When you shop for, purchase, and prepare beef, pork, chicken, or salmon dishes for you and your family, you want to be sure that it’s always of the highest quality. Not only will high-quality beef, poultry, pork, and seafood taste better, it also has a higher nutritional content and is free from hormones and other potential health hazards.
During 2001, a significant portion of the antibiotics produced in the United States were added to livestock feed. It is estimated that this amounts to 60% to 80% of all the antibiotics produced in this country. Given the proclivity of many health-conscious individuals to avoid taking antibiotics themselves unless absolutely necessary, they certainly don’t want to consume these drugs in their beef. Furthermore, it is a cause of concern that cattle are being given such large quantities of antibiotics and for which purposes.
The journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases published a study in 2011. It was found that 47% of the meat and poultry in supermarkets contained Staph bacteria. While health-conscious consumers certainly don’t want to consume beef tainted with antibiotics, consuming meat and poultry contaminated with Staph bacteria is an even more serious issue.
A healthy alternative to to purchasing typical supermarket beef, poultry, and pork, is to purchase it from health-and-ethically-conscious sustainable local meat farmers. When salmon is a favorite seafood dish, wild caught Alaskan salmon is also the healthier choice.
Grass-fed cows, for instance, provide beef that has higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids. Furthermore, it also provides more vitamins A and E. There is also 7 times more beta carotene in grass-fed beef than there is in their grain-fed counterparts.
Free-range pigs have healthier litters. This is because pigs that are allowed to spend time in pastures as opposed to pens, have 300% more vitamin E in their milk. There is also 74% more selenium,. Together these promote healthier litters than their caged counterparts.
According to the National Nutritional Database, wild-caught Alaskan salmon has a lower calorie content than its farmed counterpart. In addition to having 32% fewer calories, it averages 13 grams of fat in a half filet. When compared with farmed salmon, which tends to have 27 grams, this is less than half the fat. Furthermore, farmed salmon has over 3 times the levels of saturated fat than wild salmon.
Every year, people in the United States consume an average of 90 pounds of chicken and 66.5 pounds of beef. When American opt to purchase these and other protein sources, such as free range pork, from local meat farmers, they are making a positive contribution to the continued availability of ethical and sustainable meats products.
Another benefit of purchasing from local meat farmers is that these popular protein sources can be purchased online and delivered to the door. Rather than shopping at local supermarket meat counters, it makes good sense to shop for and purchase grass-fed steak, free-range chicken, and other sustainable meats online.