Beef .. I just can't eat it any more

[thunder rising]

A couple of months ago I bought a 10lb rack of hamburger from CostCo and divided it up into 2lb blocks and froze them.

I am a chili addict and after the first 3 cookings, I got on a chicken and rice/ grits and sausage habit.

After 6 weeks with no beef, I pulled out a 2lb pack and cooked up the chili. A couple of hours late I wasn't feeling very good. The next day was like a hang over, upset stomach, headache. I went back to my "other meat" recipes until between Xmas and New Year and brewed up the chili again. I'll say this, I'm not eating beef anymore.

Try it yourself. Just get off of it for a few weeks.

The same thing happened with fast food burgers. I ate them for years and then switched to sandwiches for a few weeks. When I went back for a burger, I could not believe how bad it tasted. Or, cigarettes, after I quit for 6 months, I lit one up...it was terrible.

Well maybe it's just me getting older, but beef (and cigarettes) are out of my life for as much as I can help it.

[Goblinmonger]

1. I'm sure it wasn't your intention

but I'll enjoy my front row seat :popcorn:

[Ignis]

31. Damn, beaten to it.

Oh well, I claim a second row seat!

:popcorn:

[Sanity Claws]

2. Try grassfed beef

I'd be interested in whether you have an adverse reaction to grassfed beef.
It truly tastes different. When you cook it, it has a different smell and almost no fat.
Chicken from the farmers market also tastes different from ordinary supermarket meat. I recently bought a chicken at a supermarket a month ago and it just didn't taste right.

[thunder rising]

6. That's what I suppose, but this mass produced stuff is poison. And now with ammonia to spice it up.

[Sanity Claws]

10. Let us know if you try grassfed beef

[derby378]

78. I have GOT to watch FOOD INC. one of these days

Watching The Corporation already drove me away from any milk tainted with rBGH. Even if it never hurts me, it's no damn good for the cows.

[Jackpine Radical]

24. Yeah, grass-fed, free-range. Venison is even better.

But personally I'm kinda losing it for meat in general, after many years as a hunter and organically-inclined consumer. Let me also suggest that you find a local farmer who raisesgrass-fed Jerseys instead of whiteface & Angus. Jerseys are a rather different kind of beef.

[Hissyspit]

44. Grassfed milk is noticeably more delicious.

[WeDidIt]

3. Hamburger

That was your mistake right there.

I don't do hamburger that I didn't grind from cuts I chose myself.

Give me a good tenderloin any day of the week.

[flvegan]

4. I know a number of folks that held to a vegetarian diet that had the same problem.

It's like once your body goes through a period of detox without meat in the digestive system, it doesn't want it back.

There's something to that.

[dkf]

5. How's bout a juicy tender prime rib with creamy horseradish sauce?

I can understand getting sick on oily hamburgers but a filet mignon or prime rib will always do wonders for me.

[thunder rising]

8. It's too expensive for the risk. I have decided I can live without it.

[thunder rising]

9. To add: I think I'm more likely to try cooking up one of the raccoons that make my life miserable

than a stake. Anybody got any good recipes for raccoon?

[Sanity Claws]

11. Can I have the fur?

Can't let that go to waste.

[dkf]

13. Ack a cute little raccoon?

Now I'm the one feeling woozy.

And I have to admit my brother bought and cooked the prime rib for Christmas. I can't cook to save my life.

[thunder rising]

18. After you live around them you come to realize they are really cute big RATS.

[dkf]

22. Ugh now I'm thinking of eating big rats.

Too funny.

[thunder rising]

58. That's the same thought that keeps me from firing up the Bar-B-Q

[jmowreader]

23. At your service!

http://www.backwoodsbound.com/zracoon.html

http://www.recipesforwildgame.com/Raccoon/RACCOON_recipes.htm

[movonne]

15. I also gave up beef about 2 years ago...after all the trouble they

had with beef I just gave it up...and don't miss it...I loved prime rib and hamberber but no more..

[dkf]

26. Have you seen the way they process chickens though?

Give me some fish!

Except for the mercury. Sigh.

[demosincebirth]

14. Amen!!

[thecrow]

7. I stopped eating beef last year....

I was just so fed up with all the recalls and e-coli scares.
Who needs it?
Besides, cows are so cute :)

[seabeyond]

12. over the years we have really cut back on meat eating. seems natural

had two small ny strips tonight that fed four people.

[Mari333]

16. do what feels right to you

I stopped eating all meat back in 1990. I dont expect everyone to do that, but it works for me. hugs.

