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Archive for the ‘Diet and Nutrition’ Category
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about essential fatty acids and how the omega 3′s are greatly lacking in the Standard American Diet and the omega 6′s are way too high, and how that influenced my decision to find a source of 100% pastured beef, since the omega 6 to omega 3 ratio in grass-fed beef is 1-to-1. However, I realize that’s not necessarily an option for everyone – some people cannot afford it (it is expensive unless you buy at least a side of beef, which requires a large sum of money all at once), some people do not eat beef for health reasons (I’m not talking about the misguided notion that it causes cancer; some individuals are sensitive to arachidonic acid, found in beef and egg yolks) and some people do not eat meat for ethical reasons. So where do you get this omega 3 essential fatty acid that is, in all likelihood, missing from your diet?
Well, to confuse the issue even more, there are three different kinds of nutritionally important omega 3 essential fatty acids: αlpha-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). EPA and DHA are provided by animal products (most notably fish oil and that grass-fed beef I’ve got such a fondness for these days); ALA is provided by plant products (most notably flax and canola oil).
EPA and DHA are the long-chain omega 3s that provide the human body the benefits of essential fatty acids. Your body can convert ALA to EPA and DHA, but it does it very inefficiently – about 15% of ALA converts to EPA and only 5% converts to DHA, and there are factors that will inhibit the conversion even more; including, but not limited to:
- A high consumption of linolenic acid (the type found in omega 6 fatty acids)
- Ethanol (read: alcoholic beverages)
- A deficiency of vitamins B3 (niacin) and B6, as well as zinc and magnesium
So, individuals who depend solely on vegetable products for their omega 3s need to be even more careful about their consumption of omega 6s, consumption of alcohol and that they are getting plenty of essential vitamins and minerals (from natural sources rather than supplements), and also need to be aware that even then they may be unable to convert enough ALA to EPA and DHA to achieve optimal levels of the longer chain omega 3 essential fatty acids.
If you don’t have a problem eating fish (some people do), you can get plenty of the right kinds of omega 3s from the regular consumption wild, fatty fish like salmon or tuna. Note the word wild; a lot of farm-raised salmon are fed grains which – yup – throw the omega 6 to omega 3 ratio all out of whack and pretty much mitigates the benefit of eating them in the first place. As for tuna, there’s the whole thing about mercury so if most of your consumption of that fish is in the form of tuna steaks or sashimi, as it is in our case, you might want to limit the amount you eat. (Note: Canned tuna is generally made up of smaller fish, so the mercury content tends to be lower. But, please, try to make sure the canned tuna you buy is ethically caught and is packed in water, NOT vegetable oil.)
So, where does that leave us? With fish oil supplements.
You can take the capsules, although I’ve had a lot of people tell me me they don’t like them because of the “fishy after affects” (yeah, you might be burping it up for quite awhile afterwards). There’s also the problem that fish oil will go rancid fairly quickly if not used quickly and/or properly stored and a rancid fish oil is not a healthy fish oil; you need to bite into one of your capsules every now and then to make sure they’re still fresh.
That doesn’t sound appealing? It doesn’t to me, either, so I found an alternative to the capsules.
As recently as a generation ago, the use of cod liver oil was widespread. High in vitamins A and D as well as EPA and DHA, it was routinely administered to children because, among other things, it prevented rickets; adults consumed cod liver oil to mitigate the symptoms of arthritis, as well as to keep skin, nails and hair healthy.
Somewhere between my mother’s generation and my own, that practice stopped. I’m not sure exactly when, or why – all I know is that I never touched the stuff until recently. Which is a shame; it’s really good for you, and if you are conscientious about the type of cod liver oil you purchase it will be free of contaminants and not be awful-tasting.
We’ve begun taking Carlson’s Cod Liver Oil every day; it comes in a green glass bottle (light can damage cod-liver oil, and the glass eliminates any danger of harmful chemicals being leached into it) which we keep in the refrigerator. It has a light, lemon flavor and is regularly tested in an FDA-regulated laboratory to insure that the oil is free from many common contaminants, including mercury, lead and PCBs.
How are you getting your omega 3s?
Posted in participation of Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday
I’d promised more about our adventure acquiring Chuck (our nickname for the side of grass-fed beef), and here it is. I’ll try to make it interesting, but…well, today is one of those days when there just isn’t enough coffee in the state of Ohio to knock the menopausal brain-fog out of me. 
When I called Jon Berger and asked about buying some of his pastured beef, he suggested we pay a visit to White Feather Meats in Creston, Ohio – the people who process his beef exclusively – and buy some in their retail store before we made up our minds. So we did, and we were very pleasantly surprised by what we found.
