Health
Benefits of Grass-Fed Products
by Jo Robinson
Meat, eggs, and dairy products from pastured animals
are ideal for your health. Compared with commercial products, they offer you
more "good" fats, and fewer "bad" fats. They are richer in
antioxidants; including vitamins E, beta-carotene, and vitamin C. Furthermore,
they do not contain traces of added hormones, antibiotics or other drugs.
Below is a summary of these important benefits.
Following the summary is a list of news bulletins that provide additional
reasons for finding a local provider of grass-fed food.
Summary of
Important Health Benefits of Grassfed Meats, Eggs and Dairy
Lower in Fat and Calories. There are a number of
nutritional differences between the meat of pasture-raised and feedlot-raised
animals. To begin with, meat from grass-fed cattle, sheep, and bison is lower
in total fat. If the meat is very lean, it can have one third as much fat as a
similar cut from a grain-fed animal. In fact, as you can see by the graph below,
grass-fed beef can have the same amount of fat as skinless chicken breast, wild
deer, or elk. Research shows that lean beef actually lowers your
"bad" LDL cholesterol levels.
Because meat from grass-fed
animals is lower in fat than meat from grain-fed animals, it is also lower in
calories. (Fat has 9 calories per gram, compared with only 4 calories for
protein and carbohydrates. The greater the fat content, the greater the number
of calories.) As an example, a 6-ounce steak from a grass-finished steer can
have 100 fewer calories than a 6-ounce steak from a grain-fed steer. If you eat
a typical amount of beef (66.5 pounds a year), switching to lean grassfed beef
will save you 17,733 calories a year—without requiring any willpower or change
in your eating habits. If everything else in your diet remains constant, you'll
lose about six pounds a year. If all Americans switched to grassfed meat, our
national epidemic of obesity might diminish.
In the past few years,
producers of grass-fed beef have been looking for ways to increase the amount
of marbling in the meat so that consumers will have a more familiar product.
But even these fatter cuts of grass-fed beef are lower in fat and calories than
beef from grain-fed cattle.
>Extra
Omega-3s.
Meat from grass-fed animals has two to four times more omega-3 fatty acids than
meat from grain- fed animals. Omega-3s are called "good fats" because
they play a vital role in every cell and system in your body. For example, of
all the fats, they are the most heart-friendly. People who have ample amounts
of omega-3s in their diet are less likely to have high blood pressure or an
irregular heartbeat. Remarkably, they are 50 percent less likely to suffer a
heart attack. Omega-3s are essential for your brain as well. People with a diet
rich in omega-3s are less likely to suffer from depression, schizophrenia,
attention deficit disorder (hyperactivity), or Alzheimer's disease.
Another benefit of omega-3s
is that they may reduce your risk of cancer. In animal studies, these essential
fats have slowed the growth of a wide array of cancers and also kept them from
spreading. Although the human research is in its infancy, researchers have
shown that omega-3s can slow or even reverse the extreme weight loss that
accompanies advanced cancer and also hasten recovery from surgery.
Omega-3s are most abundant
in seafood and certain nuts and seeds such as flaxseeds and walnuts, but they
are also found in animals raised on pasture. The reason is simple. Omega-3s are
formed in the chloroplasts of green leaves and algae. Sixty percent of the
fatty acids in grass are omega-3s. When cattle are taken off omega-3 rich grass
and shipped to a feedlot to be fattened on omega-3 poor grain, they begin
losing their store of this beneficial fat. Each day that an animal spends in
the feedlot, its supply of omega-3s is diminished. The graph below illustrates this steady decline.
When chickens are housed
indoors and deprived of greens, their meat and eggs also become artificially
low in omega-3s. Eggs from pastured hens can contain as much as 10 times more
omega-3s than eggs from factory hens.
It has been estimated that
only 40 percent of Americans consume an adequate supply of omega-3 fatty acids.
Twenty percent have blood levels so low that they cannot be detected. Switching
to the meat, milk, and dairy products of grass-fed animals is one way to restore
this vital nutrient to your diet.
>The CLA
Bonus. Meat and dairy products from
grass-fed ruminants are the richest known source of another type of good fat
called "conjugated
linoleic acid"
or CLA. When ruminants are raised on fresh pasture alone, their products
contain from three to five times more CLA than products from animals fed
conventional diets. (A steak from the most marbled grass-fed animals will have
the most CLA ,as much of the CLA is stored in fat cells.)
CLA may be one of our most
potent defenses against cancer. In laboratory animals, a very small percentage
of CLA—a mere 0.1 percent of total calories—greatly reduced tumor growth. There
is new evidence that CLA may also reduce cancer risk in humans. In a Finnish
study, women who had the highest levels of CLA in their diet, had a 60 percent
lower risk of breast cancer than those with the lowest levels. Switching from
grain-fed to grassfed meat and dairy products places women in this lowest risk
category.13 Researcher Tilak Dhiman from Utah State University estimates that
you may be able to lower your risk of cancer simply by eating the following
grassfed products each day: one glass of whole milk, one ounce of cheese, and
one serving of meat. You would have to eat five times that amount of grain-fed
meat and dairy products to get the same level of protection.
>Vitamin E. In addition to being higher
in omega-3s and CLA, meat from grassfed animals is also higher in vitamin E.
The graph below shows vitamin E levels in meat from: 1) feedlot cattle, 2)
feedlot cattle given high doses of synthetic vitamin E (1,000 IU per day), and
3) cattle raised on fresh pasture with no added supplements. The meat from the
pastured cattle is four times higher in vitamin E than the meat from the
feedlot cattle and, interestingly, almost twice as high as the meat from the
feedlot cattle given vitamin E supplements. In humans, vitamin E is linked with a lower risk of heart
disease and cancer. This potent antioxidant may also have anti-aging
properties. Most Americans are deficient in vitamin E.
