The Conscientious Omnivore: Witness to a Slaughter

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While browsing at the Salt Lake City Farmer’s Market, we met some folks who own a small chicken farm a few towns away.  They seemed to run the kind of farm we look for when sourcing our own food, so we spent some time talking with them about their chickens, their feed, and how they handle their processing.  We told them about what we do, and how we encourage others through our work to make ethically responsible animal protein choices. Towards the end of the conversation, they invited us out to … [Read more...]

Dietary Fundamentalism: A Guest Post by Tovar Cerulli

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Note: The following article is a repost from our friend Tovar Cerulli's blog A Mindful Carnivore: Thoughts and stories from a vegan turned hunter. We loved his most recent blog post so much that we asked him if we could share it with our community of readers. While we've expressed some of those same sentiments here and there, it's never been with such insight and eloquence. Tovar is able to get to the true heart of the matter in this post, and in his book The Mindful Carnivore. It's an important … [Read more...]

The Conscientious Omnivore: Pork

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Author's Note: If you are new to our site, please read the preface to our Conscientious Omnivore series first. We know this stuff isn’t easy, and we know you can only do the best you can with the resources and capacity you have. But it’s important for you to know where your Good Food comes from, and to be able to make educated, informed decisions. Our intention isn’t to shock, shame, or bully you—merely to show you what the factory farming system works so hard to keep its customers from knowing. … [Read more...]

Whole9 Visits the Farm

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by Erin Handley, Whole9's Director of Operations, who has found that knowledge is always powerful, rarely ever easy, and can sometimes lead to the petting of small farm animals. I have recently been tasked with doing research for our upcoming Conscientious Omnivore post on pigs and pork. I thought I was already fairly knowledgeable and, well... awake when it came to making smart and caring protein choices. But dang, ya'll, I have to admit, this project has been a huge eye-opener for me. I … [Read more...]

The Whole9 Seafood Trifecta

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While talking about the quality of animal protein sources at a recent nutrition workshop, we were asked an interesting question:  “I know grass-fed is better than grain-fed for beef, but aren’t things a little more complicated with fish?”  The answer is yes – the issue with choosing high quality fish goes far beyond wild-caught vs. farmed.  In fact, we discussed a wide variety of factors that go into making healthy seafood choices in our Conscientious Omnivore – From the Sea post. Turns out, … [Read more...]

The Conscientious Omnivore: From the Sea

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Fish, seafood and shellfish are an excellent source of protein, and a common food choice for those on the border of vegetarianism.  But making "good" seafood (fish and shellfish) choices is perhaps one of the most complicated tasks for us Conscientious Omnivores, with even more factors to consider than with the beef, poultry or egg industry.   Most folks assume it's as simple as Wild Caught = Good Choice, but we believe that is a dangerously simplistic view to take, and could prove detrimental … [Read more...]

The Conscientious Omnivore: Eggs

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Eggs are a staple in many of our refrigerators.  They provide a complete, easily available protein source (you can buy eggs just about anywhere these days – even your local gas station), at a cost that most health-conscious families consider to be reasonable and affordable.   But "cheap" eggs are not really cheap when you factor in all of the hidden costs to the environment, animal welfare, society and your health.  In addition, reading and interpreting the claims made on an egg carton is a … [Read more...]

Science Experiments

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From Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals": “Just the other day, one of the local pediatricians was telling me he’s seeing all kinds of illnesses that he never used to see. Not only juvenile diabetes, but inflammatory and autoimmune diseases that a lot of the docs don’t even know what to call. And girls are going through puberty much earlier, and kids are allergic to just about everything, and asthma is out of control. Everyone knows it’s our food. We’re messing with the genes of these … [Read more...]

The Conscientious Omnivore

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We are having a very hard time eating meat these days. We have been doing our Whole30 program for almost two years now.  Making good food choices is beyond easy – it’s automatic.  We can navigate any restaurant menu, handle any family dinner, survive a three month road trip on nothing but Whole30 fare.  As we’ve got the “choices” part down, we’ve spent the last few months expanding on the concept of “eating healthy food.”  The natural place for us to start was taking a good, hard look at our … [Read more...]