The
Differences Between Grass-Fed Beef and Grain-Fed Beef
Posted By: Mark Sisson
When making
the transition into the Primal way of life, a lot of people get tripped up on
the question of grass-fed beef. Is it necessary?
(No.) Is there really that big
a difference between conventional beef and grass-fed beef?
(Kinda.) What does
grass-fed actually mean? How do conventional cows live and what do they eat –
and does that matter enough to me to make the effort to incorporate true
grass-fed beef into my diet?
Hopefully,
the following article will shed a bit of light on the subject, making it easier
for you to make an informed decision based on your preferences, your needs,
your budget, your personal ethics, and the objective information provided.
Cow’s Diet
You’d think this would be a
simple, single sentence section – grass-fed cows eat grass, grain-fed cows eat
grain. Bam. Done, right? Not quite.
For the most part, all cows start
on grass. Well, calves drink milk, obviously, and then “milk replacement” (which
appears to be a sort of high-powered protein shake made of milk proteins, lard,
lactose, added minerals, and several choice supplements) upon separation from
their mothers, but even the most CAFOed
out cow probably started with grass before being switched to concentrated
feed.
Concentrated feed can mean any number of things, but the base food is
always a grain slurry, typically of corn and corn byproducts
(husks, cobs), soy and soy hulls, spent brewery grain, spent distiller’s grain,
and other cereals. CAFO nutritionists can get pretty creative,
though, sometimes including cotton byproducts, old candy (including wrappers),
beet and citrus pulp, and peanut shells in their cows’ diet.
To say grass-fed cows eat grass
isn’t telling the entire story. It’s more accurate to say they eat graminoids,
which comprise hundreds of different species of sedges (found in wild marshes
and grasslands; a famous sedge includes papyrus), rushes (a small but plucky
family of herbaceous and rhizomatous plants), and true grasses (cereals, lawn
grass, bamboo, grassland grass – the type of grass that produces the leaves
Walt Whitman writes about).
And that’s just the graminoid. Cows will also
nibble on shrubs, clovers, and random leaves if they can get to them.
Basically, they’ll eat whatever’s in reach, green, and leafy. Legally,
grass-fed cows may also eat cereal grain crops in the “pre-grain stage,” hay,
silage, and non-grain crop byproducts (one of my favorite farms gives their
cows leftover veggies, for
example, and it’s fantastic; that would qualify).
There’s yet another hazy
category: the pasture-raised cow. These guys get steady lifelong access to open
pastures, but those pastures are supplemented with feed bins containing grain
feed. Not technically grass-fed, but not quite sucking down gumdrops like
Grandma.
Purveyors of pastured cattle who include grain in the feed are usually
pretty conscientious stewards of their operation, and I’ve had great meat from
cows that were fed grass and grain concurrently.
Living Conditions
While both grass-fed and CAFO
cows start out on grass and milk (many of those cows you see grazing on open
grassland along highways end up in feedlots eventually), only exclusively
grass-fed cows live out their entire lives on grassland.
CAFO cows move to
feedlots once they hit 650 or 750 pounds, a weight it takes the average cow
twelve months to reach on pasture. Feedlot life lasts three to four
months, plenty of time to boost the animal’s weight above 1200 pounds and
increase intramuscular fat deposition (marbling). Feedlots have the potential
to be pretty grim places. While I’m sure “good” feedlots exist, nondescript,
bleak pens crowded with sick, overweight
cattle and their manure are the norm. The purpose of the feedlot, after all, is
to maximize weight gain and minimize overhead. You don’t do either by
recreating the cow’s natural habitat.
Whenever I drive up the I-5 to
Northern California, I pass the Harris Ranch feedlot in Coalinga. The Harris
ranch feedlot is the largest I’ve ever personally seen – up to 250,000 head of
cattle annually, 100,000 head at any one time, about 200 million pounds of beef produced each year – but
it’s actually considered to be a moderate sized feedlot.
If it’s above 80
degrees, you smell the lot long before you see the signs for it. Now, I’m not
citing any studies here, but I think it’s a safe assumption that cows prefer a
grassy paddock to a pond of their own manure.
