We’re Convinced Meat Tastes Better When It’s Raised Humanely
We’re awfully suggestible, as eaters.
The science, to be frank, is not wholly conclusive; studies do indicate that stress during slaughter can raise certain hormone levels that can affect flavor, and there’s a general understanding that grass-fed beef tastes a bit different from grain-fed. But to spin out that kind of specific research into a broad conclusion would be foolish. In fact, there’s basically no real research into the flavor difference between meat and eggs raised in what we’d consider humane conditions compared with more mass-market, oft-cruel conditions.
In fact, we humans happen to be ridiculously suggestible when it comes to this kind of thing. Serious Eats performed a little informal study in which testers ate various kinds of eggs; those testers preferred eggs with more orange yolks when they were visually distinct, but when the eggs looked identical (through the use of food coloring)? No consensus whatsoever.
Now some new research from Northeastern University shows just how much our brains can trick us. In a new study, identical pieces of meat were given descriptions identifying them as from factory farms or from humane farms. En masse, the testers preferred the flavor of the “humane” meat, even dismissing the “factory-farmed” meat as greasy, salty, or not fresh.
Of course, this isn’t reason not to bother with humane livestock practices; there are plenty of environmental, economic, and, you know, basic moral reasons to treat our meat animals as well as possible. But it certainly does indicate that the conventional wisdom of superior-tasting humane meat isn’t necessarily based in objective fact, and perhaps that campaigns to promote (objectively better for the world) humane meat might do well to avoid making those kinds of claims.
Subscribe
0 Comments
Most Voted
Newest
Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].We’re Convinced Meat Tastes Better When It’s Raised Humanely
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
August 30, 2016
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit