Deli meats usually don’t cross my mind often. I don’t spend a lot of time analyzing them, I usually just pick a decent looking lunch meat, at a decent price and move my shopping cart along. Well, my mind has changed since I was asked to join a webinar from Applegate Organic and Natural Meats.

The webinar was put on by Moms Meet and Applegate. It was an informative and shocking experience! For instance, I had no idea that so many meat products – especially sliced meat had antibiotics.

When I think of antibiotics, I think of a sparingly used disease fighting tools for humans. Right? Well, guess what? Farmers are actively using antibiotics to make their farm animals grow faster, not get sick and ultimately making the most out of the animal meat (for money that is). In turn, now antibiotics contaminate our food, water and soil! Um, scary?

Very scary if you have been eating meat from the companies that use antibiotics in their food. Antibiotics are important, in case you get a serious health issue, like an infection. But when they are in our food sources, we develop a barrier and become immune to them, therefore we need more and more antibiotics to help rid infections. This newly developed immunity to antibiotics also means length of the infection! Shocking right?

That is why I am now paying more attention than ever to deli meats and what I consume.

One company I found that does not use any antibiotics in their animals is Applegate. They are a very transparent company – they like to present as much information to interested parties as they can. In fact, you can visit their website, type in your products meat code and actually look up each and every product to see the location your meat is coming from! This transparency develops a trust between their consumers, suppliers, and other companies they work with. I love that they have high standards and believe in honesty with the public.

Applegate never uses hormones, antibiotics, fillers, etc. And you can tell this by just checking out their products in stores. A good rule of thumb – the more information on the label the better. Look for labels with words like, "organic’. "no antibiotics", "all natural ingredients" and similar.

After spending a good amount of time learning about Applegate and their good practices, I got to test a few of the meat products out. I went to Whole Foods and picked up some bacon and sliced turkey meat. They had quite a selection of products. Hams, hotdogs, salamis and more!

We found the products to be of superior taste and quality. The bacon ($7.99) and turkey ($4.99) were both fresh and delicious. We made some club sandwiches using the meats and cooked the rest of the bacon for breakfast. Another way I like to enjoy sliced turkey is spreading cream cheese on it, placing a few slices of garden cucumbers inside, rolling it and eating it like you would a tortilla. (If this is too messy – you can use an actually tortilla too!) The selection of lunch meats would make for many creative sandwiches and wraps – great for work or school boxed lunches!

The Applegate products are on the higher end in price on the grocery shelves, but don’t let the price deter you. You get what you pay for. You can beat real, natural and organic. These meats are free of chemical nitrites, are moist, and are a great choice of meat protein. I absolutely recommend them to my friends, and of course that includes you, my readers!

Join In!

• Find Applegate online at: www.applegate.com
• www.facebook.com/applegatefarms
• www.youtube.com/ApplegateFarms
• www.Twitter.com/Applegate

:: Giveaway ::

a Rafflecopter giveaway

** Please leave your entries using the above Rafflecopter form. It might take a bit to load. **

Disclosure:I received this product from the sponsor of the Moms Meet program, May Media Group LLC, who received it directly from the manufacturer. As a Moms Meet blogger, I agreed to use this product and post my opinion on my blog. My opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of May Media Group LLC or the manufacturer of the product.