Category: Nutrition

Posted on

Pieces & Parts & Goats Milk

Boston butt pork steaks

Dog, cats, ferrets &  Soap Crafters, what do they all have in common?

Pork!!!

Dan surprised Jeanette & I today with our special request for

Tails,  Fat Back( what you use for lard), Liver, Heart , & Feet are now all in stock in .

Prices

Tails- $4.50 per pound- Not only a great for pets but also great for stews and veggies.

Fat Back  $4 per pound if you want lard or to make your own soap this fat is gold.

Liver-$4  per pound liverwurst, Scrapple or liver pudding you know you want to make your own this summer to go with all those fresh garden veggies. We have a few books in the store to steal some recipes out of for these dishes

Heart- $2.99  per pound great for adventurous eaters (slice and cook like a steak) or for pets

Feet- $2.50 per pound.  These are my secret ingredient to so many dishes. I smoke them then add them to beans, collards and pork bone broth. Oh yes, pork broth should be its own magical food group.

Ears-$4 per pound. Not just a great dog treat, these are also my favorite bar food.  I braise these till tender (280 F in a dutch oven for 2 hours) then slice and fry.

Neck Bone-$4 per pound try a new flavor of  bone broth. If you love beans this will add an extra depth of flavor to them.

Finally Raw Goats Milk ($5 per 1/2 gallon) is back in the store on Fridays and Saturdays. The supply will be limited. Please let Lucy know by Monday if you need an order. Several of the area veterinarians in the area have suggested this for orphaned pets or pets going through medical issues such as Chemo or on raw food diets. Please check with your own veterinarians to see if this is right for you.

,

Posted on

Low fat milk is going to kill you

Ok, that’s not exactly what the report said. But it’s close enough. The headline from the article says, “A new study suggests people who consume full-fat dairy weigh less and are less likely to develop diabetes than those who eat low-fat dairy products.” This was a 15 year study of thousands of people. It’s significant.

Raw milk in refrigerator

I’ve written before about how my diet has changed from a normal American diet to a low carb diet. I’ve told you that I lost about 60 pounds, and kept it off. I also have lowered my blood pressure and am generally more healthy.

A few people have adopted my lifestyle based off of my results, some have tried it and abandoned it, but most have looked on and assumed I’m crazy. Eventually I’m going to keel over from a heart attack. “Everybody knows” that fat is bad and eventually I’ll pay the price. This is despite all the media coming out that debunks the commonly held belief that fat is bad. Everyone still thinks I’m crazy. Such is the power of our commonly held beliefs.

However this week, I found that the idea that fat is bad must finally be going main stream because I found a link to a 15 year study of high fat vs low-fat milk on, of all places, Clark Howard’s website, Clark.com. Clark is a bit of a health guy, but first and foremost he is a consumer affairs person and he looks out for the individual first. If he’s reporting that fat might be ok, then maybe this thing is getting some traction.

If you are still buying 1% milk, or heaven forbid, skim milk, take a look at the study. Vitamin D whole milk is the minimum we drink in our house. Usually it’s what you see pictured above, full cream, unadulterated raw milk. And surprise surprise, we’re pretty skinny. Well, except for after Thanksgiving. Ugh, I had to be rolled away from the table.

Eating Thanksgiving dinner 2016
Round one of Thanksgiving dinner. I should have stopped there.
Posted on

Is beef bad for you, or is it corn-fed beef?

I ran across this post on, of all places, a financial website. I haven’t verified the data myself but a large chunk of it aligns with the data I heard from Dr. Anibal Pordomingo when I was at a grazers school years ago. The Omega 3 vs 6 ratio is real, documentable, and repeatable. You can measure the health decline in the cattle as they are fed a non-natural diet. You can also recover the animals health by putting them back on pasture where they are supposed to be. An unhealthy animal being consumed cannot result in a healthy person.

Link to the post on grass vs. corn-fed cattle.

