Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Food Can Cure
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Traditional sauerkraut is a good source of Vitamin C.
What do scurvy, rickets, pellagra, and beriberi have in common?
- They are all deadly illnesses that once ravaged humanity.
- They have been eradicated in most of the world.
- They can be easily cured.
- They are not cured with drugs. They are not cured with surgery. They are not cured with radiation.
They are cured with food. Or, in some cases, with substances found in food that can be artificially made.
How Food Cures Work
The process for how food cures these illnesses is basically the same. A nutritional deficiency is corrected, and the body uses the needed nutrients to heal itself.
Scurvy is a perfect example of how the process works. It was identified in ancient times, and caused its victims to become lethargic, fatigued, and unable to function. As the disease advanced, teeth fell out, and the victim could actually die.
This illness was most common for sailors undertaking long voyages, where they spent much of the voyage eating only salted meat and biscuits. It could also be common in winter, when there was no fresh food in some areas.
It was discovered in 1932 that the illness was caused by a lack of Vitamin C. Our ancestors could not identify vitamins, but they learned to provide sailors with the juice of citrus fruits like lemons and limes during voyages, which prevented the problem. Many of our ancestors solved the problem of no fresh food in winter by regularly eating fermented vegetables, like sauerkraut, which contain ample Vitamin C.
In fact, the famous explorer Captain Cook, who undertook the longest known voyages in the era of sail, exploring much of the vast Pacific, carried barrels of sauerkraut on all of his ships, which prevented scurvy, and lasted for years, even in the tropics.
There are many such diseases, where a nutritional deficiency is the cause, and correcting the deficiency through food is the cure.
Since the information we have about nutrition and illness is incomplete, I wonder how many current diseases could be successfully treated by this age old method of correcting nutritional deficiencies.
Yet I have heard many reports of individuals who have healed themselves of all kinds of illnesses, including many that have been called incurable, by the use of food.
I think humanity would be much better off, if qualified scientists were to actually research whether many of the diseases that modern medicine cannot cure are in fact caused by a nutritional deficiency, and how that deficiency could be corrected.
The healthy peoples studied by Dr. Weston A. Price, who were so healthy that they had no disease of any kind, kept themselves healthy by following the traditional diet of their ancestors. They had no medical care, or drugs, or surgery. Yet they were healthy, much healthier than the American people. We have much to learn from this, and I hope that science will put far more resources into researching this matter.
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 blog carnival.
What Is Good to Eat? I Trust Traditional Cooking
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
One of the oldest traditional Chinese food combinations: ginger, garlic, and green onion.
If you read enough of the conclusions of studies reported in the news, you might decide that every single food you can eat is unhealthy in some way. It does not matter if the food is meat, poultry, seafood, fish, nuts, vegetables, or fruits, somewhere there is a study claiming it is unhealthy.
Obviously, if all the foods humanity has eaten, or can eat are unhealthy, we would not have survived as a species.
But how do we know what is good to eat? I found my answer through the research of Dr. Weston A. Price, who found that traditional peoples who ate their traditional diets were free from modern diseases, birth defects, and mental illness, even though many of the foods they ate were condemned by modern beliefs about food.
I base my diet on traditional food combinations, and the results have been fantastic.
It is better to look at all the foods eaten together, rather than just one food in isolation.
As a lawyer who specialized in legal research and analysis, I know a thing or two about researching an issue. What has always bothered me about most current food research is that they almost always seem to focus on a single food ingredient, or class of ingredients, and ignore the rest. An example would be studies that claim that red meat is unhealthy, yet ignore the other foods eaten, and many other factors.
But we do not eat foods in isolation. Usually, we eat many different kinds of food in a single day, and the substances in these foods interact with each other and our bodies. People do not normally eat just one food, or one class of food. To really know how food affects our health, I believe it is necessary to consider everything that is eaten, as it is the combination that effects our bodies.
