In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night.
Dear Checkout Line,
Let's talk turkey. I want to green my Thanksgiving table, but have it be delicious, too. No more Butterball! But from there, should I mail order a heritage turkey, or buy a pastured one from a nearby farmer? Or buy an organic one from the supermarket? What sort of deliciousness/sustainability trade-offs are we talking about here?
All the best,
Tired of Odious Meat
Dear Tired,
Odious meat, indeed! The most commonly served Thanksgiving turkey, the Broad-Breasted White (BBW), has been called the "Barbie" of birds for good reason. This breed is a mutant with pneumatic breasts and no ability to procreate without serious help; it's too top-heavy to get it on with Ken turkeys and must be artificially inseminated.
Choosing a different bird is a good start to greening your holiday table, but there are trade-offs when it comes to sustainability and deliciousness. So let's take a look at pros and cons for the options you mentioned:
Mail-order Heritage Breed
What this is: Endangered breeds hailing from bygone eras that are being reintroduced thanks to groups such as Slow Food USA and the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. These old breeds are gorgeous, hardy, and smart (I forgot to note that critics of the BBW say it is even dumber than Barbie).
Pros: You're preserving history and genetic diversity with each mouthful. The guidelines for heritage breeds lend themselves to sustainability: These birds must do things that nature intended, such as roam around outside in the sunshine. They live longer than BBWs, mate naturally and have undeniably better lives than factory-farmed birds. For the specific guidelines, go here. These birds also take longer to grow big -- 28 weeks as opposed to the 16 or so weeks it takes to fatten a BBW.
Although slower growth is more expensive for the farmer, it means that heritage breeds contain more fat, which adds flavor and moisture.
Cons: Heritage breed guidelines are not legally binding. If your turkey isn't both certified organic and heritage breed, you'll have to do your homework to find out exactly what the bird ate and how it was raised if you want to be certain you're getting what you're paying for. Also, mail order means that your bird traveled, and that increases Ye Olde Carbon Footprinte. Because producers tend to be small-scale farmers, you will likely have to order your bird far in advance.
Pastured Local Bird
What this is: A bird that was raised outside by a nearby farmer and thus ate a diet heavy on bugs and grass and relatively light on grain.
Pros: No long-haul travel. By supporting local producers, you support your farm community and preserve landscapes. By visiting the farm you can see for yourself if the birds are sustainably and humanely raised. Advocates say that birds that range around and eat lots of bugs are nutritionally superior to their confined counterparts (for example, higher in Omega 3 fatty acids). For more information on pastured meat, go to Eatwild.com. This is also a chance to get a fresh bird, which means that some coal-fired power plant somewhere won't have to labor to freeze it. Also, pasture-based birds naturally deposit their manure into the soil, fertilizing the grass, thus not concentrating waste into fetid and toxic "lagoons," like confined birds do.
Cons: Pastured birds move around freely, thus putting on more muscle. This can result in a tougher bird, though advocates refer to this as "firmness" and complain that non-pastured birds are mushy. Critics also say pastured birds taste gamy. Chances are that your local turkey farmer is small-scale, so you probably have to order this turkey well in advance. Pasture-raised guidelines aren't enforceable, so if you a want a strictly pasture-raised bird, ask questions; your bird may be a heritage breed or a Barbie-like BBW.
Organic Bird from the Supermarket
What this is: Under USDA guidelines, these birds can be fed no antibiotics or growth enhancers, must eat organic feed, and must be given access to the outdoors.
Pros: USDA certification offers a certain level of reassurance. For those concerned about genetically modified feed, the organic label bans GMOs from these birds' rations. Flavor/texture may be more consistent and familiar than in less conventionally raised birds.
Cons: Packaging + travel = more carbon. Plus, your bird may have come from a giant, industrial-sized producer (aka Big Turkey) and might not be traceable should there be a spooky recall. It may very well be a BBW. Access to the outdoors doesn't mean it ever put a foot outside.
More generally, I'm sorry to report that a green choice doesn't guarantee deliciousness. Last year, 24 testers from the Cook's Illustrated magazine staff tasted eight turkeys, ranging from a Butterball to "unconventional" pastured, heritage-breed and organic turkeys. The results made me drop my triple-certified latté.
Cooks "highly recommended" two birds: a Kosher bird and a heritage-breed bird. That wasn't the shocker: Following closely behind in the runner-up "recommended" category were two conventional injected-with-liquid self-basters, including the Butterball!
