Humanitarian Texts

… and USDA Bought 7 Million Pounds of the Stuff for School Lunches – Published on Washington’s Blog, by blog owner, March 11, 2012.

First watch 2 videos:

• Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution: 70% of America’s Beef is Treated with Ammonia, 5.46min;
• It’s now illegal to know what’s in your food, 7.23 min.

… What Should We Do?  

So what’s the answer?

• You could buy a pot roast or another cut of meat and grind it yourself. That way, you’ll be sure there’s nothing but real meat. (Talk to the butcher in your grocery store’s meat department; he’ll help you buy the right cut.)
• Or you could buy grass-fed beef. Organic, grass-fed usually contains no pink slime.
• And all grass-fed beef – organic or not – has a much lower risk for mad cow than other types of beef.

Why?

• Because mad cow disease is most commonly caused by feeding animal products to cows. For example, Wikipedia notes:
• A British inquiry into BSE [the scientific abbreviation for mad cow] concluded that the [disease] was caused by cattle, who are normally herbivores, being fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal (MBM), which caused the infectious agent to spread.
• If they are fed grass – their natural food – they are much less likely to get sick.

Stores like Trader Joe’s label grass fed, so it is easy to find.

• Grass-fed beef also contains more Omega 3s than beef from cows fed corn, meat or other “modern” feeds. See this and this.
• Why is this important? Because eating Omega 3 rich foods can increase gray matter in adults and boost neurological development in children.
• Conversely, low dietary levels of Omega 3s in mothers can reduce their kids’ IQ. (This is not entirely surprising, given that (1) our brains are about 60% fat, and (2) leading nutritionists say that humans evolved to consume alot of Omega 3 fatty acids in the wild game and fish which they ate (see more), and that a low Omega 3 diet is a very new trend within the last 100 years or so).
• And if you think that asking for organic beef is a counterculture hippy thing, note that Ronald Reagan insisted on organic meat.

(full text).

Links:

Pink Slime (Boneless lean beef trimmings) on en.wikipedia;

Acuff speaks, over and over and over, on barfblog, DECEMBER 3, 2010;

barfblog/services: bites.ksu.edu and barfblog.com are complimentary and comprehensive resources for those interested in microbial food safety – the things that make people barf …