Some studies have shown that the substances in one food will counteract the negative effects of the substances in another food, if the foods are eaten together. For example, studies have shown that the harmful glycemic effects of potatoes are greatly reduced or avoided if fat is eaten at the same time.
There is little current research on this, but Dr. Price looked at everything eaten by the peoples he studied, and the effect it had.
So I use as my guide the food traditions of many healthy peoples, making sure to use many of the same ingredients together that they did. For example:
- Nearly all cultures that ate potatoes never ate them without plenty of animal fat.
- The Chinese combined ginger, green onions, and garlic together in a huge number of dishes.
- Our ancestors never ate red meat without fat, usually animal fat, and usually plenty of it.
There are countless other examples, preserved in the traditional cooking and food traditions of nearly every nation, and I believe I have received great benefit by combining food according to these traditions.
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 and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
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.
Real Food Plus Real Sleep
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Cats know the value of sleep.
I have written so many times of the benefits of avoiding factory foods, and eating only real food. These benefits are real, and they have greatly improved my health and enabled me not to need medical care for over a decade. But I have come to realize something. Even though it is a lot of work and effort to just eat real food, it is not enough.
Our bodies need sleep to get the full benefits of the nutrients in the food. Our bodies use this time to rest and rejuvenate. And our bodies need enough sleep, something very few of us get these days.
It is somewhat hypocritical for me to advocate the benefits of getting enough sleep, because I usually do not get enough. To be honest, it is common for me to sleep for only four hours. But last night, for some reason, I did get enough sleep. I slept for over eight hours. And the benefits were so profound that I did some research. Now I have a new goal to go along with my good diet—getting enough sleep.
The Benefits of Sleep
There is a good reason for everything in nature. We sleep for a number of important purposes.
From a food perspective, sleep is absolutely vital to get the full benefit of real food. The natural functions of our bodies use the time we are asleep to repair and rejuvenate our bodies. This does not work well unless our bodies have all the nutrients we need to do this. A crucial reason to eat only real food, so we can get those nutrients. But we also need enough sleep so our natural functions can concentrate the energy of the body on repair and rejuvenation. If we are awake and engaging in work or other activities, our natural functions have far less energy available to them to do their work.
I thought I was healthy, but one night of getting enough sleep made me feel even better. Much better. And much more alert and productive.
I now realize that if I am going to enjoy the full benefits of the real food that I put so much effort into obtaining and cooking, I will also need to get enough sleep.
How Much Sleep?
Before the advent of electricity, most people would sleep during most or all of the hours of darkness, and wake early in the morning, often with the sun. Humans are made to be active during the day, and to sleep at night. Other animals sleep during most of the day and are active at night. This natural sleep pattern was followed for most of human history, though there were exceptions. While Dr. Weston A. Price did not write much about the sleep patterns of the healthy peoples he studied, the information we have on them indicates that they slept during the night and were active during the day. Most of them did not have electricity or artificial lighting. But now, technology and lighting have enabled humans to be active, alert, and productive at night, which is not ideal for us.
Albert Einstein, one of the brightest and most productive humans to ever live, slept ten hours a night, every night. He literally changed the world with research and analysis.
Sophia Loren, the actress, is in her mid-seventies. She is still amazingly beautiful, active, and attractive, with great skin and muscle tone. She goes to bed every night at eight p.m. and wakes up at five a.m., getting nine hours of sleep every night. While diet and exercise are also a vital part of how she stays so healthy, she considers this long sleep to be very important.
I believe that eight to ten hours of sleep are ideal for us, but most of us get so much less.
My Own Sleep Issue
Since I have adopted my real food diet, I have no trouble falling asleep. I can also decide the time I want to wake up, and I will wake at that time. In fact, I stopped setting an alarm clock, because I would always wake up just before the alarm rang.
The problem is that the day is much too short for me. I have many interests, and have often worked into the wee hours of the morning, engrossed in what I was learning or writing. One of my greatest joys is learning, and the more I learn, the more I want to learn. And there are the necessities of life, such as cooking, eating, socializing, and spending time with my family. I deliberately chose to sleep less so I would have more time to do the many things that need doing, and that I want to do.