These bloated BBWs outranked four birds, including an organic, pasture-raised turkey. To read more about those results, go here.
Naturally, I had to call up Cook's Illustrated and get to the bottom. Had those zany food testers been hitting the Beaujolais nouveau? I spoke with senior editor Lisa McManus, who explained that taste-test results can be influenced by what she calls the "Skippy Factor." (That's Skippy as in Skippy peanut butter.)
"People grew up with certain flavors, and whether or not you know better later in life, there are certain things that are sort of comforting or familiar," McManus explained. "They do well mainly because of their familiarity. I think that's a real factor with Butterball. People grew up on those birds and that's what turkey tastes like to them. Sometimes it's hard to get past that."
Of course, flavor can also be affected by how you cook your bird. Thanksgiving is a holiday fraught with culinary peril for many reasons, including the mathematical challenge of thawing time, the pressure to cook for one's mother-in-law, and an overall lack of skill in roasting an enormous bird.
"It makes for good stories when you screw it up," says McManus. In that vein, my dear friend, Chip Blake bought a "recommended brand" organic bird from the supermarket last year. "It's hard to describe its taste," he said, "but imagine this: Buy a roll of any brand of paper towels. Remove plastic wrap. Lightly baste outside of roll in any brand of preprocessed turkey broth. Wrap roll tightly in aluminum foil and bake at 450 degrees for seventeen hours. Remove from oven and let cool, which won't take long since the paper towels will contain no moisture that could retain heat or taste. Enjoy."
Take heart, my dear green-leaning reader, if your consciously-chosen turkey ends up tasting like a roasted Barbie. "Buy a lot of good bread, make a big salad, make a good pumpkin pie and people will forgive you," promises McManus whose favorite turkey roasting method can be found here. (Key concepts: brine and flip.) And remember, there's always next year.
"We'll try it again this year, since I don't want to be a part of Corporate Turkey or their antibiotics or politics," Blake told me. "But if we end up with baked paper towels again, we'll probably switch to Chinese in 2009."
Green appetit, and happy holidays.
Lou Bendrick
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Comments
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sje333 Posted 1:26 am
07 Nov 2008
The key to a green Thanksgiving is replacing the meat, not substituting one type of offal for another or moving it from one area to another. http://gentlethanksgiving.org/ has plenty of recipes.
You can enter a contest for a new eGo scooter here: http://gentlethanksgiving.org/
You just have to correctly guess how many pounds of grain will be saved by Tofurkey Brand tofurkeys in 2008 (hint, this one manufacturer reduced grain consumption by about 1.6 MILLION pounds in 2007)
Grist has really disappointed me on this one. Grist contributors, PLEASE do some reading:
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?142
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sophiejp Posted 1:28 am
07 Nov 2008
Here's a couple of great menu suggestions from the BBC for a really green, and slight more adventurous Christmas dinner: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/vegetarian_and_vegan/veganchris ...
http://www.ethicaleating.org.uk
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mtvyfan Posted 1:55 am
07 Nov 2008
Turkey is a big part of this holiday and with the prevailing apathy most people are showing around the holidays, we really need the tradition right now. Please keep in mind that not all Grist readers are vegetarian. I respect your decision about not eating meat, but some of the vegans I have met can be extreme in their beliefs and some even think I should feel guilty for being an omnivore.
I do not feel I am a bad person because I enjoy meat. I just pay more for organic and free range to honor the animal's sacrifice and to support the rancher who raises animals in a humane and healthy way.
I disagree with the turkey "taste testing", the fresh birds that I have eaten have been wonderfully tender and flavorful.
"For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide, to dispel the misery of the world." - Shantideva
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:34 am
07 Nov 2008
Because vegetarianism still uses animal products it is little different pound for pound of animal product than a regular diet.
Veganism is a statement of personal virtue for some, an attempt to gain stature by others. It is not so much a realistic strategy to save the planet.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Adam Stein Posted 3:19 am
07 Nov 2008
It's not clear to what extent this is true. No matter what bird you buy, it has to get from the farm to your plate. Either it's driven to the supermarket, or you yourself drive to the farm to pick it up, or UPS takes it to your house. The relative impact of these routes is extremely difficult to gauge, and probably only makes up a small proportion of the life cycle carbon footprint of the bird.
So I wouldn't count this as a factor -- unless you're having it airshipped, which is almost certainly a bad thing.
