Year of the Cow

by Jared Stone

  One Step Back, One Step Forward

  As my beef experiment rolls on, I begin to give thought to how it is affecting my health. I haven’t been to the doctor in years. I’ve never really thought it was necessary—so long as nothing hurts, nothing is poking out of me, and everything moves pretty much in the way it should, I figure I’m healthy. But my beef experiment has piqued my curiosity. How can I know what kind of shape I’m in if I don’t go to a doctor and find out?

  I go in for the first medical checkup since the Clinton administration. Everything’s good for the most part. My cholesterol levels are normal. But my doctor notices something that concerns him in some of my blood work and wants to bring me back in. Some fasting, more blood work, and another couple of visits, and he has news: My fasting blood sugar is high. I’m not diabetic, but I’m inclined toward it.

  My grandfather was diabetic, and my father and brother are diabetic as well, so I have an enormous neon diabetic arrow pointing in my direction. I’d always thought I’d gotten lucky and had avoided the particular set of genetic markers that made me more susceptible to diabetes, but with this news perhaps I hadn’t. Perhaps diabetes was coming for me as well, only slower.

  This is not good.

  * * *

  “Well, shit.”

  I glance down at my son, sitting across from me, and quickly correct. “Shoot.”

  Summer, Declan, and I are sitting in our local haunt for burgers and hot dogs. Out of guilt and health-induced anxiety, I ordered a garden burger. It’s dry.

  “Is there anything you need to do?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do,” I reply.

  She’s silent a moment. “Well, it’s not like it’s a definite diagnosis. It’s just something to be aware of.”

  “Something horrible to be aware of.”

  “You’re being dramatic.”

  “Not really. My brother was diagnosed diabetic as a kid. My grandfather after he retired. But my dad…” I still remember my dad, borrowing one of my little brother’s blood glucose test strips, pricking his own finger, and that was that. “My dad was diagnosed at maybe eight years older than I am now. But who knows how long he was prediabetic before that?” I toy with a fry on my plate. “This is not good.”

  “Cookie, Daddy?” Declan interjects. He’s nuts about the chocolate chip cookies they have here.

  “Not tonight, buddy.” And what about Dec? I’d never considered his risk for diabetes before.

  I turn back to Summer. “When my dad was diagnosed, he dropped all sugar immediately. Started running several miles, twice a day. Did everything he was supposed to. And then some.”

  “And?”

  “Went from type two to type one. From producing little insulin on his own to producing no insulin.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yup. We Stone men have terrible pancreases.” I take another bite of my garden burger.

  Summer thinks for a moment. “Well, listen—so what? You just have to take each day as it comes, and make the best of what you have.” I’m silent for a change, so she continues. “You aren’t diabetic yet. You’re a fairly smart guy. Maybe you can beat this thing.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, stealing a fry off my plate. “Figure it out.”

  * * *

  My health weighs heavily on my mind as I blaze through my workday. Ten hours of television are a blur—I’m preoccupied. I write words. Cut some pretty pictures. My section of the Machine whirrs along without a hitch. I wander home in a daze. I don’t know what to do. I feel broken.

  After putting my son to bed, I leash up Basil and go for a walk. She’s a fantastic companion for a stroll, especially when I don’t feel like talking. And right now, I really don’t.

  Foremost on my mind: Should I give up this beef experiment?

  If I give up, that’s a lot of beef I’m going to have to do something with. I can probably donate it to a homeless shelter or a food bank. I don’t know offhand if many places have standing capacity for this much perishable food, though I’m sure they could somehow find it.

  But bigger question: Would donating all the beef to a food bank even solve my problem? This is great beef. Far higher quality than what one can buy in a supermarket. I don’t know what the fat content is; it doubtless varies by cut. Even the ground beef—which in a supermarket would be labeled with its fat content—is a mystery to me here. Whatever fat was in the cow is in the beef.