Last night, I did not set a time to wake up. I was tired. I slept for eight hours. And felt so much better.
Now, I have decided to get those eight to ten hours of sleep, somehow. Now that I understand its importance, I will find a way to do it.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Healthy Traditional Condiments — the Treasure We Are Losing
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Kimchi, another traditional fermented Korean food.
Some years ago, there was a small Korean grocery near my home. I wandered into it one day, and was fascinated by the traditional fermented foods it contained. There were beautiful jars of colorful fermented vegetables, called kImchi, not just Napa cabbage, but all kinds of vegetables. But my attention was drawn to glass jars of another condiment, in the refrigerator section, whose beautiful red color drew my eye.
The labels were in Korean, which I do not read, but as I looked at the thick, gorgeous paste, with its deep color, I began to get hungry for it, even though I had never tasted it before.
The owner, seeing my interest, told me this was gochuchang, which was a fermented paste of hot chili peppers, a special rice, and other ingredients, which were mixed and left to ferment in huge clay jars for a very long time, sometimes years. He said it was very spicy, but it kept people healthy. He said making it was a very old tradition in Korea, passed down from generation to generation.
He pointed out many other fermented pastes to me, and explained how making these fermented mixtures was a very important tradition in Korea, one that went back to the very beginning of the Korean culture.
I could not resist. I bought a couple of the jars, beautiful from the rich colors of the fermented paste, and used them as a cooking ingredient and as a condiment. The paste was very hot, but over time I came to welcome the heat. And it gave a rich, luxurious hot flavor to all kinds of stews, stir-fries, and braises. It was great in barbecue marinades. Yet my favorite use was to eat it uncooked, right from the jar, as a condiment. Sometimes I would just eat a teaspoon or two because it felt so good to me. I began to start doing this when people around me at work had colds or flus. And, for whatever reason, I did not catch those colds or flus when I regularly ate this wonderful gochuchang.
Years passed, and I moved. I began to miss the benefits and taste of the wonderful fermented chili paste, so I planned a trip to the store to stock up. I was truly disappointed to find it was closed. I tried to find another source, but did not, and eventually forgot about it.
Many years later, when I studied the food wisdom contained in the website of the Weston A. Price Foundation, I learned that traditional fermented condiments had many health benefits, and were used by traditional peoples. I remembered gochuchang, and decided to do a thorough search and find it.
My search ended in another Korean grocery store. There were no jars of gochuchang. When I asked for it, I was led to a selection of solid plastic tubs, colored red. They were not refrigerated. I asked for gochuchang in glass jars. There was none. These plastic tubs were all there was, and I was told the same was true in Korea. I began to feel some real doubt, but I bought the tub which the clerk told me was the best and most traditional.
At home, with a mixed feeling of anticipation and dread, I tasted this “modern” gochuchang. At first, it seemed to taste good, but I soon became aware of an unpleasant texture, a slight but nasty aftertaste, and a somewhat repulsive hot flavor. It tasted nothing like the gochuchang I remembered. And the only feeling I got from it was a slightly scorched mouth, and a slightly upset stomach.
Maybe some of the other chemical brands taste better, but I am not inclined to try them.
I did some research on the Internet, and found out that traditional Korean condiments were being made in a much quicker and cheaper way, with most of the ingredients from China. Instead of placing the ingredients in a clay jar to ferment for many months, or even years, chemicals were used to achieve quick “fermentation,” and factory ingredients and flavors were added to the mix.
No matter where I searched, I could not find the traditional, naturally fermented paste.
One day, I talked with a filmmaker from Korea, who explained to me that all the traditional condiments were being made by chemical means, in factories. His mother still made the traditional fermented pastes, and he and his brother would drive to her farm each year to pick some up. He said that when her generation was gone, no one would be left who even knew how to make them.
