Can we eat meat in an ecological and economic crisis? Yes.
October 9, 2012
Tags: radical homemaking, grassfed cooking, grassfed meat, sustainable agriculture, Tuesday Post

Thirty-plus years as grassfed meat farmers has taught my family to anticipate unpredictability. One minute we’re in floods. The next, drought. One minute livestock farmers are accused of being cruel animal abusers. The next, we’re saints. One minute our product is considered unhealthy. The next, it’s the best possible medicine for the body.

Lately, the debate framing whether or not to keep meat in the American diet has taken a different turn. Concerns about ecological sustainability have many experts proponing that Americans should be dramatically reducing their meat consumption. Even the grassfed products. (I happen to think these claims are made on misguided information. You can read an excerpt from my newest book which delves into this here). Concern about the economic crunch has many Americans willing to play along. A steak or a burger on the plate every night isn’t as affordable as it once seemed.

What raises my ire in our national discussion about meat is the black and white nature of the debate: we should be eating meat, we shouldn’t be eating meat. If there is a gray area, then it is merely “we should be eating less meat.”

As a farmer who has spent the last several years working in a cutting room, watching meat waste pile up on the compost heap, a mother who must prepare meals in a family coping with type-1 diabetes where insulin costs several hundred dollars a month, and a family financial manager who needs to stretch the income as far as possible, I would argue that this country has lost its way in the meat debate. Sure, grassfed and local is better. That helps. But if our aim as a country is to move toward a sustainable food system that can nourish our local communities while ensuring a fair wage for the farmers and an affordable diet for all our neighbors, then we need to think beyond if we should be eating meat. We need to ask how we’re doing it. Our current practices of assuming that a“meat-based diet” is a 3-4 ounce portion of boneless protein on the plate every night is highly problematic. I don’t think sustainable grass-based farmers could generate enough food to satisfy that level of consumption; and if we were fairly compensated for our labors, I don’t think many ordinary Americans could afford it. But we can still have a “meat-based” diet. We simply have to change how we’re doing it.

Make full use of what is there. Six years ago, my family built an on-farm cutting facility so we could process our own meats. I was awarded the job of overseeing cut fabrication. My pride in having an ecologically sustainable farm was shattered when I observed that 20-30% of every animal that moves through our cutting room goes to waste, because our customers will not make use of the bones and the fat. Piles of bone and suet were sent to the compost heap, to the delight of the local coyotes, because we could only manage to sell chops and roasts. But animal fats, when rendered, are cheaper than butter and olive oil, and perform better in the kitchen for frying, sautéing and baking. They are far superior to the loathsome hydrogenated oils associated with heart disease. Bones, boiled into broth, are less expensive than canned broth or wine for braising, taste great as a filling warm beverage for breakfast or as a snack or light meal, and can form the base of an infinite number of inexpensive stews, soups and casseroles.

Increase the nutrient density of our food. The prevailing habit in this county, when eating on the cheap, is to select foods that are inexpensive that we can use to fill our plates. Rice. Pasta. Legumes. Potatoes. Grains. In our family, we certainly enjoy our carbs, but one of us has type-1 diabetes and carries around a glucometer and insulin pen at all times. We see the numbers every time we eat. Rice, pasta, legumes, potatoes and grains make a serious demand for insulin. And if you can’t make it yourself, insulin is pretty costly to buy. These high carb foods are cheap on the grocery store shelf, but they can certainly drive up the pharmaceutical bills (which is what appears to be happening with our nation’s type II diabetes epidemic).

Instead of “eating cheap” by using cheap foods, our family eats cheap by increasing the nutrient density of our meals. And the key to increasing the nutrient density lies in those lovely under-utilized resources I mentioned above: the bones and the fat (organ meats are good, too, although there are less of them). The animal fats are more satiating, and they are sources of the fat-soluble vitamins, which enable our bodies to make more effective use of the minerals we ingest. Bone broth is high in proteinaceous gelatin, minerals and electrolytes. This makes it an especially healing food with hydrophilic colloids that attract your stomach’s digestive juices to the surface of cooked food particles, aiding in digestion. The gelatin in the broth also helps the body make more efficient use of protein. Thus, if you can’t afford to buy a lot of meat, broth helps to maximize the nutritional benefit of any protein you can get. By using these ingredients to increase the nutritional density of our foods, our bodies are satisfied on less. We are able to go a long way on less food. That keeps our food prices down, our pharmaceutical prices down, and it helps to make sure that the existing local food resources can be stretched to accommodate a whole lot more people.

Re-use the food, recycle the nutrients. Those little bits of hamburger left on my daughters’ plates taste great when added to broth with some vegetables for a soup. The tiny amount of leftover chicken will be just the right amount when added to a frittata. The leftover veggies can either be added to soup or added to the broth pot, along with the carrot tops, kale ribs, and onion skins that can be saved up from a week’s worth of cooking.

Food waste is more than just a carbon emissions and a landfill problem. It is an economic problem as too many families discard valuable nutrients, then repeatedly spend money on fresh ingredients. By sending food to a landfill and failing to compost whatever scraps remain, we also fail to replenish our soils. When our soils are nutritionally deficient, so is our food. When our food is nutritionally deficient, we aren’t sated, our food costs go up, and our health care costs go up. Whatever is left on the plate after a meal should go toward another meal. If it cannot be re-used, it needs to be turned back into soil.

A meat-based diet is possible in times of ecological and economic crisis. But it is not the same meat-based diet that our conventional culture has grown accustomed to. It is one that our grandparents might have been more familiar with, anchored in frugality, health, resourcefulness, and an abundance of flavor. And with it, we will grow stronger and healthier children, lead vibrant lives, nourish our farms and communities, and live deliciously.

The information for this story was taken from Shannon Hayes’ newly released cookbook: Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously. Hayes works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in upstate New York, hosts grassfedcooking.com, blogs for Yes! Magazine and at ShannonHayes.info, and is the author of three other books, including the controversial best-seller, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture.
Comments
October 9, 2012 9:44 AM EDT
I have noticed that many young wives and moms are feeling the need to go back to this but have not been raised themselves living in this manner. Being a wife and a mother to 6 children and the budget coordinator for our household creating recipes for nutrient dense foods is a must. We have always had beef and chicken in the freezer which we raises ourselves but having a large family we still had to stretch it to make it last. Soups and stews have always been one of our favorite ways. My boys have been known to eat leftover stew or soup for breakfast many times because they realized that would keep them full and satisfied for a long time. The boys were and are weight lifters and football players and knew the value of optimum nutrition. Boiled eggs kept in the fridge are a much better snack than a cookie but so many young people today do not give it a thought. Education is the only way people are going to become aware of this and that is the dilemma.
How do we get that message out to so many who could benefit from this way of cooking and eating. This is my winter project!
– Tamara Fehr
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