We're Convinced Meat Tastes Better When It's Raised Humanely - Modern Farmer

We’re Convinced Meat Tastes Better When It’s Raised Humanely

We're awfully suggestible, as eaters.

USDA, Flickr

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.

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