Cows barely visible in the grass

I think there is a misstatement in the beginning about cattle going from 4-5 years to finish down to 13 months. What is actually correct is that cattle used to be raised to that age before slaughter as they were fully fleshed out and the meat had a more robust quality to it. But they weighed 1100 pounds at 24 months and 1200 pounds at 48 months. They aren’t much bigger years later. Now cows can finish in as little as 13 months in aggressive programs like he references but 24 months is plenty long for our American palate without any outside additions or weird genetics. We routinely finish cattle at 24 months on our farm with no issues and 100% natural. We certainly don’t have any special genetics. Also, after the mad cow BS of years past, we now cannot normally process cattle older than 30 months due to federal regulations so 24 months is going to be the norm regardless.

The post I’m promoting is not an overly long post and it has some good data in it. It’s not a peer reviewed publication, but they aren’t all they are cracked up to be either. To see what I mean, take a listen to this NPR Planet Money podcast about peer reviewed science. I have a distrust of science anyway, especially nutritional science, but wow! I didn’t know it was this bad.

Make sure you pay attention to the last line in the article. What is true for corn-fed cows is true for any corn-fed animal. Are you having tilapia tonight?

Posted on

Maybe I was wrong about the government not changing

Cracked open egg
Wholesome, good for you egg.

In this latest article, it appears that the recommendations are in fact changing. Cholesterol in your diet is now no longer viewed as a factor in our dietary guidelines. If you have high blood cholesterol then they still say you need to do something but apparently you don’t need to change your diet. Hmm, it only took them 40 years to change their minds despite the evidence to the contrary and all the deaths that could have been prevented.

Yep, still cynical.

Posted on

A follow up to the Washington Post article yesterday

Bacon
Mmm, bacon

Today we have a short follow up on the article posted yesterday in the Washington post. This one is about my favorite subject, bacon!

Basically, if it turns out the government and the dieticians were wrong all this time, what does that mean to the other demonized foods like bacon, cream, butter, steak, etc? It means that eating for enjoyment instead of convenience and low fat is actually better for you!

Now go fry some eggs and bacon and get your day started right!

What’s that? You don’t have eggs and bacon? You better give me a call then, because we have some right here waiting on you.

Posted on

More good info on why fat is actually good for you

I’ve talked before about my diet and its results here, and here. I also wrote about fat and heart health here.  All these are old posts that if you’ve been around a while you’ve already seen but we have a lot of new customers so it may be worth going back and reading up a bit.

Bottle and glass of milk
Who knew, milk is actually good for you

Now, thanks to Ron who sent me this article, we have a pretty exhaustive article in the Washington Post about how the government is maybe realizing that demonizing wholesome products like milk and other real foods (like we produce here on our farm) might be bunk. The article goes quite a ways back and takes us through some of the science and history behind our current government dietary recommendations. It seems to do a good job of showing both sides but it leans towards what I believe in, which is that the high carb, low fat government recommendations most of us have lived with all of our lives are to blame for our current health woes.

According to the article, the current guidelines are up for review and it’s inferred that maybe we’ll break out of our current dogma since there is such good information coming out that maybe we were presumptive and simplistic back in the 50s when all this started. My personal opinion? Don’t get your hopes up. There are too many industries and professions married to the current system to not lobby to keep things like they are. What does that mean to us, the consumer? It means we need to read and understand what is going on and make our own decisions. The government is not going to make things better, you have to do that on your own.

Posted on

One more reason to know your farmer

I found this blog post randomly (Thank you Facebook for helping me waste time instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing 5 minutes ago).

I thought it was interesting, and telling. 

The author is a milk farmer in the mid-west. She farms conventionally, milks fora  co-op, and her milk is sold to major manufacturers through the co-op. She found her way to a product by one of her buyers that contains her milk and the milk of her fellow farmers. What she found on the bottle for claims about her milk were alarming for her, and unfortunately common for the rest of us. You can read the blog post here. 

Dilbert. What I see in my head whenever someone says "marketing."
What I see in my head whenever someone says “marketing.”

