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Let’s get one thing straight: I have no intention of giving up bacon.
But.
The more I learn about how food is produced in this country—and, in many cases, food is “produced,” as opposed to “farmed”—the more discomfort I feel, particularly when it comes to the factory farming of meat.
But, again, I have no intention of becoming a vegetarian. I have no philosophical objections to a hamburger. But I’m beginning to have very real objections to subjecting a cow to a lifetime of suffering just so I can eat that hamburger—especially when there’s a better way to get that burger into my belly.
“The current system of livestock farming is contributing the largest percentage to our greenhouse gases, and also ground pollution,” says Susie Middleton, food writer and author of “Fast, Fresh, and Green.” “It’s a system that’s not sustainable. We have to support an alternative form of farming:. Using livestock and crop rotation to get back to a type of farming that more closely mimics what nature intended.”
For a look at what nature intended, let’s examine that cow that ends up as a burger. Cows were created to do two things (besides be tasty): Walk, and eat grass. Most cows raised for slaughter in the US can do neither. Grass is an expensive food source (partially because you need so much of it, so you need a lot of space), so most cows are corn- or grain-fed. Unfortunately, feeding a cow anything but grass makes it sick. So non-grass-fed cows are given heavy doses of antibiotics throughout their lives. This keeps the cow “healthy” in the sense that you’re “healthy” while taking antibiotics for strep throat. Moreover, just like in humans, overuse of antibiotics can lead to bacteria that are antibiotic-resistant: Superbugs showing up in our food, which means more additives are needed to keep the food chain safe.
Ground beef is particularly susceptible. “All you have to do is read one newspaper report about e. coli and that ammonia they’re putting in to ground beef to kill the e. coli bacteria,” says Tara Mataraza Desmond, co-author with Joy Manning of “Almost Meatless: Recipes that are Better for Your Health and the Planet,” as well as a food writer and recipe developer.
Moreover, most cows are kept in feedlots, where they cannot get the exercise they need. Their meat gets fattier, since they’re not exercising. And they’re raised to grow faster than nature ever intended them to—a grass-fed cow reaches his full weight at about four years. A corn-fed, feedlot cow makes it in about 18 months.
There’s also the problem of farts and poop, to put it bluntly. Cows produce a significant amount of methane when they break wind—a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. It might seem silly that cow poots are causing the planet to warm up, but the fact is that there are simply too many cows producing too much gas. Same with manure—a cow walking around a pasture will drop waste, which breaks down into the ground, producing more grass. Cows kept in feedlots drop the same amount of waste, but far more than the ground can take. It either must be trucked away or left there. And if that feedlot is near a water source, one big rain takes all that poop and washes right into the nearest creek, river or bay.
If it were just me, it would be easy to switch to a lifestyle where I only eat humanely, sustainably-raised meat. It’s getting easier to find: “In the Chesapeake region, we have incredible small farms that are picking up a lot of steam on the popularity of getting back to becoming acquainted with your plate. The sources are becoming more and more abundant,” says Desmond. Besides grocery stores that carry sustainable meat, many local farmers’ markets have small farms that sell beef, pork and chicken. But there are two reasons I hesitate: money, and the man I married.
Humanely-raised meat costs more—sometimes a lot more. The trick, says Desmond, is “making meat a team player, rather than the star of the show.” And that doesn’t mean cutting back on flavor: using meat as one component of a dish (rather than simply a slab of steak) “is so much more interesting than eating 13 ounces of meat—that’s the same flacor and texture bite after bite. It’s a much more enjoyable way to eat.”
“The issue with cost is absolutely valid,” continues Desmond. “That’s one of the huge elements of the book—if you’re using smaller quantities of better-quality meat, you’re getting more bang for your buck. If you’re spending $10-12 on a chicken you know has been raised well and is clean…yeah, you’re going to pay five dollars more, but if you buy a whole chicken, you can make three recipes from the book with that one chicken.”
Middleton is also a big proponent of stretching what meat you do buy—not only to cut down on costs, but to streamline weeknight meals. “I make my mom’s spaghetti sauce and chili and make tacos and lasagna and freeze it. The thing about cooking from scratch is it takes some extra time. It might take a few hours on a Sunday afternoon, and we get four or five meals from that.”
So you can use less meat and not sacrifice flavor. But there’s the husband situation. My husband was born and raised in Texas and routinely refers to a black bean dish I make (a dish that contains both bacon a chorizo, a spicy sausage) as “vegetarian.”
Lise Bruneau, a Capitol Hill resident, has a similar problem. While Lise has been a pescetarian (a vegetarian who eats fish) for “many, many years,” her husband Marcus eats meat. “I think it happens with men a lot, where they feel threatened incorporating soy products into their diet … It’s like you’re wanting to change everything about them by handing them a plate of something they’ve never had before.” While my husband is pretty open to new things and has eaten (gasp) tofu without complaining, he still thinks of meat as being the center of the plate.
Desmond suggests certain ingredients are more carnivore-friendly than others. “Mushroom have a meaty, unctuous mouthfeel to them. Beans are the most fabulous legumers—they’re just so meaty. They’re rich in flavor, texture and nutrients, and they’re so filling.”
To get that meaty flavor, Desmond relies on smoky flavors such as smoked salt and smoked cheeses, as well as chipotle chilis. “I think most people are seduced by bacon, by this smoky flavor—using chipotle in a recipe that calls on those same flavor components, people can fall in love with that just as much as a big slab of bacon.”
Getting familiar with veggies again—real vegetables, the kind that grow in dirt, not processed vegetableish foods—is another tool in eating less meat. “’Fast, Fresh and Green’ is a collection of 90 vegetable side dishes that can be done on a weeknight,” says Middleton. “There is a little bit more prep time [than with processed foods], but if you learn ways to cook them, you can learn, for example, to do a quick sautee of asparagus, ginger and garlic.”
But on the other hand, continues Middleton, “I went and looked at a bag of frozen potatoes and they were more expensive than red potatoes, which take two seconds. You still have to heat up those [frozen] roasted potatoes anyway.”
People are getting smarter about what they eat and how they get their food. We’re used to getting our food—particularly our meat—easily and cheaply. As we realize the high cost of those low prices, though, our priorities are changing. Meat, once an indicator of wealth, represents a lot of what’s wrong with the farming systems in the United States. And moving away from factory-produced meat by using less meat, eating meat of better quality, and eating more vegetables means we’ll have a healthier country, healthier children and healthier lives.
By Kristen Page-Kirby
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