Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sully on September 09, 2008, 02:38:16 am
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I can get fresh cheap 100% grass fed bison at my local co-op, i'll never go back to organic beef, the grass fed bison is just to darn great to me, I got some grass fed beef too, i'll see how that taste, if it taste like the organic beef i previously had, i'm afraid i'm going to stick with this ground bison, the bison makes me druel, i lick the package clean! i neer done that before!!! ;D btw its the first grass fed meat I ate!
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Nice. I might switch to bison since Slanker's has bison suet and organs as well as meat. The only problem is that I wanted to try Lex's idea with the dog and cat food mix from Slanker's (since it's so cheap) and I don't think they have that from bison. Maybe I'll make my normal food from the beef mix and make jerky and pemmican from bison and eat bison and beef organs.
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I would like to try slankers stuff, but I can't afford it. I buy my meat with digital food stamps in the form of a card called "Quest". My mom can't buy my meat with her cash, so I'm in control of the quest card. I'm her last under age child and I'm the only reason we get it so she lets me be in charge of it.
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Doesn't bison have a lot less fat than beef?
I guess it wouldn't matter if it was ground and a high fat percentage... do you happen to know what % of the ground bison is lean/fat?
Bison's more expensive as well. I spend most/all of my money on food now as it is! ;D
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Bison's more expensive as well. I spend most/all of my money on food now as it is! ;D
The bison I get is 5.99 a pound I think. Pretty cheap, i think it was on sale. Doesn't matter, I get about 200 a month on the card. And all the money is for me.I don't have to buy fruit or veggies. I just gathered all of my plant foods. And in the winter go carnivore.
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Ah gotcha...
the ground beef I get works out to around 4.50 per pound... and when you eat 3 lbs a day, that can add up pretty fast!
if it was anymore expensive i couldn't do it...
I so wish I could gather my plant foods, that would cut down on costs a bit! I envy you! ;D
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I so wish I could gather my plant foods, that would cut down on costs a bit! I envy you! ;D
yeah wisconsin offers lots of variety, right now i'm gathering mostly apples, pears, crabapples, black walnuts, grapes, and two varieties of small plums, where do you live?
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Oh yeah, I occassionally buy raw coconut fat. But that's about it. I use to make nut butters, but I recently stopped doing that.
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yeah wisconsin offers lots of variety, right now i'm gathering mostly apples, pears, crabapples, black walnuts, grapes, and two varieties of small plums, where do you live?
sounds like heaven lol.
I live in the southeast, in a moderately big city. I think there are either kumquats or loquats later on in the year, but that's it here. At least that I've ever seen or heard of.
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the ground beef I get works out to around 4.50 per pound... and when you eat 3 lbs a day, that can add up pretty fast!
if it was anymore expensive i couldn't do it...
Keith,
Not sure where you are purchasing you meat, but Slanker Dog & Cat is about $2/lb and the suet/fat is about $1.50/lb. Also, adding extra fat will up the calories and reduce the amount you need to eat which further lowers your daily cost. My total cost for food - including shipping charges - works out to about $7 per day. You could easily match this or beat the price by raising the fat content of what you eat.
Just a thought,
Lex
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Sully,
Bison is extremely lean. I usually find it measures less than 4% fat which is about 25% of calories or less which is not nearly enough. You could risk protein poisoning if you don't eat a significant amount of carbs or raise the fat content to at least 15% by weight.
When I purchase very lean meat, I ask the butcher to give me some additional fat that weighs 10% to 15% of the weight of lean meat I'm purchasing. I ask them to grind the fat for me which they will usually do for free. When I get home, I mix the ground fat into the lean meat and freeze/store in single serving sizes.
Lex
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Just wondering, how strong is the liver taste in the dog and cat food? And do you know the fat % of it?
Next time I order meat, I'm planning on ordering from Slankers, and ordering ground beef and suet. With the suet mixed in, this would lower the average price of my food by at least a little bit.
I'm getting quite enough fat now as it is anyway.
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Keith,
To me the taste of the D&C is rather mild. I do mix it with fat and ground beef so that the D&C is only about 1/3 of the total mixture by weight.
