A prospective study in Europe looked at 471,495 individuals’ intake of junk food at baseline and then assessed the development of cancer over the next 15 years. Higher intake of junk food was associated with statistically significant increases of cancers of the colon-rectum, cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract and stomach, cancer of the lung in men, and postmenopausal breast and liver cancer in women. One potential limitation of the study, published September 18, 2018,  is that junk food intake was assessed only once, at baseline, and may be a confounder for some other risk factor that is associated with the above cancers. However, REAL food is likely always best:…

…that’s what grandson Church called it. He arrived at Walker Century Farms to pick up six pregnant cows and discovered he’d only carry five back to Thistle Hill. The trip to South Carolina was part of a major realignment of Traditional Devon females. But we’ll save that exciting news until later. The heifer…should we call her Hurricane?…is out of TD 6 and TD Victory. Mother and daughter will catch up with the rest of their herd mates in about a month. David

Since 1990, the population of the United States has undergone a sea change in our weight and our health. In 1992 , according to the CDC, approximately 10-15% of our population was obese. By 2015, approximately 35% of the population was obese. Genetic mutations in a single generation cannot account for this big (no pun intended) change. In the last 100 years we’ve had some huge changes in our environment that I believe are encouraging this push towards obesity: increasing sugar in our diet, antibiotics changing our microbiome, GMO foods, habitual snacking and feasting on high calorie, nutrient poor foods, and what I call “fake foods” – these are foods…

…when they are determined to add quality Devon to their herd! Roger and Elaine Witzig picked up a full load of Thistle Hill Devon in Virginia and transported them back to Gridley, Illinois…in all they were on the road 32 hours! Son Shannon took the photo of the arrival at 1:40 in the morning! The Witzigs purchase included two cows, two bred heifers and a young bull. We appreciate their confidence in Thistle Hill and invite you to drop by and share in the enthusiasm. David

…fools rush in, as they say, but we’re going to have to dissent from this announcement from the Temple Institute in Israel. The Institute has hailed the birth of a pure red calf as a sign its time to build the Third Temple. Some Evangelicals consider it a sign of the end times. What we are presented with here is a calf conceived in a Red Angus mother and the resultant embryo imported to Israel. There is no identification of the bull involved. Nor is there any identification of a pedigree much less one tracing back 2000 years. The rabbis seem to have their genetics a bit weak. An earlier…

…that excites us at Thistle Hill. We have always been big fans of Rotokawa’s Ken McDowall and hosted him many times. Ken has been consulted often about our breeding decisions. One day on one his visits he looked at a new bull calf and said, “David you’ve hit the jackpot.” The name stuck…and now here is Jackpot’s son, THF Guardian. Guardian not only displays Jackpot in his pedigree but Thistle Hill’s “2” Rotokawa line, producers of more top animals than any other. Almost needless to say it all starts with Rotokawa 243, who Ken considers his top achievement. As always you’re invited to come see for yourself. David

For years saturated fat, eggs, and red meat have gotten a bad rap from both the government and from the medical community. My great uncle Boze had a heart attack in the 1990’s and was placed on an incredibly strict diet that allowed for no eggs and no red meat, though he could have margarine, which we now know is a huge mistake. In 2016, researchers from the NIH and other major institutions published an interesting study in the British Medical Journal. They reviewed previously unpublished data from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment which was  a study that took place in one nursing home and six state mental hospitals in Minnesota…

…this is the start of my favorite time of the year. The air becomes less humid, the leaves are turning and in the mornings there’s a new calf on the ground. We calve in the autumn here in steamy Virginia because it’s easier on mom and baby…surer-rebreeding too on mostly fescue. This little girl is just a few hours old…pure English genetics…at John Forelle’s farm in New York. She’s out of a Cutcombe Jaunty mother and sired by Tilbrook Sunset. John of course was one of the original partners in Traditional Devon America and while retired he maintains a few Devon cows. And here, waiting out the last few weeks…

…weighs in with the blog just below: “Monsanto gets its due”…signed Carolyn. Carolyn Matthews is my late wife’s daughter and she reminds me of Wooz in many ways. Thistle Hill has been the family farm since the 1940s and now Carolyn is the “head honcho”. Unfortunately she is one of those modern women who has to juggle a family with the farm and a demanding career. She has a medical practice to take care of as a cancer surgeon at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas and is also founder and director of Baylor’s integrative medicine center. She also writes and travels widely to make speeches.  And yes she does use…

I began attending integrative and functional medicine conferences in 2007, when I first started attending Andrew Weil’s integrative medicine fellowship program at the University of Arizona. Since then, I’ve attended two to four conferences a year from various nutrition, lifestyle, and environmental organizations; they are “brain candy” for me. I was impressed that from the very beginning of my integrative medicine journey, the speakers stressed the quality of the food we are eating. The traditional medical view at the time was that we should avoid red meat. But at the conferences, not only was red meat in moderation an acceptable part of the diet, it was encouraged- as long as…