The Truth About Beef

"Beef or chicken?"-a common question asked in restaurants every day. If you're like most of us, fowl is first on your list. After more than 25 years of declining consumption, beef is no longer our number-one choice.

What happened? Two things-an overall trend toward lower meat consumption and the fact that numerous studies in the last 40 years have indicated a relationship between beef consumption and a host of diseases, including heart disease,cancer, arthritis, colitis and gout.

In defense of beef, critics such as Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD, authors of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats (NewTrends Publishing, 1999) argue that many problems we associate with beef are, in fact, more likely the result of increased sugar and hydrogenated fat consumption in the last 40 years. Studies implicating beef are also often difficult to interpret because people who consume beef regularly tend to eat few fruits or vegetables, a fact that may in itself explain most of the results. On their website, westonaprice.org/myths _truths/myths_truths_beef.htm, Fallon and Enig write, "With the exception of butter, no other food has been subjected to such intense demonization in recent years as red meat, particularly beef."

Who's right? Is beef a problem, are there other contributing dietary trends, or does it have something to do with way we raise and process our cattle? It's worth noting that in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, where processing methods differ greatly from North America and Europe and where grass-fed and organic beef are the rule, the association between beef consumption and disease is much less credible. This is interesting because all have similar dietary habits. So, if it's not beef itself, then maybe we should be looking more closely at conventional beef industry practices.

Meat-eating has slowly continued to fall, with study after study suggesting a relationship between dietary beef and a host of diseases including cancer, arthritis, colitis and gout.

The Conventional Beef Industry

The mainstream beef industry is consumed by two objectives: reducing fat content and decreasing the cost of production. The first objective has largely been accomplished by varying feeding regimes and selective use of certain cattle breeds. Lean, trimmed cuts of beef, generally from the hip area, contain as little as 7.5 percent fat, reduced by as much as 50 percent in some cuts over the last 30 years. The second objective, which revolves around supplemental feeding in feedlots, has had a number of unexpected and often dangerous consequences.

Disease Transmission in Feedlots

In much of North America, cattle are prepared for market by "finishing them off" in feed lots after pasturing. Grain-based feedlots use "cost-effective" ingredients as strange as ground-up phonebooks and as potentially dangerous as diseased animal carcasses to fatten cattle for market. In Europe, the latter practice has resulted in the transmission of "scrapie," a brain disease associated with sheep, to cattle through feed that contained the ground remains of infected animals. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or as it is more commonly known, mad cow disease, was subsequently transmitted to humans in beef products, resulting in an infection similar to Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, an otherwise rare but invariably terminal brain disorder. Although controls have been put in place to eliminate transmission of BSE, using animal carcasses as animal feed is still a widespread practice that unnerves many public health officials.

Spread of Bacteria

A recent study in Microbes and Infection (2000) on the effects of grain feeding on E. coli bacteria indicated that the practice increases the bacterium's resistance to digestive acids, leading to a drastic increase in E. coli population including highly toxic varieties in the guts of cattle. As a result, the huge amount of waste generated in large feedlots is a high-risk contaminant for surface and uncapped well waters. This has resulted in numerous deaths and injuries, including the well-known incident in Walkerton, Ont. E. coli contamination also occurs during processing when intestinal contents come in contact with meat. Cuts with a high surface area, such as ground beef, are particularly problematic and should therefore be cooked thoroughly.

Antibiotic Use

The beef industry also uses antibiotics and steroids as a means of boosting weight gain for economic reasons. Unfortunately, overuse leads to residues in beef that compound the worrisome problems of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic allergies in humans. Similarly, estrogen-type steroids used to stimulate weight gain leave trace amounts that result in hormonal imbalances in humans who consume the meat, evident as early sexual maturation in women and feminine characteristics in men. In addition, steroid residues may support the development of estrogen-sensitive cancers, such as those of the breast and ovaries.

The Grass-Fed Alternative

Grass-fed animals are a nutritionally superior and overall healthier alternative to conventional feedlot beef. A Japanese study (1991) indicated that grass-fed animals may have as little as one-quarter the body fat of feedlot animals. More importantly, the composition of the fat differs. The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in feedlot cattle is 18 to 21:1 (omega-3 deficient), whereas the ratio in grass-fed cattle is 3 to 1:1. The lower ratio is generally believed to benefit cardiovascular function.

Omega-3 fatty acids comprise up to seven per cent of total fat in grass-fed animals, compared to one per cent in conventional beef. These fatty acids are essential to normal growth and play a major role in the prevention of coronary artery disease, hypertension, arthritis, cancer and various automimmune and inflammatory disorders diseases that are common in North America where omega-3 deficiencies are prevalent.

As reported in Dairy Science (1999), the conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) content of grass-fed beef is three to five times higher than in conventional beef. CLA supports proper fat metabolism and may prevent certain types of cancer. The lower fat content of grass-fed animals also translates into fewer calories consumed almost 60 calories less per 100-gram serving on average, for even the leanest cuts of conventional beef.

Grass-fed beef also normally contains at least twice the vitamin and mineral content as its conventional grain-fed counterpart. In the case of vitamin E, grass-fed beef has up to four times the amount. Of course, these values vary considerably and are dependent on the quality of pasture and grass-based feed. For example, if pastureland is deficient in chromium or selenium, as is often the case, the cattle grazing on that land will be as well unless otherwise supplemented.

Where Do We Find Grass-Fed Beef?

From a regulatory viewpoint, there is no definition of grass-fed beef. As result, it's sold in whole food markets and some health food stores under several names including: grass-fed, natural, organic, certified organic and chemical-free. Most of these indicate the beef is from small operators who do not maintain feedlots or use antibiotics, steroids or "cost-effective" fillers. Producers should be willing to provide detailed information.

One hundred per cent grass-fed beef is generally more expensive due to higher production costs per kilogram, and it tends to be tougher. However, organic and chemical-free producers that are not 100-per-cent grass-fed offer excellent value, are BSE-, antibiotic- and steroid-free, and provide superior nutrition compared to conventional beef products.

PDF Table of Cost Comparision of Protein from Different Food Sources