If you are a beef eater, you may have heard differing opinions over the years about whether or not beef is actually good for you and whether or not it is damaging to the environment for ranchers to produce so much of it. Thanks to organic farmers and their sustainable farming practices, organic meats are being produced that are good for you and good for the environment.
When it comes to organic food, many people might not realize that organic beef is even a thing, and if they did, they might have thought that it was something they could not afford.
In actuality, organic beef is produced with the latest and best farming practices to give you a delicious meal that is good and good for you. Here are three things about organic beef that you didn’t know.
1. Grass-fed beef has fewer calories than your regular steer.
A steer that has been fed grain is going to bring a bunch more calories to the table. A six-ounce steak that comes from a grass-fed steer will contain roughly 100 fewer calories than its grain-fed counterpart. That reason alone could sway the skeptical meat eater.
2.) Low in “bad fat” high in “good fats.”
Sometimes it can be hard to determine what kind of fat is good for you and what kind is bad for you. What we have pretty much figured out over the years is that saturated fat is bad and omega-3 fatty acids are good. The upside is that grass-fed cattle produce meat that is low in saturated fats and high in omega-3 fatty acids. Bonus!
3.) The cost of raising cattle is lower with grass-fed methods.
If a rancher is raising his cattle on grain, every cow will use about 284 gallons of oil during its lifetime. This has a great deal to do with the growing and processing of corn used to feed the cattle. On the other hand, grass-fed cows will use much less energy and produce a great deal less waste.
So, the next time you decide that beef is what’s for dinner, you might have a choice to make. You could go with the grass-fed beef that has fewer calories, is low in “bad fats” while, at the same time, being high in the “good fats” department, and is raised in ways that are better for the environment, or you could go with the grain-fed variety.