Grass-Fed Meat vs Grain-Fed Meat: Real information, not Zippy's version.

[Chester Copperpot]

Researchers compared the fatty acid compositions of three kinds of feeding. Each group contained 18 Australian cattle. The first group was fed grains 80 days before slaughter, the second group was fed “by-product feedstuff” for 200 days, and the third group was grass-finished and grass-fed.

Group #1: Short Term Grain Feeding (80 days)

Group #2: Long Term Feedlot Rations* (150-200 days)

Group#3: Grass Feeding (Life time)

*Feedlot rations for australian beef are made of 50 percent barley and/or sorghum (a type of wheat) and some form of cottonseed/protein mix: A mixture of grains.


Results

The grass-fed cows had more omega-3’s and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). Just 80 days of grain feeding was enough to destroy the omega-3 content of the beef. CLA content plummeted in the same amount of time. The longer the animals were fed grains, the lower the quality of the meat.

“There was a significantly higher level of total omega-3 (n-3) and long chain n-3 FA in grass-fed beef than the grain-fed groups regardless of cut types.”

The omega-3 quantity in grain-fed meat was so low, it didn’t qualify as a meaningful dietary source. Grass-fed meat has enough omega-3 to be considered a good source of n-3 fats. As Chris Masterjohn has shown us, the total amount of omega-3 we need is small if you have a good omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Therefore, eating grass-fed meat along with some fatty fish may be enough to cover your omega-3 needs.

“Only grass-fed beef reached the target of more than 30mg of long chain n-3 FA/100 g muscle as recommended by Food Standard Australia and New Zealand for a food to be considered a source of omega-3 fatty acids.”

Grain feeding significantly reduces the omega-3 and CLA content of meat. The feedlot cattle had the lowest levels, the grain-fed cattle were in the middle, and the grass-fed cattle had the most. The longer an animal is fed grains, the lower the nutrient content of the meat.

https://www.bulletproofexec.com/grass-fed-meat-part-1/

Referenced NIH study from article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16500874

[tod evans]

Whole bunch of analyzing for a cow.......

Simply go out in the pasture, pick the one you want to eat and take it to the packing plant.

Even city dwellers can do this in under 4 hrs.

The idea of purchasing less than a 1/2 of a beef is something adopted by the consumer society, reject it.

[presence]

what tod just said 110%

If you're buying less than half an animal you're doing it wrong.

[Chester Copperpot]

Whole bunch of analyzing for a cow.......

Simply go out in the pasture, pick the one you want to eat and take it to the packing plant.

Even city dwellers can do this in under 4 hrs.

The idea of purchasing less than a 1/2 of a beef is something adopted by the consumer society, reject it.

I dont have room to store 1/2 a cow.

[tod evans]

I dont have room to store 1/2 a cow.

Locker plants still exist.

Small freezers are cheap.

But you can justify anything if you want.........

[presence]

I dont have room to store 1/2 a cow.

it really doesn't take much, you can put a whole beef; 450lbs finished in a 7 cu ft deep freeze; they're $200 at walmart.

A honda civic has 14 cu of trunk space.


Then your family is sitting on a year of beef, from ONE cow, from a location YOU inspected.



*roughly left to right 12cu 9cu 7cu 5cu


locating a source is as easy as checking local craigslist search "beef" at www.localharvest.org or going to google maps and typing in "grass fed beef"

[tod evans]

it really doesn't take much, you can put a whole beef; 450lbs finished in a 7 cu ft deep freeze; they're $200 at walmart.


Then your family is sitting on a year of beef, from ONE cow, from a location YOU inspected.

Don't forget price.......

If you deal with a farmer and packer yourself you can expect to come in well under $4.00lb for the cow packed and processed...

[erowe1]

“Only grass-fed beef reached the target of more than 30mg of long chain n-3 FA/100 g muscle as recommended by Food Standard Australia and New Zealand for a food to be considered a source of omega-3 fatty acids.”

So, in order to get 1000 mg of Omega 3, I need to eat 7.5 pounds (3.3 kg) of beef?

Is it worth the higher price of grass fed beef just to get that little bit of Omega 3?

There are lots of other foods that have a lot more if you aren't getting enough from your beef, whether grain or grass fed.

[Zippyjuan]

Researchers compared the fatty acid compositions of three kinds of feeding. Each group contained 18 Australian cattle. The first group was fed grains 80 days before slaughter, the second group was fed “by-product feedstuff” for 200 days, and the third group was grass-finished and grass-fed.

Group #1: Short Term Grain Feeding (80 days)

Group #2: Long Term Feedlot Rations* (150-200 days)

Group#3: Grass Feeding (Life time)

*Feedlot rations for australian beef are made of 50 percent barley and/or sorghum (a type of wheat) and some form of cottonseed/protein mix: A mixture of grains.


