Though America still eats more meat than any virtually other country in the world, consumption at home has been on a downward slide for the past several years. Concerns about factory farming methods and its environmental impact; animal welfare; potential health risks as well as the Meatless Monday movement, all have helped fuel the slide.

And while some people have cut out meat altogether, many people have simply swapped cows for chicken, thinking it a healthier or earth-friendlier option. Not surprisingly, the switchover to chicken has increased demand and the poultry industry has answered the call, in a way thatā€™s anything but healthy for man or bird. In short, chickenā€™s got problems ā€” and if youā€™re a poultry-eater, so do you.

Letā€™s break it down:

1. Factory-farmed chicken, aka Big Chicken, is the stuff of nightmares.

We’re talking over-stuffed coops, floors covered with excrement, and thousands of live animals packed so tightly theyā€™re barely able move, much less engage in comfort behaviors like pecking, wing-stretching or simply walking.

The result: stressed-out chickens with reduced immunity to the illnesses that rip through over-crowded facilities. The sick birds (and often the well ones) receive multiple courses of antibiotics, traces of which eventually wind up in our bodies, and over time contribute to antibiotic resistance. In short, nothing good is happening down on the olā€™ Big Chicken farm.

2. Factory-farmed chicken poisons people and the environment.

The U.S. raises roughly 10 billion chickens a year, which generate billions of pounds of excrement annually. While some is used as fertilizer, thereā€™s literally tons more waste, which, no matter how well-managed, still tends to spillover, contaminating air, land and water.

And poultry processing is pretty tough on people, too. Workers face daily exposure to the toxic chemicals used to clean and disinfect poultry, which often trigger severe respiratory problems, sinus troubles, rashes and burns.

If that werenā€™t enough, poultry production is also indefensibly and insanely wasteful: itā€™s estimated that it takes roughly 700 gallons of water and six pounds of grain to produce just one pound of chicken meat. Is this any way to spend our precious resources?

3. What the cluck? Your chickenā€™s going to China ā€“ and back.

In what must be one of the looniest pieces of legislation ever, late this past August, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, perhaps thinking everyone was on vacation and wouldnā€™t notice, cleared the way for your birds to go on an all-expense paid trip from the U.S. to China and back. In China the chicken will be cooked, packaged, and then shipped back to the U.S for sale.

Given Chinaā€™s questionable track record on food safety, this seems like one of the most wasteful and potentially dangerous chicken-processing schemes ever devised. I urge you to fight back by refusing to buy pre-cooked, ready-to-serve or heat ā€˜n eat, processed chicken products ā€” no matter how much the kids protest!

4. Connect with your chicken ā€” and look for pasture-raised.

While raising your own chickens is fantastic for those who can, chances are youā€™re not one of them. The next best thing is to get to know a local chicken producer from whom you can source fresh, pasture-raised birds. Youā€™ll find them through your local farmers market, health food store, food cooperative or CSA ā€” or visit LocalHarvest.com for lists of small-scale, local and organic farms.

An added bonus with these types of extra healthy birds: feel free to eat the skin! For years weā€™ve been brainwashed into thinking skin is bad but if itā€™s from healthy, pasture-raised chickens, itā€™s all good, as they say. If it comes from one of the aforementioned good, clean, toxin-free sources, the saturated fat found in chicken is not bad for you, so enjoy that chicken skin youā€™ve been denying yourself all these years.

5. Know your chicken lingo!

If you must go the supermarket route, then bone up on the sometimes confusing terminology and buy the best chicken you can afford:

Certified organic is the best you can buy from the supermarket, and it’s pricey, in part because it means no drugs, antibiotics, chemical additives or pesticides. It also means feed without animal by-products and the animal was given some daily exercise.

Certified humane and handled means your chickenā€™s been raised according to standards that require ample space, shelter and gentle handling to limit stress, and it prohibits the use of antibiotics and additives.

Free-range means the chickens get to go to an outside, fenced-in pen every day, though thereā€™s no requirement for how much time they spend outdoors.

Raised without antibiotics means just that, but it doesnā€™t mean drug-free ā€” these chickens are allowed to be dosed with other meds.

Raised without hormones is a label you may often see, but itā€™s fairly meaningless, as the USDA doesnā€™t allow their use in chicken in the first place. (Hormones are more commonly used in beef.)

Natural or farm-raised are fairly useless terms, which tell consumers nothing about the way the chicken was raised, what it was fed, or if it was treated with meds and antibiotics. Assume these chickens are the most industrial of all!

Take a page from Grandma and lighten up!

With the rise of Big Chicken and availability of cheap, plentiful, low-quality factory-farmed birds, weā€™ve come to expect a chicken in every pot, every day. Look back just a generation or two and youā€™ll see that for some of our parents and many of our grandparents, poultry was a special treat, not an everyday event. Perhaps itā€™s time we take a page from Grannyā€™s book and start cutting back on chicken consumption to help the environment, the animals, the workers and ourselves.

Here are a few suggestions on how to get the ball rolling:

  • Consider taking part in the Meatless Mondays movement, and add your own Chicken-free Thursdays to help broaden your culinary horizons, be kinder to the earth and to support healthy gut bacteria.
  • Think of chicken as the side show, not the main eventā€¦.when you do eat chicken, eat smaller amounts.
  • Remember, if you are scaling back on animal products, do so without trying to fill up on processed non-meat alternatives, which tend to be full of health-sapping additives and preservatives.

BOTTOM LINE: I encourage you to buy the best, healthiest, freshest, pasture-raised, organic poultry (and meats, too!) possible ā€” and savor every bite.

About the writer – Dr. Frank Lipman is an internationally recognized expert in the field of integrative medicine. He is the founder and director of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in New York City, where for over 20 years his personal brand of healing has helped thousands of people reclaim their vitality and recover their zest for life. Focused on sustainable wellness — instead of quick fixes — he offers patients a customized blend of Western medicine with acupuncture, nutritional counseling, vitamins and herbs, relaxation techniques, physical therapy and bodywork. In 2010 he developed Be Well by Dr. Frank Lipman, a line of leading-edge supplements and health programs. He is the author of REVIVE: Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again; and TOTAL RENEWAL; 7 key steps to Resilience, Vitality and Long-Term Health. Visit his blog, follow him on or join his Facebook community today. Also check out Dr. Lipman’s MBG Video Course, 14-Day Detox.

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