Because I was trying to cook so much at home to save money and it was summer, I spent a lot of time at the local farmer's market - only 2 blocks away from our new apartment. We ate a lot of salads and I spent quite a bit of time blanching vegetables and packing them into our new deep freezer. I was already starting to come to the local organic thing on my own but what really hooked me on eating all local and organic was the documentary Food, Inc.
Food, Inc had been on my netflix playlist for a while and I finally talked James into watching it one night. We sat on our couch for the next hour and a half, horrified. I had expected it to be a hippyish overly liberal documentary that I could take with a grain of salt and take what information from it I thought was valid for my life. Boy was I wrong! The documentary was very intelligently done with great expert commentary; it didn't focus on the humane treatment of animals so much as how the industrial food system has sucked all the nutrients out of the food we eat and replaced them with poisonous substances. Corn-fed cows at industrial feed lots are fed corn to fatten them up - that's great for the meat sellers who can get more money for a heavier cow, horrible for the people eating the high in Omega-6's meat which can now possibly be contaminated with a deadly anti-biotic resistant strain of E-coli.
Cow's were never meant to eat corn, their stomachs were not made to process it. Eventually the stomach's lining starts to disintegrate and the cow becomes sick and dies. Industrial cow farmers have figured out that a cow can only survive for 160 days on corn before they become too ill. This is exactly how long they are "fattened up" on a CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation). Not only can they not digest the corn, it sits in their stomach and develops anti-biotic resistant E-coli, which all animals have in their digestive system, but this is a mutant form and it is deadly to humans. Some of that E-coli gets expelled in the cows waste - waste that was once used as a wonderful fertilizer but now has to be stored in huge pits on the CAFO because it is now toxic. Remember that big spinach E-coli outbreak? Some of this toxic waste runs off into our water supply, water that is used to grow our plants.
This was just one jarring reality that my husband and I learned about on Food, Inc. The next day we found a grass-fed beef coop near our house and I ordered enough beef to feed James and I for the next several months. Never again will we eat corn-fed beef by choice. Grass-fed beef has great amounts of omega-3s and other healthful nutrients that actually help your body. The old cliche "you are what you eat" should now be "you are what the food you eat, eats." Yes, grass-fed beef is more expensive, for 30 pounds of meat including 20 steaks, 3 tied roasts, a brisket and 10 pounds of ground beef it was around 250 dollars. I think it's money well spent if it means we spend less time and money at the doctor down the road, not to mention it tastes delicious!
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