Trace amounts of arsenic are present in just about everything, including organic crops, free-range organic poultry, you name it. Trace amounts of thousands of potentially lethal compounds occur naturally in everything we eat and drink. The issue is how much you need to consume in order to receive a harmful dose, and the answer is, truly awesomely huge quantities, which, if you did ingest them, would suggest different and more pressing health issues.

Stuart,

My point was not how much we need to eat to be harmed, but how food can actually do you good...

The idea is that grass fed beef actually is healthy for you!

However, eating any red meat should be done rarely, as there is a definite correlation with colon cancer as well as other disease...

I am glad that we are forced to eat legumes so many times a year by the Church!

As a business traveler, I find myself eating at fast food restaurants way too often. While McDonald's not my favorite, sometimes it must do. I know much of that is not beneficial nutrition, but time constraints and stretching the expense account sometimes make fast food the best solution.

Likely this old body processes lots of toxic chemicals every day from all kinds of sources. I'm not particularly worried about it. My sovereign Lord has decreed even the hairs of my head are numbered. So, then must be my days in His hands according to His times.


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Grass-fed beef is better for us to eat because cows' stomachs were not designed to eat corn (which is what most mass-produced American cows eat). Therefore, they get sick and are fed antibiotics, which we then ingest ... not good, not good at all.

Much of what city folk think they know about agriculture is wrong, you know.

What exactly are you insinuating? If you have a problem with what we read, please take it up with the authors of the literature we read. Thank you.



Thank you Alicia for that information...Indeed, we have all ingested way too many antibiotics, both prescribed and otherwise....

The indiscriminate use of antibiotics ceased some time ago, and was not related at all to the use of corn feed. In fact, cows on their own like corn, and even cows raised on grass will gravitate towards a patch of corn if it isn't fenced off.

People frequently use the term "cows" when they really mean "cattle" as in "beef cattle." Cows are what one would find in a dairy setting - they're the ones that give milk - also sometimes known as "dairy cattle." Similarly, people use the term "pigs" when they mean "hogs". Hogs are the big things we get pork from, pigs are the little ones, the juveniles.

My family has farmed (and ranched) for many generations in Iowa and in central California.

Corn is not a natural or neutral food for cattle. In fact, cattle can only eat corn for a few months - usually while they are being fattened up in a feed lot and that is exactly why they are fed corn - more weight on the animal means a better price for it. In the past, the American consumer has actually prized the "marbling" effect that corn fed cattle have and some do find the meat more tender. These days people prefer leaner meat and as a result beef cattle are spending less time in the feed lots now. Increasingly we see more grass fed cattle making it to the market. Eating corn for longer than the feed lot period will actually kill the animals because it causes permanent injury to their digestive and endocrine systems.

That fact the some cattle will wander over and eat corn from a field (I have never seen that before) does not mean that is either good or natural for them. Most domesticated bovines will eat almost any vegetable matter they can find, whether it is digestible or not. Undomesticated bovines, such as bison (American buffalo), stick almost exclusively to a diet of grasses. By the way, bison is very tasty, lean and healthy, if you have not tried it.

On a related subject, a fascinating (and accurate) documentary about corn appeared a couple years ago. I recommend watching it:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/film.html

Corn, like many things in life, is good for some things, very bad for others.

Well, Alice, since Stuart was born and brought up in NYC, it would seem that he is insinuating that we might not want to listen to his pronouncements on this topic - such as his insinuation (rebutted by Rybak, who was not born and brought up in the city) that corn is good and a natural diet for cows.

Many years,

Neil

Stuart's wife is Agro-American. Stuart also spends a lot of time doing technology evaluation, which also includes agricultural technology.

"gravitate"?

If "gravitate" is a synonym for "trample gates and fences" . . .

I know cornfed deer (deer that live near farmers' fields) taste better than forest deer that eat acorns and browse.