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Is Red Meat – Or FAKE Meat – Killing Us?
Harvard Medical School found that 1 in 10 premature deaths is caused by eating red meat:
Small quantities of processed meat such as bacon, sausages or salami can increase the likelihood of dying by a fifth, researchers from Harvard School of Medicine found. Eating steak increases the risk of dying by 12%.
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Red meat often contains high amounts of saturated fat, while bacon and salami contain large amounts of salt. Replacing red meat with poultry, fish or vegetables, whole grains and other healthy foods cut the risk of dying by up to one fifth, the study found.
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The study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine followed more than 100,000 people for around 28 years asking them periodically about their diet and lifestyle.
It was found that for every serving of red meat – equivalent to 3 ounces (85 grams) – eaten each day there was an 18 per cent increased risk of dying from heart disease and a 10 per cent increased risk of dying from cancer.
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“The research itself seems solid and is based on two large scale cohort studies monitored over a long period of time.”
Other studies have also found that eating too much meat causes cancer and other health problems.
But how much of the problem isn’t red meat … but the fact that what we’re eating isn’t what our grandparents wouldn’t even recognize as meat at all?
For all of human history – until the last couple of decades – people ate beef from cows (or buffalo or bison) which grazed on grass. The cows were usually strong and healthy. Their meat was lean, with very little saturated fat, as the critters ate well and got outdoor exercise. Their meat was high in good Omega 3 fats. See this and this, and humans evolved to consume a lot of Omega 3 fatty acids in the wild game and fish which they ate (more).
Today, on the other hand, beef is laden with saturated fat and almost entirely lacking healthy fats like Omega 3s, because the cows are force-fed food which makes them sick. Specifically, instead of their natural menu - grass - they are force-fed corn, which makes them sick. Because their diet makes them ill, they are given massive amounts of antibiotics. Even with the antibiotics, the diet and living conditions would kill them pretty quickly if they aren't slaughtered.
They are also given estrogen to fatten them up. And they are fed parts of other animals, which can give them mad cow disease.
Well-known food writer (and meat-lover) Michael Pollan gave a must-read account of modern beef practices in the New York Times in 2002:
Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet, and the modern meat industry has devoted itself to shortening a beef calf’s allotted time on earth. ”In my grandfather’s day, steers were 4 or 5 years old at slaughter” …. now we get there at 14 to 16 months.” Fast food indeed. What gets a beef calf from 80 to 1,200 pounds in 14 months are enormous quantities of corn, protein supplements — and drugs, including growth hormones.
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Calves have no need of regular medication while on grass, but as soon as they’re placed in the backgrounding pen, they’re apt to get sick. Why? The stress of weaning is a factor, but the main culprit is the feed. The shift to a ”hot ration” of grain can so disturb the cow’s digestive process — its rumen, in particular — that it can kill the animal if not managed carefully and accompanied by antibiotics.
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Growing the vast quantities of corn used to feed livestock in this country takes vast quantities of chemical fertilizer, which in turn takes vast quantities of oil — 1.2 gallons for every bushel. So the modern feedlot is really a city floating on a sea of oil.
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Tanker trucks back up to silo-shaped tanks, into which they pump thousands of gallons of liquefied fat and protein supplement. In a shed attached to the mill sit vats of liquid vitamins and synthetic estrogen; next to these are pallets stacked with 50-pound sacks of Rumensin and tylosin, another antibiotic.
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Corn is a mainstay of livestock diets because there is no other feed quite as cheap or plentiful: thanks to federal subsidies and ever-growing surpluses, the price of corn ($2.25 a bushel) is 50 cents less than the cost of growing it. The rise of the modern factory farm is a direct result of these surpluses, which soared in the years following World War II, when petrochemical fertilizers came into widespread use. Ever since, the U.S.D.A.’s policy has been to help farmers dispose of surplus corn by passing as much of it as possible through the digestive tracts of food animals, converting it into protein. Compared with grass or hay, corn is a compact and portable foodstuff, making it possible to feed tens of thousands of animals on small plots of land. Without cheap corn, the modern urbanization of livestock would probably never have occurred.
We have come to think of ”cornfed” as some kind of old-fashioned virtue; we shouldn’t. Granted, a cornfed cow develops well-marbled flesh, giving it a taste and texture American consumers have learned to like. Yet this meat is demonstrably less healthy to eat, since it contains more saturated fat. A recent study in The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that the meat of grass-fed livestock not only had substantially less fat than grain-fed meat but that the type of fats found in grass-fed meat were much healthier. (Grass-fed meat has more omega 3 fatty acids and fewer omega 6, which is believed to promote heart disease; it also contains betacarotine and CLA, another ”good” fat.) A growing body of research suggests that many of the health problems associated with eating beef are really problems with cornfed beef. In the same way ruminants have not evolved to eat grain, humans may not be well adapted to eating grain-fed animals. Yet the U.S.D.A.’s grading system continues to reward marbling — that is, intermuscular fat — and thus the feeding of corn to cows.