  But with diabetes—or prediabetes—fat content isn’t the problem. Dietary sugar is the problem, at least to some extent. That’s the reason diabetics aren’t really supposed to eat sweets. In people with normal pancreatic function, the pancreas secretes insulin, a hormone that allows the body to absorb glucose from the bloodstream. The bigger the dietary sugar load, the more insulin needed to process that glucose.

  In people with type 2 diabetes—formerly known as adult-onset diabetes—the pancreas can’t keep up with the demands that their blood sugar is making on it. People with type 2 diabetes might take medication to stimulate their pancreas further, combined with modifying their diet to ease the demand on their pancreas. In type 1 diabetes, however, the pancreas doesn’t produce insulin at all. People with type 1 diabetes have to compensate entirely with supplemental insulin injections.

  Unregulated or improperly regulated blood sugar is a tremendously bad thing. Without treatment, diabetics become hyperglycemic—they have too much sugar in their blood. High blood sugar for a long period of time can lead to heart attacks, kidney failure, and diabetic coma.

  On the other end of the spectrum, hypoglycemia is low blood sugar. In diabetics, this can occur from a number of causes, including injecting too much insulin, stress, or depleting blood glucose stores with exercise. Left untreated, this can also lead to heart disease and coma.

  The risks associated with frequent or long-term hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia are the reasons that diabetics frequently eliminate or avoid sugar in their diets. A sharp blood glucose increase—say, a candy bar—immediately and dramatically spikes insulin demand, for which diabetics have to manually compensate. If they overadminister insulin, they risk hypoglycemia. If they underadminister—hyperglycemia.

  Put differently—too much insulin: risk heart attacks and coma. Too little insulin: risk heart attacks and coma. It’s usually just easier to keep blood sugar in a safe, predictable range. No candy bars.

  As Basil and I walk beneath a streetlight, she looks up at me. From this angle above her, I can see the hourglass of her waist as her hip carriage shifts with her gait. This indentation, just above the hips, is one of the markers for ideal weight on a Rhodesian Ridgeback. They’re big, deep-chested dogs and should not under any circumstances be allowed to pack on too many pounds. (Since dogs don’t sweat, they pant to thermoregulate. Excess weight insulates their body with fat and makes it harder for them to cool off.) It’s better to underfeed than to overfeed them.

  I’m always wary of Basil’s diet. When she was younger—before we had Declan—we used to feed her raw, according to what is called the BARF (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) diet. The logic behind this approach is that it more closely mimics the diet that the dog evolved to eat. It consisted of whole foods, real meat, and vegetables. In our particular case, that translated into oatmeal with vitamins and veggies in the morning and a quarter of a raw chicken at night. Basil had tolerated the oatmeal—Ridgebacks are astonishingly food-motivated—but she’d annihilate the chicken. I remember her lifting the chicken quarter out of the bowl, carrying it out into our backyard, and lying down with it between her paws. She’d tear it apart with her jaws, crunch the bones with her molars, and swallow it in enormous chunks, bones and all.

  When we fed her raw, Basil was in glorious, preposterously good health. Bright, shiny coat. Zero body fat. Boundless energy. But when our son was born, our free time evaporated. We couldn’t get my wife started on her hour-long co
mmute before work, get Dec dressed and ready for day care, get me dressed and ready for work and on the road for my own hour-long commute, and still find time to make oatmeal for the dog. Reluctantly, we switched her back to store-bought kibble. She’s still healthy and fit, but the difference is noticeable.

  When Basil ate whole-grain oatmeal and high-quality protein, she was in ludicrously good shape. She’s a dog, so the parallels are somewhat limited. But better diet can’t help making better health, right? Similarly, my high-quality protein likewise probably isn’t a problem. Maybe, weirdly, I need to eat more like Basil had.

  More like Nourishing Traditions keeps telling me I should eat.

  I should read more.

  * * *

  First things first, however: I should run more.

  If I’m worried about my health, getting into some sort of exercise routine seems like the right thing to do. Running is one of the few purely physical activities that humans are supposed to be good at—yet most people would rather perform their own appendectomy than run a hundred yards. Me, I run only sporadically. A few years back, my wife and I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. The next day, my entire lower body cramped up, leaving me couch-ridden for several days. Because I couldn’t stand, let alone run, I took a hiatus from what was at the time a pretty aggressive running regimen. I’m still on that hiatus.

