Fitness and diet are inextricably linked, and if you want to get the most out of your exercise regimen, you need to also be strategic about your meals.

Finding the right meat isn’t always easy, and cutting through the marketing buzzwords to really understand what terms like “grass fed” and “free range” mean can be even harder. 

But if you care about your health, changing the meat you eat is one of the most important things you can do to improve your overall wellbeing. And the best way to find great meat in your area is by committing to buying local. 

Why Local Matters

For most of human history, the meat we have eaten was raised not far from the communities where we lived. But in the last hundred years, the industrial food system has alienated us from the meat we eat, to great detrimental effect. 

The good news is, that if you live in a province like Alberta there is no shortage of cattle, pork, poultry, and buffalo farms producing high quality meat that is raised in sustainable and environmentally friendly ways. 

Local farms committed to a more sustainable vision of agriculture raise their animals in more artisanal ways, and are usually closer to the land, giving their livestock a chance to live a healthy life in as natural way as possible. 

This in turn affects the quality of the meat itself, making it better for the earth and better for you. 

The Best Way to Get Local Alberta Meat

But while the health benefits of eating local meat in a province like Alberta are obvious, it isn’t always easy for Albertans to find a wide range of local product at their grocery stores — and even when local meat is available, it isn’t always labelled as such.

This is one of the reasons why many Albertans are turning to truLOCAL, a fresh meat delivery service that offers arguably the best online meat shop in Canada and delivers beef, pork, and chicken raised in Alberta by local Alberta farms and producers to any address in the province.

Getting fresh, high quality meat online may seem counter-intuitive, but it is actually one of the best ways to find transparent sourcing information for local Alberta meat, because online meat delivery services provide lots of information about which farms and partners they work with to provide you which products.

This means that when you order pork side ribs or shoulder roast through truLOCAL, you know where it is coming from: Spragg’s Meat Shop in Rosemary Alberta. It also makes it possible to make healthy, local choices even if you live a busy life in bustling downtown Calgary or Edmonton.  

There is an old saying in the fitness community that you can’t outrun the plate. Whether you’re trying to lose weight or bulk up, the food you eat is going to play a decisive role in helping you meet your fitness goals.

This is why it is essential not only to eat enough protein, but to eat the right proteins. Healthy, local, sustainably-raised beef, pork, and chicken, and wild caught fish, are absolutely essential for a balanced diet that provides your body with the vitamins and nutrients it needs to grow and develop.

For this reason, including more fresh Alberta meat in your diet is one of the best ways to make sure that what you put on your plate complements what you do at the gym.