Pemmican

[Squall]

What's the verdict on pemmican ... if there is one?

Considering that the fat has to be rendered (cooked) and the meat jerked (which I guess isn't really cooking), is it something that RPD'ers can eat on a regular basis? Or is it something that should only be eaten during traveling? Or maybe is it something that should be avoided?

I like the idea of a hard, nutritious ration that keeps awhile. I've been thinking about ordering some of the pemmican with fruit in it from US Wellness meats. Tyler had recommended in my journal that I should get some raw carbs in my diet, which I agree with, but for some reason shopping at the local supermarket for berries seems to fail a lot for me. I either don't eat them quickly enough (before they mold) or I get caught up on the whole pesticides issue.

I don't plan on making it my only source of food, but it would come in mighty handy for breakfast and snacks at work. At home I can just have a decent sized fresh raw meal.

Here is a link to the page I was looking at for pemmican:

http://www.grasslandbeef.com/Categories.bok?category=Beef+Jerky%2C+Franks%2C+Sausage%2C+Bacon++%26+Pemmican%3ABeef+Pemmican+%26+Snack+Sticks

Specifically, I was looking at the Regular Beef Pemmican Pail. What do you guys think?

[OldeSword]

You can also make your own: http://www.evfit.com/pemmican.htm

This is the recipe that a few coworkers and I are looking at. In fact, that's how this the long trail of links that lead me got started. Sure, it is cooked (drying the meat and rendering the suet) but I think it is a definite 'lesser of two evils' thing here. Travelling with raw meat is damn near impossible but pemmican is wonderfully suited to travelling and beats fast food or roadside grill hands-down.

[TylerDurden]

Most people go in for dried beef-jerky which isn't heated above 104 degrees fahrenheit, re travelling. Pemmican, as it's properly heated, should be avoided unless there's no heathy raw fat available.

[William]

You can also make your own: http://www.evfit.com/pemmican.htm

Wrong for us, as the meat is heated and so is dead food.
I dry it at no more than 37°C/99°F so the enzymes needed for proper digestion/nutrition are still there.
Also I recently learned that suet (I'm assuming that that means kidney/organ fat)is the wrong fat, being high in stearic acid, which is what candle wax and crayons are made of. Not food.
Use hide fat instead.

[TylerDurden]

Well, if you believe Loren Cordain et al, stearic acid is supposed to be the only "good" saturated fat.

[JaX]

what exactly is the difference between hide fat and suet?

Is the fat between muscles hide fat? Is suet only the fat from between kidney and other organs?

And which type of fat is the one that is so darn difficult to chew through and which you have to cut up in smaller pieces to be able to swallow (and is also often located on muscle meats)?

[livingthelife]

suet (I'm assuming that that means kidney/organ fat)is the wrong fat, being high in stearic acid, which is what candle wax and crayons are made of. Not food.

Wikipedia lists suet's melting point at above body temperature [between 45° and 50°C. (113° and 122°F.)]

When I eat it, it just sits in my stomach. Doesn't feel too good. Chewing it doesn't seem to help. It really is like chewing a crayon.

I wonder if it really digests at all.

Also wonder why it's been typically considered "bird food" - is it left behind by other predators?

The pemmican I ordered will probably be no better. I'll post once I try it. Pemmican was supposed to be "hard luck" food to get you through winter. Not savory.

[TylerDurden]

Suet is much less unsaturated than hide-fat. I've been told by others that hide-fat is almost impossible to get as in most western countries they have stupid laws forbidding people from slaughtering cattle any later than 30 months - grassfed cattle require a long time to get enough fats, unlike unhealthy grainfed cattle. Oh, hide-fat is, I believe, the fat under the skin, near the rump.

[JaX]

Suet is much less unsaturated than hide-fat. I've been told by others that hide-fat is almost impossible to get as in most western countries they have stupid laws forbidding people from slaughtering cattle any later than 30 months - grassfed cattle require a long time to get enough fats, unlike unhealthy grainfed cattle. Oh, hide-fat is, I believe, the fat under the skin, near the rump.