Personally, I'd recommend going with heritage or pastured, with price and taste being the swing factors. Organic is a decent fallback of the other two aren't options.
www.terrapass.com/blog
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raevynn Posted 3:42 am
07 Nov 2008
Serve up some real traditional foods: Squash, Corn, Beets, Apples, Nuts... a little Tofurkey goes a long way, when you eat the real seasonal, LOCAL foods...
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sje333 Posted 5:46 am
07 Nov 2008
The FAO report doesn't include exhortations to stop destroying the world for a few reasons. One of the major reasons is that they think no one cares enough to make a change. They sell us short. The old "think globally act locally" rule makes perfect sense here. We need individual action, and it's already happening: http://courtneypool.blogspot.com/2008/07/no-meat-less-hea ...
No one has to "swear" or promise anything. All I ask people to do is think about the world they want to build, and then to build it.
Articles like this are counter-productive, encouraging the attitude that we don't have to make any changes--we should just pay a little extra for the organic version. It's like buying forgiveness from the church. Most people are smarter than that.
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timhammond Posted 5:47 am
07 Nov 2008
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Biodiversivist Posted 8:58 am
07 Nov 2008
Many of us have been vegetarians at some point in our lives and many of us attended church at some point. Proselytizing has a tendency to backfire.
I ate a bison burger the other day. If I were king all beef would have to come from wild, free-range, grass-fed genetically pure bison.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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redambrosia99 Posted 1:55 am
08 Nov 2008
Give us a break, please. We're not evil people for having some meat now and then.
And Tofukey is pretty gross in my opinion.
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caniscandida Posted 4:46 am
08 Nov 2008
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Schrmin Posted 4:55 am
08 Nov 2008
The argument that veg-ism is ok for some people, but that it's an individual's "right" to eat meat is, in my opinion as a vegan, not only tired, but about as defensible an argument as "I accept your choice to try and reduce your negative impact on the planet by driving a hybrid, but you should respect my choice to drive a 9-mpg SUV because I like the way it looks." Or I'd go so far as to say it's analogous to arguing that "I respect your pacifism, but you should respect my choice to brutally beat someone I disagree with." Or maybe even "although you believe in equality for all people, you should respect my right to own slaves because they make my life easier" (crude examples, but I'm just trying to illustrate the point). I think most would agree that some arguments are indefensible, and for many veg-ns, animal exploitation falls into that category (whether for food, clothing, experimentation, etc).
The way I myself and I think many other veg-ns see it, the cruelty and violence perpetrated against animals is as immoral and unjustifiable as violence against humans, so I can't accept the argument that it should be an individual's choice to eat meat (and please spare me your accusations that veg-ns care more for animals than people, that is not what I am saying. Or that human rights trump animal rights...that anthropocentric viewpoint is why we are where we are today). Of course meat eating is a contentious issue...people defend their dietary choices vehemently...and so personally I tend to try and lead by example rather than give unsolicited opinion, but when asked or confronted, I try to explain the veg viewpoint, at least as I understand it.
And the reasoning , I believe, that people like myself who are vegan tend to promote that type of lifestyle to others has nothing to do with feeling superior or passing judgment, but instead, at least speaking for myself, has everything to do with having reached the epiphany-type realization after looking at the issue from many different angles that the animal agriculture industry is massively environmentally destructive, horribly cruel and inhumane, extremely unhealthy for humanity, and exceedingly costly to society...and that veg-ism addresses all of these problems....and that those who still eat a typical animal product-centered diet have likely not really been informed of these issues, much less looked at them in-depth, and upon doing so will likely (hopefully) come to the same conclusions. And stating that vegans avoid animal products because they "don't like the taste of meat," for example, just highlights this. So don't deride us for attempting to inform others of what we believe is possibly the most important decision an individual can make for themselves, the animal world, and the planet.
And as pointed out above, I think it's exactly right that "social dietary changes take generations to change, unless catastrophic changes intervene," because animal agriculture is the catastrophe, and veg-ns are trying to bring about that necessary change...that's the whole point.
So please, before spouting knee-jerk responses to people promoting veg-ism, take a moment or two to actually look into the subject if you haven't...maybe you'll be glad you did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWWNLvgU4MI
http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/nutshell.htm
http://www.goveg.com/
http://www.ivu.org/
http://www.brook.com/veg/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/business/media/29adco.h ...
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals"
- Mahatma Gandhi
"Nothing would benefit humanity more than the general adoption of a vegetarian diet."