The economic logic behind corn is unassailable, and on a factory farm, there is no other kind. Calories are calories, and corn is the cheapest, most convenient source of calories. Of course the identical industrial logic — protein is protein — led to the feeding of rendered cow parts back to cows, a practice the F.D.A. banned in 1997 after scientists realized it was spreading mad-cow disease.
Make that mostly banned. The F.D.A.’s rules against feeding ruminant protein to ruminants make exceptions for ”blood products” (even though they contain protein) and fat. Indeed, my steer has probably dined on beef tallow recycled from the very slaughterhouse he’s heading to in June. ”Fat is fat,” the feedlot manager shrugged when I raised an eyebrow.
F.D.A. rules still permit feedlots to feed nonruminant animal protein to cows. (Feather meal is an accepted cattle feed, as are pig and fish protein and chicken manure.) Some public-health advocates worry that since the bovine meat and bone meal that cows used to eat is now being fed to chickens, pigs and fish, infectious prions could find their way back into cattle when they eat the protein of the animals that have been eating them. To close this biological loophole, the F.D.A. is now considering tightening its feed rules.
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”When we buy supplement, the supplier says it’s 40 percent protein, but they don’t specify beyond that.” When I called the supplier, it wouldn’t divulge all its ”proprietary ingredients” but promised that animal parts weren’t among them. Protein is pretty much still protein.
Compared with ground-up cow bones, corn seems positively wholesome. Yet it wreaks considerable havoc on bovine digestion. During my day at Poky, I spent an hour or two driving around the yard with Dr. Mel Metzen, the staff veterinarian. Metzen, a 1997 graduate of Kansas State’s vet school, oversees a team of eight cowboys who spend their days riding the yard, spotting sick cows and bringing them in for treatment. A great many of their health problems can be traced to their diet. ”They’re made to eat forage,” Metzen said, ”and we’re making them eat grain.”
Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal’s lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal’s esophagus), the cow suffocates.
A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike that in our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.
Cows rarely live on feedlot diets for more than six months, which might be about as much as their digestive systems can tolerate. ”I don’t know how long you could feed this ration before you’d see problems,” Metzen said; another vet said that a sustained feedlot diet would eventually ”blow out their livers” and kill them. As the acids eat away at the rumen wall, bacteria enter the bloodstream and collect in the liver. More than 13 percent of feedlot cattle are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers.
What keeps a feedlot animal healthy — or healthy enough — are antibiotics. Rumensin inhibits gas production in the rumen, helping to prevent bloat; tylosin reduces the incidence of liver infection. Most of the antibiotics sold in America end up in animal feed — a practice that, it is now generally acknowledged, leads directly to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant ”superbugs.” In the debate over the use of antibiotics in agriculture, a distinction is usually made between clinical and nonclinical uses. Public-health advocates don’t object to treating sick animals with antibiotics; they just don’t want to see the drugs lose their efficacy because factory farms are feeding them to healthy animals to promote growth. But the use of antibiotics in feedlot cattle confounds this distinction. Here the drugs are plainly being used to treat sick animals, yet the animals probably wouldn’t be sick if not for what we feed them.
I asked Metzen what would happen if antibiotics were banned from cattle feed. ”We just couldn’t feed them as hard,” he said. ”Or we’d have a higher death loss.” (Less than 3 percent of cattle die on the feedlot.) The price of beef would rise, he said, since the whole system would have to slow down.
”Hell, if you gave them lots of grass and space,” he concluded dryly, ”I wouldn’t have a job.”
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I stopped by the shed where recent arrivals receive their hormone implants. The calves are funneled into a chute, herded along by a ranch hand wielding an electric prod, then clutched in a restrainer just long enough for another hand to inject a slow-release pellet of Revlar, a synthetic estrogen, in the back of the ear. [This] is virtually a universal practice in the cattle industry in the United States. (It has been banned in the European Union.)
American regulators permit hormone implants on the grounds that no risk to human health has been proved, even though measurable hormone residues do turn up in the meat we eat. These contribute to the buildup of estrogenic compounds in the environment, which some scientists believe may explain falling sperm counts and premature maturation in girls. Recent studies have also found elevated levels of synthetic growth hormones in feedlot wastes; these persistent chemicals eventually wind up in the waterways downstream of feedlots, where scientists have found fish exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics.