When I first started I tried to eat D&C alone but it was just a bit too strong tasting for me. I then started mixing it at the rate of 6 lbs ground beef (three-2lb packages) to one 1 1/2 lb package of D&C. Then I dropped it to 4 lbs ground beef and 1 1/2 lbs D&C. Finally I got to 2 lbs Ground beef, 1 1/2 lbs D&C. When I went to 80% fat I had to add an additional 1/2 to 3/4 lb of fat or suet to the mix to bring the fat content up to 80% of calories.
I found that the D&C consistently measures about 18 percent fat by weight which is around 68 percent calories from fat.
The Ground beef measures about 13% fat by weight which is around 60% of calories as fat.
Lex
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Interesting, thanks for your help. I suppose I'll have to do my own math soon enough ;D
But just wondering, I checked the Slanker's website and they say 90/10 for both the ground beef and the D&C. How were you able to calculate those percentages you gave?
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Just wondering, how strong is the liver taste in the dog and cat food?
The Dog & Cat is stronger than liver alone. It's a mixture so I'm not sure which part(s) make it stronger.
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When I purchase very lean meat, I ask the butcher to give me some additional fat that weighs 10% to 15% of the weight of lean meat I'm purchasing. I ask them to grind the fat for me which they will usually do for free. When I get home, I mix the ground fat into the lean meat and freeze/store in single serving sizes.
Lex
Lex, do you bolt the raw meat down or do you chew it? Do you have the fat and meat ground for any reason? I am interested, if this bolting or chewing has an effect on our digestion; I chew (can't help that, it just happens! I will even spit out the tough) and still find, that not all gets digested (not all suet get's broken down).
I have added this himalayan salt to my water in the morning but this seams to have a cleansing effect in the colon (in other words loose stools)!!!
Nicola
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But just wondering, I checked the Slanker's website and they say 90/10 for both the ground beef and the D&C. How were you able to calculate those percentages you gave?
Slankers just grinds the meat and adds about 10% fat by weight to both the D&C and the Ground Beef products. The actual fat content is the sum of the added fat plus whatever is in the meat itself. Since organ meats have a higher fat content the total fat in the D&C is higher than the ground beef which starts with lean muscle meat. This is how they arrive at the 90/10 numbers they publish on their website. The 90% is the meat they start with (muscle or organ) and the 10% is the extra added fat.
I have a commercial FA73 fat analyzer made by UINVEX. It is the same unit that is used by most meat markets to test the fat content of their ground beef. I measure every batch of food that I order and what I gave you are the averages.
Be aware that the D&C is made from leftovers from the regular meat they sell plus older animals who were used for breeding or other purposes and are past their prime for tender meat, so they go into the D&C product. Any animal where no part of the animal was sold for human consumption is not USDA inspected as this just adds to the cost and serves no purpose for pet food. This doesn't bother me at all, but some people may not want to eat meat that doesn't have the USDA stamp of approval.
Lex
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Lex, do you bolt the raw meat down or do you chew it? Do you have the fat and meat ground for any reason? I am interested, if this bolting or chewing has an effect on our digestion; I chew (can't help that, it just happens! I will even spit out the tough) and still find, that not all gets digested (not all suet get's broken down).
Nicola,
I"m a chewer. I purchase very course ground meat for two reasons. 1) it is far cheaper than whole cuts of meat (steaks, roasts, etc), and 2) I'd have to cut the larger pieces up to eat them anyway so why pay the extra money?
The normal gound beef is to fine for me - nothing to chew - more like paste. I much prefer chunks about the size of the end of my thumb to give my teeth some work to do. The Dog & Cat food is really ground far to fine for my liking, however, when mixed with the course ground "Chili Beef" it works out fine.
Lex
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wouldn't it be fine if the bison is ground with fat lex? i eat coconut fat before i eat it, should i mix it in?
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Certainly it is fine if the fat is ground into the meat initially. The problem is that most meat providers don't add enough fat at the initial grinding so you have to add extra after the fact.
I no longer consume coconut or any other vegetable oil and that includes flax seed oil and olive oil. The lipid profiles of vegetable fats are very poor. There is no real Omega3 in most vegetable sources, only percursors that the body can "convert" to Omega3, and this is very inefficient.
