Eating from Instinct & Grass Fed Beef

You may have heard us speak before about how domestic animals, like our cows, still have some instinct to know what to eat for their best health or to fix an ailment.  Wild animals certainly still have this instinct, but what about people?  Do we still have such instincts? Would instinct back up what science says that grass fed beef is the healthiest beef?

I believe that we do have such instincts (to a certain extent), but the constraints of society and what we are taught as ‘acceptable’ and what we ‘should’ eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner curb us and move us away from ‘listening’ to our bodies and what they are telling us we might need.

Children’s Instincts

I think children are a great example of this, and I have watched it with my own children – their choosing something to eat that society may not consider the norm (like a large chunk of butter or eating sea salt straight), but it may be what their bodies need.  There is an instinct that says ‘I want to eat that’ and then a feedback mechanism that says to the body – ‘I’ve had enough of that thanks’.  Have you ever had a particular food at one time and thought it tasted great, but on having lots, it didn’t taste so good?  That’s your body saying you’ve had enough.

When eating whole foods, it is easier to determine if we have had sufficient of one particular food.  If we ate apples, we may not eat more than one apple, but if we had a large slice of apple pie, we may end up eating more than one apple.  Now I’m certainly not going to drop back to eating completely singular whole foods – I love a slice of home baked apple pie every now and then!  This example shows us however, how processed foods further confuse our palettes and our body’s instincts for eating.  The addition of flavours, sugars, and other additives, means that we might eat more of one food than our body otherwise would.

Unfortunately, this feedback mechanism is muddied in other ways too.  Our instincts are not only confused by food flavours and additives, but also by social aspects like advertising, social influences & expectations, and ‘healthy’ diets.

Our Grass Fed Beef Customers & Instinct

I believe that what I am hearing from some of our grass fed beef clients, and in particular some comments from their children, is ‘instinct’.  Maybe they are yet unaffected by society’s expectations and they are just going with what their bodies are indicating.

One customer informed us that her children wouldn’t’ previously eat steaks at all, but they now happily eat ours.  Another of our regular customers (who is herself a vegan, incidently), served some beef to her young children that she had purchased at a supermarket, but did not tell her children it wasn’t our Conscious Farmer Grassfed Beef.  They tasted it and said “This isn’t Derek’s beef is it, Mum?” and continued to pester her “When are we going to have Derek’s beef again?”

Several other feedback comments were “My teenage sons are actually finishing a whole steak and not leaving a bit of meat on the bone” and another customer commented how full her children said they felt after eating our beef.

Obviously, I cannot say this for sure, but I would like to think that these children are picking up the differences in the health of the beef – that is, of beef from cows fed on natural, open, chemical free, diverse, nutrient dense pastures.

Would you Trust your Instincts?

What can we learn from our children?  We can learn to trust our instincts regarding eating, but keep in mind that when flavourings and additives are in the mix- the communication back to our ‘instinct centre’ may not be accurate.  Food makers and marketers understand this oh so very well and use it to its full extent on the unconscious eater.

We should also keep in mind that all bodies are different and what is right for one may not be right for another.

Why not test your instincts and try one of our grass fed beef hampers.