Moo, bitches.
05 Feb 2010 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: beef cow corn diet, beef industry, factory farming, is grass fed better than corn fed, michael pollan
Classes began on Monday this week, and we had much to get started on from day one. For my handbags class, we will focus the first half of this semester on box bags, and today, we had to have our 50 sketches done for line-building class. I spent my winter break developing a concept and line that will be the magnum opus of my FIT career.
While we waited for the teacher to come around and look at our projects, I chattered happily with my fellow classmates that I knew from last semester (we’ve been split up into two different modules this semester, and I’m sad that I won’t be with the same group again). The topic got to how I’ve been trying to make as much of my food from scratch as possible, just so that I know exactly what I’m putting into my body. ::SNIFF:: This is in no way due to me being a hippie… in fact, I will reply to that with a light snarl that if anything, I’m a moderate Republican (though I know that doesn’t compute in most peoples’ brains). Gay Marriage? Yes please. A choice for women? Absolutely. The right to bear arms to protect your family and your property? Duh!! You don’t have to be Charlton Heston to see the positive side of that argument. As for state vs. federal power, I say I’m pretty middle-of-the-road.
Please forgive the tangent, it will (hopefully) make sense in just a moment…
I was going on about how much I like grass-fed butter, how much better it tastes, the higher levels of omega-3s, blah blah blah, just waxing away about how much more I prefer it. The lab tech was very interested in what I was talking about, because I mentioned that “Irish Butter,” like the kind at Trader Joe’s, was grass-fed, and that I liked it very much. He had always wondered what that meant, etc, etc.
Anyway, it was brought up by a girl at another table (and entirely out of nowhere, I may add), that grass-fed cow butter is basically a crock of you-know-what, that cows eat corn and that’s that. I politely rebutted that although many cows do eat corn, that they are meant to eat grass. I must have really offended this girl who turned out to be from Iowa–
“Well, don’t bring this up to me cuz my dad’s a farmer so I KNOW, he raises cows and they eat corn… blah blah blah (can’t remember all of it, was too stunned by the animosity)… more blah blah…friggin’ hippies.” WHOOOOOAAAAA THERE. Hold on, now this was not a personal attack from me, I was simply stating my preference for grass-fed butter! And I am NOT a bloody hippie. I didn’t press it too much because I had never seen this girl before in my life, but she really hurt my feelings. She continued by saying that organic and local are bad, blah blah blah, but when I asked her why, she couldn’t seem to articulate anything other than “local food isn’t good because if the food isn’t meant to be grown in that area, it’s no good for you anyway,” … … … Huh?? I think my brain rebooted when she said that. And you know what? Yeah, organic IS bad… if you’re buying organic that has to be shipped from around the world and leaves a gigantic carbon footprint. But it’s still better FOR you. Know what else? Local food is SEASONAL. From what CAN grow in the area. Otherwise it WOULDN’T grow. Oy, my head!!
Now, all I can think is that her father must get a lot of heat for feeding his cows corn. She was only defending his honor from a perceived slight. I was not attacking this at all–you gotta do what you gotta do, right? Factory farmers don’t have much choice in the matter. But one has to admit that the average lifespan of a cow is significantly shortened by the practice of feeding them only feed corn and other nasties (which I’m just too tired to get into right now). Of course, with the beef industry, lifespan doesn’t much matter as a steer is slaughtered well before it ever has to worry about getting old. I’m only saying that if cows were meant to eat corn, why did it only start happening, on the scale in which it is happening, within the last 50 years or so?
And furthermore, may I go on in saying that cows, domesticated cows, as we know them today, came from Europe and Asia. Corn came from the Americas. And being that cows didn’t make it over here until us horrible white people started bringing them here when we settled, that would mean that for most of the evolutionary history of the domesticated bovine, they NEVER ate corn because it WASN’T POSSIBLE. Logistically speaking, of course. Now we know that it’s entirely possible for cows to eat corn. We also know that it kills them. Ruminents weren’t made to eat that much corn. This type of grain builds up too much gas to mitigate within the rumen, and causes a nasty slime buildup that won’t allow the gas to escape. You may have heard of “bloat?” Case in point (thanks Mike Pollan and CORNELL UNIVERSITY!). Know how to keep that from happening? A diet heavily augmented with…. drumroll, please…. yup, you guessed it! Grass.
http://www.foodrevolution.org/grassfedbeef.htm
http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/extension/beef/beefu3.pdf
And one more from Iowa State:
http://www.biology.iastate.edu/InternationalTrips/1Australia/04papers/keuderDigSys.htm
PS–Has anyone seen “Food, Inc.” yet? If you haven’t, please do–it’s on Netflix (to watch instantly), and it’s a nice, non-threatening look at the way the food industries operate, etc. I’d be interested in hearing opinions on it. Be warned, though; I don’t post those lacking cogent arguments.
PPS–Can’t I just like grass-fed butter better?
