Industrial meat farming is doing more damage to the environment than most people realize. And the hormones and antibiotics used to raise these animals are as bad for them as it is for us to eat. Then, you have the inherent cruelty of factory farming on the animals themselves.
This isn’t to say that you should stop eating meat. Rather, it is to highlight that meat eating for centuries was really about eating game. Game meat is delicious and sustainable and is a great way to be responsible and keep eating meat.
Many people are intimidated by it thinking that they will not know how to cook it or that the flavors are going to be too strong. The reality is that there is a proper cooking technique for every type of game that brings out the best in the flavors and takes no more skill than simply following a recipe.
In this article, we will go over the reasons why you should start eating more game meat.
1 – You don’t have to hunt it yourself
Even those that have had game meat before and really enjoyed it are still on the fence about eating it because they think they will need to hunt it themselves. They get intimidated by learning things about guns like scope bases and imagine them having to dress their own kill.
Granted, you may not have a lot of options in your local grocery store, but that doesn’t mean you have to hunt the game yourself. Luckily, there are a lot of ways to procure the meat that don’t involve you shooting a rifle to get it. If you have a farmer’s market in your area that also sells meat and fish, you may be in luck as they tend to also have game meats that are locally harvested.
If that isn’t the case for you, then online options are abundant and you can have just about every type of meat shipped to you.
2 – It’s easy to prepare
Game meat is no different than regular meat in the sense that it isn’t difficult to cook. The key is to understand the cut and cook it accordingly. Just as you would do with beef, for instance. You wouldn’t stew a ribeye steak for hours just as you wouldn’t grill a short rib.
There are lean and fatty cuts of game that need to be cooked according to their traits. When you have a venison loin, the key is to cook it over high heat quickly and eat it medium rare or medium just as you would do for a beef tenderloin.
Fattier pieces like wild boar pancetta are going to need a slower cooking time to get the meat tender and allow the fat to render. Just look up recipes for the particular cut of meat in addition to what the animal is.
3 – It is high in nutrients
Factory farmed meat doesn’t hold a candle to game meat when it comes to how nutrient dense it can be. They are eating the exact foods that they need to eat to be healthy and strong and it is all natural. Factory meat is fed a diet that is cheap and will fatten them up with little regard to nutrition.
There are no antibiotics used obviously as the animal has lived its life out in its natural habitat. The flavor is as natural as it gets because of how it has lived its life.
4 – It’s good for the environment
Every year, thousands of acres of tropical rainforest are destroyed to make way for industrial beef farms. This has a dramatic impact both in terms of the loss of a carbon sink, but also because of the increase in methane produced by the increase in cows.
When you eat wild game you are eating meat that doesn’t destroy the environment from which it came. In fact, very often, the hunting of these animals is a way to improve the land and make it better.
Since the seasons are managed carefully, there is little chance of over-hunting and depleting the resource. Since there are so many types of game, you could eat meat every day and still have very little impact on the environment. Game isn’t just venison. You can also eat wild boar, fowl like pheasant and squab, rabbits and hares and yes, even animals like wild raccoons.
Get started by substituting game for beef at least once a week and this will have a dramatic difference on the environment if everybody else did the same thing.
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