How bad do you think it is to freeze meat?

[kurite]

Hi
I finally found a place that sells grass fed beef muscles and organs and even grass fed lamb muscle meats. Unfortunately its delivery only and they have to ship it frozen. So is it worth it??? I can get regular grass fed muscle meats from my local grocer, but no organs and no grass fed lamb. Please, what do you think i should do?

[miles]

=( I have nice fresh vacuum-packed grass-fed beef, but one of my briskets got frozen because it was too close to the cooling-part of my fridge =( It's lame, I already put cushions around it but somehow it still happened.

It's strange that they must ship it frozen, I thought vacuum-packed meats, bar mince, could stay fresh for months in refrigeration alone?

[goodsamaritan]

Hi
I finally found a place that sells grass fed beef muscles and organs and even grass fed lamb muscle meats. Unfortunately its delivery only and they have to ship it frozen. So is it worth it??? I can get regular grass fed muscle meats from my local grocer, but no organs and no grass fed lamb. Please, what do you think i should do?

Go for it.

[pc701]

I dont think there is a big difference between grain-fed and grass-fed. I wouldnt get paranoid about eating some grain fed organs or meats.

[invisible]

It is not at all bad. It's perfectly fine.

[TylerDurden]

Better to buy prefrozen 100% grassfed meats than nonfrozen grainfed meats. Grainfed meats are extremely unhealthy. It would be better to eat nonorganic fruit, IMO, than raw graifned meats.

[KD]

It seems like a large percentage of people here (from the US at least) are depending on shipments of frozen meat (at least fats and organs)

seems also like a consensus that fats handle better freezing than muscle meats.

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I guess it would be helpful to know if people are eating frozen muscle meats and fats on a regular basis in exclusion of fresh meats, and if thats a doable longer term strategy.


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I've personally never had problems with grain fed animals of higher quality like WF Amish chickens or WF beef, and in the past would have assumed these to be better alternatives to frozen meat with altered bacteria/enzymes.

[djr_81]

I guess it would be helpful to know if people are eating frozen muscle meats and fats on a regular basis in exclusion of fresh meats, and if thats a doable longer term strategy.

AFAIK that's all Lex eats and he's doing fine.
I can personally do fine on frozen meats but I do need to eat more of it to feel sated.

[kurite]

Wait are the bacteria and proteins altered in some way???

[miles]

The water in the cells crystallises, rupturing the cell-walls, allowing the cells' contents to spill out.

[kurite]

is that dangerous???

[miles]

Well I'd think it'd reduce the quality/bio-availability to some degree. I'd also think that the micro-nutrient profile would decrease more rapidly.

With the cells ruptured, they may be more accessible to bacteria, which would mean the freshness would decline quickly after thawing so I'd think you might want to eat it quickly after doing so, some may even like to eat it frozen?

I couldn't say whether or not it's dangerous, if anything that'd depend on how you went about it.

[invisible]

I've had great results eating grainfed meats and grainfed organs in the last month. I switched to grain fed meats after having used up all my grass fed meat and having felt terrible after a few days of mainly fruit. Have more grass fed meat now but I'm going to continue eating grain fed organs, due to limited supply of grass fed ones and in my opinion nutritionally the order of food is: grass fed organs (whether frozen or not - from experience frozen effects taste very slightly, but not nutrition) > grain fed organs > grass fed muscle meat > grain fed muscle meat

[PaleoPhil]

is that dangerous???

What do you think the Nenets people of Arctic Siberia would think about that, with mouths full of frozen raw reindeer meat that they've eaten that way for as long as anyone can remember and longer?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSWy6LGNyAw
"Reindeers (sic), ... the main source of income (and food) of the Nenets people for centuries."

[kurite]

Do they eat only raw reindeer and are they basically zero carbers or do they eat grains and eat other unhealthy things??? Anyone know they're life expectancy?

[pc701]

I dont think we should be looking up to the eskimoes or nenets and admiring their diet because they live in unnatural climates that humans beings shouldnt be living in. Rather picture yourself in a tropical paradise next to a beach were one would most likely be eating lots of fruits vegetables and probably more fish than land animals. But thats just my opinion...

