I've been trying to source grass fed beef and free range chicken lately, and I've finally found a suitable butcher but it's a 35 minute drive to get there. I really want higher quality meat in our diets though. Do you care where your meat comes from? Grocery store, butcher, driect from the farm?
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Yes, I feel so much better about eating meat that I know has been treated humanely and is better quality. Last year, my family got an entire grass-fed cow butchered - it was great having so much high quality meat year-round. Since we purchased an entire cow, the price was actually quite affordable (I think it worked out to about $4/pound average?).
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if it's meat that we'll be cooking, it's usually the nicer stuff you mentioned.
just a week or two ago, i was visiting my mom and decided to stay for dinner. she warned me that it'd be "just some grilled chicken," because she knows i can be particular about my food. but i said it was fine, i wanted to hang out. then i saw 2 packs of fosters farms chicken breast defrosting on the counter. i seriously considered skipping dinner. i ended up eating a tiny piece and eating a lot of rice and corn instead. not that those are necessarily better, but at least i didn't see the packaging for those.
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yes i buy all our eggs and meat from a local butcher that has grass-fed beef and free-range poultry. luckily it's only a couple blocks away!
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@MungBean: I'm thinking about doing that. I'd probably need to invest in a deep freezer first though. No room in our freezer now. I would go in with a friend and probably get just a portion of a cow.
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I have always bought meat from a grocery store, however we recently had a bad meat thingy happen here, and a lot of meat got tossed into the dump.
I've considered buying all our stuff from a butcher. A few girls go in on it and it ends up being a bit cheaper for all of us to order together.
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Our pork comes straight from my parents' ranch. Anything else is single sourced, antibiotic and hormone free.
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I definitely care where it comes from. That's why I'm vegetarian!
Since I don't force my beliefs on others, if I buy meat for SO, I buy organic/grass fed/free range etc - usually from whole foods.
I feel better about it. -
Yes I try to buy free range
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We buy from a local farm just North of us, used to be in 4H with the kids of the family, now that we don't have our own farm/cattle and we bought a chest freezer, and part of cow goes in and we've got our fill for at least the winter!
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Nope - we just buy from the grocery store and I don't usually pay any attention to the source.
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@MungBean: we've been tossing around getting a half cow next year when they start butchering them.
@Mrs. Bee: I wish we had something like that so close to you. We do have a few butchers in our area, but I'm not sure about the quality of their meat. I know it's better than the grocery store, but I really want dense nutrition packed in every bite.
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yup I do! I mostly buy at the grocery store free range and grass fed (organic) meats but if I had the option to get it from a farm I totally would!
If you have the freezer space, just try to make a monthly trip and get what you need for the month. One 35-min trip a month isn't bad.
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@Coco Bee: We have an upright freezer in the basement that I plan on filling. I told DH we're going this weekend and he was on board.
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We've done a meat share CSA for a few years and while I prefer that, a lot of time we pick up meat from the grocery store or a local meat shop (thought I'm not sure if the meat is from a local source, or if it's shipped in from somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if its not very local either).
I do have to admit that I hate the taste of grass fed beef! (What a first world problem, right?) I've lived in Central IL my entire life and only ate corn fed beef until our CSA. The taste of grass fed beef makes me feel sick. We only use the beef in tacos, chili, etc. where it's heavily spiced now.
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Yes, we buy organic and grass-fed whenever possible (we have a great organic butcher locally, so it's thankfully pretty easy for us). Almost entirely from local farms.
My eggs are delivered to me at work by the farmer who raises the chickens (100% pastured and grain-free).
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@twodoghouse: that's funny, how accustomed we become to one thing isn't it? My first taste of pad thai was not even close to authentic and looks like it has bright red/orange ketchup in it, but I love it soooo much. When I went to a fancy restaurant, it just wasn't the same.
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I would like to pay attention, but the grass fed hormone free meat is like double to triple the price of the grocery store meat. It's just not in our budget!
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Wow, I feel like a bad citizen... we just buy from Costco and the grocery store! Just WALKING by the Whole Foods meat display makes me feel poorer!!
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I do care, although I have had trouble finding access to some things. I'm very lucky that we can get all our beef from my in laws - once we move we'll be buying a deep freeze and look for other local producers to fill in for turkey and chicken.
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I feel much better about eating local free range grass fed meat. We have to balance that desire against the cost of grass fed and the fact that we sometimes have to drive an hour to get it, so in the end only some of our meat is actually sourced the way I would like.