I find this sad beyond words. These naturally fermented pastes, made from traditional local ingredients, are disappearing, replaced by inferior factory products made possible by chemicals and technology. Products that have no soul, no tradition, and do not contain the traditional mix of nutrients relied on by our ancestors. This has not only happened in Korea, but is happening all over the world .
If we do not take action to preserve traditional foods, we will lose them, and their many benefits.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
The Hippocratic Alternative — Food
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Hippocrates, the great healer.
With the current controversy over medical insurance, our nation seems fixated on drugs and medical treatment as being the only way to maintain health. No doubt drugs and medical care can be necessary under certain circumstances, especially trauma.
But they are not the only way to stay healthy, under normal circumstances. The most famous and successful physician of ancient times, Hippocrates of Kos, had a very different approach.
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.â€
Modern Medicine
Modern medicine has a one-size-fits-all approach to disease. Every patient who is diagnosed with a particular disease is supposed to receive the same treatment. One size fits all. Often the same dose of drugs is prescribed with no regard for the body weight of the patient.
Usually, food is never even considered when treating illness. Drugs are the treatment of choice, though surgery is often used. The majority of treatments used for most illnesses are not even designed to cure the disease, but to help the patient “manage” the disease, by suppressing the symptoms. Many people have bad reactions to various drugs, called “side effects.” This can result in the prescription of yet another drug, which could have bad effects on the patient, which could lead to the prescription of yet another drug.
According to the Mayo clinic, and to CBS news, 70 percent of Americans take at least one prescription drug. And many of these people take several prescription drugs. This statistic does not even consider over the counter drugs, which are also widely used.
Yet this huge amount of drug use has not resulted in good health for the American population.
Let me make this clear. Modern medicine can achieve some amazing results, such as reattaching severed fingers and limbs, and saving the lives of those who have suffered trauma. Yet in many instances, it “manages” rather than cures.
Hippocratic Medicine
Hippocrates had a very different approach. Greek medicine of his time was far more advanced than most people realize, and did use drugs and surgery. Contemporary Greek writings show that Greek citizens led long lives, often recovered from serious wounds, and were expected to put on heavy armor and fight in brutal hand-to-hand combat when needed, even into their seventies. Great emphasis was placed on personal cleanliness, and Greek doctors were very skilled at disinfecting and treating battle wounds, and many other injuries. They had many medications, compounded from plants and other substances, and were skilled at performing many kinds of surgeries.
Hippocrates was the most successful doctor of his time, and became famous. He became so famous that he was asked to come to Athens to stop a plague that was killing many people while the city was under siege. Hippocrates cured the plague, and ended the epidemic, by, among other things, getting the people to boil their drinking water.
Yet Hippocrates believed in treating most illness with what he called “regimen,” using food, exercise, massage, sleep, and relaxation as the treatments of choice. Only if these methods failed, or if the patient was incapable of using them, would drugs be used. Surgery would be done only if there was no alternative. Each patient was considered to be a unique individual, and the treatment would be customized for the unique condition of each patient. Hippocrates had great success in using these methods.
Many Greek physicians resisted his methods, because, then, as now, it was much more profitable to use drugs and surgeries.
This led Hippocrates to create new moral standards for physicians, placing the welfare of the patient before the profit of the doctor. These standards were set forth in the oath he created for doctors, the famous Hippocratic Oath.
In the 1930s, Dr. Weston A. Price studied many peoples who were eating the traditional diets of their ancestors. In every case, these people had perfect teeth, and none of the chronic diseases that plague our culture. This research is direct proof of Hippocrates’ belief that food was the best way to prevent and treat many illnesses.
What We Can Learn from Hippocrates
Modern medicine is too focused on drugs, radiation, and surgery as the only way to treat illness. I believe we could greatly drive down the cost of medical care, and be a much healthier nation, if doctors were actually trained in the Hippocratic methods of healing, and were required to be just as familiar with the healing effects of real food as they are with drugs. In fact, our whole society needs to relearn and use the benefits of eating real food, rather than modern factory foods.