The F.D.A. is opening an inquiry into the problem, but for now, implanting hormones in beef cattle is legal and financially irresistible: an implant costs $1.50 and adds between 40 and 50 pounds to the weight of a steer at slaughter, for a return of at least $25.
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The unnaturally rich diet of corn that has compromised [the cow's] health is fattening his flesh in a way that in turn may compromise the health of the humans who will eat him. The antibiotics he’s consuming with his corn were at that very moment selecting, in his gut and wherever else in the environment they wind up, for bacteria that could someday infect us and resist the drugs we depend on. We inhabit the same microbial ecosystem as the animals we eat, and whatever happens to it also happens to us.
I thought about the deep pile of manure that [the cows] and I were standing in. We don’t know much about the hormones in it — where they will end up or what they might do once they get there — but we do know something about the bacteria. One particularly lethal bug most probably resided in the manure beneath my feet. Escherichia coli 0157 is a relatively new strain of a common intestinal bacteria (it was first isolated in the 1980′s) that is common in feedlot cattle, more than half of whom carry it in their guts. Ingesting as few as 10 of these microbes can cause a fatal infection.
Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way into our food get killed off by the acids in our stomachs, since they originally adapted to live in a neutral-pH environment. But the digestive tract of the modern feedlot cow is closer in acidity to our own, and in this new, manmade environment acid-resistant strains of E. coli have developed that can survive our stomach acids — and go on to kill us. By acidifying a cow’s gut with corn, we have broken down one of our food chain’s barriers to infection. Yet this process can be reversed: James Russell, a U.S.D.A. microbiologist, has discovered that switching a cow’s diet from corn to hay in the final days before slaughter reduces the population of E. coli 0157 in its manure by as much as 70 percent. Such a change, however, is considered wildly impractical by the cattle industry.
So much comes back to corn, this cheap feed that turns out in so many ways to be not cheap at all. While I stood in [the] pen, a dump truck pulled up alongside the feed bunk and released a golden stream of feed. The animals stepped up to the bunk for their lunch. The $1.60 a day I’m paying for three giant meals is a bargain only by the narrowest of calculations. It doesn’t take into account, for example, the cost to the public health of antibiotic resistance or food poisoning by E. coli or all the environmental costs associated with industrial corn.
For if you follow the corn from this bunk back to the fields where it grows, you will find an 80-million-acre monoculture that consumes more chemical herbicide and fertilizer than any other crop. Keep going and you can trace the nitrogen runoff from that crop all the way down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where it has created (if that is the right word) a 12,000-square-mile ”dead zone.”
But you can go farther still, and follow the fertilizer needed to grow that corn all the way to the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. [The cow] started life as part of a food chain that derived all its energy from the sun; now that corn constitutes such an important link in his food chain, he is the product of an industrial system powered by fossil fuel. (And in turn, defended by the military — another uncounted cost of ”cheap” food.) I asked David Pimentel, a Cornell ecologist who specializes in agriculture and energy, if it might be possible to calculate precisely how much oil it will take to grow my steer to slaughter weight…. roughly 284 gallons of oil. We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf, transforming what was once a solar-powered ruminant into the very last thing we need: another fossil-fuel machine.
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Much of what happens next — the de-hiding of the animal, the tying off of its rectum before evisceration — is designed to keep the animal’s feces from coming into contact with its meat. This is by no means easy to do, not when the animals enter the kill floor smeared with manure and 390 of them are eviscerated every hour. (Partly for this reason, European plants operate at much slower line speeds.) But since that manure is apt to contain lethal pathogens like E. coli 0157, and since the process of grinding together hamburger from hundreds of different carcasses can easily spread those pathogens across millions of burgers, packing plants now spend millions on ”food safety” — which is to say, on the problem of manure in meat.
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It’s accepted that the animals will enter the kill floor caked with feedlot manure that has been rendered lethal by the feedlot diet. Rather than try to alter that diet or keep the animals from living in their waste or slow the line speed — all changes regarded as impractical — the industry focuses on disinfecting the manure that will inevitably find its way into the meat. This is the purpose of irradiation (which the industry prefers to call ”cold pasteurization”). It is also the reason that carcasses pass through a hot steam cabinet and get sprayed with an antimicrobial solution before being hung in the cooler at the National Beef plant.
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I discovered that grass-fed meat is more expensive than supermarket beef. Whatever else you can say about industrial beef, it is remarkably cheap, and any argument for changing the system runs smack into the industry’s populist arguments. Put the animals back on grass, it is said, and prices will soar; it takes too long to raise beef on grass, and there’s not enough grass to raise them on, since the Western range lands aren’t big enough to sustain America’s 100 million head of cattle. And besides, Americans have learned to love cornfed beef. Feedlot meat is also more consistent in both taste and supply and can be harvested 12 months a year. (Grass-fed cattle tend to be harvested in the fall, since they stop gaining weight over the winter, when the grasses go dormant.)
