Most of the proteins I cook with come from the
Halifax Seaport Farmers' Market, specifically three farms and a butcher:
Last week I discovered a real butcher in the city selling local, never-frozen, "organic" meat. I'm still evaluating
Highland Drive Storehouse but I purchased this weeks proteins from her instead of the market on Saturday and so far it's been fine. Her prices are reasonable for what she is selling. The problem, I suspect, with any local butcher is that the price per pound is high compared to the sale prices from the grocery store. That sticker shock must drive away some customers, I've seen it happen at the market.
But what I've learned, and what I hope to explain here, is how to understand the real cost of the meat you are buying in order to understand why you want to pay what the farmers are asking.
Put aside the social and economic benefits of buying locally. I'll leave that discussion to others, I'm not interested. Strictly talking about value, the most important factor to consider is that the prices listed are
uncooked price per pound. What you
really care about is the
cooked price per pound. We don't eat raw chicken, raw sausage, raw roasts and there-in lies the tricky advertising at the grocery store. My local grocery store chain will sell boneless chicken thighs for $8/lb (not on sale) and my local farmer will sell me
boneless chicken thighs for $9/lb. On the surface, the Sobey's thighs are $1/lb less expensive but, my farmer's chicken has not been
Plumped. When cooked, injected water comes out diluting your sauces and reducing the cooked volume of the meal. If we assume %15 of the grocery store chicken weight is water (or worse, salt water) and we adjust our costs, now Sobey's thighs are $9.20/lb. Chicken from my farmer is free of growth hormones, unnecessary antibiotics and other additives. What about the grocery store chicken? Who can you even ask about that? The meat packers in the store were in no way involved in the production of the chicken. My conclusion is that the local, healthier, free-range and organic chicken is actually cheaper than the full retail price grocery store chicken.
A second example: breakfast sausages. I brought some breakfast sausages from the Bavarian Meat Shop over to my parent's house for Pancake Tuesday (Shrove Tuesday) this year. We planned to cook them on a George Foreman grill. My mother was used to cooking Larsons breakfast sausage; when cooking this sausage one would have to drain the drip tray from the grill to keep it from over flowing while cooking. The sausages I brought from the market barely dripped any fat at all into the tray. So when you lose 25% of your pre-cooked weight to fat and water, you tend to buy more up front because you know "how much feeds your family". I can feed my family with less weight of uncooked proteins because the cooked weight works out to be about the same after you drain away the excess water and fat that is added to the sausage to "boost" the weight and profits.
I have more examples from personal experience, like ground meats, but in the price per pound department, the farmers locally are competitive with the retail grocery stores when you look at it in a corrected context. Value is more than just the price per weight though, value to me is also derived from the quality of the product being purchased. When I decided to move our family over to local, organic meats, the first thing I considered was the quality of the product. My goal in feeding my son is not how much chicken I can stuff inside him, it is the nutrients that are contained in that chicken that his body requires. My personal feeling is that the quality of the local, unprocessed meats I get from the market are healthier than the frozen and shipped products in the grocery store freezers. I would be interested in reading any published and peer-reviewed studies on the matter.
We know that processed meats lose some of their nutritional value so in theory, I can use a little less unprocessed and fresh meat to provide the same nutritional value as something frozen. Again, in theory this increases the relative value of the local product to me.
The third component of my value equation is taste. I enjoy eating. A lot. Too much in fact. So if the taste was not as good or better than the grocery stores, I would be less supportive. Honestly, I don't really notice much of a difference in the chicken, but the pork and the beef are different to me. Steaks taste different between farms too, find the farm you like and support it by eating their product. Regardless, many people swear by the taste of fresh, organic, grass-fed beef. Factor that into your personal value equation. For us the taste is a factor but all of these factors are not as important as our forth and final one, chemicals.
Antibiotics, growth hormones, preservatives, dyes (maybe) all are common add-ons you get in factory-farmed meats. This forth factor, additives, are used because they increase profits for the manufacturer, not because they're good for the consumer. My wife has a sensitive digestion system, we've observed that eating higher additive meats are a trigger for her. By switching to organic meats, she's been healthier and in far less pain.
All these factors combined make the organic proteins the right choice for my family. They are the best bang for the buck when compared with full price grocery store proteins. Sale prices are harder to justify from a budget perspective. There can be some good sales on proteins, and I know from experience that you can save a lot by buying in bulk during a sale and freezing it. We choose to support the farmers and buy quality meats every week instead of just when they're not on sale at the grocery store but that's a choice we budget for. We believe saying "
pay the farmer now or the doctor later" to be true.
I happen to know that some of the farms I support also use sustainable farming practices which I hear is good for the environment. If that is important to you then value it accordingly.
!Foodie