I think you mean that every cattle 30+ months has to be tested for BSE...!

Europe as well as the rest of the world allows slaughter of much older cattle...

[TylerDurden]

I think you mean that every cattle 30+ months has to be tested for BSE...!

Europe as well as the rest of the world allows slaughter of much older cattle...

 Every single organic beef-farmer I spoke to has mentioned the 30-month-limit(and also mentioned an EU law that almost passed limiting slaughter to before 24 months). Another complication is that it's not profitable to sell meat from older cattle for obvious reasons as they have to keep the animals around for longer and don't get a high enough price for it. Same goes for mutton - the primary reason why lamb is preferably sold by farmers, instead of mutton, is because they can make a bigger profit more quickly and more easily.

[donrad]

I have two Nesco forced air dehydrators. I am to the point now where I dry almost everything. If I put meat in there at 98 degrees it starts tasting great in about three hours. I can snack on it at various stages of dryness until it is fully dry in a day or two.

When I did not have a source for grass fed meat I trimmed all the fat. The dried meat was hard and tough.

I just found a source for grass fed meat. The farmer spent some time telling me how he rotates the cattle to different pastures to optimize the nutritional content of the different grasses. I bought a freezer full. For some reason grass fed has started to appear in the regular grocery store lately at very good prices. Is this catching on?

I used to use lean cuts of the feedlot beef like the rump. With the grass fed I used fatty cuts like steaks and chuck. When the meat is fully dry there is chunks of fat hanging from the pieces. The meat shrinks more than the fat. Because of the marbling the meat is tender and supple. I think this might have been the origin of Pemmican. I could live on this in stressed times and it would keep for a long time. But I love fresh fruit and veggies and would not want to go without them.

Buffalo, for instance, would have naturally migrated to the lushest pastures. Because the prairies were never mowed for hay or plowed for corn crops the grass was more nutritious in pre-civilized times.

Geese, like all water fowl, put on a lot of fat and can survive on nothing but grass and weeds. If you can find it organically, get it. Ducks also have a lot of fat that cook books tell you to cook off. If you can get natural raised ducks there is enough fat to add to lean pieces of meat. I used to raise ducks and geese before I went raw, and can not remember if the fat can be rendered at low temperature. I do remember the fat to lean ratio is very high.

There is also the question of whether fat is degraded by higher temperatures like meat is. The idea is to warm the fat up enough to melt it (or make it very soft), mix it with fine pieces of dried meat, and then cool it back down. This way you have a solid energy and protein bar.

Live long and prosper.

[William]

The idea is to warm the fat up enough to melt it (or make it very soft), mix it with fine pieces of dried meat, and then cool it back down. This way you have a solid energy and protein bar.

Live long and prosper.

I'd read that the reason for rendering fat is to drive off the water, as well as making it liquid. Watery fat gets mold.

Has either story been tested for truth?

[donrad]

What you heard sounds logical. If the fat is sliced thin and dried with the meat at 100 degrees it would drive off the water. If I don't dry my meat all the way it sometimes gets moldy, but I eat it anyway. I think they call this probiotics.

Pounding the meat and mixing with rendered fat seems to be a waste of time to me. I just slice everything and dry it with herbs and spices (no salt). I cut it into small chunks with kitchen shears and chew all day. It is good for the proper alignment of the teeth and pallet if you are still growing. I am old and it keeps my facial muscles toned. It can be kept in my pocket. I never get hungry.

I cut up chunks of fruit and veggies and eat them also. I have a vacuum machine with canisters that keep them fresh a long time. I used to have very high blood. Since I started eating this way it is very low. My pulse is around 50 and blood pressure is 107/71. Pretty good for someone 57 years old.

Old too soon and smart too late   

[lex_rooker]

What you heard sounds logical. If the fat is sliced thin and dried with the meat at 100 degrees it would drive off the water.

Actually this doesn't work as well as one would hope.  The fat doesn't release enough of its moisture to keep it from going rancid at normal dehydrator temperatures.  If you want to make pemmican that will keep without refrigeration for an extended period of time you must heat the fat to over 200 deg F. to drive off the water.  Of course if you will be consuming it within a few days or a week or two it doesn't much matter.

Lex

[donrad]

I think you might be right. I am going to experiment with slicing the fat thinner, and fatty meat thin for more air exposure. For long term storage I would vacuum seal and/or freeze. I keep my meat frozen and when I need some I dry it and consume within a couple of weeks. I have learned to keep the dried meat in the frig.  If it starts to smell rancid I trash it.

Some spices like garlic powder, black pepper, and chili seem to make it last longer.

[lex_rooker]

I think you might be right. I am going to experiment with slicing the fat thinner, and fatty meat thin for more air exposure. For long term storage I would vacuum seal and/or freeze. I keep my meat frozen and when I need some I dry it and consume within a couple of weeks. I have learned to keep the dried meat in the frig. 

The whole point of pemmican is to provide complete nutrition in the smallest possible package that can be stored for long periods (multiple years if necessary) without the need for refrigeration, vacuum sealing, or any other modern contrivance.  If it doesn't meet these basic requirements then I wouldn't call it pemmican. 

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

Well, if you believe Loren Cordain et al, stearic acid is supposed to be the only "good" saturated fat.

It's not my job to defend Cordain, but let's be fair here. Since I'm aware of some of the rest of the story and no one else seems to be, I'll share what I know. I also heard Cordain mention in a radio interview that he had received lots of criticism about saturated fatty acids and acknowledged that there are some "neutral" saturated fats as well as the "good" stearic acid. He also said in The Paleo Diet that the omega 3, monounsaturated and Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) animal fats are healthy. His critics tend to conveniently ignore that.

I know Cordain is not liked here because of his concerns about what he sees as the "bad" saturated fats and about the possible "risks" of raw meats, but it is actually rare for an academic such as himself to admit that some saturated fats and animal fats are "good" and he seems to be inching closer to our thinking on fats.

For example, in a recent newsletter he admitted that pemmican is "nutritious" (though he would only acknowledge marrow fat as healthy and didn't address whether the perinephric fat that was even more commonly used in pemmican is healthy or not). He even acknowledged Stefansson. Here's an excerpt:


Pemmican as Part of the Diet of Native Americans                           
by Loren Cordain, Ph.D.
From: The Paleo Diet Update v5, #28 - Diet of Native Americans

"Invented by native North American people, pemmican is a concentrated mixture of fat and protein that was used as a nutritious emergency foodstuff, and an extensive review of this subject has been written.1 In his classic book, The Fat of the Land, Vilhjalmur Stefansson devoted five chapters to discussing all aspects of pemmican that were known as of 1960.

He described how the Plains Indians made pemmican.... The preferred fat was marrow or perinephral fat,1 however subcutaneous storage fat was used if marrow was limited.

The powdered muscle and fat were mixed by weight in a ratio of roughly 50:50 that roughly yields a protein/fat ratio of 20:80.1 Although such a mix at first appears to be highly atherogenic because of its high relative fat content, analysis of the fatty acid composition of wild game marrow showed this not to be the case.

...."

So while I'm not convinced by Cordain's concerns about the "bad" types of SFA's and think he overemphasizes them (and I eat pasture-fed and even grain-fed perinephric fat), and I think he talks too much about "healthy lean meats," I acknowledge that he has accepted most animal fats as being healthy or neutral: "good" and "neutral" SFAs, healthy omega 3 FAs, healthy monounsaturated fats and healthy CLA. That is probably more pro-animal fat than over 90% of the academics out there who discuss nutrition.

[letsdoiteczema]

I have learned to keep the dried meat in the frig.  If it starts to smell rancid I trash it.

Sorry for bringing up an old thread, but I was just questioning why/how raw lean meat jerky or raw dried fat would go "rancid"?!

Raw meat/fat (grass-fed assumed) should have enough beneficial bacteria in them to prevent them from going "rancid".

High meat smells absolutely horrible to us modern humans only because we're not accustomed to the smell, but is it "rancid"? No seems to be the answer.