[TheManInTheMac]

17. But it's what's for dinner...? n/t

[hyphenate]

19. I went mostly vegetarian in 1991

My doctor told me to start eating some more protein, and I eventually went back to poultry and fish. Sometimes, I'll have something else like bacon (a couple of times a month) or a hamburger (a couple of times a month), but I won't ever eat any young animal. Fish is still in my menu, but it's so expensive that it's not in my budget.

I get by most of the time without meat of any kind, with pizza, pasta and cereals. I will use ground turkey when I am craving pasta, or turkey sausages. But most of the time, I don't bother with it.

Considering how often they do a recall on beef and all the illnesses that come from its consumption, I'm still amazed how many people are still eating it.

And for this crap, we've sold out our natural resources out to the cattle people.

[Ignis]

21. "we've sold out our natural resources out to the cattle people"

No kidding--what a waste!

Howard Lyman (a former cattle rancher) talks a lot about this in his book, Mad Cowboy.

http://www.madcowboy.com/

[tonysam]

32. So are plants.

Environmentalists already have a tough fight without crackpot trash about cattle endangering the environment.

This is about banning animal husbandry because of "ethical" bullshit about animal "rights." Cattle aren't supposed to exist in these animal "rightists'" world.

[Ignis]

38. I recommend reading the history of cattle ranching in the US.

Also, beef is an incredibly resource-intense method of putting calories and nutrients into human bodies. It puts an incredible strain on the environment in terms of fresh water, runnoff, carbon footprint, fossil fuels used in transport, cost of vegetable calories input vs. meat calories output, etc.

If one claims to be an environmentalist without recognizing these facts, then one would be an abject fool.

[superduperfarleft]

72. Do you ever actually engage with anyone...

or do you always just throw out nonsense like this and run away when it comes time to respond?

You know, someone could probably program a simple script for you that can automatically post this shit for you. It might save you some time.

[tonysam]

28. Oh, nonsense. n/t

[thunder rising]

59. 'scuse me, but beef is very resource intensive. That fact is like gravity, it is.

[paulsby]

50. i far prefer a diet with meat, to one without

i did the vegetarian thing from a year. i feel better, more energized and stronger when i include meat (to include red meat) in my diet.

i get a fair amount of venison, and elk in my diet. and a fair amont of steak, lots of pork, and lots of shellfish.

a good steak is one of the great pleasures in life.

[smalll]

20. I'm pro-beef myself, BUT --

What have we had from most of the pro-beef people on this thread so far?

Grass-fed beef. :wtf:

"I don't do hamburger that I haven't ground myself from cuts I've chosen myself." :wtf:

Filet mignon, etc. :wtf:

In the middle of this worst of recessions, I can't help but imagine that the French nobility of the ancien regime couldn't have been more tone-deaf and economically-clueless than our modern-day well-off foodies.

First up against the wall... First up! ;)

[WeDidIt]

35. Grass fed beef have it all over corn fed beef

Beef cannot digest corn easily and will always prefer grass. I've cowboyed and I know this is a fact. Grass fed beef is best and the only way to go.

I don't trust ground up meat from others. Chuck is cheap and grinding chuck is easy, and cheaper than buying the shit from the grocery store. Add to that the fact that it isn't contaminated with ammonia LIKE 100% OF THE HAMBURGER YOU BUY IN A GROCERY STORE and that's your best answer. A meat grinder wil cost you $10 on ebay.

I buy tenderloin and do it wisely, I bought fifteen pounds recently in two strips at $5.49/lb. - $2 off total cost each (coupons). I cut the meat up myself, vacuum packed it (I have a vacuum packer), and froze it. Cheap beef. Good beef, Outstanding price. Plus, I eat less of it. 2-3 ounces per meal is all you need.

So do it smart and you're cool. Of course, you can be an idiot and buy up tenderloin at $15/lb., then grind that into hamburger, but if you did it you;re an idiot.

[seabeyond]

41. sale at store today

6 ny strips for 20. about 3.5 per. used two. so with that, bread and potatoes... spent about 11 for dinner tonight feeding four.

[noamnety]

45. filet mignon sounds fancy cause it's french

around here, it's $4 a pound, or - a dollar a serving. It's really not so extravagant unless you buy it at a big chain grocer (where it's three or four times the price, maybe that's what you are thinking of). I can have it for about the same price as a fast food burger, and the leftovers get sliced for sandwiches because I finally caught on that it's cheaper to roast my own tenderloin and slice it than to buy even the cheapest deli meat at a grocery store counter (we brown bag it here). That's supplemented with turkey I picked up for 29 cents a pound during thanksgiving holidays, I bought some for the freezer. Legs make for dinners, the breast is sliced for sandwiches because - again, I can't get sliced turkey for sandwiches at 29 cents a pound. The bones go to a soup pot, once I add potatoes, that's probably 10 cents a serving.

I don't know if that makes me sound like "nobility." The reality is that I'm getting better quality food for almost no money because I'm willing to prepare it myself instead of buying someone else's prepared mystery ground beef burgers or lunch meat with nonfood additives.

The local grass fed beef here is also cheaper than the processed mcdonalds version of beef. Compare what they charge for a quarter pounder to what an actual quarter pound of locally raised grass fed beef is, and you might be surprised to find the grass fed "nobility" beef is the better deal. When you aren't paying for all the (non)value-added processing, it makes a difference.

[uppityperson]

56. I buy local grass fed beef for about $2.50/lb

I know the farmer who raises it and kills it, I know the butcher who cuts it up and grinds a bunch for hamburger. Of course, I have a freezer and buy about 100 lb/yr.

It is cheaper than buying even cheap hamburger in the grocery store, and that I won't do because I don't know where it came from or how it was handled.

Does that make my economically cluesless or well-off?

[noamnety]

76. That matches the going rate around these parts.

I think people believe it's more expensive because they see organic produce priced higher at the store and they make assumptions based on that.

[KittyWampus]

75. you want to save money- learn to cut your own meat up and grind it yourself.

[tonysam]

25. I don't care if you don't like it.

There is a vegan/vegetarian forum for likeminded people, so this thread should go there.

I will NEVER give meat up because it tastes good and it isn't natural to be vegan/vegetarian.

[Mari333]

29. he isnt telling you to give up meat

he is saying he gave up eating beef. did he say he gave up all meat? no.
and for some people it is perfectly natural for them to be vegan/vegetarian.
for some people its natural for them to eat meat.
geez. lighten up.

[Shell Beau]

30. Why do you care if this post is put here? The OP said nothing of

giving up meat. Weird.

[flvegan]

40. Because that poster is vehemently anti-animal

and poorly educated in nutrition.

And that's just a start.

[Ignis]

34. "TAINT NATCHURL!"

Oh my, oh my. :freak:

[jgraz]

49. Here, this should help you.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/faq.html#hide-thread

[superduperfarleft]

71. What in the holy hell is wrong with you?

Are you really that much of a miserable, humorless sack of crap?

[Shell Beau]

27. Nothing wrong with ridding yourself of red meat.

And if you don't miss it, even better!

[paulsby]

52. to quote chris rock,

it's not the red meat you worry about, it's the green meat.

[scheming daemons]

33. Can I have your share?

To each his own.... but I ain't giving up beef.

;-)

[thunder rising]

60. Sure, I left it at the store for you

[Rowdyboy]

36. I make a kick-ass vegetarian chili ...I like it as well or better than the regular stuff...

and I LOVE beef. I found it on Google under (what else) "vegetarian chili". Uses veggie crumbles.


Doubt I'll ever make the switch myself but I like being able to cook for my vegetarian friends.

[Ignis]

39. The hardest part about making veggie chili...

Is duplicating that greasy, red, floating oil slick that ground beef provides.

Yes, I am completely serious. And yes, I try hard to replicate it. :D

[GoCubsGo]

66. Try some chili oil.

Not quite the same, but it may have the same effect. Of course, if the consumers of the veg chili aren't hot-heads, you run the risk of it being inedible. :-)

[Ignis]

81. Heh, that sounds great for ME, but ...

I'd hate to be responsible for melting the faces of my guests when I serve it. :D

Still, an interesting idea, thanks! :hi:

[BeFree]

37. heh

Read something once that when they carve open a cadaver that was a regular beef
eater, they found on average 7 pounds of undigested red meat therein. Ughhh.

I know I lost about 5 pounds in the month after I quit eating beef.
And I feel better, too.

[thunder rising]

61. I read that too a while back and then connected that with the Atkins diet .. no wonder you stay full

[NYC_SKP]

42. Whatever you do, don't stop having regular and frequent sex.

Unless it's too late!

[StarfarerBill]

43. Good for you.

That is all.

[cilla4progress]

46. Mmmm....

grass-fed from the neighbor down the valley a little ways. She raises half a dozen or so a year on her couple hundred acres. $2.49 / lb. hanging weight. A split-side will last our family of 3 about a year and a half! Love living in the country...

[Qanisqineq]

47. I stopped eating beef and pork last spring

I have since eaten pork on two occasions, once being Christmas when my husband wanted ham and I said I'd help eat it. I guess that week of eating the leftover ham off and on would count as more than one occasion, but it was the same ham.

