Not that this CTV news article on antibiotic presence in meat is a huge surprise, but I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to consider eating organic and so have to make a comment! You are not getting value for what you are paying if our health is the sacrifice.
Antibiotic usage in farms and chicken coops has been done for many years as we would in human population to prevent the spread of disease in closed quarters. This makes sense, as when one is sick in a crowd, the others are also likely to get sick.
The more alarming current practices involve the usage of antibiotics as prevention from disease in healthy animals. This means not only are antibiotics then being used unnecessarily but that bacterial strains that would normally be controlled with the use of antibiotics will become resistant. Mutation to super bacteria. Life always finds a way. Think of Jurassic Park!
Skeptical that the use of antibiotics in chickens cannot affect your body?
A food chain story
Vitamin K2 is an important vitamin for bone health. However, as humans, we need to eat foods containing vitamin K2 as we cannot manufacture this on our own. We are lucky that there are several foods that have K2, and one of them is the chicken. The chicken you ask? How?
Chickens enjoy eating grass, and ‘grass-fed’ chickens should in fact not be an anomaly but the norm. When chickens happily eat grass as they should, the grass contains vitamin K1, among other nutrients. When chicken digest grass and vitamin K1, their little chicken cheeks actually manufacture vitamin K2 right in their mouths. Their tissues then contain vitamin K2. When we eat the chicken later on (sadly for the chicken), we absorb this vitamin K2 and voila, healthy and happy bones for humans. Pretty nifty.
When we eat something from another organism, we don’t just take what we need, we absorb everything that organism has to give. What if your little chicken had 3 doses of antibiotics before you ate it? What if they were harboring bacteria that had become resistant to these antibiotics? What do you think will now happen to your immunity, to your healthy gastrointestinal flora? Is there a possibility that the reason you are sick more often in the last few years had more to do with your food than you realize?
Downright scary.
Eat organic, or don’t eat meat at all
Is this an extreme way of thinking? I don’t think so. “Let food be medicine, and medicine our food”, said Hippocrates, the father of medicine as we know it, and frankly a pretty smart guy. Despite concerns on price, it really is worth eating organic meats for your health. You get what you pay for – quality, conscientious treatment of the animals, better health for you. Why take a supplement when you can eat foods that are good for your body?
Organic Vendors
Just to list a few to get you started: