To Your Health
Is grass-fed beef healthier or better than grain-fed?
By James Heffley, Ph.D., Fri., Sept. 19, 2003
A. For millennia humans ate only vegetables, nuts, beans, some fruit, eggs, fish, fowl, and meat, which we know today as a Paleolithic or "Stone Age" diet. Such a diet is considerably healthier than today's typical American diet, especially with regard to amount, type, and balance of fats. About 8,000-10,000 years ago we began to cultivate grain, using it to feed not only ourselves but also our domesticated animals that formerly ate only grass or browsed on leaves.
Cattle do not eat grain naturally, and their bodies function best and are healthier when they are grass-fed. Our own bodies, and those of the livestock we keep, did not change with the invention of farming. It may be that our relatively recent change in food supply is one reason that health problems are now multiplying. Scientists are discovering that heart disease, cancer, arthritis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, and other ailments are due in large part to an imbalance of the fatty acids in our present diet: too much omega-6 and too little omega-3. Omega-6 fatty acids are found primarily in grains and legumes. Omega-3 fatty acids come primarily from green leafy plants, nuts, and fish.
Grain-fed beef is nutritionally inferior to the pasture-fed counterpart, being higher in saturated fats, lower in omega-3, and higher in omega-6 fats. In addition, compared to grain-fed beef, grass-fed beef has about five times the conjugated linoleic acid, the unusual fatty acid that helps the body fight cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. With grass-fed beef there is no risk of mad-cow disease, which is only found when animal products are used in feed. Also, hormones to promote growth are generally not used by ranchers in the grass-fed beef market.
Because cattle are ruminants, their digestive systems are built for grass, not corn. Corn production is heavily subsidized and demands more pesticides than any other food crop, as well as steady applications of nitrogen fertilizers, which in turn require large quantities of oil and natural gas to produce. Corn-fed cattle fatten faster, but they also are more susceptible to infections, which is why antibiotics are needed in the feedlot.
Spared of the necessity of antibiotics and pesticides, grass-fed beef is also friendlier to the environment. The USDA reports that the feedlot method of raising cattle, hogs, and chickens produces 61 million tons of waste each year, about 100 times the volume of human waste. This animal waste pollutes rivers and contaminates ground water, and is blamed for respiratory problems, skin infections, nausea, and depression in people who live near factory farms.
The flavor of grass-fed is different from grain-fed beef. Grass-fed beef will have a more wild taste and, as with wine, the flavor varies by region. In a blind taste test at University of Nebraska comparing top grass-fed beef from Argentina to grain-fed U.S. beef, about 50% of the study's participants preferred the grain-fed, but 20% preferred the grass-fed.
Eating grass-fed beef will seem like a step back in time for some people, but switching to grass-fed beef may help you lose weight and reduce your risk of many of today's killer diseases.