You can do everything right, but if your product goes to a corporation with a marketing department, all bets are off. If you are looking for something healthy in the grocery store, it ALL came through a marketing department.

Posted on

A farmers breakfast, Ninja style

http://instagram.com/p/rt7przjgoP/

This week SWMBO had dinner for me as always but I want able to make it home one night. This morning I found the steak she had defrosted and decided steak and eggs sounded good for breakfast. However she had some deviled eggs that needed to be eaten so I grabbed those instead. And a tomato was sitting on the counter fresh from the garden. Looks good. And before you think I am crazy, I lost over 50 pounds eating like this. This is the breakfast of champions and 100% came from our farm.

Posted on

An article on the history of red meat consumption in the US

I read an article recently that was shared with me by Darlin’ Wifey. She’s ever on the hunt for things farming related that she thinks would be of interest to me and to you.

The article (link here) is based on the book The Big Fat Surprise (picture below). It shares an interesting look at meat consumption in the US and some of the fallacies of history that shape our modern conversation on diet. It’s an interesting read and a  good primer for buying the book if you want to go further. Growing, hunting, and killing your own meat certainly seems to be a better way to feed yourself in my opinion. I also know that before I had a John Deere to harvest my crops, having a cow or pig do the foraging for me and then all I had to do was harvest the animal was a simpler way of getting my food. Tasted better too.

The Big Fat Surprise
The book this article is based on.
Posted on

The questionable link between fat and heart disease

I looks like there is a trending article in the  Wall Street Journal making its way around the inter-web that does a nice job of telling the history of our war on fat and gives some compelling evidence of why it is a failed war on many fronts. The most major failing is that we as Americans are fatter than ever. Certainly fatter than when this war on fat started.

Chilaquiles. Pork sausage, fatty beef, and yes some corn chips. Now that's diet food!
Chilaquiles. Pork sausage, fatty beef, and yes some corn chips. Now that’s diet food!

The article is fairly long and makes a lot of references to studies, both good and bad. It also pokes some pretty big holes in the original studies that supposedly showed that fat is bad for you. The author of this article is pimping her new book, which surprise surprise, is based on the same topic. Now there’s nothing wrong with promoting your book, and based on the one review so far on Amazon (850 reviews as of mid 2017, 4.5 stars average), it needs some attention to get people to buy it. It was only just released (as of May 2014) so I’m not knocking the book, just pointing out the obvious.

I read the critic’s reviews and it looks like a who’s who of the anti-carb movement, all people who have their own books. Again, not really an issue but I like to see a broader cross-section of people before I can believe the hype. However, what I have read sounds pretty good. The author is an investigative journalist and has apparently spent 9 years on this project which puts her earlier in the movement than a recent book publishing would suggest. She has gone beyond hyperbole and has, again apparently, done her research to back her findings. She lists her copious sources which isn’t common. Finally, the findings of her book match my life experiences that I’ve written about before.

As an update to the post I wrote before, I’ve decided to dip my toe back into flying. Not in any big way, but just easing back in. Step one was to go and get an airman’s medical. It’s one thing to go to the doctor and have him tell you something you don’t like hearing. It’s quite another to go to a FAA doctor, who is reporting everything he sees to Big Brother. We’ve just come off a winter where my family consumed over 800 pounds of pork. That’s over 5 months. Folks that’s about 5 pounds a day of pork! Now some of that we served to friends, some was bones and gristle and whatnot that went to the dogs. But bacon/sausage for breakfast, and pork roast/pork chops/etc for dinner, and leftovers in between? We have practiced what we preach this winter.

Now I’m sitting down with the nurse and she’s checking all my vitals. I haven’t had an exam since I turned 40 and this is when things begin to fall off of you. I’m picturing all the fat I’ve scarfed in a short amount of time. Was all this stuff wrong? Will I have blood pressure through the roof? I’m certainly stressed enough at this point. The result? Better blood pressure and pulse rate than I had when I was in my 20s. Oh, and I’m about 5 pounds lighter than I was when I wrote that previous post too.