White Feather Meats
We’d been in the retail stores of a local beef farmer before – bustling places with huge counters stuffed with just about every kind and cut of beef you can imagine and people waiting in line to be served. This was not our experience when we arrived at White Feather one Saturday morning at about 10 a.m.
First, there were no long counters full of meat waiting to be weighed and wrapped, just several freezers full of vacuum-packed meats, a small counter and a window into a back room that was dark and quiet. A tall, dark-haired young man who introduced himself as Seth Perkins greeted us and asked if he could assist us in any way.
Seth's Brother, Scott
And assist us he did – answering all of our questions patiently, not only about their relationship with Green Vista Farm but their own business, which isn’t confined to Jon’s grass-fed beef. In addition to processing and selling the products of many local farmers, including beef (both pastured and grain-finished), pork, lamb and some chicken, they also raise, process and sell their own bison.
Bison Steaks
It’s darn tasty, too. Yup, in addition to several cuts of Jon’s pastured beef (which included a brisket) we bought some ground bison along with a couple of bison steaks, a bison brisket and some bison stew meat (I’m going to make chili with the stew meat in the fall). We were so impressed with the quality of the beef and bison, we’ve been back several times and purchased pork chops, sausage, bacon, lamb chops and ground lamb – I haven’t gotten around to the lamb yet, but I have to tell you the pork we’ve purchased is so good that we’re going to source a whole pig through White Feather, as well.
Yummy Ground Bison
It isn’t just the taste and quality of the meat we’ve purchased that has made us such strong advocates of White Feather Meats and the Perkins family, it’s their passion for and knowledge about what they do. On one of our subsequent trips to their farm, we spoke to Seth and his brother Scott about their processing methods and just couldn’t have been more impressed. They explained to us, chart in hand, about the various cuts of beef, where they came from on the steer (only steers go to market as beef) and how they should be cooked. These young men also did a marvelous job in explaining the advantages of pastured beef – so much so that they accomplished something in twenty minutes that had taken me weeks: convinced Beloved that this was absolutely the right thing to do.
Cutting to customer specifications
I was also very upfront in questioning about their slaughter methods; Scott, in turn, was very upfront about answering. Not only are their methods humane, they far exceed the USDA requirements as outlined in the Humane Slaughter Act. They are also USDA certified, which means there is always a USDA representative on the premises during the slaughter process. All of the meat is then dry-aged for at least 14 days in temperature-and-humidity-controlled facilities before it is cut to customer specification, vacuum-wrapped in USDA approved material and quickly frozen.
And they don’t prevaricate or fabricate in order to gain business – when I asked if the pork they sell is pastured, Seth was quite honest in answering “No.” But, he explained, the farmer they do business with treats his animals ethically – they are housed in clean, uncrowded living spaces, never given growth hormones or treated needlessly with antibiotics and are never fed any of the dangerous garbage and GMO-laced feed that are the normal diet of industrial, CAFO animals.
“We wouldn’t do business with him otherwise,” Seth said.
All reasons we are vocal advocates of supporting small, local businesses, ethical and sustainable farming operations and the folks at White Feather Meats. They have loyal customers here at the Sushi Bar.
This started out as a single post, but took on a life of its own – there’s no way I could have put all the information I wanted in one post and expect anyone to read it without falling asleep and drooling all over their keyboard, so this is the first in a series of posts about fats and why they’re so important in our diet.
When I wrote a letter to food, proclaiming my intention to make it my bitch, I got a lot of interesting comments. I also got a lot of requests to document my little adventure in cooking and eating all of this wholesome, natural food and one commenter said it was great I’d changed my diet seemingly overnight.
I can see how it seems that way, but it ain’t necessarily so. I don’t talk about anything until I’ve pretty much researched it to death.
There are a couple of reasons for that: 1) it’s simply my nature to want to be as well-informed as possible (partly from fear of sounding like an idiot) and B) Beloved. The man takes nothing at face value – if you tell him something with any kind of authority at all, he will ask you to explain it until he understands. It really is a marvelous trait but it has, on occasion, made me want to yank my own hair out and beat him about the head and neck with it – especially because he has little patience with me reading material to him; he insists that I explain it “in my own words.”
So when I banished all oils* from our home (except olive, coconut and palm kernel oils) and began insisting we buy 100% pastured, grass fed beef and he asked “why” I said:
“Omega 6 to omega 3 essential fatty acids ratios.”