[kurite]

Yah originally we were meant for tropics. But in all reality caucasians are actually meant for colder climates that dont get as much sun. In my opinion we are not fully adapted to it and were not adapted to the tropics anymore...I kinda hate my thought process but its true unless theres something im missing.

[invisible]

I dont think we should be looking up to the eskimoes or nenets and admiring their diet because they live in unnatural climates that humans beings shouldnt be living in. Rather picture yourself in a tropical paradise next to a beach were one would most likely be eating lots of fruits vegetables and probably more fish than land animals. But thats just my opinion...

 

and 'originally' we came from Africa, a land with abundant land game.

[PaleoPhil]

I dont think we should be looking up to the eskimoes or nenets and admiring their diet because they live in unnatural climates that humans beings shouldnt be living in. Rather picture yourself in a tropical paradise next to a beach were one would most likely be eating lots of fruits vegetables and probably more fish than land animals. But thats just my opinion...

Tropical climates and tropical fruits/veg do not answer the question: "is that [eating frozen raw meat] dangerous???"--with dangerous presumably meaning risking causing rapid severe illness or even death. The Nenets example applied to the question and the answer based on their example of eating raw meat frozen for centuries is clearly no, eating the meat frozen instead of fresh or thawed is apparently not dangerous as entire societies have done it for centuries and probably many millennia.

No further claims were made about admiring their diet, but it does so happen that I have done very well on a diet similar to theirs and that I enjoy frozen raw meat myself. So if doing well on a diet means "admiring" it, then I guess that applies in my case. In contrast, tropical fruits cause me a number of problems. For example, just recently I ate 4 or 5 small chunks of pineapple and developed a nasty canker sore, but I foolishly didn't recognize the connection and I ate another handful of chunks the next day, followed by a worsening of the canker sore. I didn't have any more pineapple after that and my sore healed. Raw tropical fruit also promotes acne, dry skin, dental film and plaque, stomach upset and a host of other problems in me--with tropical juices having more severe effects than whole fruit. So for me, admiring a tropical diet would be quite foolish.

[miles]

But those peoples' meat stays cold, from the moment the animal's killed to the moment it's eaten it stays cold. It isn't defrosted, and if it was maybe they'd then boil it, or just eat it fresh before it freezes in the first place.

[PaleoPhil]

But those peoples' meat stays cold, from the moment the animal's killed to the moment it's eaten it stays cold. It isn't defrosted, and if it was maybe they'd then boil it, or just eat it fresh before it freezes in the first place.

It seems like you're really reaching to find some reason to condemn frozen meats. I remain unconvinced, sorry. Can you explain to me how frozen meat damages human metabolism or other bodily functions or promotes cancer or something concrete? Lex is more knowledgeable about this stuff and he also remains unconvinced of the dangers of frozen meats.

[KD]

Phil, can I ask what % of your meat/fat would you say you eat frozen?

also, sorry if you have answered this elsewhere, but do you have a particular method of thawing/time lapsed between eating thawing meat?

[miles]

Not responding to anyone specifically, but: I had a load of juicy grass-fed vac-packed beef briskets. One of them I accidentally froze because it was too close to the cooling element. After defrosting, when I tipped it out of the pack into a bowl, it was filled to the brim with blood. As opposed to all the others where the blood was contained within the meat.

[PaleoPhil]

Phil, can I ask what % of your meat/fat would you say you eat frozen?

Just twice so far. I found I liked it by accident when I didn't want to wait any longer for some meat to fully thaw.

also, sorry if you have answered this elsewhere, but do you have a particular method of thawing/time lapsed between eating thawing meat?

No. I don't have set times for thawing or aging. The semi-frozen meat I tried and enjoyed on two occasions was mostly, but not fully, thawed. I've found that I prefer meats and fats that have been aged enough to take all the surface moisture and odor away.

It may turn out that freezing meat is bad enough to avoid it if you can. I just haven't seen the evidence for it yet and Lex's defense of it was pretty convincing.

[KD]

so you get all your fats/organs locally then?