a food rule for you today.
#23 – TREAT MEAT AS A FLAVORING OR SPECIAL OCCASION FOOD.
pollan says – “while it’s true vegetarians are generally healthier than carnivores, that doesn’t mean you need to eliminate meat from your diet if you like it. meat, which humans have been eating and relishing for a very long time, is nourishing food, which is why i suggest ‘mostly’ plants, not ‘only’. it turns out that near vegetarians, or ‘flexitarians’ – are people who eat meat a couple times a week- are just as healthy as vegetarians. but the average american eats meat as part of two or even three meals a day – more than half a pound per person per day – ad there is evidence that the more meat there is in your diet – red meat in particular – the greater your risk of heart disease and cancer. why? it could be its saturated fat, or its specific type of protein, or the simple fact that all meat is pushing plants off the plate. consider swapping the traditional portion sizes: instead of an 8-oz steak and 4-oz vegetables, serve a 4-oz of beef and 8-oz of veggies. thomas jefferson was probably onto something when he recommended a mostly plant-based diet that uses meat chiefly as a ‘flavor principle’.”
i guess we have started to become ‘flexitarians’. we don’t eat meat everyday anymore. now, growing up on the farm we always had meat. meat from the cows and chickens we raised…it doesn’t get any better than that! we had steak often. oh, and there were times where we raised pigs too. the best pork roast. ever. when it came time to think about butchering a cow careful thought went into this process. ultimately my dad, the boss, got the last word but we would all pick out the nice big, bulky, strong cows we thought should be butchered next! i remember we had this cow, mostly black with just a bit of white on her head. she was a mean cow. she often kicked when you milked her and had an at-tit-tude! she got to the point where she wasn’t a great milk producer but she was a good stocky, rugged cow. we all decided it was time for her to go and were glad when dad agreed.
now, seeing we now don’t live on a farm and are on a budget to pay off debt, there just isn’t extra money to buy grass fed beef or farm raised chickens through the farmer’s markets. and because we don’t want to just buy the store brand meat in the local grocery store we had just been cutting meat out of our diet. now, don’t get me wrong…we do love us some good meat! but for now, we are becoming flexitarians and feeling good about it.
Smith Family Living 