All of this is true. The economic logic behind the feedlot system is hard to refute. And yet so is the ecological logic behind a ruminant grazing on grass. Think what would happen if we restored a portion of the Corn Belt to the tall grass prairie it once was and grazed cattle on it. No more petrochemical fertilizer, no more herbicide, no more nitrogen runoff. Yes, beef would probably be more expensive than it is now, but would that necessarily be a bad thing? Eating beef every day might not be such a smart idea anyway — for our health, for the environment. And how cheap, really, is cheap feedlot beef? Not cheap at all, when you add in the invisible costs: of antibiotic resistance, environmental degradation, heart disease, E. coli poisoning, corn subsidies, imported oil and so on. All these are costs that grass-fed beef does not incur.
In addition to antibiotics and estrogen, industrial meat operators feed other chemicals to the animals shortly before slaughter … which end up in our bodies.
As Alternet reported in 2010 that chemicals which can cause severe adverse health effects, and which have been banned in China and 159 other nations, are added to the feed of cattle, pigs and turkeys shortly before slaughter – and a lot of the chemicals are contained in the meat we eat:
The FDA approved a livestock drug banned in 160 nations and responsible for hyperactivity, muscle breakdown and 10 percent mortality in pigs, according to angry farmers who phoned the manufacturer.
The beta agonist ractopamine, a repartitioning agent that increases protein synthesis, was recruited for livestock use when researchers found the drug, used in asthma, made mice more muscular says Beef magazine.
But unlike the growth promoting antibiotics and hormones used in livestock which are withdrawn as the animal nears slaughter, ractopamine is started as the animal nears slaughter.
As much as twenty percent of Paylean, given to pigs for their last 28 days, Optaflexx, given to cattle their last 28 to 42 days and Tomax, given to turkeys their last 7 to 14 days, remains in consumer meat says author and well known veterinarian Michael W. Fox.
Though banned in Europe, Taiwan and China–more than 1,700 people were “poisoned” from eating Paylean-fed pigs since 1998 says the Sichuan Pork Trade Chamber of Commerce– ractopamine is used in 45 percent of US pigs and 30 percent of ration-fed cattle says Elanco Animal Health which manufactures all three products.
How does a drug marked, “Not for use in humans. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask” become “safe” in human food? With no washout period?
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In fact, in 2002, three years after Paylean’s approval, the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine’s Office of Surveillance and Compliance accused Elanco of withholding information about “safety and effectiveness” and “adverse animal drug experiences” upon which ractopamine was approved, in a 14-page warning letter.
“Our representatives requested a complete and accurate list of all your GLP [Good Laboratory Practices] studies involving Paylean® (Ractopamine hydrochloride), including their current status as well as the names of the respective study monitors. In response, your firm supplied to our representatives multiple lists which differed in the names of the studies and their status. In addition, your firm could not locate or identify documents pertaining to some of the studies. This situation was somewhat confusing and created unneeded delays for our representatives,” wrote Gloria J. Dunnavan, Director Division of Compliance.
Where was mention of the farmer phone calls to Elanco reporting, “hyperactivity,” “dying animals,” “downer pigs” and “tying up” and “stress” syndromes, asks the FDA letter. Where was the log of phone calls that included farmers saying, “animals are down and shaking,” and “pig vomiting after eating feed with Paylean”?
But, not to worry. Despite ractopamine’s dangers and the falsified approval documents, the FDA approved ractopamine the following year for cattle–and last year for turkeys.
According to Temple Grandin, Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, the “indiscriminant use of Paylean (ractopamine) has contributed to an increase in downer non-ambulatory pigs,” and pigs that “are extremely difficult to move and drive.” In Holsteins, ractopamine is known for causing hoof problems, says Grandin and feedlot managers report the “outer shell of the hoof fell off” on a related beta agonist drug, zilpateral.
A[n] article in the 2003 Journal of Animal Science confirms that “ractopamine does affect the behavior, heart rate and catecholamine profile of finishing pigs and making them more difficult to handle and potentially more susceptible to handling and transport stress.”
Nor can we overlook the effects of “adding these drugs to waterways or well water supplies–via contaminated animal feed and manure runoff– when this class of drugs is so important in treating children with asthma,” says David Wallinga, MD of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
The FDA’s approval of a drug for food that requires impervious gloves and a mask just to handle is reminiscent of the bovine growth hormone debacle.
Like rBST, ractopamine increases profits despite greater livestock death and disability because a treated animal does the work of two in a macabre version of economies of scale.
Like rBST, food consumers are metabolic, neurological and carcinogen guinea pigs so that agribusiness can make a profit.
