The Dairy Show

Green Beef: A Story of Grass-Fed Beef Trailer!

While The Dairy Show is usually focused on Dairy for obvious reasons, about a year ago I decided to expand the scope of the site to include more areas of agriculture.  At that time I started working on a report about grass-fed beef.  While I wanted it to follow the same basic format as the typical episode of The Dairy Show, I also wanted to expand it to include some information about public health and public policy issues.  The result is a 40 minute news magazine style report following the production of grass fed beef from the pastures of Grazin' Angus Acres to the plates of restaurant Local 111.  Along the way we talk about the science behind the ability for ruminants to eat grass, the history of beef in America with Betty Fussell, Climate Change with Author Anna Lappe, Animal Welfare with AWA program director Andrew Gunther, and nutrition with expert Professor Marion Nestle.

As this point the video is just about finished, you can get a sneak preview in the trailer above.

Making Olive Oil with Dancing Ewe Farm

Every year, Jody and Luisa from Dancing Ewe Farm spend their fall and winter in Italy.  This year they decided they would make their own olive oil and it bring back to the United States.  The oil is now available on their website and starting Saturday May 22 they will be selling it at the Brooklyn Flee. 

There are only just over a thousand bottle of this fantastic clean and complex flavored oil in existence, so be sure to get yourself a bottle fast.  If your lucky maybe you'll get a bottle with one of the 3 or 4 olives that I picked.

See how the oil is made after the jump.

Green Beef: A Story of Grass-Fed Beef

As some of you may know, I've been spending a lot of time working on a project on Grass-Fed and Finished beef.  Those of you who didn't know that are probably saying-'wait a minute what does beef have to do with Dairy?'  Well that's a fair question, but the reality is that the dairy industry wouldn't exist if there wasn't also beef being produced.  In this video, however, we don't focus on beef derived from Dairy farms, but instead take a look at Grazin' Angus Acres, a completely Grass-Fed and Grass-Finished cattle ranch in Ghent NY.

On Wednesday April 21st at a Slow Food NYC University Event, an advanced preview of the film was shown followed by a great discussion with Dan Gibson from Grazin' Angus Acres, Betty Fussell, Jake Dickson of Dickson's Farmstand Meats, and Josephine Proul, the Chef at Local 111.  Overall the evening was a great success and the panel discussion added further context to the video. 

April 21 Slow U: Green Beef

On April 21st come and shake the hand that feeds you at Slow Food U: "Green Beef". The evening will begin with a special trip via video to Columbia Country NY to visit a completely grass fed and grass finished cattle operation. In this special preview of a program due out in early summer, Michael Crupain (of TheDairyShow.com) will take you through the process of raising cattle for Beef from pasture to plate starting at Grazing Angus Acres farm and finishing in the kitchen of restaurant Local 111, just a few miles from the farm. Along the way he'll stop and talk biology, history with Betty Fussell, nutrition with Marion Nestle, and climate change with Anna Lappe.

After the short film, Dan Gibson, Owner of Grazing Angus Acres, Betty Fussell, culinary historian and author of Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef and The Story of Corn, Josephine Proul, executive chef of Local 111 restaurant in Philmont, NY, Jake Dickson of Dickson's Farmstand Meats in the Chelsea Market, and Michael Crupain will be on hand for a panel discussion about grass-fed grass finished beef and will also answer your questions.

As an extra special treat, chef Proul will prepare a dish featuring Grazing Angus Acres beef for everyone to try, paired with NY State Wine.

Proceeds from this event will support the activities and programs of Slow Food NYC.

Location: Astor Center - 399 Lafayette St. (at East 4th St.); Manhattan [Site]

Time: 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Tickets:
Slow Food Members: $25 - use promotional code SFNYCMEM
Non-members: $35 - use promotional code SFNYCNON

www.astorcenternyc.com/class-slow-u-green-beef.ac

Have you Seen Fresh The Movie?

