'The Cows' Beef With The Barn'

“How readily we manipulate our soil. We rearrange and restructure it. We pump it full of chemicals, we flood it, we drain it. On it’s health the fate of empires has rested. Yet we avoid it. In our cities, rivers of concrete keep us from its touch. Naked it tends to offend the eye. But a close look reveals that the soil is an essential bridge between the rock below and the life above. It is dynamic and vital, and far too easily - and frequently abused.”

- Boyd Gibbons, National Geographic

‘The Cows’ Beef with the Barn’

When we think of a cow, we think of it as sturdy, tough, and a grass-eating “monster”! But, like us humans, it’s what you feed the cow that ultimately makes it strong, durable, and strengthens their physiology.

We often say the phrase, ‘we are what we eat’. Well this statement isn’t necessarily true. Because what ultimately effects as, and all mammals and animals, is what actually gets into our blood stream and our cells that effects us, and makes us stronger or weaker. Thus, we are what we absorb.

And a cow is no different in that particular regard. However, a cow, like all ruminants, has a few things us humans don’t; and that’s four stomachs for starters! A cow has four stomachs (Linn, Otterby, 2021) that have the ability to ferment things and break things down that we just cannot. Another part of their unique ruminant-physiology, is that they have large amounts of the enzyme cellulase, which helps them break down cellulose from the grass and other plants. Cows also have an amazing symbiotic relationship with protazoa. Now the protazoa are interesting, as their relationship with the cow, in this context, is one of ‘feeding to feed’.

Do any of you recall the Russian dolls, and when you open one up there’s a smaller one inside? Well, it is almost similar, in that the cow will actually eat and use it’s four stomachs to break down the grass with the enzyme cellulase. After it;s eaten the grass, the remnents of the grass go to the protazoa -ergo, the cow eats the grass to feed the protazoa (protazoa are little animals that have a symbiotic relationship with the cow), and then the cow eats (digests) the protazoa. This is why the theory of vegetarianism is incorrect. And all ruminants are similar in this way - they have a digestive system that we just don’t.

So what happens to the beef of the cow if their diet changes from ‘grass to grains’? Well there body composition changes. If we ate a different diet for so long our physiology and body composition would change too. What happens if we overeat on carbodyhrates and refined sugars? We’d get a whole host of health issues related to blood sugar and metabolic syndrome!

The same goes for a cow. When you shift it’s dietary pattern from grass to grains it’s physiology changes, and it’s not as healthy a ‘beef’ as if it would be if it consumed grass. Yes, some may argue that they do it to fatten the cow up, but it’s composition and health are on the decline. However, they’re cows, and when they live on the farm they get what they’re given, it’s better than starving, right?

It’s a cycle, the “circle of life”. . . when the cow consumes the grass or grains to feed the protazoa, the cow digests the protazoa; we then eat the cow. That’s just evolution. However, there is something more going on here.

Since before the industrial revolution in 1940, cultures in other countries used wooden pots and pans to cook with. And in some cultures they used the wood ashes left over from the burnt away carbon in the woodon their gardens (Wallach and Lan, 2008), as part of a type of ritual that was passed down from generation to generation. Well, unbeknownst to them, the wood ashes were minerals! So almost every day they were unknowingly supplementing their food with minerals.

The next part to this was that prior to dams being built across contenents, the rain water and floods used to wash the minerals from the mountains down into the soils. As described by Verhoeven and Setter: “Floodplain soils are nutrient-rich and are naturally ‘fertilized’ as a result of flooding events” (Verhoeven and Setter, 2010).

The next, and final part to this equation was that we supress the quality of our lands with modern agricultural methods, which usually involves heavy pesticide and insecticide use. This trifecta has killed off our access to minerals and depleted our soils, and thus, the cows’. This also, in turn, effects our health (Brevik, Slaughter, Pereira et al, 2020).

It has become abundantly obvious, because if you go to certain supermarkets, the produce they shelve, such as a bag of apples, are almost mushy inside, and yet they taste sweet. This is due to decreased mineral integrity, and thus, quality of the food is compromised; and then using sugar to sweeten the produce. Although noone really states it clearly when you here conversations between shoppers, it’s clear that certain supermarkets are superior to others because of the farms they are partnered with - and those farms have a bit better quality control than the others, but it doesn’t change the depletion of minerals in the earths soil, and thus the ground the cow eats from. Everything has a chain reaction, and when we eat steak or a beef dinner on a Sunday, the quality of the meat depends on the quality of the food the cow eats.

References

Brevik EC, Slaughter L, Singh BR, et al, (2020). Soil and Human Health: Current Status and Future Needs. Air, Soil and Water Research;13. doi:10.1177/1178622120934441

Linn J, Otterby D, Howard WT, Shaver R, and Kilmer L. ‘The Ruminant Digestive System’. Reviewed 2021; The University of Minnesota Extension. Cited online: The ruminant digestive system (umn.edu). Accessed: 07/09/2023.

Verhoeven JT, Setter TL, (2010). Agricultural use of. Accessed: wetlands: opportunities and limitations. Annals of Botany;105(1):155-63. doi: 10.1093/aob/mcp172. PMID: 19700447; PMCID: PMC2794053.

Wallch JD, and Lan M, (2008). ‘THE AGEBEATERS and Their Universal Currency for IMMORTALITY’.