Dear Meat Club,
Here's the perfect lockdown escape!
I recently became addicted to the TV series Clarkson's Farm.
Unfortunately, Season 1 has ended and they're filming a second season as we speak.
In the meantime, I've found another show...
Alone is a reality TV series were contestants are left alone in the wilderness to fend for themselves. They can choose 10 items to bring, a tarp, a bow & arrow, an axe, nothing hi-tech. Last person to 'tap out' (radio in the TV Producers) wins $1M.
It is addictive!
The contestants are survival experts, they build shelters, they hunt, fish and do their best to survive.
These are the Season 8 contestants, who will be the last one standing?
Unforeseen events lead to them tapping out - food poisoning, losing a valuable tool, encounters with bears and of course, loneliness.
You become attached to your favourite contestant, getting behind them and hoping they'll last another day. It's like watching live sport but there's more on the line.
With limited access to fruit and vegetables (mainly berries and the odd mushroom), the contestants must hunt to survive.
In Season 8, they're left alone in the Alaskan wilderness.
The menu includes fish (huge lake trout), rabbits, porcupines, squirrels and a musk ox (taken down by bow & arrow and knife, picture below).
Some animals are relatively easy to catch, like rabbits.
Rabbits have plenty of protein but very little fat.
Without fat the contestants have no energy. They quickly lose around 20% of their body weight.
Without fat they start to physically breakdown, they have no energy and they can't stay warm.
Fish are fatty but they're hard to catch. And with freezing weather setting in and high winds, fishing by the beach or on a frozen lake is a risky option.
You'd think a musk ox would have plenty of fat on it but it turned out to be quite lean.
However, it's brain does contain plenty of fat. The contestant who killed the musk ox put every part of the animal to use including it's brain, which he carried around in it's ball sack. Yes, you read that right.
The search for fat leads one contestant into a deep crevasse in search of a porcupine. She risks getting trapped alone in the Arctic wilderness to catch a porcupine.
Makes you appreciate home delivery!
The wild animals the contestants are hunting are super lean. Their meat is nutrient-dense from a life of movement and a diet of nutritious grasses.
The fat the animals do hold is packed with bioavailable nutrients essential for the contestant's survival.
Contrast this with the domesticated animals raised in factory farming today and you start to realise our modern way of farming is not very natural.
Animals raised in small spaces and fed grain/soy/corn produce soft and fatty flesh. A delicacy, but not the nutrient-dense fuel we humans need for a healthy life.
At McKenzie's Meats we stock grass-fed & finished beef and lamb because free-roaming animals feeding on natural grass produce healthier, more nutrient-dense protein and fat.
You've got grass-fed beef and lamb right at your fingertips.
No hunting a musk ox with your bare hands. No chasing porcupines down crevasses.
Your nutrient-dense protein and fat is right here!