  Almost anyone can complete a marathon, if completion is their only goal. It isn’t the sort of exertion that most people assume it would be. It’s like sitting in a reasonably comfortable chair while a large man beats your heels with a very large hammer. Slowly. If a runner isn’t trying to finish in any particular time, there isn’t much aerobic exertion involved in running a marathon. It isn’t a matter of being in shape. It’s just a matter of enduring a moderate amount of pain for a very long time.

  Getting hurt while running is relatively common; Summer developed stress fractures from her marathon training. I’ve never understood why something as natural and instinctive as running has such a high rate of injury—by some estimates, almost 80 percent of runners hurt themselves running each year. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people say that they used to run, but they stopped because it’s “bad for their knees.”

  I, on the other hand, am trying to get back into it. I’ve slimmed down a bit eating whole foods, and I’m generally happy about it. And because of my recent news, I’d like to keep the health train rolling. Plus, swimsuit season is just around the corner.

  That in mind, I slip on my ancient running shoes and head out the door. I’m not as fast as I was when I ran regularly, but I have to start somewhere. It’s a beautiful day, and I breathe deeply as I settle into my once familiar rhythm. Besides the birds, the only sound is that of my feet on pavement. Ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump. (I run loud—always have.) As I run, I mentally subdivide the sound of my strides into whatever song I have stuck in my head at the moment. Today, it’s Paul Simon’s “Cecilia.” I’m begging you please to come home … ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump. Whoa oh oh!

  I round the corner of my block and head back toward home. As it’s the end of my run, I sprint, giving it everything I have. The rhythmic ka-thump vanishes. There is no music now. Just exertion.

  Finally, I slow to a walk, panting. My feet hurt. I think I need new shoes.

  * * *

  It’s a Sunday afternoon. I’m in the grocery store buying supplies for one of my weekend culinary adventures. Today, I’m not at just any grocery store—I’m at Whole Foods. They charge a premium for their wares, but they have everything that a budding food dork could desire: screamingly fresh produce, gorgeous seafood, and a fairly robust selection of cheeses for a supermarket chain. Drifting through the dairy section, I freeze—I’ve spotted a unicorn in the refrigerator case. Culinary Bigfoot. The Dairy Loch Ness monster.

  For some completely unknown reason, this store sells raw milk.

  I thought that was illegal.

  Raw milk is one of the staples and primary points of contention between the Weston A. Price crowd and the population at large, as notably represented by the FDA.

  I pull a bottle out of the refrigerator case to double-check—yes. Raw. Unpasteurized. Comes in a glass bottle like men in white suits used to leave on doorsteps. I hesitate, then move to put it back. Then stop. And put it in my cart.

  * * *

  Back in my kitchen, I open the bottle and smell it. It doesn’t smell like much—milk, I guess. What was I expecting? But is it my eyes, or does it look slightly different? A little yellower, perhaps? More straw-colored? I examine the label: “Shake Well Before Use.” I look through the clear glass bottle at the fluid inside, which must be why they put it in a glass bottle instead of a carton in the first place. The milk is two-toned. It’s definitely lighter on top because it hasn’t gone through a process called homogenization—when bottlers force raw milk through tiny holes at high pressure, breaking up the fat globules and enabling them to remain in suspension instead of floating to the top of the bottle, as they have here. Homogenized milk has a uniform density. This milk does not. It’s the real deal.

  I shake the bottle vigorously. How long am I supposed do this, a few seconds? A minute? Five? I check the milk’s consistency. Nope, still clumpy. I shake more. A few minutes later, and, well, I won’t say it’s unclumpy. But it’s something like a more uniform consistency. I pour a glass. Take a sip.