Many individuals have reported enjoying good health and curing all kinds of illness just by eating the right foods, and avoiding the wrong foods.
We can still use modern medical methods when needed, but I believe they would be needed far less often, if our population was well nourished, and if doctors used Hippocratic regimen as the treatment of choice (when possible).
We would also have more success if we abandoned the “one-size-fits-all” approach, and treated each patient as a unique individual.
Finally, we need to return to the moral standards set down by Hippocrates. The main motive of doctors should be to heal people, not to make money. People who are mainly concerned with making money should go elsewhere. People who truly want to heal should be the doctors. The welfare of the patient must come before the profit of the doctor.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday blog carnivals.
Fat Meat, Lean Meat
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Grassfed picanha with a nutrient-dense fat cap.
We are told to only eat lean meat, and avoid fatty meat. This is part of our culture’s fear of animal fat, due to intensive marketing of this view. The mistaken belief that lean meat is healthier has resulted in farm animals being bred to produce lean meat, and many animals are even given drugs to make their meat leaner. Butchers compound the problem by trimming off as much fat as possible.
The result is tough, often tasteless meat, with American factory pork being a great example.
Our ancestors would have been shocked by this preference, as they preferred meat with fat, the fatter the better. Our ancestors believed fatty meat was healthier and tastier, and would add large amounts of fat to meat that was too lean. Some even threw the lean meat to their dogs, while keeping the fatty portions for themselves.
When it comes to grassfed and pastured meats, this is how I see it:
The fatter, the better.
Traditional Animal Fats Contain Vital Nutrients
Contrary to popular belief, traditional animal fats have many vital nutrients that are important for human health and development. This is what our ancestors believed throughout most of history, and their belief has been vindicated by research. See The Skinny on Fats.
Factory Fat Is Different than Traditional Fat
It is important to know that the modern way of raising most meat animals, which is dependent on processed grains and other foods that are unnatural for these animals, changes the very composition of their fat. Grassfed animals, which humans have eaten for most of history, have a perfect balance of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6 fatty acids. Animals fed in modern feedlots and CAFOs have a huge imbalance of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids. See Health Benefits of Grass-fed Products. An oversupply of omega-6 fatty acids has been linked to many illnesses. Other vital nutrients are also much higher in traditionally fed meat.
Paleolithic and Traditional People Ate Animal Fat
While nobody truly knows what Paleolithic people ate, we do know some of what they ate. In fact, every cave dwelling that is believed to have been occupied by Paleolithic people had a pile of bones, which had been cracked open for the marrow. Bone marrow is almost completely fat.
We also know that traditional hunting peoples prized the fat of the animals they killed, and this fact was verified by the extensive on site research of Dr. Weston A. Price. Because the meat of wild animals is often lean, some believe that only lean meat was eaten by Paleolithic peoples. But nearly all wild animals store fat, but it usually located on the back, rather than in the meat. This back fat was often eaten by itself, and mixed with the leaner meat , which was never eaten without animal fat. For example, Pemmican, the famous survival food of the Native Americans who lived on the great plains, was one third bison fat. Organ meats, which are very fatty, were prized by all of these traditional peoples.
Traditional Cuisines Call For Fat, Fat, and More Fat, when Cooking Meat
A review of older cookbooks and histories reveal the fact that meat-eating cultures, such as European cultures, greatly prized animal fat as a food and as a cooking medium. Fatty meat and organ meats were the prized cuts, and meat was always cooked with fat, usually animal fat. Fatty meat was valued in most of the rest of the world, with fatty pork being the most prized meat in traditional Chinese cuisine.
Our ancestors agreed, both in their words and actions, that fatty meat from grassfed and pastured animals is best.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
The Elephant, the Blind Men, and Food Science
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Partial data is misleading.
The United States established national nutrition standards in the early days of World War II. The reason for establishing these standards was simple, yet of great concern. Approximately 15% of potential military recruits were physically unfit for service.
