Old Fashioned On Purpose

119. Why We Only Eat Grassfed Beef

May 13, 2020 Jill Winger
Old Fashioned On Purpose
119. Why We Only Eat Grassfed Beef
Show Notes Transcript

Even prior to our current situation, there has been an explosion of interest in local food production.  While we’ve always produced food for our own use, it wasn’t until this year that we chose to start producing for our community.  For our family, grassfed beef was an obvious place to start.  On today’s episode, I begin from the ground up with everything about grassfed beef.  Learn why every calf is typically grass fed but not always grass finished.  Discover the health benefits of grassfed beef, why the government can effect the taste of your food, and why your gut will appreciate grassfed animals.  If you're unsure of what exactly constitutes something as grassfed and what the true benefits are, this episode is sure to open your eyes.


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Links to articles mentioned in the episode:

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speaker 0:   0:00
welcome to the old fashioned on purpose podcast. So there has been an explosion and interest around local food lately, which I think has been a long time coming. I'm actually really, really glad is happening, and I've been watching it all unfold with interest, not only because I love eating good local food, but we also maybe you didn't know this. We became local food producers this year for the first time. Well, let me clarify. We've always grown food for ourselves, but we just started recently offering grass fed beef to the public. And it's a blast. Christian and I have been loving the opportunity to help people eat better and cook better and stock their freezers on a whole new level. But all of that aside, sharing beef and selling beef has prompted a lot of new conversations with folks around us people asking us how we raise the beef, why it's different than your conventional beef, how you cook it and all that good stuff. So in today's episode, we're talking all things grass fed beef. Why we've eaten it exclusively for 10 years, and some of the tips I have for sourcing it yourself. I'm your host, Jill Winger. And this is the podcast for the Trail Blazers, the Mavericks, the makers, the homesteaders, the modern pioneers and the backyard farmers. If you're ready to boost your food security and live a more homegrown lifestyle, well, you have found your tribe a friend. I'm interrupting this episode for just a sec because I know a lot of you are planning on expanding your homestead efforts this year, and you are in need of some supplies because it's more important than ever to be supporting small businesses. I wanted to tell you about one of my favorites. Lehman's hardware. Trust me, if you're listening to this podcast, then I guarantee that Lehman's is pretty much your dream store. They're all about supporting old fashioned people like us, and they carry everything from kitchen supplies to canning equipment to gardening tools and everything in between. I have yet to find in any home studying supply store as comprehensive as they are, and guess what they are offering a special discount on all of their baking supplies just for my listeners use code. JillMay, when you check out to save 10% on anything's is baking category so head on over to theprairiehomestead.com/lehmans l e h m A N s. Check out all they have to offer and take advantage of your now back to the show. I'm gonna break up this topic into two episodes. I think so. This episode is going to be all about the benefits of grass fed beef. Kind of the terminology and the ends announce of it. And then in a future episode, I'll talk a little bit more on how to cook it, because that could be a topic coming in its own right. And I want to get into some of the details of how to make a really good grass fed steak and a really good grass fed roast, and I don't want to rush. So today is all about the benefits and the terminology. We'll get into the cooking in a later date, so let's just start at the ground level here. Grass fed beef is not a new concept. It's been popular for a good number of years, But in case you're new to it, or you're just starting to become aware of maybe the benefits or potentially looking at it, adding it into your diet. We're just going to start from the ground level and work our way up. So, in essence, just the basic definition of grass fed beef would be cows that have been raised on forage or grass. Now, the thing that a lot of folks don't realize if they're not around the farming or ranching world is that pretty much all cattle start out being grass fed. The model that I would say the vast majority of producers follow is the cattle are born on a ranch. They live in the pasture with their mamas for good couple months until it's time for weaning time in the fall and a lot of producers cab in the spring and they win in the fall, so names they flip flop that around. But that's what we do most around here. And then when fall comes, the calves are weaned from mama. They're taken to town and a lot of the times, not all the time. But the producers will sell those calves to someone who will then feed them out, and it that feeding out