Results

The grass-fed cows had more omega-3’s and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). Just 80 days of grain feeding was enough to destroy the omega-3 content of the beef. CLA content plummeted in the same amount of time. The longer the animals were fed grains, the lower the quality of the meat.

“There was a significantly higher level of total omega-3 (n-3) and long chain n-3 FA in grass-fed beef than the grain-fed groups regardless of cut types.”

The omega-3 quantity in grain-fed meat was so low, it didn’t qualify as a meaningful dietary source. Grass-fed meat has enough omega-3 to be considered a good source of n-3 fats. As Chris Masterjohn has shown us, the total amount of omega-3 we need is small if you have a good omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Therefore, eating grass-fed meat along with some fatty fish may be enough to cover your omega-3 needs.

“Only grass-fed beef reached the target of more than 30mg of long chain n-3 FA/100 g muscle as recommended by Food Standard Australia and New Zealand for a food to be considered a source of omega-3 fatty acids.”

Grain feeding significantly reduces the omega-3 and CLA content of meat. The feedlot cattle had the lowest levels, the grain-fed cattle were in the middle, and the grass-fed cattle had the most. The longer an animal is fed grains, the lower the nutrient content of the meat.

https://www.bulletproofexec.com/grass-fed-meat-part-1/

Referenced NIH study from article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16500874

Article notes that the grass fed beef only barely qualified to be labeled as a source of omega 3 fatty acids. It does have more than "standard" beef but is still not a significant source. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16500874 (it was not a NIH study but an Australian one).

Only grass-fed beef reached the target of more than 30mg of long chain n-3 FA/100 g muscle as recommended by Food Standard Australia and New Zealand for a food to be considered a source of omega-3 fatty acids.

Note it says "source", not "significant source". The amounts are very small and won't improve your health unless you are consuming a very large amount of the beef.

How much is recommended:

Based on a review of several large studies involving more than 40,000 people, researchers say the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids to heart health are clear and merit taking action to prevent unnecessary deaths from heart disease.

The body doesn’t produce fatty acids, so researchers recommend healthy people consume 500 milligrams daily of EPA plus DHA, and people with known heart disease or heart failure should aim for nearly twice that amount (at least 800 to 1,000 milligrams daily).

500mg would be 17 times the amount found in grass fed beef.

[phill4paul]

I dont have room to store 1/2 a cow.

I don't either. Do you have neighbors? Friends? Family? Get enough together an split a whole cow, or even buy it by the half, so that it is divided in cost and portion to fit your regular refrig. freezer.

[Chester Copperpot]

So, in order to get 1000 mg of Omega 3, I need to eat 7.5 pounds (3.3 kg) of beef?

Is it worth the higher price of grass fed beef just to get that little bit of Omega 3?

There are lots of other foods that have a lot more if you aren't getting enough from your beef, whether grain or grass fed.

Theres alot more going on than just omega 3s. I posted that to rebut zippys thread.. in actuality i dont think of omega3 on and of themself.. theres a whole slew of omegas omega5, omega6,omega7, etc etc... plus vitamins and minerals that are way higher in grassfed animals because the grass is more nutritious.

[Chester Copperpot]

Article notes that the grass fed beef only barely qualified to be labeled as a source of omega 3 fatty acids. It does have more than "standard" beef but is still not a significant source. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16500874 (it was not a NIH study but an Australian one).



Note it says "source", not "significant source". The amounts are very small and won't improve your health unless you are consuming a very large amount of the beef.

How much is recommended:


500mg would be 17 times the amount found in grass fed beef.

researchers recommending fractionated omega3s as a health supplement would be best to educate themselves and stop reccomending such nonsense until they understand the subject matter better.

[presence]

So, in order to get 1000 mg of Omega 3, I need to eat 7.5 pounds (3.3 kg) of beef?

Is it worth the higher price of grass fed beef just to get that little bit of Omega 3?

There are lots of other foods that have a lot more if you aren't getting enough from your beef, whether grain or grass fed.

I think you have to look at single statistics like that in context

According to a study published in the Journal of Animal Science in 2009, eating grass-fed beef provides many benefits to consumers(3):

1. Lower in total fat
2. Higher in beta-carotene
3. Higher in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol)
4. Higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin
5. Higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium, and potassium
6. Higher in total omega-3s
7. A healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (1.65 vs 4.84)
8. Higher in CLA (cis-9 trans-11), a potential cancer fighter
9. Higher in vaccenic acid (which can be transformed into CLA)
10. Lower in the saturated fats linked with heart disease

To me its a simple decision of do I want to bring a new potentially diseased animal, from disease like prone conditions with excessive antibiotic use, to my home every night with every dinner?

Or would I rather bring one animal home once a year from a farmer with a manageble herd that I trust?

