Over the weekend I finished reading a manuscript by Diana Rodgers and Robb Wolff titled SACRED COW.  It'll be both a book and a documentary; the documentary is supposed to be debuted at the Mother Earth Fair here July 17-18, hopefully at a local theater on Saturday night, July 18.

             It's a fabulous book that goes head-to-head with the meat is murder and cows are destroying the planet--the entire anti-livestock movement.  It makes so many great points I'm having a hard time selecting a couple just to whet your appetite. 

             Eating out accounts for 53 percent of food dollars spent.  When people talk about the price of authentic food, how many times do those same people eat out?  And for the record, McDonald's ain't cheap.  Only 10 percent of Americans report "like to cook." When you couple those two statistics, it shows why those of us who have built a brand on local unprocessed fare are fast becoming obsolete.  If we don't join the heat-n-eat convenience trade, we'll go bankrupt.

             With "eating out" dominating the food dollars category at 53 percent, what's next?  It's "miscellaneous" which means premade meals, condiments, and processed snack foods like potato chips and Triscuits.  The next category is beverages.  In other words, to get down to real food you're in the tiny percentages.  This reality makes the whole "authentic food is too expensive" phrase total nonsense. 

             The next tidbit is about mental health.  The book contains a chart of the key nutrients for mental balance and stability:  zinc, B6, iron, D3, B12, magnesium and Omega-3 fatty acids.   The average American is anywhere from 10 percent to 80 percent--catch that? 80 percent--deficient in these.   Guess what the best source of these is?  Grass finished beef.

             Media attention on mental health is unprecedented.  I don't think I can open a news feed without seeing some daily mention of mental health problems.  Perhaps rather than funding mental health clinics, we should offer high quality grass-finished beef.  That might be the best mental health clinic going.  "Do you feel unstable?  Come to the grass-finished beef barn and grow stabilizers in your soul."  That would have to be a lot cheaper than psycho drugs and shrinks.  It might even be cheaper than metal detectors and armed guards at schools.

             Interestingly, the anti-meat crowd routinely says that killing animals makes a more violent culture, that violence breeds violence.  In fact, the science points the other direction, that meat eating actually creates more mental stability.  To be sure, animals can be killed with respect or disrespect and I'm not condoning disrespect.  But done as an overall part of the whole ecology, with respect for the life, death, decomposition (digestion), regeneration cycle, killing and eating animals is a beautiful part of stewardship.  I celebrate being a participant.

             The book dissects the death surrounding growing mono-crops to make Beyond Beef and Impossible Burgers and grass-finished beef is way, way under total beings killed in the process.  A reader sent me a fascinating audio last week of two fields, side by side.  One was a perennial pasture with sheep grazing in it.  The adjoining one was a field of soybeans, destined perhaps to someone addicted to a plant-based diet. 

             The perennial pasture, which humans cannot metabolize into a food source, offered a symphony of sound:  insects, birds, creepy crawlies, sheep bleating.  The soybean field offered nothing but silence.  A slight breeze blew for both recordings and the sensitive microphone picked up the rustling soybean leaves from the one field.  In the pasture, the different critters completely overpowered the breeze.  The perennial pasture managed by herbivores is where life blossoms. Plant-based diets exterminate life across the landscape.

             I'll share a bit more tomorrow.  It's a great book.

             Have you ever participated in slaughtering an animal, or hunting?