Get Healthy with The Maker's Superfoods: Part 7: Miraculous Meats

There is so much confusion surrounding meats today.  Conventional health experts tell you to avoid red meat, lamb and buffalo like the plague, opting instead for lean chicken meat and fish, or better yet, no meat, but a salad.  They claim that red meats cause heart disease and cancer.  However, this is just another example of current health advice that's not making us any healthier. Heart disease and cancer climb exponentially every year.  Maybe we should take some advice from God, instead of these well-intentioned, but incorrect, experts!

Here's what Jordan Rubin has to say about red meat in the Maker's Diet:

Superfood/Healing Food #7: Wild Animal Foods (from p. 152 of the Maker's Diet, by Jordan Rubin)

"Grass fed meat, poultry, and wild game have nourished humans for thousands of years.  Grass fed beef, buffalo, lamb, goat and venison are valuable sources of nutrients that protect and enhance the immune and circulatory systems.  They contain cysteine, glutathione, coenzyme Q10, carnitine, MSM, CLA, several B vitamins, zinc, magnesium, and vitamins A and D as well as omega-3 fats.

Properly raised red meats provide an excellent source of complete proteins. Lamb and goat represent two of nature's best sources of carnitine, a fat soluble nutritional factor that helps drive fatty acids into the cells for energy use. (Carnitine supplements are standard therapy for congestive heart failure and high triglycerides, and they are helpful during recovery after a heart attack.) Free - range pastured chicken, turkey, and duck are good sources of protein, fatty acids, and fat soluble vitamins. Chicken and turkey contain generous amounts of tryptophan, a natural sedative."

To further prove the amazing health benefits of red meat, (and chicken and turkey too!) I'd like to include some of what Sally Fallon, of the Weston A. Price Foundation says about red meat in Nourishing Traditions: (from p.329)

"Politically Correct Nutrition has singled out red meat-beef and lamb-as a major contributing factor, or even the main cause, of our two greatest plagues- cancer and heart disease.  Consumption of these meats has dropped in recent years, but the incidence of heart disease and cancer continue to climb.

What light can the practices of traditional societies shed on the question of red meat?  Surveys of ethnic diets show that red meat in the form of beef, sheep and goat is the second most preferred source of animal protein in nonindustrialized societies, second only to chicken and more popular, or at least more available, than foods from the sea.  These societies rarely suffer from cancer and heart disease...

The dangers inherent in red meat are due, we believe, to modern methods of raising cattle.  Most commercially available red meat comes from animals that have been raised in huge feedlots fed on grains ladenwith pesticides- or worse on soy food which is too high in protein and therefore toxic to their livers- injected with steroids to make their meat tender and treated with antibiotics to stave off infections...

Red meat is an excellent source of both macro and trace minerals, particularly zinc and magnesium.  In meat, these minerals exist in a form that is much easier for the body to breake down and utilize than the minerals in grains and pulses.  Red meats are rich in vitamin B12, so important for a healthy nervous system and blood; and in carnitine, which is essential for healthy functioning of the heart.  Beef and lamb fat contain fat=soluble vitamins and small amounts of essential fatty acids.

These fat soluble vitamins are what your body needs to utilize the minerals in all foods.  In animal studies, beef fat has a cholesterol-lowering effect.  Lamb and beef fat are rich in conjugated linoleic acid, which has strong anticancer effects, and both lamb and beef fat contain palmitoleic acid, which protects us from viruses and other pathogens."

We love red meat in our family! I highly recommend searching out a farm in your area so you can buy organic, grass fed meat locally.  If you can purchase a 1/4 or 1/2 cow (you can always split with friends), the cost goes down dramatically.  Just make sure you use what's in your freezer!  Remember: only organic, grass fed meat will provide the health benefits listed above. Don't settle for second best!  

Check out http://www.eatwild.com for more information on the benefits of grass fed meats, and to find a farmer in your area.