Rose Veal

Veal is well known as one of the cruelest practices to animals (though you could argue that egg laying hens is even worse largely b/c it's so bad and so much more pervasive). I personally have given up the idea that people will give up meat. The only thing we can hope for is that people will eat meat in moderation, and will actually care how their meat was raised. Veal is one of the most important places to focus. And time has shown that perception (and perhaps reality) matter. Animal rights boycotts a few decades ago brought photos of confined calves drinking formula and horrified much of the public. In the past half-century, while consumption of meat has increased, consumption of veal has dropped from an average (in America) of four pounds per year to only about 1/2 a pound a year. There have been advances in the treatment of calves raised for veal. Some veal producers keep calves in pens away from access to their mothers' milk but able to roam somewhat freely. Certain countries ban the insanely small confinement that was the standard practice for these calves and require minimum space at least (otherwise the animals cannot even turn around). But a newer, more sustainable and far more ethical form of veal is slowly gaining popularity: rose veal. (Read more about it here, here or here.)

Traditional veal is white colored. It is considered tender but many view it as lacking much flavor. The white color comes from iron deficiencies in the calves. When a calf has healthy iron levels, its meat is a pink color. Calves traditionally consume milk from their mothers. Traditional veal is deprived of this entirely. But there are other options. Sustainable farmers are increasingly offering veal calves raised on pastures with their mothers, consuming their mother's milk and grasses as nature intended. They live a natural life as a young cow normally would. Yes, their lives are cut short, but all animals are slaughtered the moment they reach a marketable weight, often very early in their lives (though still short -- often not longer than 6 months). The meat is considered extremely tender and significantly more flavorful than traditional veal. Additionally, as with any beef raised on pastures versus industrial farming, the pastured meat is much healthier (among other reasons, it tends to be raised without chemical additives in food, steroid use or antibiotic use absent medical necessity). If you want to eat veal, this is a good choice. Rose veal can also be called meadow veal, red veal, suckled veal, or any name that indicates that the calf was pastured (pastured veal, grass-fed veal or even free-range veal). While not necessarily so trustworthy, some encouragement can be gotten from labels that have developed such as "certified humane". In reality, you'll be able to find this at some restaurants, but for now mostly at farmer's markets or places that specifically cater to customers looking for pastured meats.

The Paleolithic Diet

My brother-in-law recently reminded me about the Paleolithic Diet -- or the diet of humans as hunter/gatherers. This has interesting parallels with the idea of pasture-raised animals. Essentially, grass-fed beef and lamb, pastured poultry and pig (and wild fish) all raise and treat animals the way they have been raised and treated since man learned agriculture, but before man industrialized it. Therefore, in a pasture system, the animals are living as they were meant to live -- in as close to the "wild" as these animals would ever get. Of course the idea here is that when we started industrializing farming, when we moved the cows inside to pack more of them into an industrialized system, or stuffed our chickens in cages in a building, we did more than make it easier for us to raise the animals cheaply and uniformly -- we also made significant changes to their lifestyle and diet. These changes meant that the animals gained weight too quickly, ate food their bodies were never designed to process, and created density problems that promoted the spread of disease -- disease and health of the animal being the main issue as it requires counter-action of antibiotics, hormones, etc. Treatment of the animal is also a concern to many but that's a separate issue.

There are those who believe we should look back even further, to the Paleolithic age, to before man began cooking food. Cooking opened up huge possibilities -- food that was inedible became edible. All you have to do is think about what you wouldn't (or even more accurately, what you couldn't) eat raw -- beans, for example, grains, and all sorts of random things. I'm looking at a plantain in my kitchen right now. You can't eat plantains raw -- or at least I wouldn't. Beans are toxic raw. Grains are inedible raw. Believers of this diet simply think that humans are not engineered to process these foods properly (and that other risks exist such as the presence of toxins as cooking does not always fully remove toxins in foods that are inedible raw). Followers of this diet also want us to take a step back to before we started using certain minerals (like salt) and stimulants (like coffee or tea). I think this logic is highly questionable, but what I find most interesting is the parallel to the grass-fed/pasture-raised idea. The Paleolithic diet encourages the eating of meat -- firmly believing that man is a solid omnivore -- but would certainly prohibit the eating animals that live in environments and are fed foods that differ from the Paleolithic times. If you buy true grass fed beef or pastured chickens, for instance, you're eating the way someone would have eaten a cow or chicken 15,000 years ago.

