The Meat of the Problem

I've got a somewhat sick analogy but I'm going to share it anyway. Five months and eleven days ago, my brother died. He was 23, and we don't know why he died. We do know that he was obese, and we found out after he died that he was eating a LOT of fast food. (He had told us he didn't, and that he was on a diet, but there aren't a lot of secrets when you're dead and his bank statements showed an awful lot of charges at every fast food drive-thru in town.)

We think Adam died the Thursday before Thanksgiving. We aren't really sure. Because Adam, my brother, frequently went through periods where he refused to answer his phone, nobody thought it was weird that we didn't hear from him for a few days. It took about four days before my mom got worried enough that no one had heard from him, and that's when we discovered he was dead. When I went home for the funeral, Mom said she was disappointed that we weren't able to donate Adam's organs because it took us so many days to discover his body. Adam was a strong believer in organ donation.

I thought - but did not speak - about my friend who recently donated a kidney. She's a vegan and eats a very healthy diet. The doctors were ECSTATIC about her healthy, vegan kidney. Well, if doctors would be ecstatic about my friend's vegan kidney, I have a hunch that even if we found my brother sooner, nobody would've been very interested in his organs. What kind of shape would they have been in after he'd abused them so badly for so many years? The idea that you are what you eat is no joke.

Why do I bring this up? Well, if we are what we eat, then so are the animals we use for meat - cows, pigs, chickens, lambs, fish, etc. So here's the analogy: Just like you'd probably prefer a healthy organ donor like my vegan friend instead of someone who eats crap, wouldn't it make sense that you should also prefer the meat, milk, and eggs from animals that ate healthy diets to those that didn't?

This might be a no-brainer to everyone on this site. After all, we're all here because we already "get it." But soooo many people do not. Like this New York Times article. I am not a nutritionist and I do not want to give out dietary advice that I am not qualified to give. But I think that it makes little sense to paint with a broad brush like the NYT article does about meat. All beef is not equal. All pork, chicken, fish, etc, is not equal. The conventional wisdom that red meat is bad for you and should be eaten in moderation or not at all makes a LOT of sense if we're talking about factory farmed red meat. But what about grass fed, pasture-raised beef, pork, or lamb? I find it hard to believe that pasture raised beef has the same "heart attack on a plate" nutritional profile as factory farmed beef. I have read some research showing that grass fed beef and the milk of grass fed cows has more of certain beneficial nutrients compared to (factory farmed) grain-fed cows. What I haven't seen are studies comparing the health of humans who eat grass-fed beef with humans who ate factory farmed, grain-fed beef.

Why is this so important? Well, I think that most people understand that humans have eaten animal products throughout our history. Although some of us (myself included) choose to be vegetarians, the vast majority of people see meat, dairy, and eggs as normal, natural foods. What I think most people do NOT know is that the product they are getting now when they eat animal products is not the same product our ancestors at. Simply put, our ancestors didn't factory farm. Yet we factory farm, produce crap-quality meat, dairy, and eggs, and then we eat them. And we have epidemic rates of diet-related illness. Until a larger percentage of Americans make these connections, I think it is going to be hard to achieve the changes we really need.

Photo credit: tercerojista on Flickr.com