown meat for traditional stews and pot roasts, to sauté steaks, and to baste roasting meat. It gives wonderful flavor. Vegetables roasted in beef tallow are crusty and caramelized, absolutely delicious. Grassfed beef tallow is one of my very favorite cooking fats, and I use it often. I consider it important to only use beef tallow from grassfed beef, as it has the proper balance of nutrients and tastes so much better.
Unhydrogenated Pastured Pork Lard
Pork lard has been so vilified that many people are horrified by the very thought of eating it. Yet real pork lard was once the most popular cooking and eating fat on the planet.
Pork lard was used extensively for cooking in China, other Asian countries, Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Many traditional American and European baking recipes make extensive use of pork lard. Pork lard has a very high smoke point, and is one of the easiest cooking fats to use, being soft even when refrigerated, and perfect for frying, sautéing, basting, and browning. It lends great flavor to food, and is very nutritious and easily absorbed by the body.
You have to be very careful in selecting pork lard, because most of the pork lard sold in the U.S. is hydrogenated, which means that its very chemical structure has been changed by processing to increase its shelf life. I have knowingly eaten hydrogenated pork lard exactly once, and found it disgusting, with a terrible taste. Real pork lard, from pastured pigs, in its natural form, is wonderful.
Grassfed Lamb Tallow
You can use grassfed lamb tallow for frying, sautéing , basting, and roasting. It gives incredible flavor. It is important to make sure that food cooked with lamb tallow is served hot, as congealed lamb tallow can feel greasy. Serve the food hot, and it is wonderful. Potatoes and other vegetables are particularly wonderful roasted in this fat, which lends a nutty, delicious flavor to food.
It is also important to use lamb tallow from a meat breed of lamb, as the taste of the fat from wool breeds can be strong and not very appealing. But the flavor given by grassfed lamb tallow from meat breeds is unbelievably delicious.
Grassfed Bison Tallow
Bison fat was one of the staple foods of the Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains, being a vital component of their survival food, pemmican. Bison fat just may be the most nutritious of all, being full of nutrients from the strong, healthy bison. It is great for basting, frying, and sautéing. It gives a wonderful flavor to meat, unique yet wonderful. It is particularly good for sautéing at medium temperatures. Adding just a bit of bison fat to stews will do incredible things for the flavor.
It is important that all of these traditional fats be grassfed or pastured. That way, you are eating the same kind of animal fat our ancestors have been eating since the beginning, and getting similar nutritional benefits.
But where do you find grassfed beef tallow?
Where do you find real pastured pork lard that has not been hydrogenated?
Where do you find grassfed lamb tallow from a meat breed?
Where do you find grassfed bison fat?
A local farmer may have any of these. But you can get all of them from U.S. Wellness Meats, which has done us all a great service by making these hard-to-get real animal fats available. The quality is superb, and I happily use all of them.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
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