Upgrading our Meat

Motherhood has made me very skittish about food safety. There are so many things to worry about, and the food supply system in the U.S. lets us down every so often. Vigilance is needed on two fronts...in the store and in the kitchen. Having a child with a compromised immune system ratcheted up the vigilance, which persists several years later.

For example, buying meat used to be so easy. I didn't think about it too much. However, mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) laws went into effect within the last year in several states, and that means all fresh meat products must be labeled. And there are some weird labels out there.

Some packages of meat in my local supermarket have the country of origin as "U.S., Canada, and Mexico." Do I assume that means the ground beef is from several countries, all mixed up together? Yuck. I've read enough about factory farms to be sufficiently grossed-out by that label.

Even cuts of roast beef say something similar. What exactly does that mean? Aren't they sure where that side of cow came from?

Luckily, there are other choices, even in a typical chain supermarket around here.

So, over the last several months, I've slowly made the choice to upgrade most meat purchases to the more expensive, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, ranch-raised U.S. meat, readily available (albeit in smaller quantities) in the meat case. And while I haven't made the jump to local meat (it might devastate our budget), we eat less meat overall now so this compromise works for us.

Most Europeans live this way. Meat is a small part of the meal, not the star, because it's very expensive. Also, Europeans allocate a much bigger percentage of their income to food, compared to Americans, who've come to expect great quantities of cheap food. And while we all can't live like Europeans, with their small shops devoted to breads or cheeses or fish, we can apply some of their strategies to our own lifestyles. Maybe we'll be healthier for it, in the long run. And our children will come to savor a smaller piece of a succulent steak, instead of a Whopper with large fries.