process that could happen a variety of ways, but kind of traditionally in this commercial world that we're talking about. The calves were taken to some sort of feeding facility like a feedlot, where they're given corn and grain and silage and all these things that help them to grow quickly. So it's really important if you're looking at buying grass fed and you really want grass fed beef that you specify that it's grassed. Grasp finished as well because pretty much everybody's grass fed up to a point, right? So we have been personally eating grass fed beef for about a decade now, and all of that has been home grown. And the thing I like about this and I want to do a whole other episode. Speaking of episodes on how you could raise a steer in your backyard, how you raise a calf in your backyard, providing you, you know, have a decent sized Let me let me retrace that when I say backyard, I mean on a couple acres, right? Maybe not in town, in your neighborhood. Please don't do that and tell the cops that Jill made you do it. But if you have a little bit of land, you can feasibly raise your own beef, and we've done that for many, many years. We started off with our milk cow calves. If we had a bull calf, we would end up putting him in the freezer. That worked out great. And then we kind of graduated into getting beef breeds. We would just raise. We have a mama cow and we would just breed her and use her cabs to stock the freezer every year. And that kind of what we rolled into next. And now we have a rather large for us, not comparatively to some of the big big outfits, but for us. A large herd of beef cattle that were raising for the purpose of selling the beef locally farmed a fork, so we've kind of evolved over the years. But if you're a homesteader with just a little bit of ground, it's very, very feasible for you to raise your own beef animal. Um, whether you butcher butcher it yourself or you take it to a processor, it's I think it's an awesome way to put your grass to good use, right, so I'm a big fan of this idea. But we've been eating grass fed meat for a long time, and I guess I live in a bubble. Sometimes Maybe you can relate to this. I you know, when you hang around like minded people or you're hanging around other homesteaders online, you kind of start to think that everybody gets it or understands what you understand. And that's definitely not the case. So as we've been selling this beef to the public more and it's opened up some great conversations, I'm starting to realize there's a lot of misunderstanding around beef and grass fed beef and how the whole process works. Um, and so what I love to do. And if you followed me for any length of time, I love education because I think that's powerful. And I'm or about helping educate folks and helping people understand the choices they're making, because when we have educated consumers, voting with our dollars is one of the most powerful things. Weaken dio. So I always have that Joel Salatin quote kind of ringing in my ears about we often times I'm butchering a quote, but I'm paraphrasing here. We want to much salvation by legislation, So I'm not saying that I'm always against legislation that's pro local foods, but I think even more so we can make more of an impact by helping others understand what they're buying at the grocery store and how they can make better choices. So that's the goal of this episode, but just a little note before I get any deeper into this. I haven't broached this topic a lot, even though I've been super into grass fed beef for many, many years. I've been pretty careful what I say publicly about it, Um, because we live in a ranching community. We live in a very small community, and most of the folks around us are ranchers who grow cattle, raised cattle in a traditional model. And I'm very protective of them, even though I don't always agree with them on all of the practices. I am pro farmer and I'm pro rancher, and I think what happens sometimes online in different blog's and websites, And I love the healthy food movement. But sometimes there's Miseducation, and there is misunderstandings. And sometimes we have folks who have been educated online, who end up going after the farmers and the ranchers with their pitchforks coming after them, blaming them for the issues with the food system and I'm not saying that's never the case. Sometimes there could be things that absolutely commercial agriculture can do better. But we have to look at when I look at the farmers and ranchers. I know personally, they're not bad people, and I get very, very defensive of them online. When I see Facebook, comment threads where they're like attacking all this farmer, this feeding corn and this farmers dairy cows there in a big dairy facility. And that's wrong and this is wrong and they're greedy. And here's the deal. A lot of these most of all of these farmers are just doing the best they can. And margins in farming and ranching are so small. And when we really break it down, Ah, lot of the things that are done in these commercial herds or commercial operations, whether it's feeding of the grand or feeding the antibiotics or feeding the growth hormones, they're doing that to try to just squeeze a few more sense