Glacier Grown vs. Conventionally Raised Beef

Karen Dunham • Oct 01, 2020

Not sure what you are actually buying in the grocery store meat section?

Do you know what you are actually buying when you purchase meat in the grocery store? Being informed is the first step to making great food choices for you and your family.

Here are just 5 very important ways that Glacier Grown Beef is different than the beef you’ll find in the grocery store coolers:

Difference #1
Glacier Grown Beef - raised outside on pasture in wide open spaces (social distancing in MT since 1889, baby!!) with fresh air, fresh water, and sunshine ( see above Glacier Grown beef photo ).

Conventionally raised beef - confined to feed lots, at least part of their lives, with 1000’s of other animals in very small spaces ( see below - conventional feed lot photo - hungry? us either!).

Difference #2

Glacier Grown Beef - never fed hormones or animal by-products, but instead, grown as God intended, to a natural size in their own time.

Conventionally Raised Beef - fed hormones, growth enhancers, and animal by-products in order to promote quick, unnatural growth to a standardized industry weight. Did you know that leftover snack food and junk food from large corporations are used for cattle feed? Cheese puffs puts on some quick bulk, but what about nutritional quality? Pretty much zero.

Difference #3

Glacier Grown Beef - never given antibiotics. This animal lifestyle and environment create safe and healthy conditions where the cows don’t need antibiotics.

Conventionally Raised Beef - given routine antibiotics in feed to keep animals from getting sick because of their unsanitary and crowded living conditions.

Difference #4

Glacier Grown Beef - fed a 100% pesticide-free, grass diet. The cows eat native, live grasses during late spring, summer, and fall; they eat dormant, stockpiled grasses and native grass hay during the winter when grasses aren’t growing. They are grass fed and grass finished.

Conventionally Raised Beef - fed grains, soy, and food by-products in addition to grass & hay. Often the hay that these animals are fed in a feed lot have been sprayed with pesticides as well.

Difference #5

Glacier Grown - Humanely slaughtered in their natural environment or in large, outdoor pastures to assure that the animals are comfortable, calm and relaxed.

Conventionally Raised Beef - slaughtered with many other animals in a high stress, non-humane, generally indoor environment.

Raising cattle the Glacier Grown way takes much longer and is more expensive than conventionally raised beef, but all of our growers are committed to these principals. Not only does this lifestyle produce superbly delicious meat, but it is much better for the animals, ensuring their happy and healthy lives.

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Wonderful Things about Raw Honey

By Karen Dunham • 03 May, 2024

Raw Honey is one truly amazing substance. We all know that it tastes fantastic, but did you know that it also provides a myriad of health benefits for us both internally and externally? First, let’s talk about what defines Raw Honey as opposed to conventional honey. Raw honey is not filtered, but instead is strained, often gravitationally, in order to remove bits of beeswax, bee parts, dead bees, and other impurities that are in the hives and honey frames. To be considered raw, honey isn't heat extracted from the hives or ever heated above the temperature that bees keep their hives (around 95-105 degrees) in order to strain or pour it. This careful process allows the honey to keep all of the beneficial nutrients that are naturally present in the hive, including pollen and propolis. According to Dr. Josh Axe, raw Honey is a “functional food” containing 22 amino acids, 27 minerals, 5000 enzymes, and at least 16 known antioxidants. Raw Honey is also anti-fungal, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory and antiseptic. These properties make Raw Honey perfect for applying to wounds and killing infections as well taking internally for digestive and gut issues. Personally, we have used raw honey to heal a staph infection, and it also worked wonders for me when I had a case of food poisoning. This fabulous substance is full of phytonutrients, phytochemicals, and polyphenols that act as antioxidants, hunting down free radicals within the body, boosting our immune systems and unlocking neuroprotective functions that aid in brain performance. Raw Honey does all of the above, and it even tastes fantastic too! Isn’t that crazy? I mean, we all know how great liver is for you, but it definitely does NOT taste anything like honey. There are some other very interesting aspects about Raw Honey as well. For instance, Raw Honey never goes bad. It can freeze with no change in properties, and if you happen to stash a container in your storage room and find it years later (that'd be me!), it will still be perfectly fine - just hardened or crystallized. And speaking of crystallizing and hardening, honey does one or the other depending on the climate, water content, and conditions during the year in which it was made. Personally, I LOVE hardened honey, but most years, honey tends to crystallize rather than harden. Honey is harvested once a year, and so over the course of that year, it crystallizes (or hardens); some years it crystallizes quickly and other years more slowly. Our bee keeper says that honey is alive and can change in color and texture from year to year, even within the same hives that are in the exact location. It is a truly miraculous product. We LOVE our Raw Honey. We’ve never tasted anything like it. I never particularly liked honey, and I NEVER would have licked the honey spoon, until I tried the honey we sell at Glacier Grown. That super dark stuff that the grocery stores call honey is a far inferior product. I’ve even had some honeys that are called raw, but are pretty terrible. You don’t have to sacrifice taste for quality and nutritional benefit - you can have both!! If you haven’t tried our honey yet, do yourself a favor and give it a shot . We have some in stock now, from last fall’s harvest, but with the summer farm stand season starting in May, I’m expecting that we will sell it all prior to the 2024 honey being ready at the end of September. Running out of Glacier Grown Raw Honey is never a good thing.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and just HELLO!

By Karen Dunham • 21 Jan, 2022

It's been a while since we've been in touch. The last 6 months have been a wild and woolly ride over at the Dunham household, but we've finally come up for air. We hope that you and yours enjoyed a lovely holiday season and that you have headed into the New Year full of hope and enthusiasm. Those of you who have been with us for years, undoubtedly, see a different group of people in the above photo than when we made deliveries to Southern California in the past. All of those previously little people have grown up - the baby started college this past year, and the oldest has a baby of his own. All in the blink of an eye. We wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you - we appreciate you and your continued support. It is a privilege to provide the very best 100% grass fed, grass finished, pasture raised, chemical-free, humanely raised meats that our northwest corner has to offer. If you are looking to stock your freezer for the next few months, before spring deliveries begin (we will start taking orders in March and deliveries will start in late May/early June), we still have some items remaining from the Fall Harvest ready to ship.