That, of course, necessitated an explanation. Several explanations.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve heard about “heart-healthy omega 3′s” and the benefits of fish oil. But do you know why it’s all so important? Omega 3s are, along with omega 6s, essential fatty acids. These essential fatty acids are, well, essential to your good health, and you must ingest them – your body can’t create them from other nutritional components.
Why are the omega 3 fats getting all the press these days? Because we get plenty of omega 6 fats already. In fact, we get way too many of them.
Human beings evolved eating a diet that provided a 1-to-1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids. Nowadays, the ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids in our diet is more like 20-to-1; in many instances, it’s even higher. Scientists tell us we should be getting a ratio of no more than 4-to-1 omega 6 to omega 3, and that 2-to-1 would be optimal.
Why the disparity? Well, it’s really quite simple: omega 6 fatty acids are abundant in plant foods, and omega 3 fatty acids are mostly found in animal foods – particularly oily fish and grass-fed beef**. As a society, we’ve (incorrectly) been made very afraid of animal fats***, so we eat a lot of omega 6 fatty acids in the form of vegetable oils. And to compound the problem, the vast majority of the meat we eat is fed grain, making the commercially farmed beef we consume much higher in omega 6 fatty acids than it should be.
As I researched the subject, I realized I had a couple of courses of action here – I could start giving The Young One fish oil supplements (Beloved and I already eat a lot of fatty fish), cut beef out of our diet along with the vegetable oils and live with the rioting that would ensue when I deprived my husband and son of their favorite food, or I could give The Young One fish oil supplements, cut all the vegetable oils from our diet and find a source of local, 100% grass-fed beef.
Is it any surprise I decided on the latter?
*There are many reasons why I’ve banned vegetable oils from our home, and I’ll go into all that in a later post.
**I’m going to talk more about the sources of omega 3 essential fatty acids in my next post, which will cover why flax seed oil isn’t always the best choice.
***More on animal fats, and why many saturated fats have been wrongly demonized, later in the series.
Visit Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday
I received a wonderful telephone call yesterday.
“Hello, I’m with White Feather Meats – I wanted to let you know that your order will be ready tomorrow.”
As you probably know, we recently ordered a side of grass-fed, 100% pastured beef. It took us at least a couple of weeks of research before we did, and I’m glad we did the research. A great many local farmers pasture their animals – until they reach a certain weight. Then they move them to a feedlot where the cattle are fed grains, which reverses most of the benefits of being grass-fed (conversely, you can remove an animal from a feedlot and pasture it, and the damage done by being grain-fed will be reversed). Many of these beef farmers will keep an animal pastured if you request it and we nearly went this route, since it was a tad cheaper than the option we ultimately chose.
There were two reasons we didn’t choose the less expensive option: First, these people are not experts at raising 100% pastured animals, and we simply weren’t willing to spend a large chunk of money on something we couldn’t be completely sure about. You can go into their bustling little retail store and purchase the meat (which is quite tasty), but I couldn’t get anyone to talk to us about visiting the farm or speaking with the people who actually raise the cattle.
The second reason was Jon Berger of Green Vista Farm. Jon is an expert at raising totally pastured animals; a half hour conversation with him is nothing short of enlightening. He is very passionate about what he does – you can tell he loves it, and understands exactly why his methods of cattle farming are so very important. And not only are his farming practices ethical, so are his business practices; when I initially called Jon to speak to him about purchasing a side of beef, he suggested I go to White Feather Meats – the small, family-owned business that processes his beef and sells it in their tiny retail store – and purchase some before we bought the entire side. He wanted us to make sure this meat is what we wanted before we made the kind of investment buying an entire side of beef at one time required.
So, we did – and the beef is absolutely delicious.
When I called Jon again to discuss how to go about purchasing our meat, I asked if it would be possible to visit his farm – his answer was a hearty “Of course! Just let me know when you want to come out!”
Then I asked him if I could bring my camera. Again, his answer was an enthusiastic, “Sure!”
So, days after placing our order and being given the “hanging weight” of our beef, we headed to Jon’s farm on our way to Cincinnati, camera and check for our purchase in hand.
Grazing Cattle
A Bull and Farm Equipment
This is Jon’s son, coming in from the fields on a large piece of esoteric (to me, anyway) farming equipment. That’s the farm’s bull in the foreground. Green Vista actually boasts three bulls, but only this one is allowed to breed for the time being; they are very careful about the breeding of their cattle.
