The Health Benefits and Research
Behind Grass Fed Meats

What are the health benefits and research behind grass fed meats and dairy products? What is it that makes these products better for us?

To start, let's look at some of the mistakes we've made and learned from that led us to look more closely at better ways to raise our food.

Alarming Food News

Jo Robinson, of Eat Wild.com , has some alarming news about what our animals eat.

"In my investigation into pasture-based farming, I've stumbled upon an alarming state of affairs: few animal scientists see any link between animal feed and human food. "Feed animals anything you want," say the experts, "and it makes no difference to their meat, milk or eggs." Because of this mindset, our animals are being fed just about anything that enhances the bottom line, including chicken feathers, sawdust, chicken manure, stale pizza dough, potato chips and candy bars."

Candy bars? Sawdust? Chicken manure!

If that isn't bad enough, the candy bars - and gum - are fed to the animals still in their wrappers!

Can you name any animal whose diet should consist of these things? I can't!

Do you think these "food items" affect the animals' health, and the nutritional content of the meat, eggs or milk we get from them?

Of course!

And if it affects the nutritional content of the meat, eggs and dairy, don't you imagine it affects our health, too?

Obviously.

Most people have no idea they're eating meats, eggs and dairy products that come from huge production farms that feed their animals such garbage. They have no idea of the health risks that may be involved.

But that's only one part of the biased "results" of the health benefits and research obscuring the truth about the difference between corn-fed, feedlot meats and pasture-raised meats.

Where else have we gone wrong?

Good Fat - Bad Fat

A lot of food research is going on these days, and has been in the past. When we discovered that many people died of heart disease while eating a diet rich in butter, lard, eggs and red meats, we found out that the saturated fats in these foods contributed to this disease. This is not a true statement.

The research deals with saturated fats so “Research discovered that many people were dying of heart disease because they were eating a diet rich in saturated fats (processed foods, confinement raised animals, fast food, etc. as this was the diet that most Americans eat), so they made the leap and said all saturated fats were bad. Hence we have the big push for low-fat everything even for our children. They were not testing people eating grass fed animals.

Saturated fat from wild, or grass-fed, grass-finished meat and eggs has a totally different effect on people. In fact, saturated fat is necessary for brain development in our children and better brain and memory functioning for adults. It is also satiating so the body isn’t hungry all the time, looking for more to eat, because it is not getting what is good for the organism to function well.

Previous "supposed" health benefits and research gave us inaccurate, incomplete information. What were we told to eat instead of those saturated fats? Corn oil and safflower oil. These oils are full of polyunsaturated fats, which we thought were better for us. While it seemed this helped our overall health, cancer rates were growing.

Why? There are multiple reasons, like our ever-more-polluted environment, pesticides and herbicides on our foods, food additives, stressful lives. And eating the wrong kind of fat.

What we found out is that these polyunsaturated fats contained high amounts of a type of fat called omega-6-fatty acids. There is now evidence that these fatty acids can actually make cancer cells grow faster and become more invasive.

If that wasn't bad enough, we'd begun producing meats, eggs and dairy products on huge conglomerate farms where we fed our animals on corn and grains that didn't meet their health and diet needs, not to mention the "garbage" fillers mentioned above. This unhealthy diet caused the balance of omega-6s to omega-3s to tip way too far toward omega-6s, giving us yet another source of this less-healthy fat in our diets.

Now we were double-dosing ourselves!

Fortunately, study of the health benefits and research showed that we had an alternative that actually helped fight off cancer and heart disease.

Why Grass Fed Is Best

Grazing animals raised on pasture, instead of on corn to fatten them quickly, have many health benefits: for us, for the animals and for the environment. When you raise a cow on nothing but grass, the meat you get from it is high in CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), a potent cancer-fighter. Along with CLA, the meats and dairy products are properly balanced with omega-6 and omega-3 oils.

Why are omega-3 fatty acids important? They're a potent weapon against all of these:

• ADHD
• Alzheimer's Disease
• Asthma
• Autoimmune Diseases
• Cancer
• Cardiovascular Disease
• Depression
• Diabetes
• Obesity

With all this to tip the scales to grass fed and grass finished meats, why would anyone eat anything else?

Because "conventional" meats are cheaper to produce, and thus cheaper to buy. And worse, because far too many people have no idea of the consequences of raising meats the wrong way.

Not only that but we're inundated with groups who care nothing for the welfare of the animals and we humans who eat them, and everything about making money: the study of the health benefits and research are conducted by grain, chemical, pharmaceutical, farm equipment and meat-packing companies.

This multi-billion dollar crowd ignores the health benefits and research about grass feeding livestock. Rather than looking into ways to make our animals - and thus us - healthier they work toward figuring out ever-better ways to aid the huge production farms and feedlots get around basic health issues, ignoring the small, sustainable farmer who is helping the environment while he or she is treating their animals humanely.

It high time to break those myths such people are perpetrating.

You can join us by buying our grass fed products, and helping us get the word out. You have nothing to lose, and good health to gain.

For information about a related subject, go to Beyond Organic.

For more health benefits and research into foods and healthy eating, try these links as well:

Dr. Loren Cordain's Paleo Lifestyle Website

Creighton University Medical School's Paleo Lifestyle Page

Dr. Mercola on the Paleolithic Diet 1

Dr. Mercola on the Paleolithic Diet 2

Dr. Mercola on the Health Issues with Carbohydrates

You also might want to read this article by Amy Radding on the dangers of arsenic in chicken feed which is routinely used with chickens raised in confinement on large conglomerate farms.

Arsenic in Super Market and Fast Food Chicken

New Health Benefits and Research, January 2012:

Here's another article with the newest research on the Paleo Diet and it's health benefits: Refining the Paleo Approach to Eating

Thank you for visiting and supporting our sustainable farm!


Return to Homepage from Health Benefits and Research