Chicken and Superbugs

In case you have just wandered onto this blog on a whim or random Google link, let me be clear about my food choices. I NEVER buy meats from the grocery stores, and not much produce except in winter when there’s no local hoophouse stuff available. I do as much home-grown and/or organic as possible.

My health is not good (stemming from years of work-related causes) but I'd probably be dead already if not for my food choices over the last few years. 

When I say I buy no commercial “no meats” I really mean it, but especially NOT any chicken. Here’s one reason why:

Half Of Supermarket ChickenHarbors Superbugs, Consumer Reports Finds

Tyson chicken houses are everywhere in Virginia, but thankfully none are very near me. They are now making biochar from the Tyson waste and I won’t even buy that for my garden. Yuck. Instead I use the charred bits from my wood stove on my garden.

I buy local organic grass-fed meats despite the higher cost, and I believe (in addition to being tasty) it benefits my health, plus cuts down my health-care costs. I cure my own bacon from domestic hogs that roam our wooded mountain slopes, and make my own butter from local cream that's not ultra-pasteurized. I also make a lot of my own cheese. Occasionally when I get off the mountain to a large city, I look for wild shrimp and fish but those gets harder to find every year. 

If you've tread much about native american and early settler life, you know they ate the organs of meat animals long before they'd eat the muscle meats. That's because the organs contain so much more nutrition that the muscles. We Americans choose less nutritious steak instead of organ meats, sacrificing nutrition for popular belief.

I admit I balk at eating brains, although my dad loved them scrambled with eggs. I eat liver, kidneys, heart, and sweetbreads. Some of the tougher cuts like hearts and kidneys sometimes get ground and used in a mixed country paté loaf. Do NOT even mention chitlins or tripe because I'm not going there!

Liver Disease and Nutrition

Six and a half years ago, I was diagnosed with Liver Disease, and referred to the University of Virginia to see some liver specialists. The first thing they did was to refer me to the Transplant Program, where I underwent a battery of tests over several months to determine if the rest of my body was healthy enough to withstand the rigors of a liver transplant.

At the time, I was also having the same intermittent low thyroid symptoms I'd had for most of my life. I show all the symptoms of hypothyroidism, yet the thyroid tests always come back in the normal range. This time, the endocrinologist talked to me about foods that adversely affect the thyroid, most notably cruciferous vegetables and soy products. They are goitrogens, meaning they suppresses thyroid function and the uptake of iodine needed by the thyroid.

Cruciferous vegetables lose a lot of the goitrogens when cooked, but soy does not. I thought I had pretty much eliminated soy from my diet years ago... that is, until I discovered soy masquerades under 40 or more names as food additives. The first thing to eliminate from my diet was any food that came in a package with a long list of chemical ingredients on the label, many of which are soy-based (and from GMO soy).

The next thing to eliminate was sugars, high fructose corn syrup in particular. Fructose damages the liver and causes mitochondrial and metabolic dysfunction in the same way as any other toxin.

Sucrose (table sugar) is 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is anywhere from 42 to 55 percent fructose depending on which type is used. Glucose is the form of energy our bodies are designed to run on. Every cell in our body uses glucose for energy, and it's metabolized in every organ of our body; only about 20 percent of glucose is actually metabolized in our liver. Fructose, on the other hand, can only be metabolized by the liver, because the liver is the only organ that has the transporter for it. 

Since all fructose gets shuttled to the liver, when we eat a typical Western-style diet, we consume high amounts of it, so fructose ends up taxing and damaging the liver in the same way other toxins (including alcohol) do. In fact, fructose is virtually identical to alcohol with regards to the metabolic havoc it wreaks. 

According to Dr. Lustig (an endocrinologist at the Univ. of California), fructose is a "chronic, dose-dependent liver toxin." And just like alcohol, fructose is metabolized directly into fat—not cellular energy, like glucose. So when eating fructose, it just gets stored in our fat cells, which leads to mitochondrial malfunction. 

The liver is the major site for converting excess carbohydrates and proteins into fatty acids and triglycerides, which are then exported and stored in adipose (fat) tissue.  I was advised to cut my carb intake to 50 grams a day until my system got clean, and then keep the intake to under 100 grams a day. 

The last thing to eliminate was any meat and eggs from animals that may have been fed the same soy and grain I was to avoid, as well as avoiding all fresh produce grown in a chemical cloud. That meant local free-range eggs, grass-fed beef, lamb, pastured pork, free-range chickens, and the Farmer's Market for veggies I don't grow.