out of all of their hard work. So, honestly, while I don't agree with all of those things, you're not gonna see me bashing that online because they're doing the best they can. Um, and I guess I'm probably going to ruffle simple feathers with this episode, and that's OK because I still have opinions on this topic. But we all have opinions so you can have your opinion if your corn fed beef producer more power to you. Um, I'm happy to be a grass fed beef producer, and I think there is a market for both areas, but there's definitely reasons we do it the way we do, um, but yeah, anyway, that's my thought on that. So I just will reiterate over and over that a lot of these things that have become commonplace in ag started for a reason. And maybe they aren't optimal now, or some of us are starting to see the downfalls of those methods. But initially they were started with good intention, and that kind of like an example of that would be feeding green. And so when you look at grain fed cattle, it's It's a margin thing, right? The faster you can take a calf, too. The weight it needs to be to be butchered, the less money it costs you. And when you're barely scraping by in an agricultural operation, you don't have the luxury of waiting another, you know, eight months for your cow to get big enough to slaughter so corn and grains speed up that process. And so, honestly, I get it. And I don't always fault the these family farms and ranches for doing what they do, and I hope that you'll give them some grace as well. That's not to say you still can't vote with your dollars and support the producers, um, that are doing things the way you think makes the most sense, because I do the same thing, right? I like to use common sense and make those decisions, but I just want to never demonize um, the small family operations. All right, that's that soapbox. Um, but anyway, the reason All that being said, why we personally like grass fed beef Let's get into that. So when I look at all the things we do, one of my favorites practices is just to kind of sit back and ask myself what makes sense for us? Or in this grand scheme of things and what makes sense in the natural realm of how things work and when I sit back and peel back all of the cultural norms and the traditions and the whole. That's just the way we do it now, honey, like those sort of ideas ever had someone say that to you? It doesn't go over very well with me. Anyway, um, when I peel that back and I just look at things for what they are for me analyzing how ruminants eat room and it's being cattle, right? They don't eat a lot of grain. Naturally, a cow might get some seed heads when they're grazing, but it's not something they're going to eat in large quantity. So then I start to wonder. Well, okay, so it's not necessarily natural for a cow to eat a lot of grain, Does it hurt them? Well, some people would say no, it doesn't hurt them, and it makes superior beef that grows out more quickly. But one of the issues that does arise when we feed cattle a lot of grain is that it makes their ruman just part of their digestive system, become more acidic. Okay, because they're not naturally designed to have that much grain in their system, it changes the balance of their insides. Now, the issue that arises when we have a more acidic ruman is that we have these naturally occurring bacteria like E. Coli right now. Normally it is killed off easily by acid. So let's say, in a normal instance, you have meat from a cow that was fed grass just your typical cow diet, right for millennia. And then maybe there's a little coli that gets on the meat cause it happens, we ingest it. That bacteria strain is more week, so our stomach acid kills it off. No problem, and we don't get sick. But what they have found with these cattle who are fed lots of lots of grain, the rumens are more acidic, and it causes the bacteria like E. Coli to become more resistant. So they're not so easily killed off when they get into our digestive system. And that's when we have people getting sick from the hamburgers at the fast food joint and so on. So that is a problem. Obviously, people take precautions like making through the meats cooked properly in their hands or wash and all that stuff. But it is something you have to deal with more when you're dealing with these corn fed grain fed models another thing that I look at, what I'm thinking about. What makes sense in the natural order of things is it makes sense to me to feed cows grass because it requires less fossil fuels and production to grow the grain and then transport the grain to the cattle. And then you have to take all the manure that's manufactured in a feedlot and do something else with that. And it's stinky, and it just makes more sense to me to feed those cows the grass right there, naturally fertilizing. We have less fossil fuels involved to grow out that beef, and in my opinion, it ultimately produces a better product, even if it does take longer. And that is something to keep in mind with your grass Fed models. It does take longer to grow out the beef because corn is gonna pack on those pounds. Ah, lot more quickly. And so that's one of the reasons that grass fed beef can cost a little bit more. It's because