Fat from grassfed/corn finished beef - okay?

[sevenpoints]

Hello everyone,

First I'd like to say thanks again to all of you who helped my in my first newbie thread about wishing to improve my health.  It can be found in the welcoming forum.

To update very quickly:

I'm doing better.  The skin reactions to food have minimized considerably.  I'm still completely off grains and beans, which I intend to keep doing, as I think it's doing me good.  I still get itchiness and redness on occasion, but not like I did at the peak of it.

There's still some fatigue, like today, but seems to be improving, more often than not.  Less racing heart/adrenal type symptoms.

I had beef fresh/raw several times.  The first couple were hard for me, getting used to the taste/texture.  Now I'm mostly having it raw, but as jerky, a la Lex Rooker low heat jerky maker, often fully dried, or partly dried, both of which I find most palatable.  I still eat some fish, and am a lot lower carb than before (only fresh fruit and a bit of veg).

Thanks to two forum members, I've tried pemmican once, made with muscle/back fat, which was wonderful, and will be seeing how I do with the all-suet version.  I think I'd like to make my own pemmican.

I'm, soon, hopefully, going to have a source of grass fed/finished beef - what I've been getting 80 percent of the time til now has been 70-75 percent grass, and finished on grain or organic grain, no hormones/antibiotics.  Not ideal, but that's what's been around.  I'm very interested to see how I feel with grass finished on a regular basis.

What's harder to find is the fat; I'm in Ontario, Canada.  I've not yet contacted all sources, but ideally if I made pemmican in larger amounts, regularly, I'd like it from grass fed and finished animals.  I phoned up a local butcher, a "better" butcher, last night, to ask if they had fat.

He said he'd just give it to me if I wanted, maybe a pound or two per day, on average.  Sounds great.  The beef they get is from grass fed, antibiotic and hormone free cows, BUT - they're corn finished.  He didn't know if the corn they get is genetically modified, though he can find out after this weekend.

If it wasn't genetically modified (assuming his honesty and that of the producers), would using fat from these animals for pemmican be a good, or bad, idea? I know grass finished is best, and I strive to get that, but in the meantime...?

Speaking of which, would any other Ontarians/Canadians on this board care to chime in (sorry if I've missed it somewhere) on where they source (if they make pemmican) grass fed/finished suet or muscle fat?

Thanks all for your help.

[William]

One or two pounds of fat/day is not enough if you make pemmican.

Grass-finished fat is rarely available, as the climate does not provide a long enough grass-growing season for the cattle to build up a layer of fat, and they are killed at 30 months, so still lean.
I get grain-finished back fat from a abattoir/butcher near a small town in Eastern Ontario - also grain-finished ground beef which is the best I've tasted in decades.

Grass-finished beef is hard to find - try eatwild.com first, then ask naturopaths, chiropractors, health food stores, pet owners who feed the BARF diet etc.

Try eating ghee along with pemmican, good for boosting the fat content, and it tastes good. If you scorch it, don't eat it - PaleoPhil did and suffered. It's easy to scorch.

[TylerDurden]

All discussions re ghee or pemmican  and similiar very unhealthy heated foods should be restricted to the hot topics forum. Topic moved there now. Please bear this in mind, in future. After all, the vast majority of RVAFers do very badly, healthwise, on pemmican and ghee and don't want to know about it.

As for the issue re grain-finished, I'm afraid that the general concensus among RVAFers is that 100% grassfed is far better than grain-finished beef. There has been some discussion re this with people stating that the nutrient-profile of grain-finished meat is not much different from meat raised on grains throughout life.  Mind you, animals fed on grains in the months prior to slaughter are so force-fed on grains that that's not surprising.

*I have heard a rare claim, here and there, from 1 or 2 RVAFers that someone they knew recovered their health after eating raw, 100% grainfed supermarket meat. I'm not so sceptical re this as someone whose symptoms were caused by the heat-created toxins derived from cooking/heating might have those symptoms go away as the amounts of heat-created toxins in the body started to decline with the wholesale consumption of raw foods. That said, grain-fed/grain-finished meat-consumption means  not getting any sufficient omega-3s etc.

[KD]

There has been some discussion re this with people stating that the nutrient-profile of grain-finished meat is not much different from meat raised on grains throughout life.  Mind you, animals fed on grains in the months prior to slaughter are so force-fed on grains that that's not surprising.

I find this almost impossible to believe in regards to muscle, not fat. If a human was raised 100% on its biological diet (lets say milk from a truly healthy mother followed by RPD or whatever else for its proper biology) and for the last few months of its life ate some kind of macrobiotic diet, based almost entirely in corn, would that person be in the same shape tissue-wise as someone eating a diet of mostly refined grains their entire life?

I can see the reasoning to avoid the fat from such animals, as that would largely be the accumulation of the grain finishing, other than that things like eggs that even when pastured often contain some kind of grain/corn feed are very different in obvious ways from regular organic eggs. I imagine for the same reasons above that although grain-fed organs should probably not be eaten at all, that grain-finished organs would probably be way closer to grass-fed in regards to any degeneration.

[TylerDurden]

Well, the trouble is that AV pointed out that toxins from unhealthy diets tend to accumulate in particular in  the organs of the animals so that he generally recommends avoiding all raw organs from grainfed/grain-finished animals. I tend to agree as organs are well known to have functions re getting rid of toxins etc.

[KD]

yeah, I wasn't trying to dispute that, but still don't believe that the grain finished would be closer to the grain-fed 100% factory produced esp in regards to muscle meat.

grain-finished pastured organs I imagine would still be far healthier than factory farmed and still wouldn't be as completely toxic from a few months of grain feeding although they might both be similarly bad for the purposes of building health.

Ironically I think grains are more suited to the types of stomachs of cows then our own, and although humans would be considered to be universally toxic by our definitions, many peoples organs are considered at least healthy enough to transplant etc..

[sevenpoints]

TylerDurden; sorry, I shall bear in mind the location of such topics in the future.  Thanks.

The pemmican I've tried so far, which was sent to me, I seemed to fare quite well with - I actually found it very satisfying/soothing.  Perhaps it doesn't work so well for all, but right now I'm going to try whatever I do best with (which I have yet to determine, though I think that even with what I'm already doing, I'm better than I was before).  It holds its appeal to me, also, as a highly portable, long lasting food.

I agree - I know that grassfed *and* finished is best - I'd have it no other way, at all times, if it were available and possible.

A slight improvement, perhaps, may be the nearby, huge health food store has a meat department - they told me they have fat trimmings, and may be able to order some in in larger quantities, too (10 plus pounds) for me, perhaps for free or not much money at all.  Still would be grain finished, though, but better (I'm assuming) than corn finished.

Regarding ghee, it's an interesting sounding idea to use, though the few times I tried ghee in my life, I found it really off-putting; almost made me queasy, in fact.  Interestingly, I do better with butter than ghee, though keep away from all other dairy.  I know butter's probably not ideal, but I've since cut out coconut oil and coconut-related products 90%, since they were making the back of my throat irritated and sometimes my skin itched from them.  I'm still trying to get more fat in my diet, though the meat I've gotten hasn't always had so much on it.  I did eat some really fatty all pastured, no hormones/antibiotic lamb today...

Ah well, got a five pound round steak of all grass-fed beef thawing right now.  That should be good.

Thanks, everyone.  I now realize that pemmican isn't for everybody (most-body) here, but I find it very interesting based on how I felt when I tried it.  I'll keep on going and check in, let anyone reading know how it's going.  Take care.