Well, let me tell you, for 2-3 weeks I thought I would starve to death! Giving up the obvious addictive sugars was hard enough, but giving up bread and pasta was even worse. That's when I really started to delve into Real Foods, and things started to turn around.

Within a month, my energy levels and mental outlook began to increase, and my liver enzymes improved enough in 3-4 months that my liver docs took me off all meds.

I also began to lose a little weight. I learned to always carry a wholesome snack when I was away from home, usually a hard-boiled farm egg, or a piece of raw milk cheese (for the enzymes not found in pasteurized cheese). (Do not believe raw milk cheese might harbor pathogens. By Law, they must be aged at least 60 days before they can be sold, and if there were pathogens, the cheese would be rotten before the 60 days were up.)

Unfortunately, I have fallen partially off the "good diet" wagon over the last 12 months, mostly due to the increased cost of food and utilities versus my income (just a monthly social security check) and partly due to laziness. Eating right requires planning ahead and making time to prepare nutritious foods. In the last 3 weeks, I've had 3 sodas because I was experiencing low blood sugar while away from the house. That's 3 more than I've had in 5-6 years.

It's time to climb fully back up on that healthy food wagon no matter what else I have to give up. (Or continue a downward spiral in my health.)

There are many, many good things I can make from cheap cuts of meat and bones. Slow cooking a crockpot full of bones produces an incredibly nutritious broth/stock that's like jello when cooled.  Stock contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily—not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals.  Bone broth also supports joints, hair, skin and nails due to its high collagen content. In fact, some even suggest that it helps eliminate cellulite as it supports smooth connective tissue.

Cooked long and slow, bone broth also contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons, stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine, now sold as expensive supplements for arthritis and joint pain.

The "odd bits" like heart, liver, kidneys, sweetbreads, etc. contain so much more nutrition than the muscle meats, and they are much cheaper to purchase. I just received a Christmas gift of the book Terrine, plus I found a used copy of Terrines, Påtes and Galantines on ebay for under $4 earlier this year. (If you are not familiar with terrines, think meatloaf... and a galantine is just a meaty loaf encased in a pastry shell.)

What else did I eat when I felt so great?? Bacon, eggs, sausage, homemade yogurt, salads dressed with fresh lemon juice and a drizzle of EVOO, cheese, real butter, real cream in my coffee (not UP), fresh veggies, olive oil and coconut oil, sardines, not much fruit because of the sugar content, no legumes, no grains, and grass-fed meats daily. My one daily treat was a half-inch square of an 85% cacao bar at bedtime, and it was enough.

Eating those foods also brought the ratio of my Omega-6 to Omega-3 back into a better balance (about 4:1) than the SAD (Standard American Diet) which is as much as 40:1. 

All the meat and dairy provided the essential amino acids necessary to build proteins (essential because our bodies cannot produce them internally). The failure to obtain enough of even 1 of the 10 essential amino acids has serious health implications and can result in degradation of the body's proteins. Muscle and other protein structures may be dismantled to obtain the one amino acid that is needed. "Unlike fat and starch, the human body does not store excess amino acids for later use; the amino acids must be in the food every day.

I bought some wonton wrappers yesterday and intend to make and freeze some wontons (they contain just 4 grams of carbs per wrapper). A lunch of a wonton or two added to some home canned stock is quick, easy, and nutritious. 

It's a start. Salads will be scarce over the winter because I'm leery of bagged greens, even organic ones. Thankfully I froze lots of green veggies from my summer garden.

Knowing Your Local Farmers

Photo by Watershed Post

Meat recalls... I get bulletins almost every day from FSIS (the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service) about meat recalls. It's disgusting. This month, Cargill recalled 29,000 pounds, (more than 14 tons) of ground beef as a salmonella outbreak sickened dozens of people in seven US states. 

I follow a blog about permaculture written by a medical doctor serving in the US military, and he also writes for AgriTrue.com, where he posted some interesting comments about beef recalls.

"First, this is a lot of meat. I wondered how many steers (or old dairy cows) it takes to make 14 tons of ground beef. This is not such a simple question to answer. Was the beef made from mostly old dairy cows, which would be used almost entirely for ground beef, or was the beef from large-breed, healthy steers, which would be used for steaks, roasts, and other cuts, with a much smaller portion going into ground beef production? Let’s for arguments sake pick a weight number somewhere in the middle of the two realms… 500 lbs. This would mean that it would take 56 animals to produce 14 tons of ground meat.