The decision seems simple to me. One animal, one farmer, good conditions self inspected.

[Zippyjuan]

The main article you posted https://www.bulletproofexec.com/grass-fed-meat-part-1/ makes the following claim:

Grass-fed meat fits this criteria perfectly. It contains more antioxidants, omega-3’s, CLA, TVA, trace minerals, and vitamins than any other food, including conventional meat.

Let us simply consider Omega 3s. Does meat have more Omega 3 than any other food? Your study listed 30 mg. According to this: http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-...000000000.html

Flax seed oil tops the chart at 12059mg - over four hundred times as much!

What about protein sources? Coho salmon clocks in at 3062mg - more than one hundred times this "highest amount of any other food!"

Given how far off they are on this, we cannot take the rest of the article seriously. It is marketing.

The omega-3 quantity in grain-fed meat was so low, it didn’t qualify as a meaningful dietary source.

More Omega 3's than something that does not qualify as a dietary source does not make it a dietary source. It does not "blow regular meat out of the water" nutritionally.

There may be reasons to prefer grass fed vs standard feed, but nutrition is not one of them. The difference is not significant enough.

[Chester Copperpot]

I don't either. Do you have neighbors? Friends? Family? Get enough together an split a whole cow, or even buy it by the half, so that it is divided in cost and portion to fit your regular refrig. freezer.

thats not a bad idea... i have friends and family who might want to do that... thanks for the tip.

[Chester Copperpot]

I think you have to look at single statistics like that in context

According to a study published in the Journal of Animal Science in 2009, eating grass-fed beef provides many benefits to consumers(3):

Lower in total fat
Higher in beta-carotene
Higher in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol)
Higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin
Higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium, and potassium
Higher in total omega-3s
A healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (1.65 vs 4.84)
Higher in CLA (cis-9 trans-11), a potential cancer fighter
Higher in vaccenic acid (which can be transformed into CLA)
Lower in the saturated fats linked with heart disease



To me its a simple decision of do I want to bring a new potentially diseased animal, from disease like prone conditions with excessive antibiotic use, to my home every night with every dinner?

Or would I rather bring one animal home once a year from a farmer with a manageble herd that I trust?

The decision seems simple to me. One animal, one farmer, good conditions self inspected.

Very glad you brought this up as this reveals my main argument for grassfed. In the above you noted grassfed meat higher in beta-carotene and alpha-tocopherol and they are.. but what people need to see is that beta carotene is only 1 of 500 vitamin As out there.. Alpha tocopherol is only one type of vitamin e.. if you could look at a wide swath of nutrients under spectrum analysis in the meat youd find not just beta carotene but dozens, maybe hundreds of other carotenes as well.. all natural, all in particular amounts and ratios that Nature understands but that we dont. These other nutrients are never usually tested and so when food is processed and nutrients are destroyed they can only put back the ones they test for like beta carotene... what about all the others??? Theyre missing.. and so the body compensates best it can but when too much of this ill-nutrient food is consumed we get sick as well. and it comes out in various ways depending on peoples' different conditions.

how do you know the natural carotenes are in the animal? look to its fat and milk.. instead of bright white, they will have an orange or yellow tinge.. those are the carotenes..

and its like this for all the other vitamins as well.. A, B, C, D, E, etc etc etc.

[farreri]

The grass-fed cows had more omega-3’s and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).

So wouldn't the moral of the story for us humans is to eat more plants like the cows do for better health?

[donnay]

So wouldn't the moral of the story for us humans is to eat more plants like the cows do for better health?

You have four stomachs?

[farreri]

You have four stomachs?

Grass are the only plants that have Omega 3's?

[Zippyjuan]

Flax seed oil has 400 times as much. Salmon 100 times. Beef is not a good source.

[luctor-et-emergo]

Lets get 'cow-splitting' into the dictionary. I'm all in favor.
Better for the farmer as well. Consumers actually care about their effort to care for their animals while large corporations only care about certificates when were talking grass-fed/organic etc.

So yeah! Split them cows.

It's also interesting for anyone that likes cooking. When you slaughter an entire cow (or take 50% of it...) you get lots of different parts. Organ meat, a head... There's lots of things to make. Head-cheese is actually quite good although it will gross out most people. Tail makes nice oxtail soup (yeah I know a cow isn't an ox but that doesn't really matter if you're making soup). You can smoke some beef-bacon. There's loads of bones to use in stocks. Did I mention the organs ? Liver, kidney .. Sweetbreads.

Ah well pretty much the entire $#@!ing thing is edible and I think as a moral human being you should strive to not waste parts of an animal that gave their life for you to eat.

I must say I hardly ever buy high end steaks. I buy cheap cuts from organic/grass-fed beef and I make stews with that rather than juicy steaks..

