The Quest for a Healthier Family - February

I have stuck with my January commitments to health so far with no retaliation from the family!  Now it's time to decide on February!  I have chosen to buy local, hormone and antibiotic free meat and eggs.  Since we live in an area that is plentiful with farms, this should be pretty easy.  If you do not live in a farming area, I bet you could find hormone and antibiotic free meat and eggs if you take the time to shop around.

Why did I make this choice?
I have multiple reasons for making this change.

• First of all, buying a cow or hog and having it butchered saves money in the long run.  We are getting a cow this week and we ended up paying hamburger prices for all of the meat, including the steaks!  As for the eggs, if you find people that have chickens that produce more eggs than they can eat themselves, they sometimes sell them very cheap or even give them away!
• The local aspect is important to me because that means that my meat and eggs are fresh!  The meat hasn't been injected with any dyes or chemicals to keep it pink looking.
• Many times animals are fed antibiotics to promote more growth.  Research has shown that in some cases animals can show as much as 3% more growth when fed antibiotics.  The problem here is that over time microbes in the animals become resistant to the antibiotics that the animal is being fed.  Why does that matter?  When you eat the meat, you are ingesting drug resistant bacteria, usually in the cases of food poisoning.  
• Animals are also frequently fed hormones to increase growth.  This is major for me!  Residue from the hormones is left behind in the meat and thus YOU ingest them too!  Research has shown that this can cause a range of problems;  developmental problems, hormone imbalances, early onset of puberty in children and increased risk of colon, prostate and breast cancer as well as lowering the strength of your body's immune system.  It is also believed to interfere with the reproductive system.  These types of hormones have been proven to cause infertility in sheep.
• EGGS - Well, whatever a chicken eats can be passed along into the egg.  After the above statements about the meat, I don't think I need to elaborate much here.

 Now, I don't want to get a bunch of mail telling me how I'm so wrong on this topic.  This is my choice because, although not definitively proven, the risks of these things scares me.  I know there are people out there that believe that things have been done this way for years and so far they haven't had any problems.  That's fine, I respect that.  Since this blog is about getting MY family healthier, I am just passing along information about what I am doing to achieve that goal.