Unfortunately, this recall pales in comparison to the 71,500 tons of beef recalled in 2008. Using our math, that would be over 280,000 animals “wasted”.  

 

I also thought about how these types of recalls are really a product of large scale agriculture. Is there anything inherently wrong with large scale agriculture? Well, I don’t know. I do know that there are a lot of problems that arise from the practices associated with it. I know that there is a lot of waste. I know that there is a lot of environmental damage. I know that the product being produced is typically far inferior in flavor and nutrition. I know that when a mistake is made, that mistake is proportionately as large as the corporation behind it. So, yeah, maybe there is something inherently wrong with large scale agriculture.

Now, I also had to admit that there can be contamination and illness issues from small, local producers. However, these issues are going to be significantly smaller. They will affect substantially fewer people. In addition, when it is a smaller operation, fewer mistakes are made. This is just logical. When you are only processing five animals from your farm, you will have much greater attention to detail. Your mind won’t start to drift and daydream because you are doing something new the whole time. You will not be lulled into autopilot as you do the same thing over and over again. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens on the factory floors of the large animal processing facilities. Of course I understand that the small scale beef producer rarely processes his own meat, but the point is that smaller is usually safer."

His point is well taken by me. I buy beef from a man who slaughters only half a dozen beef a year. I know how he raises them, and I know how he amends the soil that grows the grasses they eat. I don't much like the processing facility he uses, but it's the only one for many, many miles around. (The USDA inspector has a permanent office there.) They make as much money from the non-meaty parts (offal, hides, hooves, etc.) sold to outside buyers as they do processing the meats for local farmers.

This leads me into our drought conditions and the price of feed for CAFO beef, which are mostly grain-fed, but that's for another post. 

Modern Hunter-Gatherer, Part 2: Eggs, Fowl

Photo courtesy of samiebill1's photostream

(Read Part 1 of this series here.)

'Hunting and Gathering' the healthiest eggs, chickens, turkeys, ducks and other fowl can be very daunting even in a rural lifestyle, and much more so if you are an urban dweller on a short budget.

Why?

Let’s start with eggs. Sure, you can buy eggs at most grocery stores that are labeled “cage-free” and some might say “Omega-3 enriched” but are they nutritionally any better than the other, cheaper eggs stacked next to them? Frankly, they are all battery eggs, only the marketing strategy is different. They do not provide substantially better nutrition than the cheaper eggs, so save your money.

In the case of eggs advertised as omega-3 enriched, there are small amounts of O-3 in some feeds that include corn or soy, or maybe a handful of flax seeds thrown in a huge batch. There are no USDA requirements for minimums. Either way, they do not contain the amounts of omega-3 in pastured eggs.

Photo courtesy of steve p2008's photostream

Eggs advertised as ‘free range’ or ‘cage-free’ simply means that they may be crowded several thousand to a pen, with one small door to an outside concrete patch, like above. Most never see grass. Here’s what I do NOT consider free-range although they are marketed as such. Click here for Video. (These are turkeys in the video, but the caging is the same as chickens.) Here are some real free range birds: Click here for Video.

Photo courtesy of woodleywonderworks ' photostream

Nutrition in eggs:
Mother Earth News published a great nutritional study of true free range eggs compared to official USDA data for commercial eggs. The results varied from farm to farm, of course… no two farms have the exact same soil fertility and greens growing.

The average free range egg results vs. commercial eggs showed:
* 1⁄3 less cholesterol than commercial eggs
* 1⁄4 less saturated fat than commercial eggs
* 2⁄3 more vitamin A than commercial eggs
* 3 times more vitamin E than commercial eggs
* 7 times more beta carotene than commercial eggs
* 21 times more omega-3 fatty acid than commercial eggs

Not only are we what we eat, we are also whatever it is that what we eat eats, too. If we eat commercial eggs, we get some of the antibiotics and other drugs that have gone from the chickens into the eggs, and if their nutrition is poor (cheap feed) can the eggs be any better?

Because I live in a rural area, it is fairly easy to find free range eggs, especially at the farmer’s markets. However, I’m very picky because of my thyroid. If the chickens are fed supplemental grain, I want to make sure the grain contains no soybeans. (Soybeans contain goitrogens, which impede thyroid function.) I also want to know if the chickens are allowed pasture that is sprayed with herbicides and pesticides (I avoid those eggs as non-organic), and whether the grass is enriched by growing in good soil.

