Day 3 - Eating Clean Mini Challenge

Day 3 Eating Clean Mini Challenge: Meat and Eggs – All meat consumed this today will be locally raised (within 100-miles of your hometown). Seafood should be caught wild if possible. 

I want to take a few moments to explain the reasoning behind this one. And just to make sure there is no confusion we are defining meat as beef, turkey, chicken, pork, lamb, venison, duck, etc.  There is no restriction on other animal products (like milk and cheese) but Eggs should be easy enough to get locally but if not try for organic or at least free range for the rest of the week. For Seafood, if I'm buying salmon I do like to get wild salmon as it tends to be fresher and they aren't fed pellets but rather eat what they are meant to in nature. Check out David Suzuki's Top 10 Sustainable Seafood guide!

Local Meat: Of course it's always nice to support local business but also just about anything you can buy through your local farmers will be better for you and the environment. Not only do fruits and vegetables lose nutritional value during their trek, but the by-products from all of that travel also have a very negative impact on our environment. When it comes to industrialized meat, not only does the travel aspect take a toll on our environment, but the resources used to raise, feed, and slaughter the animals do as well. Secondly, the only way to truly know if the meat you are eating was humanely raised is to ask the farmer yourself. Factory farms treat animals like commodities, and they are kept in tightly confined pens and often never move more than a few feet their whole lives.  And even if the meat comes from an organic factory farm it doesn’t necessarily mean they were raised or fed properly. And the health of the animal directly affects the nutritional value of the food you consume. If you aren't sure where you can find locally raised meat today, post in our facebook event to see if anyone there can help or do a quick google search!  But if you can't, just go vegetarian for the day!

I'm lucky in that my sister lives on her husbands family farm which raises cows and now pigs as well.  The cows are fed fresh grass and hay grown on the farm and are treated very well.  There is one cow that my brother-in-law is very fond of (though he wont name him), the cow loves his head to be scratched and is so friendly.  It's sad knowing that he will one day be taken away to be slaughtered but at least these cows are living a good happy life and fed well.  

Here are a few reason why not to eat Farmed Salmon!

• Wild salmon are more nutritious than farmed with eight times more Vitamin D and three times more Vitamin A per 100 gram serving.
• Wild salmon range in colour from pink to red because of the food they eat. Since farmed salmon do not benefit from a wild diet, natural and artificial colourants are added to their feed to alter their flesh from an unappealing grey to a marketable “salmon” colour.

The way to look at it is; if your food eats it you are eating it.  So feeding cows and chickens GMO feed is just like you eating Genetically modified foods too. I think we all know how food effects us when we have eaten something greasy etc.  We don't feel well afterwards.  When the animals are left to feed on natural foods in their environment we are getting the same nutrients they are. This is how nature intended it! Plus if you have ever eaten locally and humanely raised meat you will know the difference, the colour, taste everything is better!