Grass-feed livestock

[ScottK]

I got together with Dave this past weekend, and it came up in our conversation that I was buying a cow. Not to graze on my postage stamp size yard here in ABQ, but a dead one, to eat . We are a family of 5, so buying in bulk makes more sense for us than most people I would assume.

To give you the quick executive summary of our conversation: I saw this documentary called King Corn. It is amazing to see how pervasive corn is in everything we eat. Here is a link to its website:

http://www.kingcorn.net/

That got me and the wife talking, and we are going to make our best effort to reduce the amount of corn intake for ourselves and the kids.

In my research I found an operation in Texas that specializes in the grass-fed livestock. It is pricey, I am not going to lie to you. Hopefully, the quality and benefits are good enough to offset the costs. Here is the link:

http://www.texasgrassfedbeef.com/index.htm

Doing a little bit more research on what they discussed in the documentary, I wanted to find out more about this problem in stockyards. It is called acidosis. In summary, the grain based diet is slowly killing the animals, lucky for us (sic) they generally slaughter the animals before acidosis kills them (how kind, eh ). My research hasn't been super extensive, but some quick things to pass along for your reading pleasure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acidosis

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=3956

I would love to hear from everybody on what they think of this topic and nutrition issues in general. And on that note, I have to go to work. I hope everyone is doing well, and has a chance to enjoy the day

[BBBBB]

Food is an issue with MSs

Here's my theory. The inflammatory diet consumed by most in the West, merely triggers production of the mis-educated t-cells that cause demyelination. A diet that is not inflammatory, such as the Mediterranean diet or the Swank MS diet, helps keep the immune system quiet and protects against MS.

A number of studies conducted as long as 40 or so years ago suggest this theory makes sense. There is very little MS in the Mediterranean but a lot in areas where a lot of fat is consumed (Norway, England, US, etc.) There was an interesting study done in Canada in 1998 that shows that fruit vegetables and whole grains have a protective effective against MS while calorie dense foods, candy/sweets and animal products increase risks.

Prof. Swank who studied MS for many years discourages consumption of more than a two ounces of beef per day and this is allowed only after one year without eating red meat.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Red meat causes all kinds of problems: heart attacks, cancer, etc. Those with MS need to be twice as careful with a food like this.

By the way, Swank has a web site: www.swankmsdiet.org. Prof. Swank followed his own dietary recommendations and is now 99!!! It will be interesting to see how long he lives.