As can be seen from the discussion above, our grandparents would not recognize what we’re eating today as meat. (And – on top of that – there are all of the meat additives.)
And yet the government is so protective of the current model of industrial farming that private citizens such as ranchers and meat packers are prohibited from testing for mad cow disease, and even investigating factory farming may get one labeled as a terrorist, even though a paper in the American Society of Microbiology’s newsletter mBio shows that overuse of antibiotics by factory farmers creates “superbugs”.
Healthier Alternatives
If you’re going to eat red meat, make it grass fed beef.
Cows fed grass don’t require massive amounts of antibiotics … the cows stay healthier because they’re eating the food they were designed for. The meat is much lower in saturated fats and higher in good Omega 3 fats (which makes you and your kids smarter). In addition, if they are fed grass, they are much less likely to get mad cow disease.
Grass fed cows also use much less oil – which goes into the industrial fertilizer, pesticides and other parts of growing corn and mixing industrial chemicals for cattle – and so are better for the environment (and reduce the “need” for foreign oil wars). Indeed, grass not only contributes less carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than corn, but may actually be a “carbon sink” for greenhouse gasses – taking more out than they add.
Stores like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods prominently market grass fed beef.
Ranching cooperatives are popping up. I predict they will grow in popularity, as people learn what’s in their meat.
Backyard chickens are also becoming very popular. You can get chickens and buy or build a chicken coop for eggs and chicken meat.
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Good article GW. Thanks for sharing the truth for people.
Public health also takes various actions to limit the health disparities between different areas of the country and, in some cases, the continent or world. One issue is the access of individuals and communities to health care, in terms of financial, geographical or sociocultural constraints in access to and use of services. Thanks.
Regards,
http://www.hcgonlinebuy.com
Clinical practitioners focus mainly on the health of individuals, while public health practitioners consider the overall health of communities and populations. Workplace wellness programs are increasingly adopted by companies for their value in improving the health and well being of their employees, as are school health services to improve the health and well being of children. Thanks.
Regards,
african mango diet
Just buy from a butcher who sells local meat.
Costs a little more, but you're worth it aren't you?
thank you mr. washington for all of your work.....
It's all about where you get your meat from. If you're getting it on grocery store shelves, it likely comes from factory farms which feed their animals the wrong shit and pump them full of chemicals. If you get your meat from the local farmers' market, chances are you're eating meat from animals which were raised in a healthy environment and not pumped full of artificial hormones and the like. But even if you're consuming meat from the local market, it's a good idea to moderate the amount of red meat you consume. Personally, I eat red meat once a week on average. I eat meat 4 or 5 times per week. Every other meal consists of fruits, vegetables, grains and dairy products.
India would probably declare holy war on us if this article went viral over there. Luckily the majority don't have much computer access.
Vedana Shiva has already made great inroads over there. She does great work
I'm over 60 and fat kids were the exception not the rule like today. We ate lots of meat back then. It's really sad what people are eating today.
13 year old girls barely had tits when I was 13. Now the have D cuppers at 13. I'm convinced that the reason is because of all the fucking hormones and crap in the "store" milk and meat they eat.
And it seems kids are ALWAYS sick with something these days. I went to the doctor MAYBE 5-6 times growing up...maybe. Never went to the ER but once, and that was getting sewn up after a car wreck. Parents over protect their kids too much and the antibiotics pumped in the animals they eat fuck up their immune sytems. We played in the dirt all day, drinking lake water and building up natural immunities.
Kids today eat shit/junk food and sit on their asses all day playing games indoors. No surprise to me they grow up stupid, fat, lazy, and physically unhealthy.
I buy all my meat a local butcher shop. Beef there comes from grass fed, free range cattle....not exactly uncommon here in Montana. The Hutterites have the best chicken and eggs. They free range their birds and don't feed them all that crap with hormones and antibiotics.
6'4"/190 and still wear same size jeans I did 40 years ago :)
"Today in the U.S., about 16 percent of girls enter puberty by the age of 7, and about 30 percent by the age of 8. A recent study determined that the number of girls entering puberty (defined by breast development) at these early ages has increased markedly between 1997 and 2010."
"we can estimate that the normal, healthy age at menarche under conditions of excellent nutrition without caloric excess would probably fall somewhere between 15 and 18. But today in the U.S., about half of girls begin developing breasts before age 10, and the average age at menarche is less than 12 ½ and still declining."
Toxic foods, toxic chemicals in the environment and lack of activity are the main causes - it is a health disaster for American children.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-fuhrman-md/girls-early-puberty_b_8571...
this was also confirmed by the China Study referred to above and in some of my earlier posts.
