Why Should You Eat Grass-Fed Beef?
These days, it seems like there’s always a new food trend or important cause that needs to be addressed whenever we head to the grocery store for our weekly grocery pick up. We march up and down the aisles of our local supermarket and hear the little voices in the back of our heads that remind us to choose all organic, local, cage free, grass-fed food only, not only for the sake of our own health, but for the sake of our planet and for the sake of living sustainably in a world that’s becoming more and more ravaged by climate change. But let’s hold the phone for a second, and go back to that whole “grass-fed beef” statement.
Beef is cow meat…and don’t cows naturally eat grass anyway? Well, you clever person, yes they do naturally eat grass. Unfortunately, we live in a world where our food industry is rapidly losing touch with what is natural and what is artificial – and which one of those two is the healthier choice for us. I did a little digging until I came across an article by Yahoo Health that weighs in on this issue and offers a lot of important and necessary information. Here’s what I learned.
As we already established earlier, cows naturally eat grass. In fact, they were fed grass by farmers up until the last half of the last century. Efficiency was deemed more important than quality or health standards, and so the food industry needed to find a way to fatten up our cows at a faster and much cheaper rate. These days, we feed cows lots of corn and grains in order to make them gain unnatural amounts of weight at an unnatural rapid pace. This means that the beef you get from these cattle that are no longer grass fed is extremely high in unhealthy fats, and offers very little nutritious fat for your body to benefit from, let alone gain any kind of energy from.
This unhealthy fat can lead to increased inflammation in the body, which will very often lead to joint pain and high blood pressure, among other concerns. Do yourself a big favor and shell out the extra few bucks to buy yourself a healthy, all natural cut of beef that is from grass fed cattle. Your body will definitely be sure to thank you for it – you’ll be getting the protein and healthy fats you need, without the unhealthy stuff that comes with unnatural feeding methods.
Used under Creative Commons Licensing courtesy of The Meat Case