If you eat beef, you should read this. It’s an article published in the New York Times several years back.

Discover How Your Beef Is Really Raised

As a current vegetarian, I assure you that my motive in sharing this is to not discourage you from eating beef. Definitely not. In fact, someday, I plan to eat beef again myself. I do love a good steak. However, I think here in this country and some others as well, we are too far removed from our food sources. All we think about when we eat is what we see and what we taste. Our hamburgers either come from a tube of ground meat we buy at the grocery store, or a fast food joint. Either option provides little to no real information about where our food comes from and how it reached us. Since health is something I care deeply about, and you are someone I care deeply about, I wanted to share more about why I feel so strongly about it.

I’m not an animal rights activist. I’m not a vegetarian for moral reasons. The above article is written by Michael Pollan (I’m sure by now that name is familiar as the author of the books In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Delimma) and is a biography of a cow he bought and watched grow from the rancher all the way to the slaughter house and his very own dinner table. I know, it sounds boring, and to some of you it really might be. But it offers insight into not only where our food is coming from, but also the ever growing problems associated with the industrialized cattle industry. You know that whole mad cow thing? And the e.coli thing? And the antibiotic resistant super-bug thing? Those would not be the massive killing machines they are today if it were not for the way cows are currently fed and raised.

I’ve been labeled “extreme” in my views of food. I’ve actually put a lot of thought into that recently because I like to constantly examine and re-examine what I believe and why. It helps me grow and keeps me open-minded. However, the more I think about this topic, the less open-minded I become on it. It only makes sense for cows to eat what cows were designed to eat. Who can truly argue with that? It’s not only for the sake of the cows, but for our sake as well. As Pollan says in his article, “We are what we eat, it is often said, but of course that’s only part of the story. We are what we eat and what we eat, eats too.” I’m far less concerned with labels such as “organic” as I am with getting back to common sense as it pertains to our food sources. What makes more sense for the food industry? Screwing up over and over and scrambling to cover up those mistakes and put bandages on them, or doing what we should have been doing all along? “Organic” shouldn’t be a concern. It needn’t be a regulated label. I hate that it’s a buzz word an the “in” thing right now. Give me a break. Let’s get back to real food grown the way it really should be grown. The way God designed this planet. It shouldn’t be hip and cool and “in” and a topic up for debate. It should just be.

If believing cows should graze on and eat the grass they were designed by our very Creator to eat (or if you don’t believe that way, then think of it as the way they “evolved”) because it’s good for them and, in turn, good for us is “extreme”, then what, exactly, is “normal”? The industry’s position that money and cheap food are more important than human health? Isn’t it funny how “extreme” used to be the norm and what is now the norm would have been extreme just a few generations ago? Are we better off with our new norm? With the ever rising health problems in this country, I think the answer to that is glaringly obvious.

So go forth and read the article. Then go buy yourself a nice, grass-fed steak. Just the way God (or evolution, or whatever)  intended for you to eat it. Yes, it’s pricey. But so is health care. Isn’t it better to pay a premium for that steak than pay for a triple bipass surgery? Or a hospital stay for MRSA? Or an e.coli infection?

Is that truly extreme? Well then, bloggy buds, “extreme” never tasted so good…

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