Red meat gets a bad rap. I have read that it causes cancer, diabetes and heart attacks. My social media feeds are loaded with articles on a weekly basis warning against the dangers of red meat consumption. Well I have some news for you. I eat 8 to 10 ounces of it every day for lunch with a side of green veggies, tomato and avocado, and my blood work is pretty damn good. The amount of energy and alertness that I get from red meat is second to none. Not to mention that it tastes a heck of a lot better than a dried out chicken breast.
Cows are ruminants (meaning that they have two stomachs) and they evolved to eat grass, hay and clover. Humans are not able to digest grass (we only have one stomach). Cows are not meant to be cooped up in a barn all day. Think of them as four-legged lawn mowers, always moving around and grazing on grass. This is their form of exercise. Cows should be lean and muscular. This produces meat that contains less fat, is more flavourful than the factory farmed meat you will find at the supermarket and has much higher levels of beta carotene, omega 3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid.
The health risks with red meat that you read about are specifically linked to how cattle are raised. Farmers made the switch from grass to corn several years ago because corn allows them to fatten up their cattle much faster than grass, and more importantly it allows their cattle to produce a lot more meat. The problem is that these animals are not healthy. And when you eat meat from unhealthy animals you end up getting sick!
Believe it or not, only 1-3% of the total beef produced in North America is fully grass fed and grass finished. (That means that for their entire life they were raised strictly on pasture and nothing else.) The other 97% are raised in confined feedlots where they are unable to move around and are fed a strict diet of corn, wheat and candy. Yes, you read that right. Candy. Cows raised on a corn fed diet have low levels of omega 3 fatty acids, highly levels of inflammatory omega 6’s and very little in the way of overall nutrition.
The problem is that the vast majority of the population does not have access to hormone-free, antibiotic-free, grass-fed meat. It is extremely challenging to find high quality meat that is affordable. A number of years ago I did my due diligence and found a couple of reliable providers. Whole Foods now has a large supply of grass-fed, grass-finished beef available in a number of different cuts. You can also go to grassfedbeefontario.com or check out realfoodtoronto.com, place your order online and have it delivered to your door. All three of these options are reliable and affordable.