I have and it is definitely worth checking out!  In Fresh producer Ana Sophia Joanes visits farmers, business owners, and academics to show how we can create a better food system.  The film will start playing in Theaters in NY on April 9th, followed by venues in Phoenix, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle.  And hopefully it will find its way into more cities after that. 

To celebrate the theatrical release, the folks behind the movie have put together a series of amazing events including special dinners and talks.  Coming up on Sunday April 4th, Joel Salatin, the farmer made famous by Michael Pollan in the Omnivores Dilemma will travel from his hope in Swope Virginia to NYC, where he will give two lectures at Columbia.  I've had the chance to meet hear and meet Joel twice.  First at Slow Food Nation and then at a previous Fresh screening.  He's an amazing and dynamic speaker and if you get a chance, I encourage you to check one of his talks out.  If you can't get to Joel's talks, there are plenty of other events related to the release, and each comes with a ticket to the movie!

NY Bill to Prohibit Use of Salt in Restaurants

In this Bill introduced to the NY State Assembly on March 5, the sponsors Assemblyman Ortiz and Assemblywoman Markey propose a law that would prohibit restaurant workers from using any salt while cooking.  Under the law, salt would still be available in restaurants, but only for customers to apply at their own discretion.  The justification for this law is that it would give customers more control over the amount of salt in their food and that reduced salt in food would translate into less heart attacks.

This Bill seems quite extreme.  Certainly fast food and packaged foods have too much salt in them, but salt is an important part of cooking from scratch as well.  The proper seasoning of food with salt make it taste better.  It is often helpful to add salt throughout the cooking process and not just at the end.  The fact that this bill targets all restaurants seems inappropriate.  I doubt this would pass into law--perhaps it is to be used as a tool to draw more attention to the issue and to get food producers to voluntarily reduce the salt content of their prepared foods.

Do Small Dietary Changes Effect Weight?

Tara Parker-Pope recently wrote an interesting article for her Well Column in the New York Times about the effect of making small changes in diet, like eating one less cookie per day, on weight.  Her article was based on a Commentary in JAMA by Martijn Katan and David Ludwig titled "Extra Calories Cause Weight Gain—But How Much?"

She points out that 1lb of fat is equal to about 3500 calories.  This means that in order to lose a pound of fat you need a calorie deficit of about 3500 calories.  That means you must burn 3500 calories more than you take in. 

Interestingly though, to gain a pound of fat, you need to have an excess of about 4000 calories.  This is because the process of converting foods is not 100% efficient and on average about 500 calories are needed to create 1lb of fat from the food you eat.

The average daily supply of calories available per person in American is about 1000 calories more than the average person's daily requirements.  Based on the previous paragraph, eating an extra 1000 calories per day would lead to a weight gain of 1.75 lbs per week or 91.5lbs per year!  However, this is not exactly what happens, because the bodies metabolism and energy requirements change with time and size.  So as you gain weight your energy requirements will increase in order to maintain that weight and so you need to eat increasingly more calories to gain more weight.

The same issues come into play when we talk about losing weight.  As you lose more weight your energy requirements will decrease, so that in order to maintain weight or lose more weight you must take in even less calories.

I think though that the messages in the NYT and JAMA articles is confusing.  But the gist of what they are saying is that figuring out how our caloric intake effect our weight is not a simple equation and therefore gaining and losing weight over time takes more calorie intake or deficit than we might think.  Small dietary changes such as cutting out a soda or a cookie from diet isn't going to make a major long term impact on weight, because most people are taking in so many extra calories that they are still going to have an excess of calories and gain weight in the long run.  However, it will make a difference, because while you would still gain weight, you will gain less in the end.  But if you want to lose weight or maintain weight in the long run its going to take more than just one small changes.  It requires multiple small changes that add up to creating no net gain of calories to maintain weight or a net loss of calories to lose weight.  The amount of calories taken in will have to change over time because of changes in the bodies metabolism.

What do you think about the effects of small dietary changes on weight?