There is one MAJOR difference of course and that comes back to cooking. We don't really eat raw animal flesh anymore. It is possible and if the meat is fresh and local it is probably safe, but it would repulse your modern pallet. Therefore, like with all their foods, the Paleolithic diet has no problem with cooking so long as you're cooking something that you could have eaten raw -- something that your cousin 15,000 years ago might have eaten raw. Part of the appeal to me is that the diet looks to the way tribal people still live today. Many of the tribal people around the world today are amongst the healthiest alive -- with essentially no heart disease, no cancer, pretty high live-expectancy considering the lack of modern medicine, no diabetes, and so forth. It is popular for educated Americans, from my experience, to look to the Japanese as the longest living industrialized people on earth, and try to increase fish intake, fermented soy, etc. believing that their diet must play a large role in this phenomenon. But few look to tribal people who are really healthier. I am confident that if these tribal people could eat what they eat and live where they live, but be afforded non-invasive modern medicine, they would live substantially longer than the longest living Japanese. It is an interesting thought and one that is given surprisingly little attention amongst people obsessed with looking young late in life and extending life as much as possible.

One last thought is the interesting difference on dairy. Those who believe in the pasture-raising of animals would often agree that dairy is good for humans, but that the industrialization of dairy is what's caused problems. Therefore, humans should eat RAW dairy -- or milk, cheese, etc. in unpasteurized forms. I'm going to discuss this more in the future, including my recent attempts (and failures) to get these products in Chicago.

Here's a summary of the "essentials" of the Paleolithic Diet: (you can also learn more here)

Don't Eat: Grains, Beans (including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas), Potatoes, Dairy products, Sugar, Salt.

Eat: Meat, chicken and fish, Eggs, Fruit, Berries, Vegetables (but not potatoes or others that require cooking), Nuts (but not peanuts or cashew)

Try to increase your intake of: root vegetable, organ meats (liver and kidneys)

My experiment with grass fed beef

As I indicated in my first post, I have been a vegan of sorts for a few years. I say "of sorts" because I have been eating seafood at least a few times a month for nearly the past year. I have been constantly thinking about nutrition and food, researching on the internet and reading books on related subjects, and talking to like-minded people (like-minded not because they agree with me but because they too struggle to find foods that are healthy and that their bodies respond well to). A few things shifted recently that made me once again consider eating meat. Among those was a long-time friend and vegetarian who began eating meat and found that her energy levels were significantly increased (a problem I have been struggling with for some time), and another friend recently lent me The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which eloquently discusses the virtues of grass fed animals and animal products (some refer to such products as grass fed beef and dairy, pastured chickens, etc.). I am a firm believer that you need to listen to your body and an equal believer that you must constantly try to improve -- the latter can only occur with change and surely requires some experimentation including trial and error. So I decided to expand my diet and incorporate some animal products on a limited basis. Thus began my experiment with grass fed beef.

This experiment began about 12 hours ago when I ate beef for the first time in years. I purchased about 1 lb of grass fed ground beef from a boutique shop in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago called Provenance. I'll write about the long and absurdly difficult process of finding grass fed beef in Chicago another time. The point of this post is to discuss how I feel. I felt fine eating the burger. I made sort of a half-portion burger and made sure to eat plenty of veggies with it. It tasted good and I never had any adverse reaction. Today I feel pretty great, I have to admit. I woke up this morning an hour early feeling like I must have overslept by hours as I was wide awake (something that NEVER happens). Turns out I woke up an hour early. I had tea this morning because it has become a bit of a ritual lately but I really didn't need it. I probably have more energy today (so far at least -- day's only half over) then I have in a long time. Do I feel completely and uterly rejuvinated? No, but I feel better then I have in a long time and I can't ignore that the meat is probably a huge part of it. So step one in my new experiment with animal products (albiet grass fed pastured animal products) is looking good.