Shopping for Sustainable Meat Choices

Grocery shopping has become a challenge. Five Green Food Actions

Are you stopping to really look at ingredients? Are you putting back products with palm oil and unpronounceable preservatives?

I found that my shopping cart had fewer items, but more fresh fruit and veggies. Shopping for meat products has become a journey into reality. I could not find any meat from an animal raised on natural food. The beef and pork were labeled as having a vegetarian diet, and the fine print on the organic roasting chicken spelled out that that vegetarian diet was corn and soybeans. Chickens will naturally eat corn, but having raised chickens, I know it isn't their first choice. They would much rather eat greens and small protein items, insects, worms, etc.

Pigs will eat most anything. Cattle however do not digest corn and soybeans well. I've finally gotten around to reading the Omnivore's Dilemma by Micheal Pollan. I recommend it. It will explain to you how cheap corn is being used to make large corporations wealthy, while making animals and people less healthy.

So what to do? I bought an organic roasting chicken and one small steak. Then I whipped out my Seafood Watch guide and found two types of fish on the Preferred listing. I wasn't the only one reading labels and putting back pieces of meat. A European couple was doing the same thing. They had more resolve than I did. When they found nothing "grassfed," they bought nothing.

It is time to check out the local farmer's coop and their meat choices. Time to really say 'No,' to the corporate production of unhealthful animal protein.