I know for a fact my egg supplier has some of the best pasture around. He tests the grass with a refractometer, and adds what the soil needs to increase the Brix. I am willing to pay more for those eggs, too. Over in the next town, I can buy free range eggs for almost half the price of Richard’s eggs but they come from several sources and I don’t know what they are fed. They are certainly far better than commercial eggs, and I will buy them when Richard has no eggs.

It is more difficult to find pastured eggs in the winter due to moult, and that varies somewhat with breed, and when they were born. Typical pullets may lay for 11 months before their first adult moult when they cease production for 3 months. Excellent layers moult for a shorter time than poor producers, and day-length (and temperatures) affects laying.

For urban dwellers: I have seen pastured eggs offered online that can be safely shipped. I'd also suggest you try to get a local store to stock pastured eggs, but that may be difficult. The co-op links below may offer some suggestions.

Richard (Moyer Family Farm) not only grazes his chickens on that great grass, he grazes his ducks and turkeys there, too. I bought my Thanksgiving turkey from him, a heritage breed called Bourbon Red. They are leaner in the breast than factory turkeys but higher in nutrition and much tastier. These are free range turkeys: click for video. This year he is raising more duck eggs (which are higher in nutrition than chicken eggs), hence more ducks. I hope he will have duck to sell later.

Note: Two to four billion pounds of poultry feathers are produced every year. Most are ground up as filler for animal food.

Buying free-range chicken and other fowl
As I mentioned in part 1, I see Coleman Natural and Coleman Organic chickens in most health food stores. Their labels say “NO Antibiotics, NO Added Hormones, NO Preservatives…EVER. Always Vegetarian Fed.” Frankly, that doesn’t tell me much. (Besides, they had a major recall not long ago. That always worries me.) How will I know if the chicken is high in Omega-3 from grass, or if it is high in Omega-6 because it was fed vegetarian grain and soy products instead of grass and forage?

Fortunately, most farmer’s markets usually have at least one vendor of processed (often frozen) pastured chickens, and occasionally other fowl. Also much grass-fed fowl is available online (mail-order) from many sites. A good site to locate a source near you is Eatwild.

A dozen or more farmers in a several county area near me raising grass-fed meat and fowl have just started a co-op. Their prices are considerable lower than health food stores, and I see they have local suppliers of beef, pork, lamb, goat, chicken, turkey, duck, pheasant, and rabbit. I already have an order placed!

They are part of a larger, national independent co-op group. You may find one near you here.

Just last week I bought a small chest freezer (7 cu. Ft.) for under $180 with a $20 rebate coming. (I also had a 10% off coupon!) I will start to stockpile chickens and other fowl because buying in season and in quantity is cheaper.

To that, I will be adding beef, pork, lamb and fish. I found pastured summer butter (higher in omega-3) on sale at Whole Foods yesterday and bought a supply to freeze since it is seasonal. I already opened one package and it really IS butter-yellow. The difference in taste and color to commercial butter is amazing, like the yolks of pastured eggs vs. commercial eggs!

Heritage Turkeys

Last year I ordered a small organic Heritage Turkey (locally from my Farmer's Market) to cook for Thanksgiving dinner. I must say it was the most flavorful turkey I've ever eaten, quite different that the standard 'butterball' type turkey. You can see my photos and story about it here.

I had intended to do a repeat performance this year but I'm "On Strike", refusing to use the kitchen here. Most of you know I love to cook, and it takes great restraint to refrain from making a daily issue of the nasty kitchen here. (I refuse to clean up after 2 grown women, capable of doing it themselves.)

Slowly (very slowly) I'm getting set up to cook in my end of the house, but that won't provide a Thanksgiving Dinner this year. The important thing, however, is that I am Thankful for lots! What I will miss the most is sharing the day with friends, but you are always just on the other side of my computer screen.

I am invited several places to share the holiday weekend but I'd rather not travel on holidays. Nor will I feel lonely. In fact I hope to help deliver holiday meals to some who are shut-ins.

Wishing all of you a very pleasant Thanksgiving, early before all the kitchen work sets in!

Egg Trivia

• There are now over 200 breeds of chickens.

