Sacred Cow Movie Review

Pasture-raised Meat; Your Key to Heart and Bone Health

By Shari Rossmann and Susan Pierson

At our small and careful Thanksgiving gathering, the conversation turned, as it often does in my family, to health and nutrition. My brother Bob (Farm to City farmers’ markets in Philly) brought up a recently released movie, Sacred Cow, about farm raised, 100% pasture/grass-fed, meats.

Here’s a paragraph from the film’s website:
 
Sacred Cow probes the fundamental moral, environmental and nutritional quandaries we face in raising and eating animals. (W)e focus our lens on perhaps (the) most maligned of farmed animals, the cow. 

Not only are the environment and the cow threatened by modern Agri-business farming practices, but these practices directly affect our individual and national/societal health. Indeed, because of certified animal feedlot operations (CAFOs) and grain feeding of cattle and cows, the American population can be scientifically described and malnourished. Our conversation grew passionate as we discussed dire health consequences if we do not get the essential nutrients available largely only from pasture-raised meats and dairy.

These nutrients were once widely available; when we purchased milk from dairy pastured on local fields and meats raised on traditional ranches and farms, and NOT fattened on grain. 

We know that cattle are not meant to digest grain. Hence the need to feed them prophylactic antibiotics. When grain poisons the cow’s digestive tract, it depletes their meat and milk of the essential nutrient, Vitamin K-2.  Why is this so important?  This little publicized nutrient regulates our bodies’ ability to move calcium into our bones and, simultaneously, out of our bloodstreams where, if left behind, it bonds with saturated fat and cholesterol to form life threatening plaque in our arteries.*  The result is a society-wide pandemic equivalent of cardiovascular and other diseases. Systematic depletion of this nutrient from our diets in the quest to reduce the price of meat have had a massive health impact.
 
Pasture-raised meat and dairy are also important sources of healthy fats,  nutrients essential to brain development of infants and young children and part of a healthy adult diet.

What can you do? Purchase your meat from local farms and at our farmers markets. These foods are rich in these nutrients! They are not pumped with antibiotics and don’t need to be.

We are hoping to partner with the County Theater for a virtual showing of this film some time soon.  Watch for more news!

*For more information about his little known vitamin and its link with bone and heart  health (it’s vital importance in preventing osteoporosis and atherosclerosis) read: 
Vitamin K2 And The Calcium Paradox
How a Little-Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life by Kate Rheaume-Bleue