Switching to organic meat

I know, I know. I watched Food Inc. a while ago and didn’t make the switch to organic meat. It turns out that rampant animal abuse wasn’t enough to get me to switch to organic meat, but salt was.

My grumblings about salt started a few weeks ago and culminated last night when I realized that our canned soup from Target had 111% of the daily recommended allowance of salt in it. I also realized that every processed thing in our house was bathed in sodium or high fructose corn syrup.

Even our 98% fat free turkey hot dogs are packed with sodium. One turkey hot dog link has 470mg of sodium or 20 percent of the daily recommended value. I was grossed out so I decided to switch to organic meat. Besides not having the hormones and animal abuse associated with it, organic meat also has considerably less sodium.

Buying organic meat at the local grocery store was difficult. I couldn’t find it at first until the butcher lady informed me that they only had “natural” chicken and small packets of organic ground beef hidden somewhere amongst the normal meat.

I eventually found it. What a miserable little package.

Despite the cosmetics of the package, it was delicious.

I then had the problem of a pantry full of canned food that I wasn’t not going to eat. I looked over the cans and realized that seven were already expired. Canned food takes a long-ass time to go bad, so I obviously don’t eat enough of it anyway. I gathered the good cans and brought them to the Aliveness Project, the local HIV/AIDS food shelf.

And yes, I realize the irony in donating unhealthy food to sick people, but I didn’t want to waste it and the food shelf doesn’t accept fresh food in anyway.

Also, to ease my guilt about donating the sodium-filled cans, I called the food shelf and offered to buy the kitchen fresh food. The cook thought it was a rather bizarre request and told me that he’s never had anyone offer to buy food for the kitchen before. He only requested lemons and cilantro, so my healthy contribution was rather meager. Maybe they’ll want something more substantial next time?