Over the past few years, you may have heard people talk about, read articles or even saw in the news, “recent studies show, red meat is bad for you!” And the reality of that is the kind of red meat they are talking about IS bad for you. However, they failed to mention that there are different kinds of red meat. You see over 90% of the beef industry is grain fed, factory farmed beef. The very beef that IS bad for you. A small percentage of beef is Traditional Family Farmed, 100% Grass Fed Beef.
100% grass fed beef, the very meat your grandparents/great grandparents ate, and that the human race has thrived on for over a million years, in good health. In this article I will give you facts about the reality of the different kinds of beef.
First understand that when I say different kinds of beef, that this is true. Grain fed beef, 100% grass fed beef and what lies in the middle are completely different foods. Let’s start with Grain Fed (Factory Farmed) beef…
Grain Fed cows are raised on a “farm” that looks and acts more like a factory. As a matter of fact, if you were to visit a Factory Farm, you wouldn’t recognize it as a farm! The cows are penned up in restrictive pens, standing shoulder to shoulder with virtually no allowable movement and in inches deep of their own fecal matter and urine.
Factory Farmed cows diet consists of “grain,” which translates to genetically modified corn that makes its own pesticides, and soy, types of foods that ruminant animals did not evolve on therefore, the cows begin to get sick and start to die from this new diet. The industry begins a poor attempt to counteract this by injecting the cows with antibiotics and steroids to keep them “alive” long enough to bring them to the slaughter. As of 2009, 80% of all antibiotics produced in the United States are used on Factory Farmed animals. The reports you read that have been done on beef that disclose the results of beef being bad for you, have all been done on Factory Farmed, Grain Fed beef not 100% Grass Fed. You might not suspect that factory farmed beef to be a source of heavy metals, pesticides, and an array of potentially harmful drugs, and GMO’s, but that’s exactly what you get. For more information on Factory Farmed (Grain Fed beef), you can also check out http://www.mercola.com/beef/cla.htm .
Next let’s explore the world of Traditional Family Farmed 100% Grass Fed beef. If you were wondering if the image of the open field of cows grazing on grass was the applicable image for 100% Grass Fed beef, then you are correct.100% Grass Fed cows feed on pastures of grasses and seeds, a diet their ancestors evolved on and thrive on today. This creates healthy cows, therefore there is no need for antibiotics and hormones and since they are not eating genetically modified corn that produces its own pesticides, neither are you. 100% Grass Fed beef contains 3 to 5 more times the CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), a healthier ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids, is higher in essential vitamins / minerals and is lower in saturated fats.
So, what is the meat that lies in between? That would be Grass Fed beef finished on Grain for the last 3 months of the cows life. Here you take a perfectly healthy cow and ruin its health by feeding it genetically modified corn, and soy that also produces its own toxins. Since the cows begin to deteriorate, they too are injected with hormones and antibiotics.
Before I close out this article, I would like to also state that there has been a lot of talk about meat being hard to digest. This too is a partial truth. Meat if ingested with sugar or meat that has been fed a diet high in sugar IS hard to digest. This is due to the sugars coating the proteins and making them hard to digest or indigestible. In short choose your meats wisely and don’t add sugar to your meat if you want the proteins in it to be digestible. Thanks for reading remember to eat your 100% grass fed beef in good health.
– Guest Author, Kim Bowman, ‘The Food Investigator’ with ‘What’s In It 4 U?’
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