You can’t be healthy unless the animals you eat are healthy

Wednesday, August 7th, 2019

The New York Times looks at the vegetarians who turned into (ethical) butchers:

As soon as I started eating meat, my health improved,” she said. “My mental acuity stepped up, I lost weight, my acne cleared up, my hair got better. I felt like a fog lifted.” All of the meat was from healthy, grass-fed animals reared on the farms where she worked.

Other former vegetarians reported that they, too, felt better after introducing grass-fed meat into their diets: Ms. Kavanaugh said eating meat again helped with her depression. Mr. Applestone said he felt far more energetic.


Grass-fed and -finished meat has been shown to be more healthful to humans than that from animals fed on soy and corn, containing higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, conjugated linoleic acid, beta carotene and other nutrients. Cows that are fed predominantly grass and forage also have better health themselves, requiring less use of antibiotics.

“There’s one health for animals and humans,” Ms. Fernald said. “You can’t be healthy unless the animals you eat are healthy.”

There’s another benefit to grass-fed and -pastured meat: It can be absolutely delicious, as that steak in Denver reminded me.

Mr. Applestone vividly remembers that first bacon sandwich (made with pasture-raised pork) in his post-vegetarian life, served on a soft Martin’s potato roll: “I thought it was the greatest thing that ever hit my mouth.”


  1. Grasspunk says:

    Great ad for us grass-fed beef producers there, Isegoria. Too bad I can’t ship you some of our beef. There’s a fat heifer going in for slaughter next week. And you should taste our chickens.

    More seriously, ruminants are awesome on grass alone but when you are talking pigs and chickens they are still eating cereals even on pasture and don’t have as good a fat profile as beef or lamb. Taste awesome though.

  2. Isegoria says:

    I may need to arrange a family vacation to southern France. (And Slovenia?)

  3. Dave says:

    Grass-fed free-range eco-meat or feedlot McBurgers, either is healthier than eating no animal products at all. If paying six times as much for meat, eggs, and milk assuages your conscience while allowing you to not die of malnutrition, go for it.

  4. Bruce says:

    Lean meat tastes dry. Which helps when you are virtue-signalling, or stoking your thirst for booze, or slathering the meat in so much rich sauce it could be a paper plate and still taste great, or all at once.

  5. Grasspunk says:

    Dave, the US grassfed beef market is nuts. I have no idea why they charge so much more, or more to the point why people happily pay so much more. You’re all huge signallers. The French have no idea what grass-fed beef is. Then they think all their beef is already grass-fed. So our prices are the same. The chicken market, otoh, is way complex and interesting.

  6. Grasspunk says:

    Isegoria, there is a spare 3-bed house on the farm. We AirBnB it for the juilletistes and aoûtiens but out of season you can park your family there. Don’t come in winter, it is fucking cold in that house.

  7. Slovenian Guest says:

    Sure, and you can bunk with me in my parents basement, like a sleepover!

  8. Harold says:

    Interesting. It’s all grass-fed beef and lamb here in New Zealand. Including my father’s farm, and farms of uncles and cousins’. Buy New Zealand beef and lamb ;)

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