The other time was when we were out of town and couldn't find a restaurant that served unbreaded chicken that also didn't have soy sauce. We live in Korea and I hate any fish or seafood and I have a gluten sensitivity (which is in soy sauce and, of course, breading). It was late and we were hungry so I ate pork.

I do feel less sluggish when I don't eat red meat, but I haven't notice much change beyond that. I quit smoking 4 years ago and had a drag last spring -- I almost fell over dead. My lungs were on fire! I don't crave red meat anymore, but I do crave cigarettes. Daily.

[thunder rising]

62. I know!! I took up cigars for a while. But I don't have enough self control to NOT INHALE.

[niceypoo]

48. More for me

[jgraz]

51. Sounds like a good move

I still haven't given up my once-a-month organic, grass-fed, locally-raised (fully-adjectived) ribeye but, other than that, I tend to avoid eating large chunks of beef.

No matter what kind of meat (or veggies) you're eating, I'd really encourage you to go for as much organic, locally-grown food as you can. The factory farmed shit is just poison -- especially the meat.

[shireen]

53. try to find sustainable meat from small family farms

it's more expensive, but you get great quality food. The animals also tend to be treated well. Because of the higher prices, you end up eating less meat, which is healthier.

I'm fortunate to have a Whole Foods nearby that gets their meats from sustainable farms, so i can buy small quantities at a time. With a bit of googl'ing, it's possible to find local sources that sell sustainable meats near most major cities. Some farms sell 'half beef' (half a cow) and send it to a butcher who will prepare the cuts for you -- you buy the meat in bulk at considerable savings and freeze it (just make sure you have a generator or battery to keep the freezer going if there's a power outage!)
Check out http://www.localharvest.org/ for local food sources near you.

For pork, I found a wonderful place that raises heritage pigs, Flying Pigs Farm, http://www.flyingpigsfarm.com . I ordered a half-leg smoked ham from them, and loved it. Their apple-sage sausage is awesome. (Didn't like the bacon, tho', but that could just be my personal taste.)

[shireen]

54. found an interesting article about the internal conflicts we feel about meat

it's a long, but very interesting article

An Animal's Place
By MICHAEL POLLAN-New York Times
Posted 01/04/03

http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/010403_organic.cfm

The first time I opened Peter Singer's ''Animal Liberation,'' I was dining alone at the Palm, trying to enjoy a rib-eye steak cooked medium-rare. If this sounds like a good recipe for cognitive dissonance (if not indigestion), that was sort of the idea. Preposterous as it might seem, to supporters of animal rights, what I was doing was tantamount to reading ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' on a plantation in the Deep South in 1852.

Singer and the swelling ranks of his followers ask us to imagine a future in which people will look back on my meal, and this steakhouse, as relics of an equally backward age. Eating animals, wearing animals, experimenting on animals, killing animals for sport: all these practices, so resolutely normal to us, will be seen as the barbarities they are, and we will come to view ''speciesism'' -- a neologism I had encountered before only in jokes -- as a form of discrimination as indefensible as racism or anti-Semitism.

Even in 1975, when ''Animal Liberation'' was first published, Singer, an Australian philosopher now teaching at Princeton, was confident that he had the wind of history at his back. The recent civil rights past was prologue, as one liberation movement followed on the heels of another. Slowly but surely, the white man's circle of moral consideration was expanded to admit first blacks, then women, then homosexuals. In each case, a group once thought to be so different from the prevailing ''we'' as to be undeserving of civil rights was, after a struggle, admitted to the club. Now it was animals' turn.

That animal liberation is the logical next step in the forward march of moral progress is no longer the fringe idea it was back in 1975. A growing and increasingly influential movement of philosophers, ethicists, law professors and activists are convinced that the great moral struggle of our time will be for the rights of animals.

...

more at http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/010403_organic.cfm

[Greyhound]

55. It's been nearly impossible to get good beef for years. After decades of

genetic manipulation, commercial feed designed, not to feed, but simply to grow cattle as big as possible as quickly as possible, the life-long regimen anti-biotics and hormones, $8 p/hr 'casuals' replacing real butchers, and the lack of proper aging, have resulted in just plain bad beef.

Over the last 10 - 15 years, I've tried Ruth's Chris, Morton's, Lowery's, as well as dozens of independents all over the country, and the meat is just bad. Tough, tasteless, and expensive to boot. Not to mention the plethora of deadly diseases created by and through the creation of this frankenmeat.

I wonder if good beef can still be got in other countries?

[uppityperson]

57. Have you talked with Costco, could be that batch of hamburger?

Not saying it is, but just thinking that if I got sick after eating something I made from the same batch of ground meat a couple times, I'd start looking at that batch of meat rather than just "all beef".