[donnay]

So wouldn't the moral of the story for us humans is to eat more plants like the cows do for better health?

Grass are the only plants that have Omega 3's?

I don't think you know what your talking about. We are not multi-gastric and aren't designed to break down the cellulose in grass to get out the nutriments. Cows on the other hand, can.

[GunnyFreedom]

Lets get 'cow-splitting' into the dictionary. I'm all in favor.
Better for the farmer as well. Consumers actually care about their effort to care for their animals while large corporations only care about certificates when were talking grass-fed/organic etc.

So yeah! Split them cows.

It's also interesting for anyone that likes cooking. When you slaughter an entire cow (or take 50% of it...) you get lots of different parts. Organ meat, a head... There's lots of things to make. Head-cheese is actually quite good although it will gross out most people. Tail makes nice oxtail soup (yeah I know a cow isn't an ox but that doesn't really matter if you're making soup). You can smoke some beef-bacon. There's loads of bones to use in stocks. Did I mention the organs ? Liver, kidney .. Sweetbreads.

Ah well pretty much the entire $#@!ing thing is edible and I think as a moral human being you should strive to not waste parts of an animal that gave their life for you to eat.

I must say I hardly ever buy high end steaks. I buy cheap cuts from organic/grass-fed beef and I make stews with that rather than juicy steaks..

That's the primary reason I don't buy a butchered cow. I personally know a rancher and could almost certainly buy a cow cut-rate, but I can't do offal. Shudder. I'd rather not waste parts of a living creature, which I would do if I bought a cow.

[presence]

That's the primary reason I don't buy a butchered cow. I personally know a rancher and could almost certainly buy a cow cut-rate, but I can't do offal. Shudder. I'd rather not waste parts of a living creature, which I would do if I bought a cow.

At my local slaughter house you can choose to take or leave anything you want and whatever you leave the slaughter house distributes; there is no more "waste" than in any other slaughter operation. They'll chop up the cow anyway I like it and give me back only the parts I want. In my experience that is pretty standard. You contract with the farmer, you let him know how you want it cut and what you want back... farmer trucks cow to slaughter at his preferred house, then a week later you pick up frozen paper packages either from the farmer or directly from the house. Its pretty common practice to leave behind some percentage of "undesirables" and that's generally up to you to declare before hand, the farmer can help you make those decisions. You usually pay the farmer on "hung weight" which might be 650lbs, but you only end up coming home with 450 or so that is actually "meat". The rest of it... lard, bone, head, dick, hooves... it all has a market to the house, so if you don't take those parts, its still being used for dog food, etc.

[Spikender]

Locker plants still exist.

Small freezers are cheap.

But you can justify anything if you want.........

You guys actually didn't justify why someone should go out of their way to buy 1/2 a cow other than saying doing less is pushed by "consumer society".

[specsaregood]

Flax seed oil tops the chart at 12059mg - over four hundred times as much!

The omega 3 in flax is not the same as in meat sources, it is ALA, not DHA or EPA. Our body has to convert the ALA to DHA and EPA to use it and we are very inefficient in that conversion process. IIRC, men in particular can't convert ALA as well as women.

[tod evans]

You guys actually didn't justify why someone should go out of their way to buy 1/2 a cow other than saying doing less is pushed by "consumer society".

My reasoning is it taste better and I know what I'm eating and who has touched it.

Besides where else can you get prime rib and burger for under $4.00?

[Suzanimal]

My reasoning is it taste better and I know what I'm eating and who has touched it.

Besides where else can you get prime rib and burger for under $4.00?

I pay extra not to meet my food.

[GunnyFreedom]

At my local slaughter house you can choose to take or leave anything you want and whatever you leave the slaughter house distributes; there is no more "waste" than in any other slaughter operation. They'll chop up the cow anyway I like it and give me back only the parts I want. In my experience that is pretty standard. You contract with the farmer, you let him know how you want it cut and what you want back... farmer trucks cow to slaughter at his preferred house, then a week later you pick up frozen paper packages either from the farmer or directly from the house. Its pretty common practice to leave behind some percentage of "undesirables" and that's generally up to you to declare before hand, the farmer can help you make those decisions. You usually pay the farmer on "hung weight" which might be 650lbs, but you only end up coming home with 450 or so that is actually "meat". The rest of it... lard, bone, head, dick, hooves... it all has a market to the house, so if you don't take those parts, its still being used for dog food, etc.

I have wanted to do this for a while. I should ask him at the next GOP meeting. He's the County Chair, and we get along great!

[luctor-et-emergo]

I pay extra not to meet my food.

That's just something you have to get through once.
I can still remember the first fish I smacked on the head and then gutted. I don't remember the ones after that.

It's actually quite nice if you're conscious of where your food comes from. Does make you not eat certain things though. At least for me.