  It’s creamy and very, very rich. I drink a little faster. Cold, it’s almost chewy. It’s grassy and thick, with a little more sweetness than I’m used to. I’m drinking it fast, like an eight-year-old child at a school picnic, and I can feel the milk coat my upper lip. For science, I check my milk mustache in the mirror. Regular milk gives one a certain pencil-thin, John Waters–esque ’stache—elegant and easily removed, if noticeable at all. Raw milk drops the full Wilford Brimley. It’s luxurious, thick, and ever so slightly gloopy.

  Also, this milk is delicious. If, of course, you have the sort of psyche and constitution that can shrug off the threat of a little Listeria. That is, if you aren’t very young, very old, pregnant, or suffering from some malady that compromises the immune system. Listeriosis can kill—it’s one of the reasons that some governments began widespread pasteurization of milk in the first place. It’s a decision between absolutely bacteriologically safe milk with a possibly decreased flavor and health profile versus more flavorful milk with potentially greater health benefits that is likely bacteriologically safe—but if it isn’t, it could be very, very bad. That’s a personal choice, and I’m not sure there’s a clear-cut right answer. Listeriosis is potentially deadly, and those most susceptible to it, especially children, have the least agency in their own food choices. Conversely, risk can be minimized by buying locally from producers one knows and trusts. And proponents say the health benefits can be enormous.

  I don’t have an answer. But I do have milk. I top off my glass and put the bottle back into the refrigerator. I leave my kitchen and stride across my living room, before sitting by the window with a good book.

  I take another sip of my raw milk. I’m down the rabbit hole now.

  * * *

  Some nights just don’t go quite like you planned.

  “Cool,” my wife says. We’re in our living room. She is gazing down at a small ceramic bowl on her lap with a look midway between nonplussed and actively disinterested. “So what is it, like a bowl?”

  “It’s a French butter crock!” I exclaim, as if that should explain it all. “You’re making a lot of bread now, and I thought you could use this to keep your butter fresh.”

  “Of course,” she replies, trying out a smile because I’m being a little weird. “Well, thank you. I really like it.” She says it like the conversation should be over now.

  “Allow me to elucidate,” I continue, unwilling to give up on an item that I think is actively fantastic. I talk fast. “Before refrigeration, people had to keep butter from going bad somehow, right? Most of the time, they
’d wrap it tightly and keep it submerged in water. It takes a lot of energy to change the temperature of water, so the butter would stay pretty cool. Also, because it’s away from oxygen, it wouldn’t go rancid. Make sense?”

  “Sure.” I can only imagine what mad gleam I must have in my eye.

  “In the late 1800s, French butter lovers—great band name, by the way—developed this little guy.”

  “To hold butter.”

  “Exactly! Dig.” I gesture to the device in question. “Two pieces. The outer is this mug-looking thing. You fill it about a third up with water.”

  “Okay.”

  “The inside is this inverted bell-type thing. You fill this with butter. Flip it over, insert it, and the lip of the bell slips beneath the surface of the water. You get butter, sealed free of air, so it keeps at room temp. What’s more, it stays super spreadable. So you won’t have to nuke it and risk it separating. All without refrigeration.”

  “So this just sits on the counter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the butter won’t go bad?”

  “Not for thirty days, give or take. But when does butter ever last us thirty days?”

  A pause. Her eyes dart from the butter crock to me. “Cool…” she says.

  “You’re not excited?” I ask incredulously.

  She smiles. “I’m excited you’re excited.” Her smile widens a little. “I haven’t seen you this excited about something for quite a while.”

  “It’s butter! And it’s a better, cheaper, more delicious way of doing something. It’s an old tech that’s better than the new one, and a mere forty-eight hours ago I had no idea it even existed. What’s not to get excited about?”

  “You are absolutely right. It’s very cool, Jared. Thank you.” She stands up and kisses me on the top of my head.

  “You will understand the magnificence of the butter crock!” I bellow, fist shaking sarcastically like a B-movie villain. “You must recognize its genius!”

  “Come to bed, Goldfinger,” she calls over her shoulder. “We have to get up early.”

  I glance at the clock. She’s right. She’s always right.