A Cute Calf
This sweet little guy was in a pen outside of the barn – Jon told us he usually resides in the field with the bulls (that are kept separate from the steers that will eventually go to market), but he had put him in the pen while his son was in the field on the large and potentially dangerous farming machinery. He was also the only calf on the farm, and seemed far too young to be weaned. And he was; apparently, most calves stand moments after their birth – this baby did not. He didn’t stand for some time, and rather than leave him with his mother to see if he’d live or die, Jon took him to his farm and is raising him, which is quite a commitment for such a busy (but obviously compassionate) farmer.
Chickens
There were quite a few chickens running about, doing the things chickens are supposed to be doing, and when I asked about the sale of them and/or their eggs, I was disappointed when Jon told me they were laying hens that provided his family with just enough eggs. “I’m no chicken farmer,” he said, grinning.
Jon Berger
Jon himself, patiently answering our many questions with humor and a great deal of knowledge.
Oh, and one more thing – his prices, as well as those of the folks who are processing the beef, are very reasonable. I’ve been talking a lot about the investment this has required, but that’s simply because we had to pay for it all at once. Actually, after it’s all said and done, we paid just over $4 a pound for a supply of meat that will very likely last us at least a year. When was the last time you paid $4 a pound for a beef tenderloin or a porterhouse?
Live in or near northeast Ohio and are asking “Where’s the beef?” It’s here, at Jon Berger’s lovely Green Vista Farm.
You can thank Oldest Son for the title of this post; he asked me what I was doing the other night and I replied, “Trying to write this week’s Spin Cycle, which is all about relationships. Well, just hand me a loaded gun and tell me to play with it. Sheesh.”
I mean, really – nearly everyone I know reads my blog. If I tell you that I have marvelous relationships with my nearest and dearest (aka Beloved and our collective offspring) how boring would that be? My relationships with Good Ex and his wonderful mother are fairly well-documented here. I’ve even spoken about my own mother and issues I’m still coming to terms with. The point is, I write about that stuff ALL THE TIME. It’s all the other relationships, those I don’t blog about, that could get me in trouble.
So, when I told Oldest Son about the subject of this week’s Spin Cycle, he said, “It’s a good thing no one’s asking me to write a piece on relationships. I’d just title the damn thing Can’t We Just Be Friends? or I Love You Like A Brother.”
Spoken like a 27-year-old that works two jobs and has been on the dating scene way too long. And just what I need to put this week’s topic in perspective. Some familial relationships are just off limits. Those that aren’t are already well-documented. So which should I blog about?
Well…how about a relationship that is intimate but largely undocumented. Well, that’s not right…not undocumented – it’s been well-documented on this blog – but one that is taken for granted. Ahhhh, that’s the ticket. A relationship that, up until recently, has been taken for granted.
Dear Food,
We’ve had a love/hate relationship for far too long – I love you, and you hate me; the size of my backside is more than ample (ahem) proof. I have lovingly prepared and enjoyed you all my life; you have repaid me by fattening me up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I have done nothing but speak and write about you with passionate hyperbole; you have been stealthily screwing up my metabolism. I have openly and joyously embraced you; you have given me heartburn and gas.
No longer, Food.
No longer will I be swayed by brightly-colored packages that can be thrown in the microwave for 3 minutes. No longer will I be tempted by pictures of gooey chocolate and caramel. No longer will I be fooled by the words “improved” and “enriched” and “healthy” and “smart.”
It’s come down to this, Food – I can’t tell you to take a hike and never speak to you again but after a lifetime of abject worship and pathetic stalking, the time has come to make you my bitch. If you are not grass-fed, pastured, whole, raw, organic and completely unprocessed and free of pesticides and chemicals, you are unwelcome in my house.
That’s right, refined sugar, flour, high-fructose corn syrup and vegetable oils – it’s time to pack your bags and go live with your mother. I’ve been having a flagrant affair with grass-fed beef, free-range chicken, raw milk cheeses and locally grown, organic seasonal fruits and vegetables and I’ve decided that I can no longer live without them. They have shown me what an unhealthy relationship we really have, as you’ve seduced me with sweetness, long shelf life and ease of preparation when all along you’ve been running around behind my back, wreaking havoc with my insulin, HDLs and triglycerides.
I’d say “shame on you” but it’s really “shame on ME” for letting you do it to me. But that’s all in the past, Food.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a dinner date later with a grass-fed filet in a red wine reduction, a crisp green salad with a nice, homemade vinaigrette and a fresh peach, sliced and splashed with a little hormone-and-antibiotic free cream for dessert. You can just go peddle your modified food starch somewhere else.
Sincerely,
Jan