Not All Beef is Created Equal

By: Roger Mills

What do you want when you buy your family's meat? You want a good eating experience. That includes meat that looks good, smells good, tastes good, and eats good. You want mouth-watering anticipation of the taste to come, the satisfaction when you take the first bite that makes you want to eat more. You want it easy to cut and chew without having to grin it, beat on it, or stomp on it.

We want out good eating experience, but we want it without concern of cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, or diabetes. We'd like to help our vision and improve our immune systems. Is this just a pipe dream? Let's look at what can be done and how to do it.

Beef is naturally nutrient rich with excellent amounts of zinc, selenium, phosphorus, vitamin B12, and numerous proteins. At least two of these proteins are essential, and as our bodies cannot synthesize them, they must be acquired in the food we eat. Beef also has good levels of niacin, iron, riboflavin, and vitamin B6. In addition, when the animal is fed green, growing forage, it can have high levels of CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), Omega 3 fatty acids, Beta Carotene, and Vitamin E.

In a ruminant animal, such as a cow, sheep, goat, deer, elk, or bison, there is a big difference in the meat according to what they eat. Digestions is done, to a great extent, by the bacteria in the rumen. Different types of feed require different types of bacteria to turn that feed into meat. The end result in the meat can be quite different. Not all meat is created equal. The difference is primarily, from the standpoint of health, in the fatty portion of the meat. These components of the fat (fatty acid) vary greatly according to the feed the animal eats.