it takes longer, and it causes the farmer or rancher to retain ownership of the cow for a longer period of time, which ultimately costs more money. Okay, grass fed beef can also be a little different to cook because the animals are a little bit older now. No, you hear me out here? I didn't say it's tough, right? Well, you can have tough grass fed beef. You can also have tough corn fed beef. Sometimes that's just the animal, Um, and sometimes a lot of the time it's the way you cook it. So grass fed beef is a lot leaner because the animals have more exercise and it's a little less fatty, and we have to keep in mind. There are older animal, so it needs a little bit of a different way of handling it. But it can be. It is delicious, like once you figure out the tweaks for cooking grass fed, which really aren't complicated, trust me, and we'll do an episode on that, Um, it's melt in your mouth. Amazing. And it has, I think, more depth of flavor, not gamey, but it has just more of a robust, beefy flavor. So in addition, all that stuff there's also some actual health benefits, and I did a little bit of looking around and I tried to get some studies because that are more I guess, unbiased because there's a lot of folks out there like me who have giant articles about how grass fed beef will hear everything that ails you. Um, I'm not saying any of that's wrong, but I know for a skeptic you want to hear some sources potentially that are a little less biased. So I tried to grab a few, Um, that gave some really good information, So I will give a few of here, and I will also put the link in the show notes if you want to check it out yourself. Um, I found on the mayo clinic website, and they said this when compared with other types of beef. Grass fed beef may have some heart health benefits, including less total fat, more heart healthy omega three fatty acids, more conjugated linoleic acid. And that's often abbreviated as C. L. A. And if you want to just Google C L. A. And benefits of C. L. A. It's a really big deal. It's actually a type of fat that is thought to reduce heart disease and cancer and all kinds of stuff, and it's really, really good for you. And oftentimes, if you're looking at the benefits of grass fed beef. That's one of the ones. Its highest on the list is that increased amount of C l A. So go check that out for yourself. It's pretty interesting. On also says they may have more anti oxidant vitamins such as Vitamin E. So just more good stuff in there. Um, I also found a study on Pub Med, which is kind of like the big research science journal area. They said there was a significantly higher level of total omega three and long chain fatty acids in grass fed beef. Right? We hear a lot about the benefits of omega three fatty acids. Grass fed beef has a little bit more another study. Some of these were repeating themselves a little bit, But another study at California State University's College of Agriculture again showed that grass fed beef includes more omega three fatty acids. Mawr conjugated linoleic acid. Um and, yeah, lots of good stuff. So to me, it's worth the extra effort and the extra dollars it takes to put some grass fed beef in your freezer. And I'm not just saying that because we raise it. We have been on this bandwagon for a very, very long time. Um, and not only does it is it better for you, but it also is really good for your local economy if you can support those farmers and ranchers at the same time. So if you're not able to have a steer in your backyard or on your apartment balcony, I would suggest starting to do some research on who in your area is selling grass fed beef. And one thing I've noticed it's really picking up lately. Or Facebook groups of local producers banding together. Or maybe even it's a simple is posting on your social media wall or texting some friends and just starting to do some research on who's in your area and how you can support them. And, yes, it's a little bit more of an effort on your part because you got a maybe not go to the grocery store and do a little more driving around. And, yes, sometimes it costs a little bit more because we're not dealing with government subsidies and we're not dealing with quick grow methods, and it takes a little bit longer to grow out a grass fed beef. But you're going to be making good choices for your health, good choices for your local economy, and it tastes pretty much amazing. So that's Masefield, my friends. That's why we love grass fed beef again. I'll say it. I know there's different opinions on this, but that's where I stand. So there you have it. If you are falling in love with the idea of an old fashioned intentional kitchen full of nourishing food and rich memories, you will love my Heritage Kitchen Handbook. I've packed this little e book full of my very best tricks for cooking and eating like a farmer. Even if you live in the city, you can grab it for free over at heritagekitchenhandbook.com, and that's it. If you have a minute, I'd be so honored if you could leave a quick review over on your podcast player. So more people confined this podcast And thanks so much for listening. It's always fun. We'll catch up again on the next episode of the old fashioned on purpose podcast