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I do and there are tons of really convenient options near us that source from local farms less than a hour away. The thing keeping us from it is cost. It's sooo expensive and we just can not afford it right now.
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i do! DH and i try to only buy grass-fed meats and sustainably caught fish, etc. it doesn't always happen that way, but it means we eat less meat because it's more expensive and we're okay with that.
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Once I finish grad school and have an actual income, then I'll be more careful about this, because I genuinely do care. As it stands now, though, we live of my (small) graduate stipend and can't really spring for the expensive meats/eggs.
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Yes, but we can't afford anything other than the occasional Greenwise stuff from Publix (depending on what else is on the list or how much meat we need), so sadly I can't care right now.
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There's a butcher shop a few blocks down that we buy from occasionally...but for convenience, we usually buy from costco and I have no idea where the source is.
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I really don't, so long as the taste is good. I buy from a local butcher when I'm over there because I like to support his business, but that's about it.
ETA: I care about sustainability more, and I try (with fish, mostly) to buy sustainably produced food.
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I try to buy organic at the grocery store. There are a lot of butcher shops near me...I should start going!
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We're lucky to have a really good grocery store, with an organic butcher section so I get all meat there. My husband is the only one who eats it and he used to buy himself the cheapest stuff, but now that he's had it he'll only eat the good stuff. He says it tastes so much better and that the texture is better. It makes me feel better that he and our kids one day are eating better quality meat and that the animals are treated better.
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@highwire: Finally, someone else who doesn't care! I was thinking I was the only one.
I can't tell the difference, honestly, between grass fed or organic or blah blah blah... I just buy what's there. There is a local butcher down the street that we will buy from occasionally, but that has more to do with supporting local businesses than where the meat came from.
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Yes; I m disgusted by the conditions in large factory farms for meat – and I also don’t believe it’s healthy to eat meat after the way it’s treated in factory farms. Too many risks for severe illnesses due to contamination and disease. I don't want to eat all the crap and chemicals they pump into animals, and I don't support meat producers where cruelty takes place.
I also don’t trust the “organic” label slapped on meat at the grocery store because that doesn’t mean it was actually raised humanely; or that it couldn’t have become contaminated while being processed at the same plants where sketchy meat comes from.
I only trust and try to only buy meat from local farms so I know where my meat comes from and the conditions under which the animal was slaughtered and processed. It tastes better and per pound is often cheaper than the “organic” type at the store too, which is nice. I also eat a lot less meat than I used to.
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Yes - I'm very into how animals are harvested for their meat. It's actually very interesting to read about how meat changes depending on how animals are slaughtered (if they're calm vs. if they're not).
We're part of a meat CSA out of upstate NY and have been for the past couple of years. I love that we get random cuts of meat each month (including some ground beef and pork) and I like knowing that my meat comes from a family farm where the animals are raised and killed with care. -
We buy from the grocery store...I don't buy the cheapest kind but I'm not overly particular about it.
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I *do* care, but unfortunately, in my area it is difficult to get it. Here, we have 2 Wal-Marts and the commissary, and that's pretty much it for groceries, and neither one carries organic/free-range/hormone-free meat. We have a small health food store that carries some groceries, but my choices there are limited to frozen ground beef, frozen chicken, and frozen buffalo.
I believe there are some farms nearby where it's possible to buy a whole cow or a share of one, but as a military family, it's not realistic to have a freezer full of meat when you're moving all the time.
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My doctor actually recommended I go *vegan* when TTC! He said the carcinogens and toxins that we eat get passed through fat cells, so only meat can pass those things along (if that makes sense). I was a bit freaked out and didn't listen to him, but it did secure how strongly DH and I feel about only eating high-quality meat with no antibiotics, hormones, fillers, nitrates etc that has been pasture raised/grass-fed/organic. I figure if I'm going to eat meat it should be the highest quality possible. Plus with things like beef, the nutritional content is much higher (ie the ratio of omega-3s to omega-6 fatty acids) in grass-fed beef than corn-fed beef. We're pretty anal about it especially now that I'm knocked up.
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Yes, feel very strongly about the humane treatment of the animals we eat, as well as that the meat is hormone/antibiotic free and sustainably sourced. I virtually only cook chicken/turkey and both of those can easily be obtained from either the farmer's market or our local Fairway that meets my criteria.
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