Ground beef from grass-fed and grain-fed cattle: Does it matter?

[Danke]

Angela's face whenever someone provides evidence, facts, and/or statistics she does not like...

I thought it was this.

[GunnyFreedom]

I am not opposed to eating animals fed a better diet. Just don't expect it to improve your own nutrition compared to "standard" beef. The nutritional differences are not significant. If you like the environmental impact better or feel better morally spending more money on it then enjoy. Animals on different diets may taste different but nutritionally, basically the same.

Nothing you said here makes even the slightest bit of sense. To start with "you are what you eat," that includes cows being what they eat, and to finish, if it tastes different, then it's different.

Recommended Vitamin E is 15mg per day. http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supp...g/hrb-20060476 Based on your chart, grass fed beef has less than seven micrograms per gram (microgram is 1/1000 of a mg) per gram. 15 mg would be fifteen thousand micrograms which at seven micrograms per gram would come out to five pounds of beef a day to get your minimum requirement.

Not a significant source of vitamin E. One ounce of almonds has as much vitamin E as two pounds of grass fed beef.

Also note that vitamin E is broken down by cooking which means unless you eat it raw, you need even more beef to get your daily E.

Not "off the charts".

So one pound of beef provides 1/5 the RDA of vitamin E? Sounds pretty significant to me. When you add in the vegetables and such that people generally eat with a steak, that sounds like a well rounded meal.

The US National Center for Biotechnology Information seem to think that beef is a significant source of Vitamin E:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846864/

Red meat, regardless of feeding regimen, is nutrient dense and regarded as an important source of essential amino acids, vitamins A, B6, B12, D, E, and minerals, including iron, zinc and selenium.

WHat does Zippy know that the US National Center for Biotechnology Information doesn't?

And we aren't even talking yet about other essential amino acids like Tryptophan.

[dannno]

Zippy doesn't know anything about what he is posting.

First if all, a lot of the regular old commercial beef sold in the store is largely grass-fed and grain finished even though it isn't marked as such. So of course a study that compares beef that was probably raised on grass and finished on grains is going to be similar to beef that is labelled grass-fed but was also most likely raised on grass and finished on grains.

It's a bit better to have a cow raised on grass then finished on grains than a cow raised primarily on grains its whole life, but the last two months of grain feeding really throws the fat ratios which comes out in the study. But ultimately the cows are a bit healthier when they go to slaughter, even if nutritionally it isn't very significantly different in some areas.

I would like to know what the omega 6 content of this beef was, because the primary reason of keeping your animals away from grains has less to do with increasing the omega 3 content and more to do with decreasing the omega 6 content - the increase in omega 3 is more incidental. Omega 6 fatty acids in high amounts causes inflammation and is what leads to heart attacks. But omega 6 content is high in VEGETABLE oils and grains, which is why the grain feed throws off the fat content in the cows negatively.

One of the problems is that you don't know what you are buying if it isn't labelled, it could be grass-fed for most of it's life or maybe it isn't. Buying the faux-grass-fed beef at LEAST guarantees you are buying a healthier animal, even if it isn't nutritionally optimal. I don't think it is honest to refer to grain finished beef as 'grass-fed', they should call it "grass-raised, grain finished".

But really what you want is to buy 100% grass fed beef which is finished on grass.. but one issue with pure grass-fed beef is that they may be feeding them hay toward the end of their life if the area doesn't get a ton of rain which is why not all 100% grass-fed beef is very high quality. Some supplementation of hay is probably ok, but optimally you want the cows eating some sort of greens as much as possible if not year around. This is why some areas that get a lot of rain are best for raising and killing them all year, where other areas might want to supplement in some hay and slaughter them after the rainy season when the cows have been eating a lot of greens for some time. New Zealand and Ireland are examples of great places to raise cattle on grass, but there are plenty of good locations in the US as well.

As far as fat content, some of the fattiest ground beef I've ever had was 100% grass-fed. The first contained 10% liver. The second was a kobe strain of beef that was taken to New Zealand and I have had both steaks and ground beef and they were both great. Awesome marbling in the steaks. The other thing is that the paleo diet advocates eating the fattier parts of the animals like the organs - but of course there is nothing wrong with some good grass-fed butter as well.

[Zippyjuan]

True kobe beef is kept in pens and fed high calorie grains since land in Japan is scarce. http://www.montanawagyu.com/wagyu-beef.html American and New Zealand is raised differently and are usually cross bred.

American-Style Kobe Beef vs. Kobe Beef

There is considerable confusion in the marketplace as to what exactly is Kobe Beef. In order to be Kobe
beef, the cattle that it comes from must be of the Taijima family of Wagyu (the breed) and have been raised in
the Japanese prefecture of Hyogo. Additionally, to be certified “Kobe”, it must be slaughtered at the right age
in Hyogo-ken, have the right amount of marbling, and show a minimum of 5 generations of Taijima lineage on
each side. Kobe beef gets its name from the prefecture capital city of Kobe, and it is these cattle that are of
legendary fame for their sake drinking and massages. As so often is the case, the myth behind the legend is not
necessary the most accurate. The cattle are given alcohol only during the summer months to stimulate their
appetite because they go off their feed due to the high heat and humidity. Most of these animals are raised by
individual families on their limited property and thus are kept confined in pens with limited freedom to move
about and graze. They are massaged to keep them from becoming stiff and knotted up. Frankly, massaging the
shoulders of a cow will not tenderize the beef, regardless of how long or how often you do it. It is this restricted
lifestyle as well as the animal’s genetic makeup that predispose it to become highly marbled overtime and
produce the extremely high intramuscular fat that is so prized and commands prices that are in the hundreds of
dollars per pound.

In contrast, American-style Kobe beef is the cross breeding of these Wagyu cattle, brought to the United
States from Japan in 1976 and then again in 1993 and 1994, with our famed Angus cattle. This breeding was for the purpose of producing a distinct variation of beef which combined the best of both breeds. This variation is not a lower or cheaper quality of Kobe but is intentionally different to produce a beef that is more suitable to the American palate. It is the combination of the rich buttery taste of the Wagyu with the deep robust taste and texture of Angus that makes eating one of our steaks a deeply luxurious dining experience. Additionally, we are able to produce an extremely high quality beef that consistently rates on top of the USDA Prime scale at a price that makes it reasonable for far more people to enjoy.

http://www.montanawagyu.com/wagyu-beef.html

Piece is from a Montana ranch raising such cows.