Soy Free Pork ? Coming soon through Little Sprouts!

It seems that every day we have more exciting things to learn about raising good healthy food.  This week was no exception. One of the most important points we have been exploring is the "soy free" approach to feeding and producing meat.

We spent some time this week talking to the Rogue Valley Chapter Leader of the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF),  Summer Waters, L.Ac., N.T.P., an acupuncturist and nutritionist in Medford and Ashland, OR . If you are interested in learning about the local WAPF chapter, please visit http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/RogueValley-WAPF and join the RV WAPF yahoo group to receive periodic emails about important food and health solutions.  If you're not familiar with the Weston Price Foundation, it is worth spending some time on their website to explore the fascinating, cutting edge health information there.   I won't go into the details of the foundation itself, since they are much better at explaining the healthy living plan than I, but one fascinating item came out of the conversation - the notion of soy free animal feed to produce healthier meat.
First, a little background is helpful. Today, farm animals rarely eat a truly natural diet. Instead of the pictures you see on labels of animals grazing out in the great open prairies, the reality is that the majority of any farm animal's food today comes in a bag. There are lots of formulations available, but the basic point here is that a small variety of foods are ground up, combined with some added vitamins and minerals, and pressed into pellets. This process is somewhat akin to us eating nothing but breakfast cereal every day, three times a day, our entire lives. Their health depends totally on the formula of that feed being right and supplying everything needed for good health.

That in itself is a scary thought to me. I have very little confidence that man has learned what real food is and what balance of ingredients are necessary to maintain health. Think for a sec how many times in our own lifetime the recommendations for food have changed. Pick almost any food type and follow it through the last 40 years, you will see conflicting, sometimes opposing recommendations over time. Why? Simple... life is incredibly complex. Life seems dependent on a complex balance of nutrients. It is not enough to ensure that all ingredients are provided, because the balance or proportions of the nutrients are just as important as presence or absence.

So, back to animal feed. I find difficulty with the basic approach of only providing one "perfect" food  for an animals entire life. That is why at Little Sprouts we are committed to allowing each animal to forage for its own food as much as possible. We also bring in a wide variety of produce, greenery, forest products, etc to provide as much natural diet as possible. Nevertheless, we have not been able to eliminate the "perfect" man made feed yet. Which brings me back to "soy free".

There is a wealth of information available about the potential health problems caused by a diet with excess soy. Weston Price Foundation is a good place to go to find the theory and evidence behind it. Plenty of people today are working hard to eliminate soy from their diet, including the meat they consume. Oddly, today, soy and corn are the two most prevalent ingredients in all animal food. Corn provides carbohydrates, soy provides protein. There are particular reasons behind this, most founded on our government and its choices.

So, eliminating soy is a difficult problem to solve. Protein is required by all living beings, Hogs seem to need somewhere between 10% and 20% of their diet in protein. There are of course other sources of protein, and we have decided to explore these. I contacted our mill, who has already altered the "recipe" for us in other ways, and they are committed to working with us to produce a Soy Free hog and Poultry Food. We have the added difficulty of requiring only organic protein substitutes, since we are committed to being "chemical free" already. Even so.. we will solve this problem asap! Our ultimate goal is the best health for our animals and for us.

Speaking of taste, its  worth mentioning that hogs seem uniquely bound to the old saying "you are what you eat". It is obvious through a little research that the flavor of pork depends as much on the feed given during the last 3 months of life as much as any other aspect including breed. I suspect that is one reason our first round of Red Wattle pork is so significantly different from that available in stores, and even different from farm raised pork we have had previously. These hogs were fed half or more of their diet in fresh produce in that critical 3 months, largely pears! I cant wait to see what acorn fed pork taste like! Acorns above all else, is the most natural diet for hogs.

So, if you are committed to eliminating soy from your diet, Little Sprouts will soon have pork for you. We will be able to add "Soy Free" to our label along with "Humanely Raised, Organically Fed, Pastured Pork."  Until then, when you buy our pork, feel secure that it is healthy, tasteful, humane meat. We are sure you will find the quality much higher than pork purchased elsewhere. When soy free is available, the good just gets better :)