Nose to Tail: Could You Learn to Eat the Whole Animal?

Caution vegetarians, you might as well stop reading right now. I am about to embark on explaining to my fellow meat eaters why supporting whole animal consumption is considered a sustainable practice. Now there is no doubt that eating only local fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains can be the most eco efficient means to nourishing our bodies. But many of us environmentally conscious consumers need or crave animal protein, and if you do, then supporting nose-to-tail animal eating may be the most sustainable option.

I've noticed a recent culinary trend in my Brooklyn community where restaurants are choosing to purchase entire animals raised naturally on nearby farms, butcher in house, and use most of their parts in the establishment's cuisine, leaving little animal to waste.

Brooklyn's Get Fresh Chef and Owner Juventino Avila proudly admits, "When I purchase the whole animal, all the parts are being used even the bones for doggie treats."

It's really a culinary practice that many of us learn from historical text, foreign travel, or older, sensible generations recollecting meals uncommon to today's Westernized taste buds such as heart, feet, tripe, liver, or blood pudding. In fact, just simply imagining the whole animal and the farmer that raised it while placing its savory meat in to our mouths is a thought typically kept at distance from today's dinner table.

What are ecological benefits of nose to tail?

What I've learned from some of these chefs and purveyors is they are not simply trying to challenge our palates for mere amusement, but instead are thoughtfully challenging our conventional relationship with the food we rely on for physical nourishment and pleasure. And while considering the whole animal and the farmer that raised it, we are also relating closely to several significant factors that influence our human existence?ecological health, cultural nourishment and economic sustainability.

Aaron French, scientist and chef at The Sunny Side Café in Albany, CA explains to me, "The Head to Tail movement is challenging cultural norms. This is also why it's become so celebrated—because people are looking for these connections to what gives them life. When people realize they can take a evening class in pig butchery, or spend a weekend with friends breaking down a whole pig to share, they are creating an active connection to their food chain, and that food chain is their most direct connection to the ecology of the earth."

From an ecological perspective, it's simple math really--feeding multiple mouths with one whole animal and all its edible parts is much more efficient and less tolling on our environment than processing multiple animals to feed only a few mouths, which is what we do when limiting ourselves to eating only a single part. The challenge though for many of us is learning how to eat parts of an animal that we're not familiar with seeing on menus. Just imagine if our hunter and gather ancestors fussed over only eating the muscle tissue found around the ribs of animals they chased. Well the hunters would not have been able to feed all the families that relied on them. But today that isn't the consequence?instead treeless, plowed acres of land for grazing animals and their feed along with industrial animal farms plague our environment while working to meet our unsustainable demand for packaged cuts of protein. Learning to eat the whole animal and its many parts cuts down on the sheer volume of animals processed.

Avila describes the most unconventional part of the animal he likes to cook and recommend is beef heart. "Tastes amazing," he reassures. "Very tender and doesn't have the funk of liver. Pig trotters make for tasty tacos."

French, a tropical ecologist who spent several years living with the Baka pygmies in Cameroon explains, "The bottom line, scientifically, is that there is a significant ecological investment involved in the production of all animal tissues. The more parts of each animal that are used equals a lower net impact per pound of meat eaten."

Understanding this might warrant a greater understanding of how industrial meat production depletes enormous amounts of natural resources. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reports that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world's greenhouse gases, which is more than transportation does, while 30 percent of the earth's ice-free land is involved in livestock production. And as the The New York Times reports, Americans consume twice the amount of meat per day than other nations--at 5 percent of the world population we kill and process 15 percent of the world's animals for consumption. Judy Grant, Director of Value The Meal campaign reveals that the largest buyer of industrial meat in the U.S. today is McDonalds.

French describes in more detail the impact of meat consumption in common ecological metrics, "The amount of nitrate leached into the environment per kg of pork is 280 grams while beef is 1,729 grams," he calculates. "And the 'global warming potential' per kg beef is roughly ten times higher than for chicken. Additionally, there are a related set of statistics that refer to how many gallons of water and how many calories of grain are required to produce each calorie of each type of meat."

Nose-to-tail animal eating not only reduces our excessive demand for a high volume of processed animals, but it can also offer better quality food for a cheaper price per ounce.

"Normally you would have to pay more for a loin, but if you purchase the whole animal you pay one very inexpensive price. As for cooking and eating, it's like buying fish, you don't know how old a fish fillet is, but if you have access to the whole fish you can see it's eyes, gills, etc for freshness," Chef Juventino explains.

After speaking with these chefs, I sat pondering a few things. One: will I actually be able to condition my taste buds into enjoying these foreign animal parts? Two: Who do I know that will be adventurous enough to break down an entire animal with me? And three: Will I really buy a whole animal and be able to store it my kitchen? I don't have answers to the first two questions yet, but I did learn a few tips on how I can actually support nose-to-tail eating, whether I buy and store the animal or not.

How to Support Nose to Tail Eating

- The easiest thing to do is become a patron of restaurants or butcher markets that make an effort to buy and butcher whole animals and birds purchased from local, sustainable farms. Besides supporting your local small farmers and purveyors, you may just find yourself paying less for that prime cut of meat you already love. If you aren't sure whether or not your favorite markets or restaurants do this, then ask. You deserve to know where your food comes from.

- Contact and visit a sustainable farm in your region that raises animals or birds for consumption and ask them to provide you with a list of buyers they sell whole animals or birds to. Explain you want to support them and their vendors.

- Look for a food buyers club or CSA in your area that may already be buying whole animals and butchering them to share among several families. You can also create your own buyers club once you locate a local farm that raises animals to sell for eating.