Fnord.

(Picture links to Flickr page where I found it)

Last year, I read an amazing article on the Times by Michael Pollan called ‘Power Steer’, where he purchased a steer and followed it from birth to slaughter. Pollan is the author of ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ and other books, and writes quite well. In it, he spends a lot of time explaining just why corn-fed beef is bad, both for us and the cows.

I was reminded of this today, when Mark Morford wrote a nice article on grass-fed beef that links to this Slate article reviewing several sources. The winner is Alderspring Ranch. At $21.50/lb (ouch!), they were the cheapest, too. (!!)

When we were in Illinois, it was reasonably easy to get locally produced beef at the farmers’ markets. Here in SoCal, it’s not so easy. Given the rave reviews in the Slate article and Morford, I’m tempted to try the Alderspring but damn that’s a lot of money for a steak.

The continuing irony never ceases to amuse. It’s expensive and difficult to eat healthily, and cheap & easy to eat junk food. The public health consequences of this are a lot less funny, though.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 10:06 am and is filed under Environment, Essays - other people, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.