The government correctly determined that the problem was malnutrition. Thus, the national nutrition standards were established, based on scientific research. These standards have been revised several times over the years, based on more scientific research.
American institutions, the medical profession, the nutrition profession, and society in general tried to follow these standards, and many people did.
The result? Today, in 2013, 75% of potential military recruits were physically unfit for service.
In other words, the percentage of recruits unfit for service has risen from 15% to 75%!
Since the purpose was to improve the health of military recruits, the national nutrition standards are a miserable failure, by any measure.
How could this happen?
The Dangers of Partial Information
The problem with food science is that it is based on partial information. There is much about food and how it interacts with the body that has not yet been discovered. Partial knowledge can be very misleading.
The problem was perfectly described in a very old tale from India, one that goes back thousands of years. There are several versions, but this one will do.
Six wise men, who had much knowledge, had never seen an elephant. All of them were blind. They went to examine an elephant to decide what it was. Since they were blind, they had to rely on touch.
One wise man fell against the side of the elephant, and stated that the elephant was like a wall.
The second wise man grasped the tusk of the elephant, and declared the elephant was like a spear.
The third wise man felt the squirming trunk of the elephant, and declared that the elephant was like a snake.
The fourth wise man felt one of the legs of the elephant, and stated the elephant was like a tree.
The fifth wise man touched the ear of the elephant, and declared that the elephant was like a fan.
The sixth wise man touched the tail of the elephant, and declared that the elephant was like a rope.
All of their conclusions were reasonable, based on the data they had, and all of them were wrong.
Before one can determine the truth of something, one must be able to perceive the whole of it.
Food science has never had more than partial information on food, nutrition, and digestion, and has come up with conclusions that are often wrong, because the data is partial.
An Example of How Partial Knowledge Leads to Serious Errors
Back in the mid-twentieth century, food scientists reached a consensus that saturated fat was bad for health, and unsaturated fat was good. Since most saturated fat came from animal sources, and most unsaturated fat came from vegetable sources, the scientists claimed that vegetable oils should be used instead of animal fats. This recommendation was adopted by the authorities and institutions, and most people adopted it as well.
But these scientists did not know of the existence of omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6 fatty acids. We now know that these acids must be in a particular ratio, one that occurs naturally in the fat of wild fish and grassfed animals. There is much scientific evidence that an oversupply of omega-6 fatty acids is very bad for the body, causing inflammation, and contributing to inflammatory diseases like heart disease, cancer, and many others. More omega-3 fatty acids are found in saturated fat, while unsaturated fat is made up mainly of omega-6 fatty acids. Most vegetable oils have far too many omega-6 fatty acids, and are out of balance.
The scientists who recommended vegetable oil over animal fats did not even know that omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids existed, let alone how crucial the balance was. This is very much like the blind wise men and the elephant.
The harm that was created by this partial knowledge is immense, as there is no telling how many millions of people got serious inflammatory illnesses because they followed this bad research. We do know that the occurrence of these diseases has increased enormously over time.
For example, 3000 people died from heart attacks in the U.S. in 1930. But, in 2004, 876,000 people died from heart attacks in the U.S.
The Wisdom of the Ancestors—the Research of Dr. Price
I am not condemning valid, unbiased, well conducted scientific research. It can be invaluable. There is no doubt, though, at this time, scientific knowledge of food and its interaction with the body is only partial, and cannot be relied on in all areas.
But we have an alternative. Our ancestors (especially those peoples who were healthy) had cuisines and food combinations based on thousands of years of experience, passed down over the centuries from father to son, from mother to daughter. I try to eat according to these traditions, and to eat unmodified foods that were similar to what they ate. I have had great success, and so have most of the people I know who follow this path. Dr. Weston A. Price showed the way, with his study of traditional peoples who were free from tooth decay and modern disease, and we can follow his path.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
The Butchers Tale, or Is Real Food Worth It?
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Cuts of grass fed meat.
