At 21:42 +0900 9/12/02, Tom wrote:

>The whole theory that grass proteins somehow get into the
>cow and cause allergic reactions in people just seems far
>out to me. Grass is the cows natural food, after all.

I always thought the big problems with grain-fed meat (and I mean
all sorts of meat -- beef, mutton, fish, even farmed rabbits) were:

1. The animals' diet is way overloaded with omega 6 fats compared to
omega 3s, so the fat profile of the meat is less favorable (this is
especially noticeable with farmed salmon). I have posted several
messages to this list over the years with a fat breakdown of farmed
vs wild meat.

2. The sheer amount of fat a feedlotted animal can pack on is
astounding, making fat far more available to a modern "supermarket
hunter" than it was to a traditional wild game hunter. None of the
rabbits I have ever shot or trapped had much in the way of kidney
fat for instance, but the farmed ones I buy at the market have up
to 50 grams of it. You wouldn't get rabbit starvation eating them!

3. Most of the extra fat is saturated which pushes the fat profile
of a western diet way out of line with a hunter gatherer diet. This
fat profile needs to be corrected (for instance by supplementing
with w-3 fats or by finding a source of offal and large bones) if
our diet is to be more "paleo".

 ...Richard.