- Albert Einstein
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
- Leo Tolstoy
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Biodiversivist Posted 6:30 am
08 Nov 2008
Vegetarianism consumes animal products and is pound for pound of animal product no more environmentally benign or animal friendly than a diet that includes moderate amounts of meat.
"I accept your choice to try and reduce your negative impact on the planet by driving a hybrid, but you should respect my choice to drive a 9-mpg SUV because I like the way it looks."
An SUV is the car analogy for your average American's meat consumption.
A hybrid is the car analogy for moderation in meat eating/vegetarianism.
Veganism is the equivalent of telling people they have to walk everywhere. Veganism and vegetarianism are not synonyms.
I respect your choice of diet as well as whatever religion you've chosen. It's the proselytizing that gets old.
It isn't a matter of educating people about why you have accepted Jesus into your heart or veganism as a lifestyle, having heard it all a million times. Veganism is asking people to go against the grain of evolution, to crawl instead of walk upright--doable, but not an idea that will scale.
There are literally billions of people increasing their consumption of animal products because they can afford to do so and tens of millions of human beings arriving on the planet annually who will want to partake in the consumption of animal products if they can afford to do so. Vegan conversions won't make a perceptible dent.
Good luck with your education efforts, but I'm with the FAO. We need to find viable, scalable solutions for the fact that the vast majority of people are going to continue to do what they have been doing for millenia--supplement their diet with animal products.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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redambrosia99 Posted 4:28 pm
08 Nov 2008
So... let me see if I have this straight... choosing to buy organic, local, free-range, humanely-raised chicken still puts a person in the category of slave-owner, bully, and SUV owner?
Seriously? Are you kidding me? That is so out of proportion as to be ridiculous. Your analogies fail the reality test.
Personally, I had my epiphany about 7 years ago, after reading some article about the way laying chickens were treated. Then to top it off, I read Fast Food Nation. At that point I started buying less meat, and buying non-industrial meat where I could. I had already stopped eating everything but poultry, so it was fairly easy. The biggest problem, as with all things organic, etc is the cost of it.
But I don't have a problem with the fact that I'm an animal which subsists off other animals. I do my best to make sure that the animals I eat are treated well before the eating, but I have no squeamishness about that.
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spaceshaper Posted 12:00 am
09 Nov 2008
B O R I N G.
How about we give it a break. Seems to me we all have something much more special to be thankful about this November than what brand of roasted bird (or paper towel) may or may not be in the center of the table.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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Tom Philpott Posted 12:45 am
09 Nov 2008
Checkout Line is an advice column. A reader wrote in asking advice on a perfectly reasonable topic; and Lou responded in a perfectly reasonable way. Suddenly, a whole debate about veganism (or something) broke out -- very tedious for all, save perhaps for the participants (but aren't even they getting tired of the same ol' screeds?).
Rather than going after Lou for not addressing questions that weren't raised by the advice-seeker (Tired of Odious Meat made pretty clear s/he would be cooking a turkey, and wanted info on the various options), why not send in a question related to the topic you're interested in?
You might ask, for example, which is the greener option, occasionally eating meat from nearby pasture-based farmers, or seeking out highly processed meat-like soybean products that come from ... well, where do they come from?
Or something. Lou can only respond to the questions that get asked.
Victual Reality
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Schrmin Posted 1:25 am
09 Nov 2008
Peace.
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turkeygirl Posted 4:51 am
09 Nov 2008
Many feed and seed stores have turkey chicks (BBW and other varieties) in the late spring and early summer. Buy a few and watch them grow.
I started with 15 Kentucky Bourbon Reds this year and am down to 14. Two of them have become pets (a long and funny story) who follow me around the yard. Their manure is great for the compost pile and they eat kitchen scraps, bugs, grass, you name it.
It certainly costs more than a butterball, but I know exactly what they've eaten, what their quality of life has been, and will give them as painless a death as I can.
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caniscandida Posted 8:36 am
09 Nov 2008
SJE, you correctly pointed out what Tom Philpott failed to observe, that Lou Bendrick should have included the option to go turkey-less in his otherwise very interesting response. Tom failed also to observe what SpaSh did, that there was no pro-vegan proselytizing going on, but the thread only got bent as though there were by a couple of others who seem in fact to have been reacting to private problems of their own.
Anyway, in this joyous season of renewed hope, the promise of change, and the expectation of a hypo-allergenic puppy from a shelter, we should certainly not hold ourselves to comply conservatively and thoughtlessly with any "tradition" that seems like the iron clench of an ancestral hand gripping our throat and refusing to descend into the mouldy grave.