Why is this even a concern? given the fact that raw meat / fat / marrow could be left to dry out in room temperature in the wild all the time?

I'm pretty sure most people here would not call the wild dried raw meat/fat "rancid". Correct?

[William]

Sorry for bringing up an old thread, but I was just questioning why/how raw lean meat jerky or raw dried fat would go "rancid"?!

Raw meat/fat (grass-fed assumed) should have enough beneficial bacteria in them to prevent them from going "rancid".

The microbes that make rancid need water to do their thing, so jerky lasts a long time.
The only way I know to remove all the water from animal fat is to render it; tried drying, but it did not taste right so I assume that there was still water in the fat.

[PaleoPhil]

It all depends on the fat being used. Donrad mentioned intramuscular beef fat, goose fat and duck fat, which are soft fats that would have to be rendered to store them for long periods without freezing, as they are very moist, and even with rendering they likely wouldn't last as long as true tallow that includes much or all suet, which is probably the main reason that tallow is traditionally made largely or wholly from suet. I have found that suet from 100% grassfed or wild animals (not the cheap, crappy supermarket suet) lasts indefinitely without doing anything to it, as long as it's kept dry and relatively cool, such as in paper bags in my cupboard, because it's a very solid fat with very little moisture content. I left one bag of suet in the cupboard untouched for over a year to see how long it would last. It still hadn't molded or otherwise gone bad, but it did absorb some of the odor from the paper bag, so I wouldn't recommend it. Plus, fats do accumulate AGEs over time naturally, so I wouldn't recommend it for that reason too.

[TylerDurden]

I have found that suet from 100% grassfed or wild animals (not the cheap, crappy supermarket suet) lasts indefinitely without doing anything to it, as long as it's kept dry and relatively cool, such as in paper bags in my cupboard, because it's a very solid fat with very little moisture content.

I, too, have found this to be the case. All that happens is that the outer skin/layer  goes green or blue due to fungi, but the inner core stays solid and doesn't rot at all. All to do with a lack of moisture.

[William]

I have found that suet from 100% grassfed or wild animals (not the cheap, crappy supermarket suet) lasts indefinitely without doing anything to it, as long as it's kept dry and relatively cool, such as in paper bags in my cupboard, because it's a very solid fat with very little moisture content.

Everyone who has rendered beef fat has seen the water boiling out of it.

Plus, fats do accumulate AGEs over time naturally, so I wouldn't recommend it for that reason too.

Whence come the AGEs, considering there is neither protein nor glucose in fat?
"4) Glycation is forever
 Recall from the discussion in Wheat Belly that, whenever blood glucose ranges above 90 mg/dl (5 mmol/L), glucose-modification of long-lived proteins in the body, or glycation, proceeds at an accelerated rate: the higher the blood glucose, the greater the quantity of glycation."

[PaleoPhil]

Everyone who has rendered beef fat has seen the water boiling out of it.

Yes, and I have rendered beef fat, and I've also had water come out of intramuscular fat when cooking it. So my point wasn't that there's no water in suet, but that one possible factor in why suet doesn't go bad quickly is relatively low water content vs. softer fats.

Whence come the AGEs, considering there is neither protein nor glucose in fat?

I'll leave that to Tyler, as he's the expert on AGEs and is more concerned with them. I only said that I'm not recommending it (due to that being a possible issue), not that it's a huge concern for me. After all, I ate the year-old suet.

[TylerDurden]

There is a type of AGEs, called "ALEs" or advanced lipoxidation end products which are created when fats are heated.

[letsdoiteczema]

Thanks a lot for the replies! You guys know too much

I, too, have found this to be the case. All that happens is that the outer skin/layer  goes green or blue due to fungi, but the inner core stays solid and doesn't rot at all. All to do with a lack of moisture.

So would Aajonus say that the fungi growing on 100% grass-fed marrow/fat/suet is healthy to eat? (similar to high meat good bacteria?)

@TylerDurden

Did you eat the blue/green fungi?