Why You Should Try Nose to Tail Eating

Did you know In 2007 almost 1.4 billion hectares of land were used to produce food not consumed? This represents a surface larger than Canada and India together. One-third of all the food we produce globally goes to waste when 870 million people go hungry every day. 28% percent of the world’s agricultural area – is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted.¹

Running an ethical meat business is REALLY hard and is why many high street butchers no longer buy animals from local farmers or abattoirs. Many butchers now go straight to massive wholesalers where they can just order what they know they can sell. But with this comes consequences…

When we talk about the environmental issues around eating meat we focus on the inefficient use of land or cows farting! There is, however, a simple solution available to everyone that could make a HUGE difference:

Eat everything you buy.

In 1950 approximately 40% of our wage went on our household shopping and nowadays it is less than 10%. We have driven down the cost of production of our food – the supermarkets say we demand it! Then we attach so little value to it that we throw it in the bin! But the problems start before we even get the food on the shelves.

I have been running meat business for nearly ten years, and I can tell you the biggest issue we face by far, is what we call ‘carcass utilisation’. This is the art of making sure you sell all the bits of one animal before moving on to the next. If you have a lot left over all your profit is gone. This problem is made worse by the fact that you only have about 5 days in which to sell all these cuts.

Running an ethical meat business is REALLY hard and is why many high street butchers no longer buy animals from local farmers or abattoirs. Many butchers now go straight to massive wholesalers where they can just order what they know they can sell. But with this comes consequences loss of accountability, and knowledge of provenance.

Ten years ago in our butchery we filled several wheelie bins a week with beef bones and offal that nobody would buy. Now 100% grass-fed beef bones are in such demand at Primal Meats we have a waiting list!

So what is that all about? Well, overall a meat business has to achieve a certain profit margin on the sale of every carcass – this is straightforward business. The complicated part is that there are many different cuts of meat in vastly different quantities but they all need to sell equally. Out of a carcass that weighs 300kg you may only get 3kg of fillet steak but trust me there is a whole lot of mince and stew to sell before you can move on to the next animal. Yes you can freeze some to delay the issue but ultimately you still have to sell it.

The meat business decides on the price of the cut of meat depending on how much people demand it. You think that you pay more for the fillet because it is the ‘best’ but it has a lot to do with the fact that it is scarce too. In reality some of the most delicious and nutritious parts of the animal have become undervalued by the public because they are cheap.

What is even funnier is that 100 years ago we were valuing this stuff and eating it as a treat. In Eastern cultures the offal meat, connective tissue, joints and heads are highly prized and used in many celebrations. We have forgotten the value in our own wise traditions.

Offal meat is considerably more nutritious than muscle meat. Including ‘bone broths’ (formerly known as ‘stock’ by your Grandma) and ‘cheap’ cuts with connective tissue in your diet you can add considerably more important nutrients to your diet than just eating muscle meat.

Take a look at our ‘cow share‘ boxes which utilise a good range of the cuts in a carcass to prevent waste and provide a good range of amino acids. 

We often use evidence of native populations and anthropological data to back up our meat eating habits and there is good reasons to assume humans are designed to be ‘meat eaters’. But ‘meat’, in these cultures and throughout our early history, means the WHOLE animal; brains, liver, kidney, blood, head, eyes – okay you get my point. The muscle meat was probably dried and used for rations during the lean seasons.

In fact perhaps we should be a bit more cautious about eating muscle meat with gay abandon! There are some credible concerns over the possible toxic effects on our bodies of eating too much of the amino acid methionine in human subjects. Evidence to suggest that a diet excessive in muscle meat could cause a rise in plasma homocysteine.

Homocysteine is used as an index of the susceptibility to disease. The great news is that if we eat enough glycine (found in offal and connective tissue) and get the ratio’s in better balance, this risk negates.3

This is why foxes who get into your chicken shed only take the heads – they have got what they came for – the vital bit that has all the nourishment – they will only take the muscle meat if they are starving!

The other issue with eating muscle meat is that when amino acids, sugars, and creatine react to high temperatures harmful compounds called Heterocyclic Amines (HAs) can form. If you allow charring to occur when cooking your meat from flaring flames or dripping juices then another harmful compound Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) is created. PAHs can result in DNA mutations after being metabolised by specific enzymes, these have been associated with cancer in animal studies. Muscle meat is mostly cooked at high temperature – grilling, frying, and roasting so this issue is more common in this type of meat eating.⁴

Joints and cuts of meat with a lot of connective tissues tend to require long slow cooking at a lower temperature; this allows the fats and tendons to melt down into a delicious sticky gravy. Happily this way of cooking is not associated with the harmful compounds PAHs and AHs.

So you see throughout the development of man we have adapted to eating the whole animal carcass and our bodies don’t do well when we cherry pick the steak!

We want to support farmers who grow food this way and encourage people to demand it. But at the moment 100% grass-fed meat animals reared on regenerating soils are very scarce. Only approximately 50 farms in the UK are rearing to this grain free ‘Pasture for Life’ standard; we need to make sure we utilise every bit of these precious carcasses.

We can help here by buying the ‘cheaper’ cuts of grain free 100% grass fed animals and expanding our horizons beyond the need for fillet, sirloin and rump steak. Some of these farms have small farm shops or sell meat by mail order, you can find these here. Many of the pasture farms are in remote locations or don’t have farm shops. It is not a good idea to transport live animals for hundreds of miles to reach the abattoirs of the small number of meat businesses already selling ‘pasture for life’ produce, so these animals often ‘dissapear’ into the food chain unmarked.

This could actually make me cry!

If we want to be in control of what we eat for the good of our health and environment we need to vote without pound and stop being led by convenience. And anyway what is more convenient than having a freezer stocked up with nutritious meat for every occasion?

By being more conscious about the process of meat eating from the field to our fork, we can get a sense of responsibility for what we demand and the processes involved in getting it. A better awareness will hopefully make the food we eat more valuable and appreciated so less will ultimately end up in the bin.

References

1. Marsh, E. (2013, Sep). Ten food waste facts to make you stop and think. In Love Food Hate Waste. Retrieved from http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/blog/2013/09/ten-food-waste-facts-make-you-stop-and-think
2. Kresser, C. (2013, Aug). How to eat more organ meats. In Chris Kresser. Retrieved from http://chriskresser.com/how-to-eat-more-organ-meats/
3. Garler, P. J. (2006, Jun). Toxicity of Methionine in Humans. In Journal of Nutrition Vol. 136 no. 6 1722S-1725S. Retrieved from http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/6/1722S.full.pdf+html
4. Minger, D. (2013, March). Denise Minger Meet Your Meat: An Objective at a Controversial Food. In YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaEBMoHFrQA