121: The Hidden Contaminant in Even the Best Meat

MK: You know, you might be buying organic grass fed grass, finished pasture, raised food, and still eat unhealthy or eat toxins that are at the end of the day, avoidable. And so in this episode, I wanna talk a little bit more about some of the things that often go wrong as part of our food supply that you're likely not even aware of, that food producers might not even be aware of, especially small farmers and ranchers.

Who wanna do the right thing, but just don't know any better, and then do something that contaminates the food unknowingly, and you still get phthalates and microplastics and all of the things you're trying to avoid into your food supply, into your body at the end of the day without even knowing.

Welcome to the Primal Shift Podcast. I recently attended a. Biohacking conference was called Hack Your Health, where MCA Supplements was exhibiting, and I had a presentation that talked about the blind spot that biohackers very often have as far as food is concerned. And so I figured I wanna talk a little bit about the same things that I discussed in the presentation, but more from an angle of, you know, just someone who wants to live healthier, improve their health and wellbeing, and eat right, eat healthy.

You know, as I said, that's much more difficult than than you think it is, and I know, I apologize in advance that this is likely going to be. Make your food sourcing even more difficult than it already is. I don't wanna induce more anxiety, but I feel like you ought to know certain things so that you can decide if that's worth your consideration, if you wanna do something about it or just live with the risk, because perfection doesn't exist.

There is no way of living a perfectly healthy life in our modern society, at least not one that. You know, I'd be willing to pursue because it would remove us from a lot of the things that not only we've gotten used to, but we do, you know, enjoy and take for granted. And so there's gotta be this balance and that balance is a different one, different for everybody.

And so, but I just wanted to give you the information, then you decide what you wanna do with it. Because better health starts with better food and better food starts with understanding how it's raised, processed, and packaged. Most people never think about the last two steps. They just assume organic means clean or pasteurized means nutrient dense or grass fed means toxin free.

But the modern food system has some landmines baked into it. Things that can undermine your health even when you're trying to make the right choices. And it in many cases, in, well, in some cases, even if farmers and ranchers know. How to do better. They can't because of federal regulations that would prevent them from doing what's best because it would be, you know, and so, but I would argue that most food producers don't even know, and I wanna give you one specific example because it's very recent, a Thanksgiving, Turkey.

Last year we started raising our own turkeys. So we have full control over their feet, their environments, and ultimately the quality of that Turkey then ends up on our Thanksgiving dinner table this year because of the move you've been following us on the Kummer homes that you've probably seen that we moved to a larger property.

But one and almost two hours away from our old homestead with all of the animals and the saunas and the coal plunges, it was a major undertaking. We are still in the process of moving in, so to say, even though we are already on a new property. And so with all of the stress going on, we decided not to raise turkeys this year and instead buy a Turkey from a local firm that we know.

It does a lot of things right. In fact, they practice regenerative, you know, agriculture. They do most of the things the same way we would do, and I felt confident and good about. Supporting them and uh, buying the Turkey from them. So we bought the Turkey, we picked it up just before Thanksgiving, and even though, you know, spoil out, we didn't end up eating the Turkey for Thanksgiving because it was so stressful that my wife said, let's just have steaks easier, let's prep time.

And so we had steak dinner for Thanksgiving and we'll have to Turkey another day. But my point here is that Turkey was wrapped in plastic, obviously, you know, all of that. Frozen items that you buy are in plastic and you would think, well, what's the problem? You know, I've said in the past that plastic, plastic and frozen foods is not a real concern from a ceno estrogen perspective.

There are no endocrine disrupting chemicals leaching from the plastic into the food, the just when it's frozen, when it's below room temperature. And so, you know, I mean, we, when we made, uh, butcher turkeys, you know. Put them into, into, uh, plastic and vacuum seal and then put 'em in the freezer, which is not perfect, but good enough as far as I'm concerned.

The problem is though, most homesteaders what they do is, especially the smaller ones and the larger ones are like, there's not really, I think there's not really a whole lot of difference across the board. What they do is once the, the bird has been dispatched and cleaned out. It goes in a plastic bag and then the plastic bag goes in a hot water bath to shrink, wrap the plastic and basically get out all of the air that just and, uh, you know, get it ready for the freezer.

That just, and I'm sure you can imagine that the combination of heat fat from the animal and the plastic. A recipe for disaster or for the transfer of chemicals that would not transfer if there was no heat involved. And that includes microplastics, you know, anytime plastic. Most plastics and all, and especially soft plastics, they're exposed to high temperatures, microplastics shed, and they shed into the meat and also the transfer of endocrine disrupting chemicals, so-called xenoestrogens, like phthalates and stuff from the plastic.

They migrate and they migrate very easily if there is salt or fat involved because a lot of those are lipophyllic. They like fat. And so you get microplastics and endocrine disruptors, you know, in direct contact with the Turkey meat because of the high heat when the bird is shrink. Uh, shrink wrapped.

Most people don't know that. Most ranchers don't know that. Most homesteaders don't know that because otherwise they would probably not be doing that. And so that's one thing. You know, you might get an organic free range, pasture raised, regeneratively, raised Turkey. All of those attributes apply to the Turkey that we purchased from a local farm that no wanna do the right thing, but they still use the heat shrink.

Uh. That just, and, and, and that's just then that, that at the end of the day, denatures your food. That then puts back some of the things that you would, that you've tried to avoid in the first place. It makes the food significantly less healthy than it would be otherwise. And that's just one example. A second example, I've talked about it in the past is pastured poultry, more specifically chickens.

Most of the chickens you can buy. Definitely, I wanna say a hundred percent of the ones you can buy com from commercial breeders that you can find in, you know, in a supermarket, et cetera. But also, most of the homesteaders they raise Cornish Cross. That's a specific, that is breed that was specifically bred for incredibly rapid weight.

So that those an incredibly efficient or high feet conversion, meaning for every pound of feet you feed them, there is a lot of muscle meat that they gain or just weight that they gain. The problem with those Cornish crosses I've mentioned in the past is that they are,

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And now back to the episode... They're just at that end breed.

They are chunk food. At the end of the day, most of those birds don't even survive. They, they would get sick or drop dead or can't walk anymore because they're way too heavy for their weight. They're basically obese babies when they are slaughtered at 45 days. Six to eight weeks is usually how long they stick around.

Um, if you've ever raised a regular chicken, you know that at the six week, eight week mark, there is nothing on that bird that you would wanna eat. It's basically just feathers, um, and skin and a little bit of meat that's not even worth putting in a stock, you know, or making a soup out of. And so that's a.

Chunk food, breed of chicken. That might be pasteurized, that might be organic, that might be all of the things. But with those poor genetics and then combined very often, even if it's organic, you know, soy, uh, corn-based feed that's high in fu high, in those poorly unsaturated fatty acids that render rendered a fatty acid.

Profile of the meat and the fat. Less than ideal for humans. And you know, all mono gastric animals, they are what they eat. So if they eat high pufa diet, those PUFAs end up in, in, in the meat and then the fat tissue. And so as the chicken eats a high pufa diet and stores a lot of those PUFAs, if we eat that chicken, we store a lot of those PUFAs, not a good thing.

So again, healthy chicken, pasteurized chicken. Not a good thing. And I would argue most farmers, they probably don't even know if you tell them, Hey, are you feeding low PO of feed? They don't even know what POS are because that's not their thing. You know, that comes more from the biohacking kind of work, from health optimization and it has not really saturated the homesteading community.

And so, you know. That's a problem. The third one, and that's probably the least expected one, or the one that most people least expect is grass fed. Grass finished beef. They've tested a lot of the beef and the one from Whole Foods and other places that are very popular where people just buy their steaks and the ground meat from had high concentrations of microplastics and salads, again, from the processing.

So it was not how the cow was raised, it was how it was tortured, or how the meat was packed and in plastics. Where there was transfer them from, uh, transfer of those microplastics and endocrine disrupting chemicals into the fat of the meat, and that's the one that you're eating. Then again, not a good thing.

So what can you do? Well, chill out for a moment. Don't go nuts. Don't, don't, you know, think like there is nothing you can do because there are a lot of things that you can do, and depending on where you source your food from, there are different. Different avenues that you can navigate, but the number one recommendation is to get closer to the source of the food.

You know, if you know the farmer who is raising your Turkey or the cow that you buy them or get the meat from, you can have a conversation and say, Hey, um. What are you doing to reduce the PUFAs or avoid exposure to microplastics, to satellites? And if the rancher says, I dunno what that means, then you can have say, Hey, look, I, I, I learned that plastics, heat, and meat, not a good combination.

Is there maybe something we can do to. You know, not get that exposure. Can you maybe just, um, vacuum seal the meat that I'm buying from you instead of shrink wrapping it with heat? Or can you maybe, uh, wrap the beef that I'm buying from you in butcher paper before it goes into plastic? You know, there are a lot of things that you can potentially do or at least ask and have a conversation about, and then see if your grower, if your rancher, if your farmer is willing to.

Maybe change things and change the way they do things. In many cases, that might mean it's gonna be more expensive because adding butcher paper, um, is gonna be an extra cost that someone has to pay, and the margins are usually not very high in that area anyway. So it's probably gonna be you ending up paying for that.

But I would argue paying a couple of cents more for maybe, you know, adding that butcher paper, um, or maybe even a dollar more per pound is probably gonna be worth it from a health perspective. Because if you don't, then buying expensive, pasteurized, organic, regeneratively raised meat, just so you still get microplastics and endocrine disrupting chemicals is probably not gonna be worth it.

Uh, you might as well then go and buy regular meat, you know. Obviously there is some nuance. You know, you doing better is always a good thing and you should not try to chase perfection because you're probably gonna go nuts doing it. But nonetheless, um, it's a fairly low hanging fruit, I would argue. But the point here really is that you need to get as close as possible to the food source and have an understanding of what it takes and what some of those landmines could be.

And of course, the best way of learning is, is to raise the food yourself because then you come across, I mean, as part of our homesteading journey, you know, we realize that there is, it's very difficult to be plastic free. When raising animals, you know, if just, you know, our rabbits getting water to them, you know, is typically involve some sort of plastic.

Be it, you know, a hose, be it a water pipe, be it a bucket, you know, yes, you can get all of those things food great. And, you know, hd uh, high density polyethylene, you know, is probably the, the safest option of the plastic in many cases, but getting away from plastic altogether. No food pan, no watering system exposed to plastic is incredibly difficult, but at least you know what are some of those landmines?

And you say, okay, alright. Like in our case, our water pipeline from the well down to the pasture is, you know, one inch HDP, you know, high density dip polyethylene. It's not ideal, but it's the safest. Option, the safest yet practical option we have. So what can we do that on the other side? Well, okay, what we can potentially do is, you know, apply some sort of filter at the end where the water comes out, you know, to filter some of that out or just accept the risk that, you know, there might be some residual, um, leaching, even though you know the pipe is buried so it's not exposed to direct sunlight.

It should be relatively temperature stable. And so it should be, it should be leaching fairly little, but there's probably gonna be some leaching going on, and so nothing we can do about it because bearing copper, you know, for hundreds and hundreds of feet is just financially impractical for us. We can't, you know, I, I, I can't afford doing that and it's also not as flexible.

So there are some. There is a balance you have to strike, but at least you know the bigger problem than when the food, when the, the animal is being butchered. We are not gonna use heat to shrink wrap our birds or our meat. We do a vacuum ceiling, you know, at low temperature, and then with room temperature, ambient temperature, then immediately goes to the freezer.

So that should be significantly safer than anything else. But the point here really is, unless you try to do those things yourself, you might not even know what are some of those problems. Um. So doing it yourself is the best course of action. Now, of course, I understand not everyone wants to become a farmer and raise their own food, especially animals, but I would argue or I would encourage you to raise at least something, get involved in something, do something, and if it's only raising a tomato plant on your patio, and you get to understand, okay, what does it really take to manage pests to.

Provide nutrients without synthetic fertilizers. You know how soil health plays into the final product. You know how to get water to it, you know, all of the things. It gives you a much better understanding so you can have a better conversation and be more educated. When you talk to someone who then grows most of yard of food and you get hay, you know, I've learned X, Y, Z, how are you doing it and is there a way maybe we can prevent this and that from, from happening?

And, um, so growing your own food. Best thing you can do from a learning education perspective and to gain more expertise. The second thing is, you know, talk to your farmer, peer, buy your food, or at least most, or some of it, at least from someone who is close by who you can visit and. Look at the operation, see what's going on, ask them questions, ask if you can be maybe part of the butchering, maybe you can be part of some of the processing, or, you know, rotating the animals.

You know, get to learn, because I know it's, it takes time, it takes money, it takes effort. You have to be involved. But at the end of the day, outsourcing something as important as food and nutrition to someone who cares. Less about your health than you should is a recipe for disaster. And I gotta tell you that unless you're working with a.

Local rancher who is in it for the right reasons. Nobody cares about your health, certainly not the grocery store or you know, Tyson or those big, uh, meat packers or anything in anyone in between. They too not care about your health. And so why do you, why would you outsource food to someone who doesn't care?

That only leads to, you know. Disaster and less than ideal nutrition, even if the label would suggest otherwise. Organic doesn't really mean it's healthy. Pasteurized, nothing really means anything unless you know exactly what happened, you know? And so getting involved, shortening the distance between you and your food, that's the one thing I recommend you do in whatever shape or form, you know, raising it yourself.

Becoming friends with a farmer, getting involved, helping, maybe helping out learning what it takes. Uh, all of those things are important. And if, if you can't, if you live somewhere in the city and there's nothing close by, at least, you know, buy some books. You know, I, I, I dunno how many books I've read recently on, on Soil health and on improving pasture, not because we wanna be.

Commercial farmers or anything, but all of those things matter for us on a small scale. But also for me buying things now I know okay, that grass fed, grass finished doesn't really mean a whole lot because it doesn't say anything about the health of the pasture and the soil, the quality of the pasture.

You know, are they doing rotational grazing or are they doing, you know, they're just putting in the cows in a, in a, in a large, large pattern and leave them there all year that whatever grass they're eating is significantly less nutritious than. The grass of, of, of a ranch where they practice rotational grazing, where they move the animals every day, you know, but none of that is, is reflected by a label and you gotta be involved.

You can't outsource your health and you can't outsource the quality of your food. So get involved. Let me know if you have any questions. You know, if anything was. Like sparked your interest. You wanna talk more about this or learn more about that, you know, leave me a comment, shoot me an email. And, um, I hope this has helped you a little bit.

Not to make you more anxious about sourcing your food and buying your food, but to educate you a little bit more and to help you, to enable you to ask the right questions. And with that, we're gonna wrap it up for this week. I hope I see you in the next episode and here in the next episode. And, uh, maybe share this with someone who could, you know, who could benefit from it.

Until next time.