I haven't had time to read this, because I've got to run off and cook all our food to avoid the fake. I will later, but all I gotta say is George, you and I think alike. All the things you write about are the things that I think are the most important. And we even both took revolutionary names.
I have long been saying it is all the fake that is making us sick, not beef.
"Red meat often contains high amounts of saturated fat, while bacon and salami contain large amounts of salt. Replacing red meat with poultry, fish or vegetables, whole grains and other healthy foods cut the risk of dying by up to one fifth, the study found."
Who wrote this? It reads to me like your risk of dying was cut by 1/5? I thought no one got out alive? Am I wrong about that?
Most of the chicken and some of the fish doesn't fair much better in the filling it full of crap before it gets to the table part. God only knows what GMO oats and grains we get.
Soylent Pink!
Any investment opportunities in ranching cooperatives?
Grains are poison bitches!
And the answer is.....Soylent Green !!!!!
Soylent Green- mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
soylent green is long pig!
Look on the bright side...the average American diet will help solve our Social Security problem.
Last time I looked, the risk of death was 100% regardless of what you eat.
So, relax and enjoy that steak .. Both of these actions will ensure your flesh is tender when it comes time for you to be the main course.
That " Pink Funk" is nasty. Ya want to know what is even worse? Huge Chunks of Bernanke hitting the markets @ { HFT} velocities...<>
Factory farming as described above is not only inhumane but a crime against humanity.
I eat meat, though much less than I used to and I've hunted fished, cleaned fileted and butchered. So I'm not a PETA type -- I can accept that we kill to live. But even if that's true, it's another thing to support subjecting animals to an existence of living hell. What is inhumane is a crime against our own humanity.
That being said, the poor have to buy what's cheap, factory farming makes cheaper meat products; but most (in the US anyway) would be better off eating less meat anyway.
George-
Excellent info, thankx.
The article missed two points (or maybe I missed them): The feedcorn is genetically engineered and usually labelled/identified "not fit for human consumption". Thanks Monsanto. Also some of the beef cattle are cloned which raises a whole different set of questions and concerns. Cloned cattle meat is not required to be labelled per USDA.
We have a couple of dozen chickens, the eggs are great. We let them free-range in the PM.
We raise 5-6 rabbits and the meat is excellent.
A couple of years ago we grass fed a couple of bull calves to about 850# dressed-out. Gotta watch those critters when they start to get big as they don't realize their strength. Also, when they get large there's BULLSHIT EVERYWHERE. So much that I would think I was watching CNBC! LOL
The problem is grain not GMO or cloning. The arguments against GMO and Cloning are similar to the French farmers pitchforking the first hot air balloon in fear. A cloned animal is EXACTLY the same genetically as it’s parent. Exactly means that it is exactly like it’s uncloned parent which I’d eat in a heartbeat – if it was grass-fed. And if the cloned critter eats grass it will have the exact same nutrient makeup as the uncloned parent. That’s just a physical fact. The other fact is that cloning is totally impractical at this time and no one does it except labs that like to spend money. 99.9999999999999999% of all meats are not cloned.
As for GMO grasses (the corn plant is a grass BTW) the chemical composition of its green leaves are exactly the same as nonGMO grass grown in the same soil. The plants take their nutrients from the air, the earth, and the sun is the engine. That’s why plants are the only sustainable life forms. The GMO plants operate exactly like the nonGOM plants and grow the same way.
If the mob wants to really fear the proper bad food, it’s grain. Yes, the same grain that 99.99999% of all mothers feed their children and themselves. It makes no difference if it is whole or smashed. Man invented grain farming and created an abundant food that does not match the nutrient needs of animal life. Consequently, the more grain there is in the system the more disease. It’s that simple, but the mob does not read the science which is over 30 years old. It all sources back to the discovery of the Omega-3 fatty acid and the knowledge that our current food system, the way it is today, is deficient in this most important compound.
It All Began in the Sea . . .: http://www.texasgrassfedbeef.com/id58.htm
Cloned Meats: http://www.texasgrassfedbeef.com/id102.htm
Big Nutritional Changes in Recent History: http://www.texasgrassfedbeef.com/id91.htm
"The GMO plants operate exactly like the nonGOM plants"
Absolutlely not. First off, genetically plants are "genetically" different -who would have known? We are only beginning to understand SOME of the consequences of this Frankenstein experiment - probably the worst experiment we've ever unleashed.
