Two Beef Sticks But One Is Award-Winning In Taste & Health

If you said, “yes” please know that you are not alone. Today, paleo snacks comprise an incredible market.

Our goal at Paleovalley is to enable vibrant health for as many people as possible. In order to accomplish this goal, our original efforts were aimed primarily at providing quality information regarding WHAT to eat in order to thrive. As we have progressed on our journey, we have also noticed a need for high quality snacks and food products that make this lifestyle manageable. Because of this need, we have expanded our mission. Today, we strive to provide the paleo community with high quality information as well as the highest quality paleo snacks. Most importantly, paleo snacks you can trust. To us this means:

• No GMOs
• No Gluten
• No dairy
• No additives
• No freaky chemicals
• No exceptions

Food manufacturing can be a challenging and tedious. Although, we began this process with naevity and idealistic intentions, we soon began to understand why so many manufacturers cut corners. High quality food products made with integrity:

-Take longer to design
-Are more difficult to source
-Require more time to be manufactured
-Necessitate stricter quality control
and last but not least…
-Yield significantly smaller profit margins

Therefore, those who are in it for the money, won’t last long unless they abandon their high standards.

Fortunately, we are not in this business for the money. We want to survive, of course, but we absolutely refuse to compromise our standards in the name of profit. That’s what makes us different.  Although many food manufacturing companies would rather keep you in the dark regarding their manufacturing processes, we value transparency above all else. Ask anything and everything about the creation of our products and we will always answer honestly. Promise.

Our Paleovalley priorities are:

1. Quality
2. Integrity
3. Transparency
4. Every time

Therefore, in the spirit of transparency, I want to take a minute to tell you exactly why we chose to make our 100% grass-fed beef sticks (that were recently named the #2 best snack of 2014 by Paleo Magazine:) the way that we did. We began our beef stick story with a mission to make the highest quality beef stick on the market. In order to do so, we had the following criteria:

• Nothing less than the highest quality, 100% grass-fed beef
• Only organic spices
• No freaky chemicals
• No questionable additives
• Minimal, clean processing practices

Finding high quality, 100% grass-fed beef and organic spices was fairly easy. It was the beef processing that was the trickiest part. We learned that there are two methods commonly used to manufacture the type of beef to sticks we were hoping to provide: Encapsulation and fermentation.

High quality ingredients can be used in both processes yet there are important differences. Most manufacturers prefer the encapsulation method because the fermentation process can take over 10 hours. The live bacteria used in the fermentation process can also be difficult to control and special care is required to ensure that the end product remains moist. In other words, fermentation takes longer and is more difficult.

For manufacturers, encapsulation is clearly a better option. However, this method is not ideal for the consumer as it involves the use of hydrogenated oils that are often genetically modified.

What are hydrogenated oils?

Hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil is made by taking oils such as palm, soy, corn and adding intense heat (over 500 degrees), extreme amounts of pressure, hydrogen gas and a catalyst (often nickel or aluminum) to rearranges the molecules in the oil. This process makes the oils solid rather than liquid at room temperature and produces trans fats. Trans fats are actually more closely related to plastic than food. They have no place in a high quality food product.

Hydrogenated oils are utilized because they are a dead food which helps to prevent food spoilage. These oils have been found to damage artery walls, enzymes, and cell membranes. They have also been shown to increase the risk of heart disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes.  For these reasons, hydrogenated oils should NEVER ever be consumed. In fact, even FDA has made a preliminary recommendation that partially hydrogenated oils (trans fat) are no longer “GRAS” (generally recognized as safe) and should therefore be avoided.

That’s why we use a 100% natural fermentation process to preserve our beef sticks. As perfectionists, we strive to only use processing methods that impart zero risk to the consumer. Besides, we knew that re-embracing the age-old art of fermentation would make our paleolithic ancestors plum proud.

Here’s to high quality 100% grass-fed beef sticks that appeal to both your taste buds and your hopes for a safer, more sustainable food supply. We hope that you love them just as much as we do! 

You can get more information on them or purchase are beef sticks here.