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5 Reasons Why You Should Be Mindful Of Factory-Farmed Meat
These days, it isn't too difficult to find mass-produced items, including our food—large, factory-style farms have the ability to churn out a seemingly endless supply of meat, chickens, eggs, and dairy products. All that mass production might equal abundance and lower prices, but if those factory-farmed products are negatively affecting your health, are the savings really worth it?
Here’s what’s really going on with mass-produced meats and why you might want to steer clear.
Factory-farmed animals can have unhealthy diets.
To keep production costs low, animals raised in factory farms are typically fed cheap grains and feeds containing “by-product feedstuff.”
Which begs the question, what’s feedstuff? To put it simply, it can include not-so-healthy items like corn byproducts from the distilling industry, potato waste, orange peels, and even candy. So, when you eat factory-farmed animals, you might also get an unintentional serving of “feedstuff.” In short, their bad diet can become your bad diet, which can become counter-productive to your health.
Bad diets make for sick animals–and people too.
Cud-chewing critters such as cattle, dairy cows, goats, bison, and sheep were designed to eat fibrous grasses, plants, and shrubs—not starchy, low-fiber grains, and feedstuffs. When these animals are switched from pasture greenery to grains, many can wind up suffering from a number of disorders and painful conditions1.
The sickened animals can also be given chemical additives, plus constant, low-level doses of antibiotics. Their drugs in turn can enter your system2 when you eat antibiotic-treated animals, which can the stage for drug-resistance in your body3, particularly if you’re a heavy-duty carnivore. While more research is needed to make this correlation, if you don't want antibiotics in your food at all, it may be best to avoid factory-farmed meat.
Factory-farmed meat can be a less nutritious product.
It may come as no surprise that animals fed an unhealthy diet will make for a less nutritious meal. Compared to grass-fed animals, factory-farmed, grain-fed meats have less vitamin E, beta-carotene4, and little of the two health-promoting fats called omega-3 fatty acids 5and “conjugated linoleic acid,” or CLA.4
So what’s the end-result of the feed-’em-fast-and-cheap factory farmed method? It may very well yield less nutritious food with more of the unhealthy fats. It's no wonder the stuff is so much cheaper than grass-fed.
The animals can experience stress.
In factory farms, chickens, turkeys, and pigs are typically raised in inhumane conditions, tightly packed into cages and pens, unable to practice normal behaviors, such as rooting, grazing, and roosting. In these conditions, the animals can become stressed and wind up producing products that are lower in a number of key vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids–we know that stress can affect our physical health, so it only makes sense that these animals have a negative reaction to stress, too.
Factory farming can pollute the earth.
In a conventional feedlot operation, for example, confined cattle deposit large amounts of manure in a small amount of space. The manure must be collected and removed. As it costs money to haul it away, the manure is often dumped nearby, close to the feedlot. As a result, the surrounding soil can become over-saturated with the stuff, resulting in ground and water pollution6. But when animals are raised on pasture, their manure is a welcome source of organic fertilizer, not a “waste management problem.” That said, raising animals on pasture can be much kinder to the environment.
The bottom line on factory-farmed meat.
In short, though factory farming enables us to have plenty of cheap and convenient food, it typically yields food with little nutritional benefit that can increase your resistance to antibiotics as it pollutes your air, land, and water.
With so little going for it, doesn’t it seem slightly crazy to eat factory-farmed meats? While some factories can produce ethical and sustainable farming practices, it might be difficult to seek those few out—there are plenty more of the conventional, harsh farming environments in our food system.
That said, I strongly suggest that if you’re going to eat meat, buy the good stuff, even if it means having to pay a bit more or buy less of it. Choose grass-fed beef, lamb, bison and poultry, to ensure that you’re eating nutritious and healthy meats, as nature intended.
To learn more about what to look for when buying meat, check out my post on meat labeling.
For Dr. Frank Lipman, health is more than just the absence of disease: it is a total state of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social wellbeing. Dr. Lipman is a widely recognized trailblazer and leader in functional and integrative medicine, and he is a New York Times best-selling author of five books, How to Be Well, The New Health Rules, Young and Slim for Life, Revive and Total Renewal.
After his initial medical training in his native South Africa, Lipman spent 18 months working at clinics in the bush. He became familiar with the local traditional healers, called sangomas, which kindled his interest in non-Western healing modalities
In 1984, Lipman immigrated to the United States, where he became the chief medical resident at Lincoln Hospital in Bronx, NY. While there, he became fascinated by the hospital’s addiction clinic, which used acupuncture and Chinese medicine making him even more aware of the potential of implementing non-Western medicine to promote holistic wellbeing.
He began studying nutrition, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, herbal medicine, functional medicine, biofeedback, meditation, and yoga. Lipman founded the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in 1992, where he combines the best of Western medicine and cutting edge nutritional science with age-old healing techniques from the East. As his patient, chef Seamus Mullen, told The New York Times, “If antibiotics are right, he’ll try it. If it’s an anti-inflammatory diet, he’ll do that. He’s looking at the body as a system rather than looking at isolated things.”
In addition to his practice, he is also an instructor in mbg's Functional Nutrition Program.
More from the author:
Functional Nutrition Training
Check out Functional Nutrition Coaching
A cutting-edge nutrition deep dive taught by 20+ top health & wellness experts
Learn moreMore from the author:
Functional Nutrition Training
Check out Functional Nutrition Coaching
A cutting-edge nutrition deep dive taught by 20+ top health & wellness experts
Learn moreFor Dr. Frank Lipman, health is more than just the absence of disease: it is a total state of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social wellbeing. Dr. Lipman is a widely recognized trailblazer and leader in functional and integrative medicine, and he is a New York Times best-selling author of five books, How to Be Well, The New Health Rules, Young and Slim for Life, Revive and Total Renewal.
After his initial medical training in his native South Africa, Lipman spent 18 months working at clinics in the bush. He became familiar with the local traditional healers, called sangomas, which kindled his interest in non-Western healing modalities
In 1984, Lipman immigrated to the United States, where he became the chief medical resident at Lincoln Hospital in Bronx, NY. While there, he became fascinated by the hospital’s addiction clinic, which used acupuncture and Chinese medicine making him even more aware of the potential of implementing non-Western medicine to promote holistic wellbeing.
He began studying nutrition, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, herbal medicine, functional medicine, biofeedback, meditation, and yoga. Lipman founded the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in 1992, where he combines the best of Western medicine and cutting edge nutritional science with age-old healing techniques from the East. As his patient, chef Seamus Mullen, told The New York Times, “If antibiotics are right, he’ll try it. If it’s an anti-inflammatory diet, he’ll do that. He’s looking at the body as a system rather than looking at isolated things.”
In addition to his practice, he is also an instructor in mbg's Functional Nutrition Program.
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