You don’t have to care about the
animal’s welfare – after all, we’re going to end up eating them – but I enjoy
my meat more knowing that it comes from an honest operation that respects its
participants’ living conditions.
Does it matter?
I think so. I make no bones about
my primary reason for supporting grass-fed beef (I, ahem, want to eat delicious
animals and buying delicious animals promotes their production), but that
doesn’t mean I don’t care about their
welfare while alive.
I’ve been to grassland farms with families of
cattle ranging, and if you get to close to a calf the mother will stomp and
chase you down. I didn’t even know cows could run like that. Are they
cud-chewing ungulates with minimal brainpower in the grand scheme of things?
Sure, but they care about stuff in their own beefy way.
And I find that pretty
touching. I’ve also hiked through cattle farms and watched the cows roam
and range all over for acres, contrary to the grass-fed detractor’s claim that
cows prefer to be confined to a single, safe spot.
Nutrition
I’ve been one to bang the omega-6
in feedlot beef drum, perhaps as loudly as anyone, but I think a revisiting is
in order. Simply put, while the omega-6:omega-3 ratio in CAFO beef is worse
than the ratio in grass-fed beef, it’s not because the omega-6 content of beef
fat skyrockets with grain feeding; it’s because the omega-3 content is
basically nonexistent.
The absolute totals of omega-6 in grass-fed and
grain-fed are roughly similar. Grass-fed is even richer in PUFA by percentage, owing to the increase in
omega-3s.
As long as you’re avoiding or limiting the real big sources of linoleic acid in the diet,
like seed oils, bushels of nuts, and
conventionally raised poultry fat, the omega-6 content of conventional beef fat
won’t throw your tissue ratios off by much (if at all). What will, however, is
the lack
of omega-3 fats in grain-fed. Eat some fatty fish
or take some high quality fish oil to
round it out.
Grass-fed beef is
also higher in B-vitamins, beta-carotene (look for yellow fat),
vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), vitamin K, and trace minerals like magnesium,
calcium, and selenium. Studies show grass feeding results in higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid, the
“good” naturally occurring trans fat.
Studies also typically show lower total
levels of saturated,
monounsaturated, and
polyunsaturated fats in grass-fed cows, but that’s just looking at the trimmed
cuts. If you look at the whole carcass post-slaughter, you’ll find it’s encased
in a thick shell of saturated animal fat that gets removed because consumers
are scared of it and many grass-fed producers love to market their meat as low
in “bad fat” and low in cholesterol.
Kurt Harris, who regularly hunts “lean”
wild bucks and miraculously discovers ample stores of body fat, just put up a post
dealing with this exact issue.
Long story short: grass-fed beef has
plenty of fat, it’s just distributed differently. More subtle marbling and more
subcutaneous deposition.
Grass-fed truly shines in the
micronutrient profile for one reason. Grass-fed cows get more nutritious food.
Remember: they aren’t munching on monoculture lawn cuttings (let alone soy and
corn).
They’re eating a wide variety of (often wild) grasses, sedges, rushes,
shrubs, and herbs, each with its own nutrient profile.
Of course, how
nutritious those graminoids are depends on the quality of the soil, or the terroir.
If we care about what our food eats, we should also care about what the food
that our food eats is eating, right?
Grass-fed isn’t just miraculously higher
in selenium because of some magic process; it’s higher because grass grown in
good wild soil patrolled by plenty of mobile, self-perpetuating organic
fertilizer machines contains more selenium than soybeans or corn grown on
nutrient deficient land. It should follow that pastured, grain-supplemented
beef raised on good soil by good ranchers also contains higher levels of
micronutrients when compared to the CAFO cow, albeit not as high as the purely
grass-fed.
Eat beef, first and foremost. Get the highest quality beef you can afford,
whether that ends up being premium grass-finished from the farm up the road or
USDA Prime from Costco.
Don’t let the perfect
be the enemy of the good. Man cannot live on wild caught canned
sardines and crushing angst alone.