• There is no nutritional difference between a brown egg and a white egg. Hens with white feathers produce white eggs; hens with brown feathers produce brown eggs. Exotic breeds like arucana vary in egg shell coloration.

• The color of the yolk has to do with the hen’s diet. The more carotene eaten by the hen, the darker the yellow yolk.

• An average hen lays 300 to 325 eggs a year.

• A hen starts laying eggs at 19 weeks of age.

• A hen must eat four pounds of feed to make a dozen eggs.

• Occasionally, a hen will produce double-yoked eggs throughout her egg-laying career.

• As a hen grows older she produces larger eggs.

• The mother hen turns over her egg about 50 times per day so the yolk won't stick to the sides of the shell.

• “Free-range” has a wide legal interpretation. A large factory with a single window to the outside may qualify even if the hens are packed tightly on the floor area.

• The larger the farm the more crowding there will be, along with practices such as debeaking. The secret is to find a small local source (usually at the farmers' market or farm stand).

• Organic eggs are healthier since organically raised chickens are not given antibiotics (plus growth hormones for poultry are not legal in Canada).

• The new 2009 Canadian Organic Standard requires that organic livestock management aim "to utilize natural breeding methods, minimize stress, prevent disease, progressively eliminate the use of chemical allopathic veterinary drugs (including antibiotics), and maintain animal health and welfare.”

Farmer's Market at The White House?

President Obama, during a health care strategy meeting last week, was asked about nutrition and how his family keeps so fit. Part of his reply addressed school nutrition and the need to include fresh produce, then he went on to say he wants a Farmer's Market right outside the White House.

There may be hope for good and healthy food all over this country yet!!

Read the full story in the Huffington Post.

NC inspectors raid farmer's markets

Photo at a New Hampshire Farmer's Market by acanatta

Last weekend the NC state food inspectors removed numerous items for sale at the North Asheville Tailgate Market, telling several vendors they were out of compliance with state regulations. There were no fines this time, but the state can fine repeat offenders up to $2,000. The state inspectors who came to the Asheville market made vendors remove home canned items like pickles, and said the products and their recipes needed to be registered through the state — at $50 a recipe. (BTW, Pickles are preserved in vinegar, which will not support the growth of bacteria, mold or virus germs.)

The inspectors from the N.C. Food and Drug Protection Division, part of the Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, responded to a complaint about canned goods that had not been prepared at an approved facility, according to Andrea Ashby, spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture.

While small market farmers are running scared that increasing food safety regulations will impose harsh constraints against them and perhaps put them out of business, huge companies like Nestle's Danville, VA facility reportedly had refused federal inspections for 5 years before the current recall for E. coli O157:H7 tainted cookie dough.

Why is it that inspectors can come down hard on the little guy, while huge businesses can thumb their noses at inspections? The Wall Street Journal reported on June 29 that inspection reports covering the past 5 years show that officials at Nestlé’s Danville, Va facility, "refused to allow a Food and Drug Administration inspector to review consumer complaints or inspect its program designed to prevent food contamination."

You probably saw on the news last night that the FDA has now verified e coli in the Nestle's cookie dough. Also yesterday, the Colorado company JBS Swift Beef increased their "voluntary" recall of contaminated beef by an additional 380,000 pounds.

The particular strain of e coli that causes severe food poisoning in humans is fecal contamination, whether animal of human origin. I did an internet search and could not find a single report of an e coli or salmonella outbreak from meat or produce from a local farmer’s market. Surely there must have been some individual cases (even if from meat left in the car too long before getting it home), but certainly no “outbreak” was reported.

So why the close scrutiny on farmer's markets? Why are huge companies allowed to "self-regulate" only to end up with so many voluntary recalls? I'd guess that the cost of recalls over the last few years has been a bare fraction of the gross revenue of these companies, one they so can easily absorb that they are willing to take risks.

I read somewhere the Smithfield plant in Virginia processes 35,000 hogs a day. That's over 8 million pounds PER DAY. I don't know what the daily poundage is from the Colorado beef plant mentioned above, but I'd bet their 380,000 pounds in recall are far less than a day's production.

On the other hand, farmer's market vendors mostly sell out of love of doing it, of having and providing fresh items, and the hope making a few bucks. Have you ever heard of a farmer's market seller getting rich from the market? I have thought about selling my jams, jellies and pickles at the farmer’s market; if I were still living in NC, just the recipe fees alone would be over $3,000 for the various kinds I make.