Though Coconut oil is a staple for island dweller's, I'm just not convinced it is the best food for humans - especially when other better foods are available. If you think about it, Island dwellers would quickly exhaust the meat supply on an island so they would have to find a replacement for animal fat or perish. This doesn't mean it is an optimal food.
I'll choose grass-fed saturated animal fat everytime over fats or oils from any vegetable source including coconut, olive, or flax. All vegetable fats are modern additions to the human diet. Raw unprocessed animal fats are also down right cheap compared to most "high quality" vegetable oils and fats. I see no reason to include them in my diet and now avoid them like the plague.
Lex
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The bison meat might be lower in fat but don't they have a fatty hump on their backs? Wouldn't this have been cherished by hunters?
Correct me if I'm wrong. All I can find on the subject are humans who have the lipodistrophy disorder commonly called "buffalo hump"
Craig
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I can get organic beef fat. But not grass fed fat from the butcher. Like I said before i can't order stuff unless they take food stamps. I kinda don't like the organic fat, think it's because it gets touch up of grain? i don't know what to do for fat..... ??? organic beef fat or coconut fat? any suggestions?
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Organic doesn't mean much. It can mean the animal was fed organic grain or that there were no hormones or antibiotics used on them.
Since you're an omnivore, you're probably getting enough carbs and fat. What's important is that protein not dominate the diet.
Yes, I'd suggest Raw Virgin coconut oil or whole coconut. The "organic" beef fat would be a little better than conventional. You are young and your body should be able to handle it until you're able to find or afford grass-fed fat. Avocados are fatty but not rich in saturated fat.
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yeah, i have extra virgin cold pressed coconut oil. I plan on going carnivore in the winter. Since I only eat vegetation I gather, besides the coconut fat. I ordered a dehydrater. i think i'll get the organic fat and dehydrate it, until i get another source, or until i get a job after high school.
thanks Craig
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think i'll get the organic fat and dehydrate it, until i get another source, or until i get a job after high school.
Sully,
You can't dehydrate fat. It will just go rancid if you try it. The cellular structure retains moisture and the fat quickly oxidizes (takes on excess electrons, also known as free radicals in bio speak) and this is not a good thing. You can slow the process down from days to several months by freezing the fat, or you can render the fat at a temperature above the boiling point of water. Rendering will release the pure fat from the cells and evaporate all the water. Rendered fat will keep for years if it is in a sealed container, but the relatively high heat will damage some of the fat soluable vitamins like A and D just like any other cooking process.
If I had to choose between rendered grass-fed animal fat or a vegetable fat like coconut or olive oil, I'd choose the rendered animal fat hands down. Even though rendered grass-fed animal fat has been heated and some nuritional damage has been done, it still has a far better lipid profile (omega3/omega6/omega9 ratios) which are the primary building blocks for our cells.
Lex
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"If I had to choose between rendered grass-fed animal fat or a vegetable fat like coconut or olive oil, I'd choose the rendered animal fat hands down. Even though rendered grass-fed animal fat has been heated and some nuritional damage has been done, it still has a far better lipid profile (omega3/omega6/omega9 ratios) which are the primary building blocks for our cells."
i second that
not that i render fat: i can only render some service or help or else translate
luckily, i am now 100% oil free, which means free of heartburn & acid reflux, as well as enjoying non-heavy meals totally devoid of plant lipids, esp. the sat fat & mufa types (which add up to the adipose tissues & cause insulin resistance) & the plant pufa's (aka plant omegas) which are hard to convert to aa, epa, dha
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Sully,
You can't dehydrate fat. It will just go rancid if you try it. The cellular structure retains moisture and the fat quickly oxidizes (takes on excess electrons, also known as free radicals in bio speak) and this is not a good thing. You can slow the process down from days to several months by freezing the fat, or you can render the fat at a temperature above the boiling point of water. Rendering will release the pure fat from the cells and evaporate all the water. Rendered fat will keep for years if it is in a sealed container, but the relatively high heat will damage some of the fat soluable vitamins like A and D just like any other cooking process.
