Did you know that buying grass-fed butter is not just for food snobs? And that cage free eggs are NOT what you think? Find out what I never knew before that has made a huge difference in my health and nutrition (and try not to feel mad that you got fooled!).
(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/lmfood.)
Rich Food Poor Food: http://amzn.to/2odqPFV
Micronutrient Miracle: http://amzn.to/2pMZcAS
Hi, I’m organizing and lifestyle expert, Lorie Marrero, and I talk with people about de-cluttering your mind, body, spirit, and space. Lately I’ve been doing a little series about de-cluttering your body. We’ve talked about sugar and things like that recently.
Today, I want to talk about the most benign of topics, butter and eggs, but what I’ve learned about them is amazing for your health. I’ve learned a lot about what I used to think were snooty food choices. I thought people would buy grass-fed meat, and grass-fed butter, and all kinds of organic food, because they were being food snobs. Certainly that could be true about some people, but there is a very good reason to buy grass-fed meat, and dairy, and to buy pastured eggs. I want to explain that to you today, because it’s actually different food. You’ll be amazed. I’m going to show you some stuff about your butter and your eggs today that might surprise you.
This is conventional butter, and this is grass-fed butter. It’s right out of the refrigerator. I can tell you, this is extremely hard, and this is much softer. I don’t know if you can see that. You can actually mush it around right out of the frig, so that shows you it’s a different fat content. What I understand from the Calton’s is that this grass-fed butter has more Omega-3’s, which is what people are supplementing with when they take fish oil, and things like that. It’s interesting that we can get more of that in our food, if we are just intentional about it.
I don’t know if you can also tell that this butter is much lighter. It’s almost white in color. And this butter is a deeper yellow, along with being softer.
One of the things that I do differently, since this butter comes in blocks like this … This is Kerrygold brand. I usually cut it in half like this, and that makes it the size of a regular stick of butter that I’m used to cooking with. Then, as a practical tip, I just cut my butter in half, in half again, and half again. Basically, I’m cutting it into tablespoon portions just by eyeballing it by cutting each piece in half until it’s done. When you end up with these eight tablespoons, you can quickly put that right into your butter dish, and then you can quickly grab a tablespoon as a nice measurement.
Over here, I have a bowl of eggs. These brown ones are pasture-raised organic eggs. They look like they just got removed from the chicken’s nest yesterday or something. This is a conventional factory-farmed egg that looks kind of industrial, actually, with even a little stamp on it and everything. I don’t know, for me, I just prefer to eat that, but of course that doesn’t matter as much as the health benefits that are inside the egg. These I get at Costco now. I’m so pleased Costco has both Kerrygold butter and these organic pasture-raised eggs.
My nutritionist friends, Mira and Jason Calton, wrote this book, “Rich Food, Poor Food,” that I really like for navigating through the grocery store very specifically. Their latest book though, is called, “Micronutrient Miracle,” and I wanted to read from you a little bit from here, because it is the most recent information.
They say, “Cage free means the chickens are not kept in cages, and they have continuous access to food and water, but they generally have no access to the outdoors or the sunshine, fresh grass, and insects we want them to have.” That is pasture-raised eggs that I showed you. “Free range is only slightly better, in that the USDA requires five minutes of open-air access per day to receive this status, but open air can still mean confined in a concrete pen.”
We think that cage free and free range sounds like the chickens are all running around, but they may not be. Pasture-raised right now is the most reliable term. That means they really are getting the sunshine that they need, and vitamin D, and all the things that make the food better for us, for our bodies, with the nutrients that we want. As the Caltons say, you want your food to be as micro-nutrient rich as possible. As you make certain choices, why not pick the most power-packed choice that you can to get the most bang for your buck.
You don’t have to be snooty to want to buy the very best food for your health and your body. You know, the animals get treated better too, so we all win. Whether or not animal rights is your cause of choice, everybody gets better food, better conditions. It works out really well, and I think we should all be voting with our dollars to make this more widespread and available.
Let me know what you think in the comments, and I’ll see you next time. May you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
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