Michael pollan where to buy meat

I've got a dough downstairs while I'm upstairs writing, and I come downstairs every hour, and I put my hand in it and smell it and taste it and turn it over, and there's something I really like about that.

I was really gratified that, of all the episodes of "Cooked," the baking one really hit a chord. There were months where there were dozens of loaves posted from people on my Twitter feed every day. Most of those loaves put up on Twitter were put up there by guys. You learned a lot of labor-intensive complicated dishes for "Cooked. I grill something really simple. Our default is to marinate some fish or chicken. Depending on what we are doing. Sometimes we do more Italianate or Asian marinades, but it usually involves soy sauce and then some acid — old wine, vinegar or citrus — herbs and garlic.

We also brine a lot. The other day I made a branzino brined in salt and a little bit of sugar and some herbs for a couple of hours. That kept it really moist and delicious. We served it with pasta, fresh ricotta and grilled asparagus, because that's great right now. Monica Eng is a food and health reporter at Chicago Public Radio. She co-hosts the "Chewing" podcast with Tribune reporter Louisa Chu at www.

You can hear a fuller version of this interview on "Chewing" in July. Twitter monicaeng. Skip to content. If this sounds like a good recipe for cognitive dissonance if not indigestion , that was sort of the idea. He invites me to join him, to have a look at the auspicious piles of worm castings, the clover leaves just breaking, and the two inches of fresh growth that one particular blade of grass has put on in the five days since this paddock was last grazed.

Garden City, Kan. What it got instead were sprawling subdivisions of cattle. Michael Pollan. Join the Gates Notes community to get regular updates from Bill on key topics like global health and climate change, to access exclusive content, comment on stories, participate in giveaways, and more.

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Didn't get an email from us? Upload a profile picture. The image you are trying to upload is either too big or is an unacceptable format. The high-grain diet also increases the risk of acidosis: Acids accumulate in the rumen and spread to the bloodstream, making the animal sick and in severe cases even lame. Every animal differs in its susceptibility. GPS-guided feed trucks deliver precise amounts to each pen, and every morning feed manager Armando Vargas adjusts those rations by as little as a few ounces a head, trying to make sure the animals eat their fill without waste or illness.

About 6. About one percent die before they reach butchering weight, generally between 1, and 1, pounds. Pharmaceuticals are crucial to the feedlot industry. Every animal that arrives at Wrangler receives implants of two steroid hormones that add muscle: estradiol, a form of estrogen, and trenbolone acetate, a synthetic hormone. Finally, during the last three weeks of their lives, the Wrangler cattle are given a beta-agonist. Zilpaterol, the one with the biggest effect, causes them to pack on an extra 30 pounds of lean meat.

But last year, after 17 cattle turned up lame at a Tyson Foods slaughterhouse in Washington State, Tyson and other beef packers began refusing cattle that had received zilpaterol. In the U. It achieved this while slaughtering 10 million fewer cattle, from a herd that was almost 40 million head smaller. The average slaughter animal packs 23 percent more meat these days than in Small meat-packers like Edes were once common, but today 82 percent of U. Every cow slaughtered commercially in the U.

The people at Wrangler appeared competent and devoted to their work. They tried to handle cattle gently. The pens were crowded but not jammed—the cattle had around to square feet each, and since they tend to bunch up anyway, there was open space. I was relieved to be standing on dry dirt—manure, to be sure, but dry. Most cattle feedlots are in dry places like the Texas Panhandle. Are feedlots sustainable? The question has too many facets for there to be an easy answer.

The hormones and beta-agonists used at Wrangler are not considered, by the FDA at least, to be a human health concern. But as the animals excrete them, the effect they might have on the environment is less clear. The issue that concerns Defoor most is water. The panhandle farmers who supply corn and other crops to the feedlots are draining the Ogallala aquifer; at the current pace it could be exhausted in this century.

But Texas feedlots long ago outgrew the local grain supply. Much of the corn now comes by train from the corn belt. The biggest, most mind-numbing issue of all is the global one: How do we meet demand for meat while protecting biodiversity and fighting climate change? A common argument these days is that people in developed countries need to eat less meat in general, eat chicken instead of beef, and, if they must eat beef, make it grass fed.

For starters, that advice neglects animal welfare. After my week at Wrangler, I visited a modern broiler farm in Maryland, on the Delmarva Peninsula, a region that raised million chickens last year.

The farm was clean, and the owners seemed well-intentioned. But the floor of the dimly lit, foot-long shed—one of six at the farm—was solidly carpeted with 39, white birds that had been bred to grow fat-breasted and mature in under seven weeks. But would Americans help feed the world if they ate less beef?

The portion of the U. Ethanol now consumes 36 percent of the available grain, beef cattle only about 10 percent. Still, you might think that if Americans ate less beef, more grain would become available for hungry people in poor countries. Audrey Bushway and Steven Boyles, visiting from Arizona, got in line at 8 a.

They ate at noon. In America intensive livestock operations produce plentiful meat. Global demand for all meat is rising.

Prices for corn and sorghum drop, which helps a bit in Africa, but globally the key food grains are wheat and rice. The notion that curbing U.