Cost and Accessibility
For the average grocery store
shopper, conventional meat is cheaper and easier to get. You drive your car to
the grocery store parking lot, walk twenty feet to the entrance, walk to the
meat counter, balk at the $9/lb grass-fed ground round, grab a few Styrofoam
containers of ground beef for a few bucks per pound instead, and you’re done.
Not much thinking, hard work, or money required. This is how most people handle
their meat acquisition.
If you want that same deal for
the grass-fed beef, you have several options.
Wait for a sale at the grocery store and
stock up. It probably won’t hit $3/lb, but you might save a few bucks.
Find a farmers’ market nearby (if any
exist and the season permits) that has a grass-fed beef vendor. Hope they sell
for a reasonable price, haggle if not. Buying large quantities might lower
costs for you.
Buy direct from a farm. Search Eatwild or browse
the list from this post
for the nearest provider. Oh, and you’ll need a freezer to store all the meat,
since you’ll have to buy in bulk to reduce costs. If you go this route, you can
sometimes get a quarter, half, or entire cow for as little as $4/lb. (Hint:
remember to ask for the fat!)
Each route involves more effort,
more money, and/or more time. All three are worth pursuing (grass-fed is that
much better, in my opinion), but I can understand why the barrier to entry
appears so high – a combination of price and time. To reduce the former
requires more of the latter, usually. And if you do it right and get a freezer
to go with your side of beef, you’re still incurring a big initial investment.
Not everyone can do that.
To my knowledge, “average” price
figures don’t exist. Grass-fed from one Whole Foods can be a dollar cheaper per
pound than in another Whole Foods two zip codes over; the same farmer who gives
me grass-fed ground round for four bucks a pound at the Santa Monica farmers’
market might charge five dollars at the Beverly Hills market.
Bottom line? Paying $12/lb for
grass-fed flat iron steak regularly isn’t worth it, to me, but spending extra
time researching farms/visiting farmers’ markets/scoping out sales to obtain affordable grass-fed
beef definitely is worth doing.
Availability
From 1998 to 2009, the number of
serious grass-fed producers in the United States grew from just 100 to over
2,000. Market
share grew in the same time frame from just $2 million to $380
million (to over $1 billion if you include imported grass-fed beef). Today, you
can find grass-fed beef (and lamb and
bison, even) in standard supermarkets, not just your specialty upscale grocers.
Farmers’ markets
are exploding (I gotta arrive earlier every weekend, it seems), and the Slow
Food/locavore movements are picking up steam. Clearly, the availability of grass-fed beef is growing with
growing consumer awareness and demand – funny how that works out, eh?
Taste
In the end, what else matters?
The final arbiter of a food’s worthiness is always taste. Food should – must –
taste good for us to eat it, especially food that is responsible for a big
portion of our caloric intake. Typical grass-fed beef is intramuscularly
leaner, more robust, and “beefier” than typical CAFO beef, which I find to be
somewhat mushy and bland.
Still, stringy, tough,
unpalatable grass-fed beef exists along with incredible grain-finished beef.
I’ve had both. I’ve eaten great conventional chuck roasts purchased for a few
bucks per pound at the Hispanic supermarket and I’ve had excellent steaks from Prather Ranch,
a Northern California producer that goes purely grass-fed until the last few
weeks of a cow’s life, when its diet is supplemented with chopped forage, rice,
and barley. While good grass-fed is better than anything else, the grass-fed
label can’t make up for a bad rancher (or poor foraging) and a good rancher can
make up for some grain in the diet (taste-wise; perhaps not nutritionally).
For me, the
clearly superior version of beef comes from the grass-fed and –finished cows
raised by ranchers committed to providing excellent stewardship of both soil
and cattle. Next, cows that have been grass-fed, pastured, and
grain-finished by similarly committed producers with similarly maintained soil
quality.
After that?
Just eat beef. Whatever you can get on a regular basis. Grab the occasional
grass-fed cut when you can, see how it tastes, and figure out if it’s worth it
to you.
¡hasta la próxima!
-Never let your protein intake go
lower than 1g/lb of body weight when you are aiming to add long-term muscle.
It’s the building block of muscle, and your body is going to be starving for
it.