We have already seen genetically modified medications wreak deadly havoc (L-Tryptophan), our own FDA wanted to halt aspertame (three decades ago) due to huge concerns but was hushed, genetically modified crops create strange mutations with other plants, demostrate bizzare unforseen weaknesses and on and on and on. This is EXACTLY why the food freaks are working so hard to keep GMOs from being labelled. It would give us compelling data to track reactions. BUT, there have been at least two animal tudies done independently of industry and both raised serious problems. NONE with humans...well except the large one we are all part of
See the documentary The Future of Food (YouTube) for an introduction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsFVAAzyWiY
or check out the work of Jeffery Smith
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4147551008386395793#
or follow what happened to Arpad Pusztai, renowned geneticist when he warned about the risks
http://www.psrast.org/pusztai.htm
The whole time I was reading your post I kept having to remove the grainy black and white images of a doctor lighting up a cigarette and being paid to tell us which brand he liked best. Point being, we have no idea how these genetically modified, pesticide resistant plants are going to effect the delicate natural balance of the Earth's ecosystem let alone how eating these modified organisms are going to affect our own DNA down the line.
It's just common sense, we shouldn't be messing around with the genes of crops and we definitely shouldn't be eating them. Do you realize that one of these plants could create a mutation in any aspect of the growing chain that renders that crop ungrowable forever? Did you know they have released genetically altered mosquitos in Florida, and released a genetically modified organism into the gulf of mexico after the oil spill?
We are talking about the potential extinction through infertility or severe genetic alteration of the human race here. It's not something to be taken lightly, and at the very least isn't a subject where your first statement should be "the problem is grain not GMO or cloning". No one knows what the effects will be.
To end on a positive note, over 1 million people have signed the FDA petition to label GMO foods which is something of an accomplishment considering the general population we are dealing with here. Probably won't mean a damn thing to the FDA but at least people are letting their voice be heard.
Thanx, you made my inferred issues perfectly.
Are you a mindreader? LOL
The pink slop is the stuff that gives red meat flavor, especially when you grill it using BBQ sauce...the charcoal grill + pink juice combines to form the most delicious carcinogens in the world....
An excellent article.
However, it missed why chicken manuer is added to cattle feed. --- They add arsenic to chicken feed and the birds eventually pass most of it. Thus, chicken manuer is a rich source of arsenic.
The reason they add arsenic to chicken feed is that it partially blocks the Kreb's Cycle. That is where most of the ATPs (that is the body's energy currency) are generated. Since, the birds can, then, only partially metabolize their food, they store the surplus as fat and tissue growth. The same effects as force over-feeding them. It results in chickens that grow fast and are plump.
That is why the farmers allowed the banning of growth hormones for chickens. They don't need it, they can be fed arsenic instead.
Arsenic, also, does the same things to cows and us, too. However, they don't feed arsenic directly to cattle nor to humans. They add chicken manuer to cattle feed and sell us cheap brands of chicken, instead.
Incidentally, organic chickens and also Tyson chickens are supposed to be free of arsenic. Other "better" brands may be, too, although, some aren't. Exposure to arsenic will not only tend to make you fat and lethargic but can lead to skin and brain cancer, tachycardia, hypertension, various other maladies and, of course, large doses can be fatal. --- Chicken is an excellent meal for entertaining the inlaws.
Interesting.
This is all part of the misinformation campaign tied to global warming, also aimed at reducing the living standards of first world countries. Beef especially is more costly to produce than say, gruel. Break out the barbi, bitchez. Fuck the NWO paradigm.
Toxic food is killing us - pink slime, spam (double the risk of diabetes), trans fats (maybe 2 to 5 times), high-glycemic corn in everything including chicken nuggets, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, Bovine Growth Hormone - we are in a sea of toxic foods.
The only solution is to avoid processed foods as far as possible and exercise, get some sun, and eat less and preventive medicine. And a glass of dry red wine with your dinner, if you drink. You can start by sparing a couple of minutes to reduce your diabetes and obesity risk:
http://diabetesrisk.net/
You are endangering whole industries with your ideas.
Big Pharma is betting big on the coming wave of these "Civilization Sicknesses". Each Indian or Chinese who is getting fat by eating western junk food while sitting in front of a computer or tv or inside a car is a near guaranteed future client for diabetes test kits and drugs. Diabetes is a very stable revenue supplier. People suffer over decades having to test their blood sugar regularly and have to take medicine. While in most cases as you state correctly regular exercise and better food can avoid or control diabetes for decades.
p.s. I was always wondering were the term "junk food" has its origin. Is this a food of low quality originally served on Chinese junk boats?
There are 26 million diabetics in the US and 80 million have metabolic syndrome or prediabetes. There are 350 million diabetics in the world. And we will add about 30 million this year alone. And more than 1 billion people with prediabetes in the world.
You can easily prevent prediabetes from developing into diabetes.
Diabetes health care and lost productivity (mainly health care) costs about $370 billion a year in the US alone. We can estimate that diabetes costs the world about $1 trillion a year out of a world GDP of about $60 trillion.
