The third meal: Grass fed. After a week on the Salatin farm, Pollan will get his grass-fed chicken that Joel so politely refused to Fed-Ex him a month before. Taking two chickens, a dozen eggs, and a dozen ears of sweet corn. Stopping in Charlottesville, he picked up other local produce including rocket for a salad and a $25 Virginia wine. Okay, so he picked up some Belgian chocolate--since it is not produced locally, it's alright to buy globally. So roasted chicken, a side of sweet corn, salad and a chocolate suffle it was! And Pollan and his guests (children included) found it delicious! And although Pollan made that same meal at home before, it was with industrial chicken, pale yolk eggs and corn and salad grown far, far away. Those meals never came close to being as good as the one made locally. Now for some science. Evolutionarily speaking, humans have had about ten thousand years to adjust their bodies to agricultural food. And now we have to adjust to industrial agricultural food, a diet based on a small handful of basic grains, think corn, that is still a biological novelty. Not only are we eating these grains, but the animals we are eating eat these grains. According to evolution, pasture fed animals are better for us because they more closely resemble wild game. There is less fat, less saturated fat, more CLA (a fatty acid that helps to reduce weight and prevent cancer) and more omega-3s in pasture raised animals. Not to mention other nutrients and vitamins, and flavor. "When chickens get to live like chickens, they'll taste like chickens, too."
And so Pollan got to eat his tasty meal, free from the thoughts of killing chickens, all the while he knew exactly where his food came from: ". . . the early morning pasture, there in the grass where this sublime bite began."
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