Joy in Finding Burgers | Shelli Stein

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Hello friends,
and welcome to this month’s Joyinmovement newsletter,

Actually, this month’s letter should be called
Joy in Finding Burgers! If you want to hear more about one of the
strangest yet fun and wacky things I’ve ever done please keep reading.

Have you ever been to a burger smack-down? No, that’s not
my terminology, and yes I agree, the term “smack-down” sounds a bit
harsh, but here’s how it all happened.

It started about 10 days ago. I needed a short break from
all the writing I’d been doing so I picked up that day’s newspaper.
They say timing is everything, and what happened next is a great example
of serendipity because I NEVER read the newspaper. I spotted this very
tiny article that said, “If you’re interested in participating in a
burger smack-down, email the restaurant reviewer.” I don’t know what
possessed me but I went to my computer and sent an email that said, “If
you’re interested in a 50-something female palate that is VERY picky
about burgers, count me in.” I didn’t think anything about it after
that.

The next day I got an email back that said I had been
chosen for the burger smack-down! The reviewer for the newspaper had
reviewed a burger place that had recently opened in town. It’s one of
those “have your burger anyway you like it with whatever you want on it”
kind of places. It’s taken the community by storm and you can’t get in
there without at least a 45 minute wait. It happens to be near where I
live, so I saw the place go from its construction phase to its grand
opening, and I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

When the review was published she said the burgers there
were the BEST of any she’d ever eaten. Well, that’s when the uproar
started. She got over 20,000 hits online for that particular review and
she received hundreds of emails telling her that other places were
better and wondering how she could recommend a chain over locally-owned
burger joints. That’s when she got the idea for the smack-down.

Her plan was to hold a blindfolded burger tasting and
have tasters score the burgers. So, thinking I had impressed her with my
witty email about my 50-something palate, I arrived for the burger
tasting only to find out the truth. She had received many many emails
from people wanting to be tasters, but I was the ONLY woman who emailed
her! Can you imagine that? Plenty of women had emailed, but only to
volunteer their boyfriends or husbands. There I was, me and 4 guys who
were chosen as tasters, plus the photographers and other newspaper
employees.

We blindly tasted burgers and filled out answer sheets
over and over again. You could take as many bites as you needed to reach
your conclusions. It’s very interesting to eat blindfolded, and none of
the burgers had any condiments on them (so as not to affect the taste).
All in all, it was quite a night. As a thank you we got a beautiful
cookbook, and we jokingly told our host we’d be back the following week
for the pizza smack-down!! The article will likely be in the paper next
week. I hope they spell my name right!

Here’s the take-away point to all this. NONE of the
burgers were made with meat from grass-fed animals (which is the GOLD
standard for meat). When I eat burgers, and I make it one of the
grass-fed burgers, it tastes incredibly delicious. These burgers I
tasted at the smack-down didn’t come close to a healthy grass-fed
burger.

I’ve talked about this type of meat before and how it’s
one of the healthiest forms of meat you can possibly eat. Grass-fed beef
and other grass-fed ruminant meats such as bison, buffalo, lamb, and
venison have similar omega-3/omega-6 ratios as wild salmon. In
fact, this “land meat” not only contains as much, or even higher levels
of omega-3 fatty acids, but without the possible negatives such as
heavy metals (mercury, etc) and PCBs that can often be found in fish.

Now I know that a lot of people will try to convince you
that meat is not good for you… and to be honest I partially agree with
them when it comes to your typical factory farm-raised meat where the
animals are fattened up with huge quantities of grains and soy that are
not their natural diet and given unhealthy doses of hormones and
antibiotics. However, when animals are healthy and eat the diet they
were meant to eat naturally, the meat is actually healthy for us.

Let’s take beef, for example. When cattle
eat mostly grain and soy, the fat composition of their meat becomes
higher in inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids and lower in beneficial
omega-3 fatty acids. On the other hand, when cattle eat mostly grass
instead of grains/soy, their meat becomes higher in omega-3s and lower
in omega-6 fatty acids. In addition, grass-fed beef also contains much
higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which has shown some
promising benefits in studies for losing body fat and gaining lean
muscle mass.

The problem is that it’s VERY hard to find healthy
grass-fed meats in typical grocery stores. In fact, even at health food
stores, you might find some “organic” meats (which is at least a little
better than standard), but it is often hard to find any real grass-fed
meats. If you haven’t found places to buy grass-fed beef let me know and
I’ll hook you up.

Here are some other burger do’s and don’ts:

*figure 5-6 ounces of hamburger per patty.

*do not overwork hamburger; it becomes heavy and
compacted.

*never press
down on a hamburger on a grill; it squeezes out the juices.

*when frying
them, lightly oil the skillet and make sure it’s very hot.

*never use
nonstick frying pans.

*fry 2-4 minutes per
side; turn once–don’t poke or fuss.

A movement coach’s life isn’t all footloose and
fancy-free. Sometimes it requires me to ask serious questions like,
“Where’s the beef?”

Wishing you a month of exceptional health and joy in
movement!

shelli