Humanely Raised Animals Are Healthier To Eat

I’m a localtarian when it comes to eating meat, which makes me one of those weasely douchebags who drives a Prius, recycles, composts, puts spiders outside and sends his extra shoes to African children. And I’ll live with that label if it means that some animals have better lives because, well, I’ve met a lot of animals and I’m pretty sure they care about having a nice lifestyle as much as people do.

I’m not preachy about it, since we must draw the line at douchebaggery somewhere, but I do champion the fact that animals existing in better conditions are healthier to eat than those that live in the abhorrent squalor forced upon those in America’s Big Meat industry. So I’m pretty pissed off at a PR campaign from the egg industry on a study showing no nutritional difference between the eggs of chickens raised humanely vs. those raised in the poulet version of Devil’s Island. Mainly because the study didn’t show that. It showed the opposite.

next up, a study stating the chickens in this picture are perfectly happy.


I guess when you’ve got lawyers as powerful as Big Meat you don’t let pesky science stand in your way. Fund a study that doesn’t yield the results you want? Fuck it. Just issue a press release to the major wires stating it did. Who’s going to care as long as you’re paying, right?

The Fitness Nerd, that’s who! Big props to Denis, who went the extra mile to scrutinize the science. Not that he needed dig that deep in order to begin finding flaws . The Nerd reports,

So many things wrong here. First off, it's a lie. So much of a lie, in fact, that the release itself admits it 5 paragraphs later when it explains "β-carotene levels were higher in the range eggs, which... may have contributed to the darker colored yolks observed in these eggs during the study."

Huh? How do "no nutritional difference" and "β-carotene levels were higher" mesh? The study indicates vitamin A levels in both types of eggs were the same, yet β-carotene can be converted into Vitamin A in our body, so technically, the body gets more A from the free-range eggs.

But he read the entire study, on principle, and found more problems. So either read his entire post or just believe my anecdotal logic—now based on Big Meat’s own science—which concludes that animals that eat healthy, exercise, breath fresh air and aren’t subjected to Frankenstein-esqe experiments and filled with more drugs than Mr. Olympia are healthier to eat. In turn I promise not to get mad when you call me a douchebag because, in my mind anyway, it’s a lot better than being an asshole like all those wankers at Big Meat. Now excuse me while I ride my fixie to the local farm to make sure they’re letting the chickens get enough exercise.