‘Meathead’ the BBQ guy goes meatless for a whole month

No one loves meat the way Meathead loves meat.

OK, to clarify: Many of Meathead’s fans really love meat too. That’s why they flock to his website, amazingribs.com, to find barbecue recipes and techniques, read his blog and generally bask in the special camaraderie that comes from mutual meat love.

Which is why it came as a bit of a shock to everyone — including Meathead himself — when he decided to stop eating meat for an entire month.

How could something like this happen? Especially with a guy known as a “Barbecue Whisperer” and “Hedonism Evangelist” — a guy whose motto is “No rules in the bedroom or dining room”?

It didn’t happen overnight. Meathead — also known as Craig Goldwyn, 61, of the Chicago area — has spent a lifetime preparing all kinds of animal protein, putting the biggest premium on taste while doing so.

In recent months, though, he’s gotten increasingly irked over the practices used on big, industrial factory farms. The more he’s learned, the more alarmed he’s become. And that’s what led him to do the unexpected:

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He went on a 30-day meat strike.

“I want to use my prominence in the food community and as a man whose reputation was built on cooking meat, to send a message to the factory farms that I think they can do better,” Goldwyn wrote in his blog. “I am willing to pay more for my meat if it is grown better.”

Antibiotic use gets Meathead’s goat
Goldwyn’s protest began on Aug. 9 and ended this week. During a telephone interview mere moments before breaking his self-imposed fast, he eagerly answered a question from his wife about what she should pick up at the store for dinner: “PORK CHOPS!”

He reflected on his meatless month and said he’d learned a lot. When asked how the experiment went, he said any personal details about himself don’t really matter. The fact that he lost 5 pounds? Immaterial! The fact that he endured abdominal pain during his final week without meat? Not important!

Craig Goldwyn

Mmmmmm ... ribs. The 30 days are up, and Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn is back on the sauce.

What’s more significant, Meathead said, is the way meat and fish are grown in the United States. In particular, he’s troubled by the widespread use of preventive antibiotics on factory farms.

“I’ve seen enough about antibiotics to scare me,” said Goldwyn, who is an avid reader and is married to a food scientist with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are being bred, and they can infect humans. ...

“The meat industry has been under great pressure to drive down the price of meat and dairy and bring it to market cheap, and shortcuts have been taken. ... Half a billion eggs had to be recalled at about the middle of my 30 days. That just drove home my point.”

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Goldwyn has become a big fan of grass-fed cattle, heritage hogs, pastured chickens and wild fish. He said they taste great, and because these animals aren’t raised in such close quarters, they aren’t routinely given antibiotics to prevent illnesses.

“The better farming practice is to watch the herds carefully — which, of course, takes more manpower — and keep them more spread out — which requires more land — and if you see an animal get sick, separate them from the herd and use antibiotics only as needed,” Goldwyn said. “A growing number of farmers are proving they can do this.”

Tomato sandwiches, ‘grilled spaghetti’
When Goldwyn first began writing about these issues, he had no idea what kind of landmine he’d be detonating. In response to his blog posts on his website and on The Huffington Post, more than 8,000 impassioned readers — from farmers and cattle ranchers to vegans and animal-rights advocates — wrote in to share their thoughts about all things meat- and animal-related.

He’s considered so many thoughtful arguments on so many sides from so many people that he’s become a bit of a layman-expert. And while he never intended to become a vegetarian or give up meat forever, he was prompted in part to try his 30-day meatless experiment because of all the feedback he received.

In a blog post announcing his plan to go meatless, he wrote:

“In addition to my desire to send a message, I have two other motives: 1. I have read scores of testimonials from vegetarians about how going meatless made them feel great. I want to see how it makes me feel. 2. I love veggies and carbs almost as much as meat. I want to challenge my outdoor cooking skills and see if I can discover and create new dishes that will satisfy my meat-loving readers.”

Create new dishes he did. He called his most interesting invention “grilled spaghetti” — which, in essence, involves grilling plum tomatoes and other marinara sauce ingredients before chopping them up finely and putting them in a sauce pan. “I wound up with this wonderful, rich, smoky marinara sauce,” Meathead said. “It was great!”

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Several of his dinner entrees included pasta. Here’s Meathead’s description of his first meatless dinner in his blog: “Bowtie pasta topped with fresh warm juicy tomatoes from the garden topped with fresh basil from the garden topped with a mix of cottage cheese and milk topped with a sprinkle of chipotle powder and herbed sea salt and washed down with an Alsace Pinot Blanc.”

He also stuffed zucchinis, made meatless pizzas on the grill, ate ears of sweet corn and devoured plenty of juicy tomato sandwiches for lunch. (These sandwiches involve monster tomatoes from his garden, good bread, light mayo, sea salt, basil and balsamic vinegar.)

“Going meatless in August is cheating, by the way,” he confessed during the interview. “We live off our vegetable garden anyway during a regular August.”

Sustainable Sunday before a Meatless Monday?
Of course, higher-quality protein sources cost more money. What’s a family on a limited budget supposed to do about that?

“That’s a really serious issue,” Goldwyn said. “I’m in the suburbs of Chicago living a middle-class life. I can afford to spend a little bit more on meat. But on the South Side of Chicago? That’s a whole different story. We have our food deserts in this city, and there are food deserts all over the place.”

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He knows it’s not realistic for most families to spend big bucks on food most of the time, but he does have an idea.

Borrowing from the concept of “Meatless Monday” — an international campaign that encourages people to forego meat at least one day a week for health and environmental reasons — Goldwyn is trying to whip up support for something he’s dubbed “Sustainable Sunday.”

“Spend a little more on your Sunday dinner,” Goldwyn said. “Try to get grass-fed beef or meat cut from a heritage hog or pastured chickens. It’s a little more expensive, but let’s help those smaller farmers find a good market for what they’re doing.”

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He said it’s not always easy to find sources for these meats, but LocalHarvest.com is at least one good starting point for curious consumers.

“I’m not a scientist, and I’m way late in the game here, but I think a lot of meat lovers don’t necessarily know about a lot of these issues,” Goldwyn said. “When Meathead goes meatless, well, hopefully it caught some eyes.”

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