By Sadie Radinsky, author of Whole Girl: Live Vibrantly, Love Your Entire Self, and Make Friends with Food.

I’m a Los Angeles mountains girl, student at UC Berkeley, wellness author, and healthy recipe creator who cares deeply about the planet.

And I love meat.

I know, this is a shock even to me! I grew up vegetarian, and never imagined that I’d end up a proponent of eating animals. Like many of us who follow a vegetarian or vegan diet, I had three main motives: helping the environment, helping animals, and being my healthiest self.

But one day, it dawned on me that I wasn’t my healthiest self. I’d recently gone gluten-free which had resolved my persistent childhood stomach issues, but I still felt weak and constantly fatigued. I didn’t have enough energy to do rigorous exercise. That year, my family went to stay at a bed and breakfast on a farm that raised grass-fed cattle. The first morning at the B&B, the farmers served us eggs with breakfast sausage made from their own cattle. I’d never eaten beef before, and just the thought of trying it induced guilt, like I’d be tainting myself in some way.

But, I could tell that my body was crying out for some meat. I looked at that breakfast sausage on my plate knowing where this beef came from, and acknowledged that these cows were living the good life out on the pasture. And as far as climate went, there was just no way that this herd of happy cows was harming the climate nearly as much as the car we were driving around in or the emissions from the factories where all our clothes were made. I decided to give the sausage a try. I took a bite, and it was delicious—juicy and flavorful. And after the meal I felt satisfied and a little more energetic. That summer, I ate more meat. I tried a burger, some bacon. I felt my body fill with more and more vitality. Soon I had the energy to do trail runs and serious yoga every day. I’d never felt this strong.

I was starting to realize that my body instinctively knew what was healthy for me. Although I’d always heard red meat was unhealthy, my body clearly thrived on it. So something in the common knowledge must be flawed. I got to reading. I learned that in fact a lot of the messaging around meat—especially beef—is incorrect. I read science on the environmental, animal welfare, and health aspects of meat. Environmentally, I learned that factory farming isn’t the only way to raise cattle. With grass-fed and regenerative farming, animals are raised in a way that works in harmony with nature and actually helps the environment—with the potential to even draw carbon out of the atmosphere and store it underground, helping reverse climate change. As far as animal welfare, I read that grass-fed or regeneratively-raised animals live lives very similar to those of animals in the wild. I even read of humane ways of slaughtering the animals that many farmers were implementing. And there was a reason eating beef made my body feel so good: it’s good for us.Nearly all of the health information I’d been fed about red meat was incorrect. The idea that consuming saturated fat led to heart disease was a myth. So was the idea that eating meat posed a cancer risk. As it turned out, the saturated fat in beef is actually incredibly beneficial for the body—as are the protein, vitamins, and minerals. It’s a “superfood” in the truest sense.

The more I expanded my knowledge, the more my perspective on food systems as a whole changed. I began to view eating as a way to work in harmony with the ecosystem. I saw my body as one part of the larger whole of earth’s life cycles. With this new perspective, I looked back and realized that as a vegetarian, I’d been quite divorced from life systems. We young women have been taught by society to dislike our bodies and fear food, to be disconnected from both. For me, vegetarianism only fueled this disconnection. The food I was eating was packaged and processed beyond recognition, coming from monocropped farms and giant factories, so I felt no connection to it. Not only that, but because eating it made me feel badly, I was encouraged to ignore my body’s natural signals.

Eating meat, on the other hand, made me conscious of where my food came from, and gave my meals meaning. It connected me with the food I ate, and encouraged me to listen to my body. Real meat, unlike its vegan counterpart, doesn’t need to come hyper-processed and packaged from a factory. It comes whole and raw, forcing us to engage with it—to engage with life, with death. While this can be daunting, especially for new meat-eaters, it’s also exciting. I’ve grown a love of finding local butchers and vendors at the farmer’s market who I can talk with and buy meat from. I get ideas from them, experiment with new simple ways of cooking the meat, and invite friends over to share it.

The beauty of sharing meat with others is that it gives us a chance to engage in real conversation about the subject. A lot of my peers are vegetarian or vegan—or eat meat, but feel guilty about it. So, I always like to open up a conversation. The other day I made a new friend. In our first conversation, I asked, “Do you eat meat?” Not your average conversation opener, but she was intrigued (or humored me). “Yeah,” she said, “But I’m trying to eat less, because I know it’s so bad for the environment.” “Not necessarily,” I replied. “I used to think the same thing, but I’ve read up on it and there’s some pretty amazing new info out there…” And thus, our conversation began. All too often, our dialogue around meat are polarizing and lacking nuance because we get caught in our own ideals. For example, a blanket statement like “Factory farming is bad so I don’t eat meat” is often the end of the conversation, not the beginning. But I think that most of us can agree that factory farming is inhumane and we want a more equitable food system, so we can use these agreements as a starting point for a nuanced conversation.

A couple days later, my new friend came over to make dinner together. We made beef meatballs and roasted veggies. This was her first time cooking meat. It was such a wonderful evening,  talking about deep issues like climate change anxiety, animal welfare, and listening to our bodies. We learned so much from each other, and from our food. As we sat there after the meal feeling fulfilled, I thought to myself, this is nourishment.

Truths & Tips for the Meat-Curious

Truths:

For a lot of us, it’s hard to enjoy meat because we’ve been conditioned to view it as wrong in a myriad of ways. So, here is a list of truths around meat. If we can accept them, then we can eat meat with pleasure and gratitude, not an ounce of guilt.

• Eating animals is not sinful. In nature, animals eat animals. Humans have eaten other animals since the dawn of time.
• Eating meat does not contribute to climate change even a fraction as much as other activities like travel, buying virtually anything, or eating packaged foods. (If we wanted to have zero impact on the climate we’d have to live off the grid with no car, internet, or possessions of any kind, and forage and hunt for all our own food!)
• Grass-fed/pasture-raised/regenerative meat works in harmony with nature and can actually help fight global warming by sequestering carbon.
• Animals die, and letting animals die of “natural causes” isn’t more humane than ethically farming them.
• For every food we eat, something dies. In the farming of grains and other crops for “plant-based” diets, huge numbers of small animals die. In this way, killing a cow to feed many people is no more immoral than farming grains.
• Meat is good for us, and the science correlating meat with disease has been debunked. Beef in particular is filled with fat and protein and minerals, which our bodies need.

Tips:

Getting started in the world of meat can be incredibly daunting, especially coming out of vegetarianism. What kinds of meat do we like? How do we cook them? But over time I’ve learned some things that really helped:

1. Start simple. In my beginning years as an omnivore, I didn’t even cook any meat myself because I was so nervous about handling it raw. But over the past couple years, knowing I was going to be living at college soon, I pushed myself to get over my fear of raw meat and learn to cook it. I started with very basic dishes like baked chicken and burgers, which required minimal attention and were hard to mess up. Once I’d gotten comfortable with those, I graduated to slightly more involved dishes like pork ribs, beef stew and steak. Simple recipes are the perfect way for getting into the world of meat!
2. Batch cook your meat. Off at college, I’ve gotten into prepping all my meat at the start of each week. While cooking a new dish of chicken or beef each night would be too time-consuming, spending a few hours every Sunday meal prepping for the whole week is manageable. I like to make super simple beef meatballs and crispy chicken thighs (recipes below). Then I add this meat to my lunches and dinners with endless combinations of veggies and sauces to make super hearty, delicious meals.
3. Embrace premade humanely-raised meat. No pressure to cook all of your meat from scratch! Companies like Applegate make wonderful pasture-raised products that make eating meat very quick and simple when you’re busy. I always have some of their breakfast sausages and beef hot dogs in my freezer to heat up and eat with any meal for instant protein. This is also a great place to start if you want to begin eating meat but don’t feel ready to cook it yourself.

My Go-To Simple Recipes

Crispy Chicken Thighs

Ingredients:

-6 bone-in, skin on chicken thighs

-2 Tbsp avocado oil

-kosher salt and pepper

-optional: 4 Tbsp Primal Kitchen buffalo sauce

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 425ºF and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Pat the chicken down with paper towel, then place on the baking sheet. Drizzle the thighs with a glug of avocado oil, then spread evenly using a paper towel. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.
3. Bake for about 30-35 minutes. The tops should be crispy and the center cooked through.
4. Optional (but highly recommended): when they’re done baking, drizzle the thighs in the buffalo sauce, then place back into the oven. Turn it on broil, and let them crisp up for 5 minutes.
5. If using as meal prep, remove the bone from the thighs, then place the meat in an airtight container and store in the fridge for up to about 5 days.

Herby Meatballs

Ingredients:

-2 lbs grass-fed ground beef

-1 large egg

-3 medium shallots or 1large onion

-1 head of garlic

-2 tsp coconut flour or 2 Tbsp gluten-free flour

-1 tsp each: dried basil, oregano, thyme

-1 tsp kosher salt

-a few grinds of black pepper

1. Preheat your oven to 425ºF and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Peel and slice the shallots into small chunks. Peel the head of garlic and finely dice.
3. Place the shallots and garlic in a large bowl. Add in the beef, egg, coconut flour, and spices. Mix it all together with your hands until fully incorporated.
4. Roll into balls about 2 inches in diameter (the larger they are, the more tender they will be). Place evenly on the baking sheet so they’re not touching.
5. Bake for about 17 minutes, or just until they’re not too pink in the middle.
6. If using for meal prep, place in an airtight container and store in the fridge for up to about a week, or store in the freezer for up to a month.