I decided two months ago to try the carnivore diet. I did this once before without very good results. Mainly the problem was insomnia. But wait. That was a variety of animal based foods. What if I only ate one kind of food for a few weeks as an elimination diet? I had been watching videos by Mikhaila Peterson, and she had gone into remission from rheumatoid arthritis on a carnivore diet. She also persuaded her father, Jordan Peterson, to go carnivore. In his case he has eaten only steak for five years, and has had improvement in his health. Five years? Well, I thought I would try that for a few weeks. She recommended Betterfedbeef.com. I decided to go with that, because their beef was antibiotic and hormone free and high quality.
I've never been disappointed with Betterfedbeef.com, and things were going well with my experiment. My health was improved in every way and I was very happy. It ran into trouble about a month ago though because one of my dental crowns came loose, and I wasn't up to the chewing I had been doing for a while. What to do? I decided to just eat potatoes until I could get my crown fixed. It sure did take forever to get anyone to cement my crown back on. One solid month. So how did the potato diet go? Well, not too bad, but not as well as the beef diet. Eventually my crown was fixed, but I had almost no beef left, and since it had to be shipped, and since they only ship on Mondays or Tuesdays, I wound up buying beef from a local meat store. How did that go? That didn't go well at all. I was surprised at how much could go wrong.
So the local store bragged about how they had a ranch and this was all meat from their own ranch, where the cattle were grass fed. The grass fed thing doesn't matter that much to me. What mattered was no antibiotics or hormones or pink stuff. They said there were no antibiotics or hormones either. So I bought six pounds of their hamburger.
I don't feel that the hamburger was terrible, but you never saw such lean hamburger. I would fry it, and there would not be grease in the pan afterwards. Strange. Looking at it, it was obvious there was not even 10% fat, and really, there probably wasn't 5% fat. I don't like lean hamburger. For one thing, if that's the only thing one is going to eat today, one will find it hard to feel adequately fed. The fat is filling and makes the beef taste better. So, bottom line, I didn't like the hamburger. It seemed curious that it was all so lean. I've never seen such lean hamburger before. No doubt some people prefer that.
I returned a few days later and decided to try their ribeye steaks. I mentioned that the hamburger was leaner than I liked. "Oh, well, when we have the cow butchered, we don't have the hamburger graded out by fat content, because that would cost an extra $3000." Did I believe that? Not really, but maybe the hamburger had had some leanness due to cost cutting at the butcher. Strike one.
Wow. What tough steak. The steak was like trying to eat concrete. I had looked forward to eating a steak after finally being able to chew again, but eating this felt like it would break every tooth in your mouth. I was concerned that my crown would come loose again, and my poor tempero mandibular joints were almost permanently destroyed. This had never happened before either. I looked at the other steaks I had bought. Marbled? Not much. Again, lean meat. How would you even make a ribeye that stringy and tough? Grass fed? Doubtful. Older animals? Maybe. Mom said she didn't think it was beef. She thought it was either deer or elk. And the truth be known, it was exactly like venison. Almost no fat. Tough. Stringy. And some people think venison is great. OK. I wanted beef. Strike one million. This meat store wasn't working.
Another thing about my experience with the beef from this store is that during the time that I ate the meat that I bought there, all my numbers went ballistic. My blood pressure actually went up to 175/100! What?? My fasting glucose was 126, having eaten only meat the day before. Really inexplicable. And I felt terrible.
So, I placed another order with Betterfedbeef.com. It should be here today or tomorrow. I had one pound of their hamburger left and ate that yesterday. Today all my numbers were back to normal.
So, I am not 100% convinced the local meat store was somehow at fault. However, they themselves told me they had cut corners with the butcher. One corner cut. Were there others? Well, what if they added cornmeal or whatever to the hamburger? Or the pink stuff? I had quit eating beef because of having problems like this every time I ate it. I assumed I was allergic to beef. No, I'm allergic to antibiotics, hormones, the pink stuff, and who knows what. And how did they manage to make the toughest ribeye on earth?
The bottom line is, it matter where you buy beef.
I have been studying cow charts to try and figure out, once and for all, where the cuts of beef come from. The area where ribeye comes from would be almost impossible to make that tough, since it isn't exercised much. This "ribeye" seemed like you might expect to find on one of the shanks.
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