When people think about eating healthy, they often think about the type of food they eat. Increasing the intake of vegetables, incorporating more protein sources, eating more whole grains and less sugar, and so on are all examples of food-related changes that are good for one’s health. But there’s another layer to this question that doesn’t get nearly as much attention—where does the food come from? How it’s produced before it makes its way to your plate can have a profound impact on health outcomes over time.
How something was produced, especially animal products, can have a direct bearing on the nutritional content of that product, and the relationship between how food is produced and its nutritional content is something that nutritional research has been building a case for over several decades. Understanding this relationship provides helpful insight into long-term health outcomes, which is the goal of this post.
How Farming Practices Affect Nutritional Content
The way an animal is raised can influence the composition of the meat it produces. An animal’s diet plays an important role in how nutrient-rich its meat turns out to be. For example, cattle that graze on pasture and eat a natural grass-based diet develop a different fatty acid profile in their tissues compared to animals that are raised in feedlots with grain-heavy diets. That difference between the two types of beef shows up in measurable ways once the animal is slaughtered and processed into meat.
Beef from grass-fed cattle is higher in omega-3 fatty acids than beef from grain-fed cattle. Not only that, but it contains higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a naturally occurring fatty acid that has been associated with a range of positive health effects. The sourcing process itself is worth understanding, and this article breaks down what pasture-raised really means in practice. Two cuts of beef that look identical in a supermarket can have meaningfully different nutritional profiles depending on how the animal was raised.
Why Omega-3s Matter
The importance of omega-3 fatty acids has to do with the fact that they are an essential nutrient that cannot be produced by the human body. It must come from food. Most of this essential fatty acid intake comes from fish, which have high concentrations of omega-3s. Grass-fed beef, though, still provides a meaningful amount.
The ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids in a diet has received growing attention from nutrition researchers over the past few decades. Modern western diets tend to be heavily weighted toward omega-6 due to vegetable oils and grain-fed meat products. That imbalance has been linked to increased inflammation in the body, which sits at the root of a host of long-term health conditions. Eating grass-fed beef is an easy and effective way of shifting the ratio of fatty acids toward a more favorable direction.
Other Nutritional Considerations
The amount of omega-3s isn’t the only difference between grass-fed and grain-fed beef that has nutritional implications. The vitamin E content in grass-fed beef is notably higher. Vitamin E is an antioxidant that plays an important role in protecting cells from oxidative stress. Another antioxidant known as beta-carotene is found in much higher quantities in grass-fed beef. The presence of beta-carotene, which is the precursor to vitamin A, is also responsible for giving fat from pasture-raised animals a slightly deeper color than fat from grain-fed animals.
Zinc, iron and B vitamins all help the body function properly. Their levels are high in all beef products regardless of how the animal was raised, but the greater nutrient density of grass-fed beef means that it’s a more complete source for these nutrients.
These considerations around grass-fed beef are part of a much larger conversation about food quality. The same principles that apply to cattle also apply to other animals. The nutritional profile of dairy, eggs and pork products changes depending on whether animals were raised with an emphasis on their natural behavior and diet.
Grass-fed Beef in Practice
Beef that is sourced from grass-fed cattle tends to cost quite a bit more than conventionally raised beef products. Cost is likely one of the reasons why grass-fed beef is not more common as a regular part of people’s diets.
Replacing some conventionally raised beef with grass-fed alternatives can still lead to increased health benefits over time even if it does not become a dominant part of what people eat.
Leaner cuts of grass-fed beef also require adjustments when cooking compared to grain-fed beef because of lower fat content levels. Cooking in lower heat for slightly shorter periods of time produces better results with grass-fed beef.
Long-Term Health Outcomes Depend on Food Quality
The implication of all of this in terms of long-term health outcomes comes down to the quality of a person’s diet more than anything else.
No single food choice in isolation is likely to have any meaningful impact on health outcomes over time. People can, however, expect significant results if they consistently make good choices when it comes to the quality of food they eat.
Choosing animal products that are sourced through farming practices that result in a richer nutritional profile is one of the easiest ways to improve diet quality without making dramatic changes.
The relationship between sourcing and health outcomes might not be complicated once it’s understood, but it’s still not well known outside specialist circles.
Information like the above provides an understanding of why the sourcing of animal products matters more than food labeling often makes clear.
