bison chop
© Stanley A. FishmanSuper-Tender Double Bison Chop, nicely browned on the outside, with a very rare interior.
When I was a child, I had an illustrated copy of an old story, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. The story tells of a young Dutch boy from a poor family, who is a great skater. More than anything, Hans wants to win a race that had a pair of silver skates as the grand prize. Hans wanted those skates more than anything. While Hans was preparing for the race, his father had a serious injury. The doctor (this was back in the days when doctors actually made house calls and treated poor people who could not afford them) said that only good food, including rich red meat, would enable Hans' father to recover. But Hans' family was too poor to afford meat. Hans won the race, and the silver skates. He then sold the skates he had wanted so much, and used the money to buy good food for his father, including beef. The father recovered from the good food and grassfed beef.

Most of the versions of the story today have the money used to pay for surgery, but in the version I had, meat was the key to healing. That story has always stuck with me.

The power of grassfed meat made an important change in my life recently. There was a very nasty illness going around, and I caught it a couple of weeks ago. Normally I do not catch anything, but I got this. I was not getting enough sleep at the time, and I am sure that was part of it. But I soon became sicker than I had been in thirteen years, with a very nasty, deep cough that fed on itself. There was one four-day period when I slept a total of seven hours. It was very difficult to eat. How can you use food to fight an illness if you have difficulty in eating?

I tried a number of things, various home remedies, sunbathing, sipping an ocean of broth, and prayer. The one thing I did not do was use doctors or medication. I have found them to be useless for this type of illness. Eventually I was able to stop the cough and the other symptoms. But I was totally, completely worn out. I was tired all the time, and did not want to do anything. My body ached all over, the way it used to feel after an afternoon of being pounded on a football field. Sleeping did not really seem to help. I was able to eat (though my appetite was greatly reduced), but I remained tired. This went on for day after day. Finally, my birthday came. We had a grassfed bison roast to celebrate, and I cooked it very rare, using the Super-Tender Double Bison Chop recipe in Tender Grassfed Meat. The meat was cooked so rare that the natural enzymes were not denatured. The very first bite I took of the tender red meat created a great hunger in me. My whole body was demanding more, more, more! I slowly and carefully ate slice after slice of the delicious, juicy meat. And I started to feel energy flowing back into my body. I started to feel good and energetic. By the time that meal was over, I was no longer tired. I awoke the next morning full of energy, and completely myself. I was totally well. I have since made sure to regularly eat some serving of very rare grassfed beef, and I am doing great.

So what happened? Almost all of the healthy peoples studied by Dr. Weston A. Price ate some of their meat raw. Raw meat has a number of enzymes that are deactivated if the meat is cooked beyond a certain temperature. There is an old saying in Germany that beef gives strength. And eating some raw meat is an old tradition in Germany. Many European and Native American cultures believed that eating meat would help healing. Based on these traditions, and my own experience, it is clear that there is something in raw or very rare grassfed bison and grassfed beef that can renew a tired and damaged body. I do not know exactly what it is. I just know that it worked a miracle for me.

What it actually did was give the natural functions of my body the nourishment they needed to restore my health and energy. Our bodies are amazing, and can heal almost anything if they get proper nutritional support.

Now, our government is totally against the eating of raw meat, and very rare meat, claiming it is unsafe. This is the same government that allows animals that are so sick that they cannot stand to be processed into meat, something no traditional society would ever do, unless they were starving. Obviously, the government intended these standards to apply to factory meat. I cannot stand to eat factory meat, anyway. But I personally feel fine if I am eating very rare beef or bison from healthy animals, raised and finished on grass. While I am not personally opposed to eating raw meat from healthy, grassfed beef, or bison, I have never been able to get myself to eat raw meat. But I love very rare grassfed beef and very rare grassfed bison. I am not advising anyone else to eat as I do, merely relating my experience. Everyone must decide for themselves.

And my experience was that eating very rare grassfed bison was exactly what my body needed to regain its normal energy and vitality.