Shannon Hayes on meat consumption

From her FB:

Is Radical Homemaking Incompatible with Grain-Free Living?

I was sent the above question last week. Here is my response:

First, please understand that I simply cannot jump on board and believe that any particular dietary regime is the right course of action for every human being. When my family's health crisis started, I was in the process of writing the manuscript for my 3rd cookbook, Long Way on A Little, which focuses on helping folks to eliminate waste with grassfed meat consumption. I was developing lots of recipes that incorporate grassfed meat with grains and legumes. Then we went through our health crisis, and I wasn't able to test the recipes. Rather than hire a recipe tester, it was cheaper for me to re-write the book, focusing on recipes that didn't contain grains or legumes, so that our family could eat whatever I had to test. But I also had the challenge of still focusing on prudent meat consumption. Here's what I can tell you as a result of that experience:

I work in a cutting room @the farm, and just in that phase of food production, 20% of every animal harvested, and probably more often more than 30% of the hanging weight, is completely good food that is wasted. It never even gets wrapped for sale, because people just won't eat it. That includes the bones, the fat, pig skin, the heads, the feet, the organ meats, etc. Once folks buy the meat and take it home, there is even more waste. Unsure of food safety, folks throw out tons of perfectly good meat, or they cook it for one meal, and wind up discarding leftovers, unsure of how to use them. Thus, I cannot accept that a meat-based diet is bad for the planet and against RH values. What I can believe is that we are still incredibly wasteful. We can feed a lot more folks a lot more nutritionally dense food that is raised in harmony with the planet.

To do this in my home, i focus my family's diet on the 20-30% of the animal that gets wasted. I boil 10# of bones into broth every week. We drink it like milk. One cup of good broth for breakfast-on-the-run provides us unbelievable staying power. We picnic a lot, and I do that by drawing from French culinary traditions, making rillettes, rillons and confits, which can be made well ahead and will be preserved in nutritious fat. We also do a lot of devilled eggs, chicken salads, terrines and head cheese. All of this stuff is actually quite easy to do - it just takes some kitchen time. But when done ahead, it enables me to have fast meals easily. One day of kitchen work can actually buy me about a week of nearly "kitchen free" time. Because there is always lots of bone broth in my fridge, I can make "instant soup" faster than any Campbell's can. I boil the broth, toss in whatever veggies are on hand, and supper is on the table in just a few minutes.

When you focus on the 20-30% of the animal that is wasted, the cost of eating a meat-based diet drops significantly. Many farmers often give that stuff away, rather than see it go to waste. Interestingly, if more people would buy that waste meat, we grass farmers could probably drop the prices on our other premium cuts, because we would still garner the same net return. In my family's case, a 1 month supply of insulin costs $800. Eating without grains, refined sugars or legumes, we can make that 1 month supply last about 6 months, so the savings right there is pretty significant.

Learning to cook for a busy family w/out grains and legumes took some doing. But in many ways, I think I'm able to spend less time in the kitchen, now that I've come up the learning curve. If this is something you feel you need to do for your family's health, I just want to assure you that it can be done. Take heart, and feel free to write with any more questions you may have.