Or, as Calvin Trillin once said, Wouldn't it be wonderful if our traditional Thanksgiving food were not turkey, but spaghetti alla carbonara.
And in the context of the 2008 election, one can easily imagine the otherwise bitter coal miners of Appalachia clinging gladly to that coal miners' tradition.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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spaceshaper Posted 12:10 am
10 Nov 2008
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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spaceshaper Posted 12:12 am
10 Nov 2008
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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caniscandida Posted 10:03 am
10 Nov 2008
But certainly, even the most enlightened, pure-hearted of environmentalists can hardly expect the very food in their plate to be "sustainable"!
In Scandinavian mythology, the rather comical thunder-god Thor used to ride around in a goat-cart. When he was out adventuring, and had to pitch an over-night camp, it was his practice to take his supernatural thunder-hammer, and slaughter with it one or the other of his goats, then cook the flesh of that goat over the camp-fire, and have it for dinner; then, the next morning, he would wave the hammer over the eaten goat's bones, and thus restore it to life, fully-fleshed and vigorous; and so, he would harness it to the goat-cart, and all together they would set off afresh, adventuring, as good as new.
Do they have hammers like that on eBay?
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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spaceshaper Posted 1:38 pm
10 Nov 2008
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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PermieWriter Posted 2:46 pm
10 Nov 2008
I think that the carbon-smart thing for a lot of folks to do is to abandon roasting a whole bird. A whole bird is fine if you have folks you're feeding who will eat every part, but so many folks will only eat breast meet that it might make more sense to buy and cook one or two breasts, or legs if your eatees are dark meat eaters. Whole birds are a pain to carve, harder to bring and cook and way more likely to have a lot go to waste (thrown away food being a top contributor to waste in our ag system).
For the veggeterians, try marinating portobello mushrooms with the same herbs, but pureed with some nice oil and vinegar, then roasting or grilling. Wonderful taste (and 33 percent protein - by dry weight). I find that when I serve mushrooms along with meat, it reduces greatly the amount of meat folks eat, which is a good thing all around (given that humanely raised, local meat costs about as much as local, organic mushrooms).
On the other hand, I suppose some vegans might not eat fungi since they're, genetically speaking, more similar to animals than vegetables. If they're collected responsibly, the impact on the mycelium (the underground part of the mushroom) is positive (since a good collector will spread the spores far and wide). And if they're raised responsibly from sustainable feedstocks (manure, compost, wood chips, etc.), then the energy cost is probably less than animals (I haven't run the numbers. There is a considerably heat outlay for mushrooms for sterilizing the feedstock which may only slightly be exceeded by the energy costs of raising the crops to feed meat animals).
I suppose conversations about dietary requirements will always be a part of the negotiations leading up to a Thanksgiving feast. Let us hope for more goodwill on the subject at the table than in the forum.
Eat what you grow, grow what you eat
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willa Posted 1:42 am
12 Nov 2008
BioD, as for a vegetarian diet not being better than better than an omnivorous one...um, no. A cow can either be slaughtered or kept for dairy, but a cow produces many, many more pounds of milk than meat over the same period of time. Likewise a chicken; my friend keeps chickens for both eggs and meat, and if you calculated the average amount of food provided per year by each (it would have to be an average, because the meat birds start being converted to meat after just a few months), I'm pretty sure the eggs would win.
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sadee Posted 6:50 am
12 Nov 2008
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caniscandida Posted 5:30 pm
13 Nov 2008
<<
Wall Street Journal subscribers will find the full, wonderfully positive article on line at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122653028076622317.html
The following link makes the article available to non-subscribers for the next seven days.
http://tinyurl.com/5dr3nc
>>
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Curly Bill Posted 1:47 am
25 Nov 2008
Did you know Buffalo meat is better for the human body than Turkey? It's leaner, higher quality protein. And on this particular ranch, they harvest organic, free range, native grass fed buffalo. The animals are harvested right there on the prairie where they were raised and lived full lives, and processed in front of a meat inspector by a mobile refrigerated truck. Since the animal underwent absolutely no stress (they doesn't even run when one is taken)... the meat is free of all hormones. Since they are raised on the very grass for which they evolved to thrive thousands of years ago... they need no antibiotics. This is the healthiest, most humane (and delicious) meat available. Skip the Turkey.
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