Monday, May 18, 2009

Grass fed beef: Part II

My second experiment with grass fed beef occurred last night when I ate grass fed steaks with my parents. They live on the "northshore" of Chicago, which is sufficiently wealthy to have some specialty stores and grocery stores that care different products then many others in the Chicago area. I bought last night's meal at Sunset in Highland Park, where you can get a variety of different steaks, roasts, and ground meat. It is apparently not too difficult to find one brand of grass fed beef that has really done a great job infiltrating grocery stores and restaurants in the Chicago area. While I have yet to find it at any normal grocery store in Chicago, it is sold at Fox & Obel. The brand is owned by newsman Bill Curtis: Tallgrass. You can also read a NYT article on it here. My parents each had a strip steak and I had a boneless ribeye. Grass fed steaks cook a good 30% faster due to lower fat content. I was very worried I'd overcook them but overall they turned out well (the ribeye cooked a little slower as it had a little more fat). The meat had a bit of a gamey taste to it and I felt like I could taste the grass though my father disagreed. The steaks were not cheap (about $14 for a steak not much over half a pound) but no one at the table could eat more then half of theirs.

Tallgrass is available at a variety of nice to very nice restaurants in Chicago. Their website lists most of the restaurants that carry their product. Some grass fed beef is "finished" with corn (sometimes called "grain finished" or the like). This helps fatten up the cows before slaughter. It does, however, pose some of the very same problems with feeding cows corn their whole lives. Tallgrass, like many but not all grass fed brands, is 100% grass fed. Just something to keep an eye out for if you care.

How did I feel? Well I did have a lot of trouble falling asleep. I found this particularly ironic since raw foodists often say that when you eat your first big raw dinner you can't sleep because you have so much energy from all the nutrients. Well that never happened to me when I went raw but it did when I at a big steak. I take no pleasure in admitting this as someone who believes there are many benefits to raw and vegan diets (and few to carnivorious ones). Nonetheless the point of this blog is to be honest during this journey. Today I feel pretty good. Maybe a slight noticable increase in energy but honestly difficult to tell considering I didn't sleep well as I layed awake for hours.

The last thing I'll mention is how it felt eating it. Some vegetarians have commented to me that they couldn't get themselves to eat meat again because any "flesh" makes them nauseous. The burger was easy as it was hidden in bread and covered with condiments, lettuce, tomatoe and onions. I was worried about the steak. Frankly, it was easy. I didn't have any negative reaction and it brought back not so distant memories of what a good steak tasted like. So while everyone's different, I apparently can go back to meat pretty easily.

2 comments:

  1. Some cool resources http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Resources2.html

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  2. Thanks for that link -- very interesting. Here's one I don't think I posted yet that I find useful: http://www.eatwild.com/

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