If I had to choose between rendered grass-fed animal fat or a vegetable fat like coconut or olive oil, I'd choose the rendered animal fat hands down. Even though rendered grass-fed animal fat has been heated and some nuritional damage has been done, it still has a far better lipid profile (omega3/omega6/omega9 ratios) which are the primary building blocks for our cells.
Lex
I've never put fat(suet) in a dehydrator, but I have let it dry by leaving it out or in the fridge for weeks. It becomes dry as sawdust(sometimes with a little green fungus on it), but it lasts forever.
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Suet lasts long in at fridge or room temp but muscle meat fat not so much. After 2-3 weeks, it starts to smell real bad and tastes yukky!
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Suet lasts long in at fridge or room temp but muscle meat fat not so much. After 2-3 weeks, it starts to smell real bad and tastes yukky!
What the texture like of muscle when it left that long?
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Sully,
Suet is the fat that cushions the internal organs like the liver, kidneys, and spleen. It has less connective tissue (protein) and therefore is sort of flakey or crumbly. It is the protien that tends to spoil quickly. Suet often has much less protein than muscle fat so the spoilage is not as apparent.
Beef fat is the fat that separates muscle tissue. This is the fat that you see on the edge of steaks and roasts in the meat market. And in the case of a ribeye steak, the fat that separates the "eye" from the surrounding tissue. This fat can have a lot of connective tissue running through it (grizzle?), and this is made from callogen and protein and will spoil quickly due to the nitrogen content unless the water and protein is removed through the rendering process.
Both sources are similar in nutrition.
Lex
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now a little background, in my current understanding, to my previous remarks
afaik, there are 2 kinds of body lipids:
~ structural: animal pufa (aa, epa, dha) in all cell membranes & nervous system; perceptible as flavor in land or sea meat; neither visible to the naked eye or touchable
~ in storage for fuel: sat fat & mufa in visceral, muscular, subcutaneous adipose tissues (10-20% adult body weight); pathologically as plaque in blood vessels or floating in blood; visible & touchable; these tissues also contain structural lipids in their cells & blood vessels
2 main environmental effects on animal (incl. human) lipids:
~ aerobic > peroxidation of pufa & mufa (rancidity); as in ground or cutup meat with or without visible fat (i.e. rancidity of both fatty & lean meat, since both contain structural lipids in addition to their presence or absence of visible saturated storage lipids)
~ anaerobic microorganisms > hydrogenation of pufa & mufa (saturation); as in fermentation inside the cow's stomachs or in a jar culture
this is the main reason i discontinued 2 practices i enjoyed previously: eating groung meat & meat fermentations (high meat & anaerobic)
now i'm experimenting with anaerobic herbal fermentations...
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re. wild vs domestic dietary animals:
here are some tidbits from crawford & marsh, the driving force, 1989, ch.12
"if an animal is overfed & denied exercise it simply gets fat [excess adipose tissues]. if the process is continued long enough, it loses muscle & depot fat infiltrate the retreating muscle fibers, giving the 'marbled' appearance characteristic of modern intensively fed animals. this infiltrating fat is, like the rest of the storage fat of ruminants, saturated fat ...
"by contrast, under natural or free-living circumstances this cannot happen ... hence analysis of its [wild] meat shows it to be characterized by the type of fatty acids involved in cell function & structure, that is [aa, epa, dha]" (p.222).
"before the enclosures of the 17th century, cattle had mostly been herded in open grass, bushland, & forest. when people began to contain them in fields ... the variety of food that the animals could select for themselves was drastically reduced [alfalfa & clover, which are legumes, within electric fences]" (p.223).
"added to all this was the clever idea of castration, again to make the males quiet & to gain weight faster: but the weight was largely fat -- saturated, storage fat" (p. 224).
