Beef is always aged quite a while before it's cut for sale, so I wouldn't worry about considering it un-fresh.
Organic beef is quite different from grassfed beef. The problem is that cattle are designed to eat grass and other forage plants like clover, not grains. Grains, even organic ones, upset the digestive environment of cattle, sicken the animal, and form a breeding ground for dangerous bacteria. To complicate things even further, feeding operations that finish cattle on grain are designed for easy delivery of grain to the cattle, so the cattle are not given free open range and end up living in and breathing the dust from their own feces.
Select grassfed ONLY when you buy beef. Similarly, other animals should be eating their natural foods, even farmed fish are often fed corn-based feed - LOL can you imagine a salmon nibbling on an ear of corn?
Thanks for answering my question. I've heard people lecture about never eating grain fed beef so many times so it kind of worries me to do it, although I have never once heard a factual reason why I should stay away from grain fed meats.
It doesn't seem to be a good enough reason to stay away from it though.
If it is really just for the reasons you listed off, I will probably just go gobble down a huge fatty raw grain fed steak right now LoL, simply because those statements aren't all accurate. However, I still would like to figure out other reasons why people don't, maybe there is something else to it.
This might be coming from the fad that grains are unhealthy for all humans and that they cause inflammation and disease, ect therefore we should all exist on a low carb diet and also stay away from grainfed meats, but given my knowledge in physiology, I know that isn't accurate. It also has no place in a paleo diet, because our ancestors ate carbs...
I'm still not entirely sold on this idea though, I would definitely need more proof, it seems unproven and unfactual and it's just that I was actually raised on a 400 acre dairy farm with over 300 milk cows, we used some grain for feed, and our cows were the healthiest on the island, except for the odd case of meningitis and times when birds would crap in the cow feed which could kill cows, which is why my dad spent a lot of time shooting starlings. Cows shouldn't be ingesting feces.
Crop grains
are grass, more specifically seeds from grasses, cows have no problem digesting them because cows eat all types of edible plants when put in the wild, wild cows have digested these grains in natural abundance since the beginning of time, the only difference is they are being harvested by man now and often times made into pellets.
We lived on raw milk straight from the cow, and despite the cattle consuming things other than grass and the amount of lime spread on feilds and pesticide in corn seed, the raw milk kept us from ever getting cavities, chicken pox and we never got sick.
The cows ate mainly grass in the form of silage that we preserved in gigantic silage bags. They lived in barns so were not free, but sometimes were allowed to go wild to keep the land guarded because we often rented more feilds further away from the farmstead, and then they turned wild and naturally skittish and aggressive very fast.
The main reason farmers keep cows in barns is to keep them from predators, because otherwise they are easy prey. I'm not sure what barn you have been walking through but I would be awefully worried if there was manure dust, because that should not exist in a healthy environment, first of all because manure does not create dust, it remains wet. Barn floors are supposed to be scraped regularily and manure is dumped into the manure pit, which is used later on feilds. Barns are extremely well ventilated, otherwise, the building would literally explode due to methane gas. The cows do not have breathing problems or health issues due to the smell, neither do farmers who work 24/7 in the barns.
Corn season allowed us to plant cow corn and it was also fermented, and haybails were stored in haylofts throughout the winter, and made sure to keep dry or else they could catch on fire. Many farmers we know have had barn fires that way. We would occasionaly get shipments of alfalfa, and there were grain pellets stored. Grain was mainly given to the calves for added nutrition. The calves would drink fresh milk twice a day from big bottles or as they got older from bucket, and get a bucket of fresh grain pellets, lots of water, and have some hay but they did not feed on silage or grass like the cows. Also, we had huge salt blocks for the cows to lick on which they loved, something to do with keeping them healthy but I can't remember the exact reason.
We weren't a beef farm but sometimes when we lost cows, instead of leaving them out in the boneyards for scavengers we had them butchered and it was the best meat I've ever tasted, and have never been able to find any steaks like that since I've lived in town. (The steaks we get in all the butcher shops here are shipped from Alberta and aren't local ).
The grains we used never upset the digestion in cows, they have more than one solid stomache hehe and chew their cud, they always have very good digestion, nor did it make them sick but there are farms around that have very sick animals for many reasons, but eating grains is not typically one of those reasons. It's not like most people can walk through the barns to look at the cows or follow a farmer around on his errands before they buy the meat. But unfortunately, it is best to buy meat from a source you can trust. That's impossible here in town LoL.
The number one thing I would be worried about when purchasing meat is the experience of the farmer. I'll tell you why I trust big "industrial" farms more - there may be some things I don't agree with, but generally, they know what they are doing. Because the small private farms that farm organic, grass fed beef are usually owned by inexperienced hippies who have no generational experience or knowledge about agriculture and that is a very specific science. These big farms tend to get a bad name but the truth is they tend to be a lot safer than most small farms.
You could be buying grassfed meats or "free range" meats where the cows are allowed to roam free in a small feild, but you have no idea what the state of that grass is. There is more to farming healthy cows then just letting them roam in a feild!!! I can tell you though, unless they are truly wild animals, they aren't going to be healthy - which is exactly why the science of agriculture was invented, to grow new crops properly. Free range cows would need to roam in a neverending wilderness for them to be truly healthy, not just a feild, otherwise said feild becomes trampeled, they mow it down and wait for the same grass to grow again, therefore cows are forced to eat the same grass over and over again - that is not healthy for the grass or the cows.
If it is a small farm, chances are, they are NOT taking proper care of that grass.
Real wild cows NEVER stay in one spot and munch on the same grass. Feilds must be cropped and completely started over many times to grow healthy crops.
The only thing that grain (good grain) does is give them added nutrients and make them fatter, which actually ups milk production and makes them healthier, but the cows need a good balanced diet, which also is a science. Besides, real wild cows do not just eat grass, seeing as grass does not grow everywhere, they would eat all types of edible ruffage, even naturally growing grains.
Besides I've heard some paleo dieters claim grass fed is better as it makes the meat leaner.
I don't like lean meat. I think it's gross without fat content. No meat was ever completely lean back in paleo times. I think that's unnatural.
I would be more worried about injections and chemicals that are used. I think people should be concerned about more areas in regards to where their beef and raw milk comes from then it just being grassfed, there's a lot to take into consideration.
It's just going to take a lot more than that to convince me not to eat grain fed beef, and I really want to try it raw because the stuff I normally get that is fed grain for 3 months before they die, I just love LoL I just can't seem to find any accurate information about why not to, even though people say not to and it's not like I want to die after eating a grainfed meat just to see LoL
I just wish I could eat meat as fresh as possible. You know like, go out hunt the animal, eat it right away - that would be more natural and more nutrient dense. I don't like the idea of aging after cut because the myoglobin and heme iron doesn't last that long, it'll eventually turn brown, and Im sure loses nutrients in the process. I understand aging is supposed to make it easier to digest or at least more tender and flavorful, but I don't think that's the case for everyone. I mean I know for some people eating cooked or aged meat is harder to digest then eating it raw and as fresh as possible.
I'll give it a try though.
Im airing out my organic grassfed steak right now for a few hours. Will try it for dinner again and hopefully I don't get gas again.
Gas pains seem to be gone, probably because I had diareah this morning. Wonder if I got e.coli or something after all haha
