Hameno

deer season and omega-threes

So I am FINALLY done with that one book (Omnivore’s Dilemma) that caused me to be a walking corn bore. Not saying that I’m not still a corn bore, I probably still am. But I’ve cut back — now I don’t bring up corn in every conversation where it is only remotely related such as when anyone mentions food — now I wait until someone brings up something more closely related - processed food, or the evils of marketing in general, or beef.

Yes, beef. I have a beef with beef, after reading this book. In the US, we have this general conception that red meat is really really bad for us, because studies show that people who eat a lot of red meat get a lot of heart attacks, etc. Well, it’s not beef that is the problem, it is what the cows in the US are eating to make beef. They are eating corn, and they don’t like it. They are force-fed corn, they are medicated so that they can stomach it, and the meat they produce is full of omega-sixes and it is terrible for us. (Apparently omega-6 clots blood, and omega-3 thins it. Neither is good or bad, but we need an equal amount of both in order to live healthily. Corn-fed beef have almost no omega-3 and almost all omega-6.) In fact, since salmon was found to have a lot of omega-threes and it was being highly recommended, the demand for salmon grew and they supplemented wild-caught salmon (with a good balance of omega-3’s and omega-6’s) with corn-fed salmon. Which is JUST AS BAD as corn-fed beef.

Most of you know that my dad and brothers hunt for deer each Thanksgiving. There a lot of deer up there in Northern Wisconsin, so my brothers can get more than one deer a piece if they choose. I always ask them to get me one, mostly because I like it. And then I spend the whole year working to eat all of the deer in my freezer, it’s like a game with me. But now, NOW! I embrace wild venison as the most healthy alternative to all products corn-fed. I know where my meat comes from, my family killed it for me. The deer my meat comes from ate wild healthy things that it likes to eat, and it lived a healthy life out in the wild.

We are what we eat.

For more on this, read the following by the same guy who wrote the Omnivore’s Dilemma, a justification of meat eating: http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=55.