[Dorian Gray]

63. I don't eat beef very often....

maybe once every two months or so. (Six times a year? That seems about right.) But when I do eat it, it's usually a decent cut of grass fed beef. I actually had a McDonald's hamburger last week for the first time in a year, and it did taste like cardboard.

(I eat it rarely not out of consciously trying to not eat beef, but I prefer lighter meals, and beef is so heavy. I prefer fish or chicken or tofu or seitan if I have to have a protein on my plate.)

[earth mom]

64. I stopped eating beef 2 or 3 years ago because mad cow disease is NOT being tested for.

I don't miss it and in fact can barely stand the smell when my husband cooks himself up a couple of burgers. :puke:

[shawcomm]

65. There's your problem, your basing your health on

stuff from CostCo and fast food. Any part of a cow is classified as beef. Hoof is beef. I don't think eating 10 lbs. of hoof, gristle, intestine trimmings, etc. is going to make anyone feel good. The best way is to either learn what quality ground beef looks like, or grind your own. There is a visual difference in the look of market ground trimmings and packer ground beef. Even supposedly higher end products like packer ground sirloin or ground lean beef are inferior to the real thing. The packers aren't going to put good quality sirloin in a grinder, when they can make four to six dollars a pound more.

Some of the best places for quality ground beef are the smaller grocery stores, as they will usually have extra trimmings from steaks and roasts. Completely different league from the packer ground stuff. I've unfortunately had Walmart ground beef. It stinks when it's cooking. I can't eat it. Smells like they swept it up right off the packing house floor.

[GoCubsGo]

67. You can afford beef?

Lucky you!

That's not to say I would buy it if I could afford it. I would rather have vension...

[Bluenorthwest]

68. That's all well and good, but that crap was not 'beef' in my view

from the word go. Local, natural, actual.

[tabbycat31]

69. I don't eat ground beef anymore

occasionally I will have a steak, but on the rare occasion I do eat ground meat (I rarely eat meat anymore) I use turkey. It's healthier.

[Rebubula]

70. More for me....

...thanks.

I love my steaks, burgers, chili and all other beef products too much.

[dionysus]

73. i never had that happen with beef, but with fast food. i gave it up, and now fast food will

literally make me sick a few hours after eating it.

[Xenotime]

74. The animals would thank us for following your example.

[pipi_k]

77. No beef for three years, but for a different reason

Went to a small county fair....had a nice, greasy cheeseburger, then wandered around and ended up in the livestock contest.

In the ring was the most beautiful black bull. I was literally feet away from him. I looked at his face...long eyelashes, gentle brown eyes.

Then the announcer said something about how he should bring a good price at the market. OK I'm not totally innocent of such things, and I do know that animals have to die in order to become our food. But I had actually looked into this animal's face. I could "feel" his soul. And I was sick. Just sick.

Have not been able to eat beef since.

I do still eat poultry and pork, although even the pork I'm starting to feel not so great about, you know?

Anyway, once I stopped eating beef, I stopped having peri/post menopausal breast swelling and pain. No more extreme mood swings. The only thing I can attribute this to is perhaps a reduction in estrogen, which I've heard is one of the hormones beef cattle are given in order to build up lots of fat which makes the meat taste better.

I don't miss eating beef, but every so often when I smell it cooking (hamburgers on the grill) my mouth waters and I feel like a monster.


But, given a choice, I really do prefer seafood to beef anyway.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

80. Meet Lulu --

the pig that could put the kabosh on your sausage eating. :evilgrin:

http://www.pigs4ever.com/news/lulu.htm

Oinking For Help

Pot-bellied pig saves owner's life by lying in front of a car
Saturday, October 10, 1998

It was just like those "Lassie" episodes where Timmy would injure himself in the wilderness and the ever-loyal, super-intelligent collie would run to town, bark for help and lead rescuers to her master.

Jo Ann Altsman attributes her Vietnamese Pot Belly Pig, Lu Lu with saving her life last month. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

OK, it was almost like that.

Except that Jo Ann Altsman of Beaver Falls didn't twist her ankle, but had a heart attack.

And it wasn't in the wilderness but in the bedroom of her vacation trailer on Presque Isle.

And the pet that ran -- er, waddled -- for help was a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig named LuLu.

....(more at link)

I have spent a great deal of time with rescued farm pigs, and I can tell you they are wonderful, fun animals. I would spend an hour under a tree scratching bellies and slathering on protective lotions for them -- the happiness just radiated from them.

[jtrockville]

79. I've switched to buying only locally grown grass fed beef.

I'm not terribly interested in eating animals that cannabalize themselves. That just can't be "good eats" (to borrow Altan Brown's phrase).