Grass-fed beef is vastly superior to grain-fed beef, and in fact it’s the clear beef of choice you should be eating.  It is lower in fat than regular beef, and more importantly, contains higher amounts of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), 3 to 5 times more than grain fed animals.

CLA has been making headlines for its extreme health benefits, which include:

• Fighting cancer and diabetes

• Helping you lose weight

• Increasing your metabolic rate, a positive benefit for promoting normal thyroid function

• Helping you maintain normal cholesterol and triglyceride levels

• Enhancing your immune system

• Fights inflammation

Strictly grass-fed cattle are not prone to the deadly stomach-acid resistant E-Coli bacteria to which grain-fed cattle are prone.

Grass-fed meat is almost always preferable to even organic meat because most organic meat is fed organic corn, which is what causes the myriad of health problems associated with eating beef.

Grass fed products are rich in all the fats now proven to be health-enhancing, but low in fats that have been linked with disease.

(Excerpts from Mercola.com)

 

COMPARING OMEGA 6 TO OMEGA 3 FATTY ACIDS   

 Ratios in the Modern Diet

Our ancestors’ diets before the last 100 years likely had a ratio of 3 to 1.  Modern agriculture increased production by emphasizing grain feeds for domestic livestock, and grains are rich in omega 6 fats.  Therefore, aggressive, industrialized agricultural management techniques have decreased the omega 3 fat content in many foods: green leafy vegetables, eggs, animal meats (beef, chicken, buffalo and even fish) to where the ratio is now closer to 20 to 1.  This huge imbalance appears to be responsible for much imbalance in our body systems and responsible for many of our health problems.

When we switch from grain-fed to grass-fed meat, we are simply returning to the diet of our fore- fathers, the diet that is most in harmony with our physiology.  Every cell and every system of our bodies will function better when we eat products from animals raised on grass.

 

 

Research from Utah State reconfirms health benefits of grass-fed beef

 

LOGAN, Utah: Research by Drs Dhiman, Poulson and Cornforth in the Department of Animal and Dairy Science at Utah State University have once again confirmed the greater health benefits of grass-fed over grain fed beef.

The research also reconfirmed that steer calves fed grain early in their lives never achieve the CLA levels of calves raised exclusively on pasture for their entire lives.

Generally, the calves fed grain early in their lives but finished on pasture had 218% more of the anticarcinogenic CLA than feedlot-finished cattle, but this was less than half the amount of the calves raised on grass their entire life. This compares with 466% more in completely grass-fed animals. This is the same magnitude of increase previously found in the milk of completely grass-fed dairy cows.

The Utah researchers surmise that grain feeding at any time in the animal’s life somehow decreases the expression of the mechanism responsible for the synthesis and incorporation of the anticarcinogenic CLA into meat tissues.

Some researchers have argued that the leaner carcass of grass-fed animals offsets the increased CLA content as the CLA is found mostly in the fat of the animal.

However, the Utah research said that even figuring a fat content of only 60% of that of grain fed beef the CLA per 100 grams of meat was still 330 % greater. Also, the grain fed animals had only 60% as much omega-3 fatty acid as the pasture finished animals.

Omega-3 fatty acids have been found to increase immune function and to reduce heart disease. Vitamin E in the meat was 300% higher than in the grain-finished animals. This resulted in a significantly redder meat color than that found in the grain fed animals.

There was no difference in tenderness or juiciness between the three treatments. However, a slight off-flavor was noted in the grass-fed and grass-finished group.* Surprisingly, this off-flavor was not found in the cattle which had been grain supplemented as stocker cattle but had been completely grass-fed for the final 130 days of their lives.

Other research by Dr. Dhiman in 2005 found that supplementing grass-fed steers with soybean oil for the last 105 days prior to harvest did not significantly increase CLA content in either grain fed or grass-fed animals.

*Note: In our 30 years of farming, we have not had any negative reactions to the flavor of our grass-fed beef, but rather many positive comments. We invite you to try our product and see for yourself.

 

Not too long ago the local paper asked to do an article on us. They did a nice job of explaining what we do and who we are. We thought we would share it with those of you who peruse our web site just to give you a bit more detail about us as you consider the possibility of a beef purchase. They may have made us look a little better than we actually are, but they got the essence of it correct. Use the following link:

http://mcrecord.com/archives/517279/hobbs-hereford-farm-actively-supports-health-of-mind-body-and-spirit/

 

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