Grass-fed beef. Why you should insist on beef from cows fed on grass.

Grass-fed meat.
Why you should insist on it.

Have you ever seen a cow in a field?

What was it eating? Wheat - no! Barley - no! Oats - No!

Undoubtedly, if you saw a cow in a field, it was eating grass. Grass is what cows are built to eat. It is what their digestive systems are designed to digest. It is what gives their meat the properties that nature designed it to have. Grass-fed cows are natural cows.

It may not seem so to us, but grass is pretty nutritional stuff. Common sense says that if you can build cows, sheep, goats and much larger animals entirely from grass, it must have a lot of nutrients in it. After all, that's where the name "grazing" animals comes from isn't it?

When cows (or virtually any other grazing animal for that matter) are fed on grass, the nutrients from the grass are passed on into the tissues. One of the most important of these is Omega-3 fatty acid - one of the nutrients in which Americans, in particular are most deficient.

A recent study showed that over 25% of the Americans tested had so little omega-3 fatty acid in their systems that it was undetectable. This is a serious problem. Omega-3 is an essential fatty acid, meaning that it can't be made by the body from other fats and MUST be ingested in the diet. the other essential fatty acid type, Omega-6 is found in abundance in the Western diet.

Opinions on the ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 vary, but it is likely that the closer it is to 1:1, the healthier the effect. The average American diet has a ratio of around 15:1, Britons are a little better a8 9:1, followed by Europeans at about 5:1. Even the Japanese, arguably the healthiest nation on Earth can only manage 3:1.

The reason we bring this up here is that omega-3 fatty acid is found in beef and animal fat - but ONLY when the cow has been fed on grass, i.e. it is 100% grass-fed beef. Grain-fed cattle (apart from the other problems modern farming introduces) contain little or no omega-3 in their meat or fat, leading to the types of imbalance that are typified by the American and (to a lesser extent) UK diets.

It is these imbalances (along with the propaganda of the vegetable oil industry) that have spawned the "saturated fat", "cholesterol" and associated "low-fat" regimes that are so popular today, based on totally flawed scientific logic and incomplete data.

Saturated fat intake does not increase cholesterol levels. These are controlled by the liver, which will produce a much as the body needs.

High cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, it is a sign of nutritional deficiency, namely lack of Vitamin C.

Unsaturated or polyunsaturated vegetable oils are much worse for you than natural, saturated fat.

Only once medicine and the general public understand these facts will both be able to move beyond the dogma of the last 50 years and improve health rather than treating symptoms. The conversion of all beef to grass-fed beef would be a good start.

Back from grass fed meat to weight management foods

Further reading

Conquering weight loss using natural methods

Conquering heart disease using natural methods

Grass-fed meat. Why you should insist on it.

Grass-fed meat.
Why you should insist on it.