Eating Beef for your health and the Planet

Part 1 of 2

Doesn’t it seem like there is new and conflicting information everywhere you turn?  It makes you want to throw up your hands and just give up.  But I won’t if you won’t!  You’re reading this, so you want to learn with me the latest and best information we have available about our food.  Are you ready for something new?  Here is some amazing information about beef.  And it turns out the HOW of the cow is just as important as the cow itself. 

The What

Not all “meat” is created equal.  The somewhat newly coined saying, “It’s not the cow, it’s the how” is not mine, but it brilliantly, tongue-in-cheek, illustrates just that idea. 

I wrote a post called “The Most Bang For Your Bite” which covered why, when plants that feed us are raised in an ideal environment, they are healthier and tastier.  Well, how animals that feed us are raised also determines how healthy they are for us.  This short series shares with you what I learned about identifying and buying the best beef for your health and the planet.  I’ll start with our health – this is part 1.

The Why

I’m reading a book called, “What Your Food Ate.”  And in the chapter on cows, it says, what’s going on in the body of the cow, whose meat ends up on our plates, affects what nutritional benefits (and harm) we experience when we eat it.  So, I want to encourage us to know, demand and buy the meat that is best for our health, and frankly for the animals too.  I’m mainly going to focus on beef.

Just the facts ma’am

Cows are ruminants, as are sheep and goats.  They have digestive systems that are meant to process a mixture of grasses.  However, most cows today are fed grains, like corn and soy, because that is what’s cheapest thanks to government subsidies.  It’s also more economical to pack as many animals into as small a space as possible, as land is expensive.  And so bringing them their food, instead of having them graze for it, is cheaper.  When they are fed grains, their meat might taste a bit sweeter from the high sugar content, but the health of the cow is worse, and the fat content in their meat changes for the worse. 

 When confined and eating grains, in addition to the fat profile changes in their meat, they have developed several health issues – in cows, it’s mainly respiratory illness and liver abscesses from acidosis.  The common respiratory illness is treated with antibiotics, sometimes preventively. That means they are giving antibiotics to cows that are not sick.  Because of the current system, “almost two-thirds of the medically important antibiotics sold in the United States go to meat production.”  (One silver lining is that a new FDA guideline goes into effect June 1, 2023, that should make it harder for ranchers to pass out antibiotics willy-nilly.)

The result for us in this system is two things.  1 – When antibiotics are overused, bacteria can become resistant to them, which makes infection, for even us humans, far more dangerous. 2 – the fat ratio in the meat of omega-6 to omega-3 is bad for us, and a part of the reason why there is so much heart disease and other chronic ailments in America. 

If you’ve read enough, skip down to What You Can Do.

Let’s Go Down the Rabbit Hole, Shall We?

I learned from an interview on PBS, with feedlot manager, Bill Haw that some managers allow the liver abscesses in cows to remain.  But, if they give the cows antibiotics, healthy microbiome of bacteria in their rumen are also wiped out. These bacteria are essential to healthy meat growth, so the managers are forced to choose between a cow with poor liver function or a cow whose weight and fat profile might be compromised by the antibiotic.  While I want beef with healthy meat, just how healthy is it if it lived with poor liver function?

“We’ve learned that the livers are not very economically viable, and there’s a willingness to sacrifice the liver for the overall growth, which far transcends the value of the liver that may be damaged in the process.”

I think we can move on from the sad story about confined animals, eating food they shouldn’t eat, and being largely unhealthy.  I’m going to try to remember that by choosing healthier options for ourselves, we are also endorsing a better quality of life for the world’s animals that provide us with those precious nutrients.  They deserve at least that.

Fats are a controversial topic.  For the longest time, we were all convinced that fats were bad for our health – they made us fat and they made us sick.  We are learning, however, that not all fats are the same.  That some are good and some are harmful.  That we need different amounts of different fats to keep us healthy.  And…now I need a nap. That’s so exhausting just to think about! 

But here is what I’ve learned about beef.   Beef provides a lot of nutrients  – proteins that are hard for our bodies to make just through plants alone*, B12, zinc, iron, selenium, B6, niacin and phosphorus.  It also contains anywhere from 5-35% fat, mainly omega-3 and omega-6.

Omega-3 fats are important for brain health, mental health, heart health, eye health, and auto-immune disorder management. They also have anti-inflammatory properties.

Omega-6 fats are important for maintaining healthy blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels, and our blood’s ability to clot.  They also help us with inflammation when we have illness or injury, which can protect our body.

The problem with feedlot cows is that because of their diet and living conditions, their fat ratio of 6s to 3s is just too high. The ideal ratio for our health is 4:1 or less, 6’s to 3’s.  It SHOULD be 2:1 or lower.  When cows are pasture-raised and grass-fed/finished, with room to roam and eat a variety of grasses, their fat profiles are within the ideal range, which means red meat can be heart-healthy!  But, beef from grain-fed cows has Omega 6:3 ratios more like 8:1 or 10:1.   When they are like that, we are at a higher risk of too much inflammation, heart disease, and other chronic ailments.

To make matters worse for us Americans, just about all our processed foods, from tortilla chips to salad dressings, cookies to granola bars, and even some nut milk, have seed oils, which are omega-6 fats.  So this kind of fat in moderation is essential for human health. In the amounts we’ve been actually getting it – a danger to it.

People!  Yikes!  (this is me just learning this as I research this post, and I’m floored).  I was at the grocery store yesterday, frantically looking at the back of tortilla chip bags to find one without seed oil.  Skip to the end – I found one.  It had avocado oil – an omega-9.  Also good for us in moderation.

I think the key is that variety and balance are important for our health.  Eating truly healthy beef in moderation is an important component of just that.

As Michael Pollan would say, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”  When it comes to beef, eat grass-fed, grass-finished.

*I fully support vegetarians and vegans and believe they can lead healthy lives without eating meat.  I chose to eat meat for my health.

**This is not meant to be dietary or medical advice.  Please consult your doctor if you have health issues.

What You Can Do:

1. Buy 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef and truly pasture-raised chickens. In this case, USDA Certified Organic is not enough.  “The USDA’s organic certification doesn’t address what actually composes a cow’s diet, only that the crops used as feed are organically grown.”  So organic corn, for example, could be 70% of the certified organic cow’s diet.   Here are some options I found, but you’ll have to do some research depending on where you live and your budget:

At Whole Foods:

At Kroger:

On-line:

2. Know where your food came from.  A friend of mine just told me she doesn’t eat meat unless she hunted it or knew the animal’s name.  That’s certainly a way to guarantee you know where your food came from!  I’m just going to suggest you consider buying locally, so you can ask the farmer yourself.  In most places in the country, except food deserts in some metropolitan areas, which are very unfortunate, you can drive out to a farm or farmer’s market and ask away. If you live where I do, in Ann Arbor, try Emma Acres or Vestergaard Farms.