"the energy contained in [dietary] storage fat represents about 1.097 times 10 to the power of 14 joules a day, or enough to keep an oil-fired 1200 mw station in operation for a year. translated into candle power [candle = sat fat], the present animal production in the uk provides enough white storage fat for all families to throw away their electric light bulbs. we now eat the candles" (p. 225)
the following is from their table 5:
"comparison of proportion of lean meat & nutrients in the carcasses of wild [w] & domestic [d] beef animals"
lean meat w = 75% d = 50%
protein & nutrients w = 15% d = 10%
(water removed)
storage fat w = 4% d = 25%
[sat fat]
"what is termed lean meat in butchers' carcasses is not lean meat at all. the tissue is infiltrated with veins of [storage] fat, which can account for anything up to 20% of its weight. in wild animals there is virtually no visible fat between the muscle fibers. the only fats present [in wild] are structural lipids [aa, epa, dha] used for building the cells. any surplus fat the [wild] animals have is stored around the interior organs such as the kidneys & the heart" (p.227).
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This was a statement on the "Saturated Fat For Health" Yahoo Group:
Hello Dr. Groves
Is this right?
The reason any fat (including butter) alone or butter without carbs will cause you to be hungry shortly afterwards is that, without glucose (usually from carbs), the fat cannot be metabolized! If it is not metabolized, it cannot be oxidized. It is the oxidation of the fat that produces ENERGY! Glucose activates the citric acid (fat-burning) cycle. It is in the citric acid cycle that the fatty acids are oxidized (for energy).
and Dr. Groves answer:
Eating fat causes you to feel hungry shortly afterwards? Not in my experience. Indeed I find that fat is the best food to prevent feeling hungry for several hours.
There was a belief in the 19th century that 'fat burns only in the flame of carbohydrates'. It was thought that fat and carbs were literally burned in the lungs as they would be in a fire. Just as that was proved to be wrong, so was the belief that carbs were needed to burn fats. Let's face it, if it were true, how would Inuit and Maasai survive?
Nicola
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I no longer consume coconut or any other vegetable oil and that includes flax seed oil and olive oil. The lipid profiles of vegetable fats are very poor. There is no real Omega3 in most vegetable sources, only percursors that the body can "convert" to Omega3, and this is very inefficient.
Though Coconut oil is a staple for island dweller's, I'm just not convinced it is the best food for humans - especially when other better foods are available. If you think about it, Island dwellers would quickly exhaust the meat supply on an island so they would have to find a replacement for animal fat or perish. This doesn't mean it is an optimal food.
I'll choose grass-fed saturated animal fat everytime over fats or oils from any vegetable source including coconut, olive, or flax. All vegetable fats are modern additions to the human diet. Raw unprocessed animal fats are also down right cheap compared to most "high quality" vegetable oils and fats. I see no reason to include them in my diet and now avoid them like the plague.
Lex is right. These veg oils take technology to extract. The sole exception is olive oil, which can be pressed by hand. I can't imagine making coconut or flax oil without electric-motor machinery. These oils would not be available pre-agriculture. I think it is important to consider this when choosing foods. You know, just because it is a paleo foodstuff, it may be pretty modern, much like most juices are. That said, I do consume some olive oil, and it is probably less than ideal. But then, we will all miss the mark in terms of paleo living. It boils down to picking your poison and choosing your battles. But pretending that veg oils are a pristine food source is fooling yourself. Better to eat a coconut or olive than the processed oil product.
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Nicola,
I've had some correspondence with Mary on this subject. Whether her belief that carbs are necessary for the efficient metabolism of fat I really don't know, however, she has done some experiments that appear to support this belief.
I have great respect for Dr. Groves and his experience as well. That said, Dr Groves has told me via e-mails that it is his practice to eat a piece of fruit as a snack before retiring. This would certainly provide a few carbs.
Also, when I challenged Mary on this point, telling her that I had only eaten meat and fat for several years and it appeared that I was efficiently metabolising the large amounts of fat that I consume, she reminded me that as long as I was consuming any significant amount of protein, then gluconeogesis would create the necessary glucose to burn the fat. So even if Dr Groves comments were related to a time when he did not consume a few daily carbs, I don't know that he would have eaten fat only and excluded both carbs and protein from his diet.
If I understand Mary's comments correctly, then glucose from any source (dietary or GNG) is all that is necessary for efficient fat metabolism. I'm planning on doing an experiment prompted by Elli where I only eat fat for a couple of days to see what happens. I'm going to be discussing this experiment with Mary to get her predictions on what will happen based on her understanding of the citric acid cycle model.
This should be another interesting experiment and will post about it in my journal over the next couple of weeks.
Lex