I ran into one of my favorite butchers yesterday. He was trained the old way, when butchering was an art. He knows a lot about all kinds of meat. He can cut steaks and roasts that are so beautiful that they are like a fine painting.
He had just finished reading Tender Grassfed Barbecue. He said that he agreed with everything I wrote about nutrition. He could see it in the meat, over the many years he was a butcher. He had wondered for a long time why grain-finished meat looked so different, and was so full of blocky streaks of fat, rather than the fine marbling he looked for in a superior piece of meat. He said that he believed that most conventional foods were not that nutritious. And then he let out a shocker.
“I am still going to eat the conventional food. I know the grassfed meat and real food is much better for me, but it is too much trouble to change. It would just be too much work. And the better food is too expensive.”
I have heard words like these from so many people. It is too hard, too much trouble, and too expensive, to make the switch to real food.
Having reached the point where we eat nothing but real food and grassfed meat, I can tell you this:
- It is very hard to make the switch.
- It is a lot of trouble.
- It is more expensive.
And, many people will think you are nuts.
Is it worth it?
Absolutely. The blessings of good health and mental clarity that I have received from changing my diet are worth all the trouble, expense, and even being made fun of or being thought of as a nut. It has been like being reborn.
Health Is Much Better than Convenience
Many years ago, when I was twenty, my Dad asked me if I ever felt good when I woke up in the morning, full of energy, eager for the challenges and pleasures of the day. I honestly told him that I never did. I did not even know what he was talking about. When I woke up, I was discouraged, annoyed, short of breath, and in pain.
I thought I was eating a good diet, because the FDA inspected all food, and would not allow any food that was not good to be sold. I ate only conventional foods sold by big supermarkets, because they were cheaper, and “just as good.”
I thought I was well nourished, because I was big and looked powerful. And because I followed my doctor’s advice on what to eat.
I thought I was getting the best medical care in the world.
So why was I so sick, exhausted, and miserable?
I am convinced I was suffering from severe malnutrition, like most Americans. And I did not even know it.
Because it is easy to find, buy, and use conventional food, I had convenience. But I did not have health.
Making the Change
Eventually, things deteriorated to the point where the medical profession had no help to give me, and told me so. Rather than give up and die as predicted, I got furious. I got determined. I used my skills as a research attorney to find another way.
What I found was the website of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and the priceless information on their website enabled me not only to save my life, but become healthy for the very first time as an adult.
I knew I had to switch to real food. It was difficult. I had to drop most of the food items I used to buy. I thought I loved many of them, though in reality, I was addicted. I had to learn a whole new way of cooking. And we spent much more money on food than we were used to. And I had to deal with the fact that some of the foods I needed could not be bought, only made. Making homemade broth, especially skimming it, and straining it, seemed so hard. Learning how to cook grassfed meat was hard, especially when I kept ruining it and there was nothing I could find that taught me how to cook it. I wrote Tender Grassfed Meat to make it easier for others to learn how to cook this wonderful meat. Making my own fermented foods was hard, at first. And I really missed the factory foods I was addicted to.
But once I learned how to make broth, cook grassfed meat, and make fermented foods, it became familiar and easy. Still time consuming, but easy.
I learned how to find and buy real food, which became fun. And the extra expense became easier to accept, as we adjusted our spending priorities, realizing that nothing we can buy is as important as the good food that keeps us healthy. We also learned how to find sales and bargains, which really helped.
The addiction to the factory foods began to fade, as we ate much better real food alternatives.
Many of our family members, friends, and acquaintances thought we were too picky. Some got offended when I would not eat the conventional food they liked.
The convincing argument, the one that convinced me that real food was worth all the time, expense, and trouble, is this—I became much healthier. When properly nourished, the natural functions of my body kept me healthy, without any drugs. My mind became much sharper, and the occasional short term memory problems disappeared. The quality of my life became so much better, in every way.
Now I wake up each morning eager for the challenges and pleasures of the day, full of energy, and so happy to be here. I finally understand what my Dad was talking about, so many years ago.
This post is part of Fat Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
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