What Should You Avoid?
I’m sure you’ve been told to cut back on the red meat before. It raises your cholesterol, increases your chance of heart disease, should be avoided because of the saturated fat. Is this true? Well when it comes to conventionally raised animals, this is absolutely true! Whether it is red meat, poultry or fish, you should avoid eating grain-fed animals (yup, they even feed grains to farmed fish).
If you’ve seen any studies done on the correlation between heart disease and red meat consumption, remember this is specific to grain-fed meat, NOT organic grass-fed meat!
What Do We Recommend?
Grain-fed cows (or even grain-finished) have a much higher level of omega-6 fats, which we already get far too much of. These cows are also typically given antibiotics, hormones (to help them grow), and are fed grains that have been treated with pesticides. What do you think happens to these chemicals? That’s right – they are stored in the animals and then we eat them!! Not good.
Cows are meant to eat grass and roam free in a pasture. When allowed to graze on grass, the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats is ideal, which is GOOD for your body (remember our article on fats last week?). Organic, grass-fed cows are not given antibiotics or pesticides in their feed, meaning you are not consuming any of these nasty chemicals either. Meat from cows fed exclusively a diet of grass and hay does not cause heart disease. Your body actually needs saturated fats for the make-up of your cells. Plus, beef is a great source of protein! Go ahead; eat your organic, grass-fed beef!!
What Have We Found?
We won’t lie… We know finding exclusively grass-fed, organic beef is not only difficult, but also expensive. There are some great farm shares you can participate in where you can actually purchase shares of a cow.
Some companies we have found are Brooker’s Natural Meats and Beretta. You can purchase certain cuts from Nature’s, or online (delivered to your home).