What cows? Steaks grow on trees … don’t they?

If you missed last week’s column on It’s a Southern Thing (SouthernThing.com), you can read it by click here . Below are the first paragraphs.

Raise your hand if you have ever felt the need have a closer relationship to the animals you are about to eat. Go ahead, I won’t judge … as far as you know.

I am a person who prefers to pretend the steaks I eat were found that way in the wild, sitting perfectly cooked beside a baked potato and some A1. I don’t want any information that might make me feel guilty for eating meat, such as if the cow had a name, or soulful eyes, or soulful-eyed offspring I had unwittingly orphaned. I certainly never wanted information about its diet or age.

But apparently today’s young and hip population, by which I mean people who don’t use the word “hip,” want to know personal information about their food from the time before it was food.

I was reading about this new trend in the 2020 Farmer’s Almanac that I bought for Sweetums for Christmas. I figured since we’ve moved to the country, a full five miles from the nearest Publix, he would want to read about farm life. I was casually flipping through the book’s Trend section and came across this little nugget: “People are talking about ordering steak from menus that specify the source animal’s feeding regimen and age at ‘harvest.’”

What do they hope to learn? Are they worried the cow had some bad habits that will somehow transfer to them? It’s not as if the cow got to choose, like a condemned prisoner does, so it’s a safe bet it didn’t have a six-pack of Natty Lite and some e-cigs. Click here to read the full column on It’s a Southern Thing.