Diet has a profound effect on the health of an animal and the meat it produces.
Why settle for organic meat when you can have better?
Meat from animals fed exclusively grass is nutritionally superior.
Consumers have been led to believe that organic meat has some kind of nutritional advantage. In other words, it's not important what an animal eats as long as it's organic. This is not true.
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Less fat: Grass-fed meat has about the same amount of fat as skinless chicken or wild deer or elk.
- Lowers cholesterol: When meat is this lean, it actually lowers your LDL cholesterol levels.
- Fewer Calories: Leaner meat is also lower in calories
- More Omega 3: Although grass-fed meat is low in "bad" fat, it gives you from two to six times more of a type of "good" fat called "omega-3 fatty acids. .
- The CLA Bonus: The meat and milk from grass-fed ruminants are the richest known source of another type of good fat called "conjugated linoleic acid" or CLA. When ruminants are raised on fresh pasture alone, their milk and meat contain as much as five times more CLA than products from animals fed conventional diets.–12. CLA is believed to be a powerful defense against cancer.
- Vitamin E: The meat from grass-fed animals is higher in vitamin E. In humans, vitamin E is linked with a lower risk of heart disease and cancer. This potent antioxidant may also have anti-aging properties.
- Vitamin K2: Vitamin K2 is essential for healthy teeth and can be found most in the meat and dairy from ruminant animals. Humans are capable of converting only a small percentage of vitamin K1 into K2, while cows can convert K1 from grass much more efficiently into vitamin K2 making grass-fed animal products an important part of our diet.
Many farmers claim their cattle are pasture fed and many usually are.
So what’s the hype?
Grass-fed is not enough. It’s important that the cattle are not only grass-fed and raised but grass finished as well. This phase, which lasts 3 to 4 months before butchering, is probably the most crucial of all. A mere 3 months of grain feeding without grass dramatically changes the nutritional profile of the meat.
Take a look at a comparison of the change in
An analysis of the effect of grain- or grass- finishing systems on the nutritional composition of beef, particularly comparing lean meat from grain- and grass- fed animals, revealed that grass-fed product had:
- Increased moisture content
- Decreased total lipid content by 43%
- 288% greater vitamin E content
- 54% greater b-carotene content
- Twice as much riboflavin
- Three times as much thiamin
- 30% more calcium
- 5% more magnesium
- Roughly the same amount of omega-6 PUFA
- Three times the omega-3 PUFA
Most of the above data is from the book Why Grassfed Is Best! The Surprising Benefits of Grassfed Meats, Eggs, and Dairy Products by best selling author, Jo Robinson. Other data comes from the website eatwild.com
You can visit NY Times best selling author Jo Robinson's website to obtain extensive information on grassfed meat.
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