Yes, my ideas are endangering a $1 trillion cash cow. But they can make many millions of lives happier and healthier. It was not a choice at all.
The REAL problem with modern red meat is not the meat, but the antibiotics, GMO grain-feeding, pesticides, and hormones in it!
Simple as that!
Quoting Michael Pollen for science is the last thing one should do. And to say he's a real meat eater is wrong. Oh, he'll eat meat (once in awhile) but he's afraid of it just the same and dances around the topic. http://michaelpollan.com/resources/animal-welfare/
For more about him and his ilk see
Food Inc. Review: http://www.texasgrassfedbeef.com/food_inc_review.htm
That article is very unpopular with the anti-food types who glorify in blaming Big Business for producing the wrong foods. Yet they are the ones who actually make the choices about what they eat – not Big Business. lol
when fake red meat doubles in price again will it be twice as bad for us?
hello from an exotic unhappy Eastern European crony-capitalist place. Last week, we had a big buzz in the media - it came out that most of the salt used in meat was not eatable, but industrial (to put on the roads in the winter). At first, everyone thought these bastards who were doing this (for 10+ years, thousands of tonnes) will surely get a life behind bars. Then, some experts said that it's not a big deal.. Probably this just the iceberg. No one cares. You want to eat healthy? Go become a farmer, eat your own stuff or STFU..
guess what they sell that meat here in the usa too the bennies of "free trade" you are free to eat shit or eat shit for free i see that shit at discount stores makes you feel hey european meat im sophisticated today and will buy it plus it's cheap how is this possible?? thank gawd for free trade and profits and unrestrained free "market" capitalism nomnomnomnomnom
what a stupid dead-end-evolutionary-mistake-of-a-species spaiens is truly deserving of extinction, fuck giant asteroids, we do this shit on our own merit: self-extinction, the best way to go, earth, it was good while it lasted, life, it couldve been decent until we hit the 20th century
After peak oil and other resources, industrial society has about 100 years left. Everything will be mined out, and either in land fills or the bottom of the ocean. Massive drop in population to pre-industrial days.
A planet only gets one shot with an intelligent life form. When the resources run out, it's back to a simpler lifestyle.
i tend to agree with olduvai theory but it seems a bit too linear for how these things happen in actuality
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/duncan/olduvaitheorysocialcontract.pdf
anyone eaten a Big Mac and looked at the burgers? ...looks more like re-constituted cardboard with beef flavour!
Burger Kings are twice the size and look like twice as much beef.. but they're fatty as hell
so whenever i can i order my own sausage and burger meat chosen from good cuts with excess fat trimmed off (fat is good for you and very tasty, but not in the volume processed meat sticks in sausages and burgers) made up on the spot by my butchers
it's the only way of quality controlling you are what you eat
Everything is filled with artificial flavors. There was an article on a KFC chicken pot pie, which is made from reconstituted tasteless crap. The flavoring agent is specifically designed to mimic the flavors of chicken pot pie.
I had cut down to one fast food burger per year until recently. I gave a tiny taste of burger king "meat" to my cat. No sause, no ketchup - just plain "meat". He didn't really want it -- not a picky earter, either. He immediately threw it up.
Must'v been full of soy/sawdust or pink slime... who the hell knows. But it won't even sustain a carnivore. NEVER AGAIN. I HAVE LEARNED.
A fruitarian here:)
Here's one about the protein myth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae-dlHOmwk4
Here's some articles about the B12 myth: http://www.naturalnews.com/029531_vitamin_B12_vegan.html
another excellent source is an organic method of fertilization that includes composted animal waste
Nice article GW. It is amazing ow many "modern' practices are being outed as being bad for us. From those you cite to fluoride in drinking water, to the drugs that Big Pharma pedal to us...and so on.
I raise meat goats, Boer goats, and we have elected to not even use recommended vaccinations (CD/T) in an attempt to keep the animals as pure as we can. We do feed some grain rations to pregnant and lactating does, but other than that they are naturally fed.
Another issue... though many cities require it, our dogs and cats DO NOT NEED TO BE REGULARLY JABBED with vaccinations. That is just another contrived recurring source revenue stream for the Pharma's and for your vet. For heart worms meds, you can buy generic (or name brand) stuff off the internet without a vet's Rx...saves a lot of US$.
Do you sell the goat meat? Can we buy?
We currently do not sell meat directly to the public...only live animals. Mostly we sell to a small , errrrr, ummmm, slaughterhouse/meat market. They are highly respectful and as humane as that type place could be. Most of the goat meat in the area goes straight out their door to Hispanics.
Ever try finding goat in a mainstream store? It's almost nonexistant. Most of the world eats goat.