Grassfed Beef!

We've been told that red meat is bad for us. It's high in saturated fat, cholesterol and surely causes obesity, heart disease and a host of other health problems. This common "knowledge" may hold some weight in regards to feed-lot beef. However, there are essentially two types of beef, feed-lot and grassfed. Grassfed beef as you are about to find out is more comparable to wild game then to its counterpart from the feed-lot.

Feed-lot cattle are fattened on corn, grains, stale candy, chicken crap, their own crap and whatever other cheap calories are available including pieces of their own brothers and sisters. They are weened onto this diet with a steady stream of anti-biotics because this diet is so toxic that they could immediately die if the switch from their evolutionary diet (grass) to their new diet is not gradual. Next, hormones are added to make the cow hungrier and grow faster. This strategy enables farmers to produce around a 1200 pound steer in a little over a year, opposed to 4-5 years or so for a grassfed cow.

Feed-lot cows are sick. This excerpt from Michael Pollan's "The Omnivores Dilemma" describes exactly what happens to a cow when fed this feed-lot diet incongruent with its evolutionary diet of grass.

"Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal's lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal's esophagus), the cow suffocates.

A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike that in our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio."

"You are what you eat." As the old adage goes, when we eat a marbled cut of beef, we become more like that marbled cut of beef. When the cow eats crap unhealthy calories, it turns into crap unhealthy calories. When it eats what it is evolutionarily designed to eat (grass), the cow is healthy. It stores the omega-3 fats that are abundant in grass in its own less abundant fat stores. It also picks up the other nutrients and makes more of a healthy fat called CLA which has been shown to fight cancer in studies and aid in fat loss.

Recall how grassfed beef is akin to wild game? Archaeological evidence shows that humans thrived on a hunter-gatherer diet based around wild game. Knowing what happens to cattle when they deviate from their evolutionary diet guess what happens to humans when they deviate from ours? You are right, they get sick.

There are innumerable reasons why it is healthier to eat grassfed beef than feed-lot beef. Here are my top 7.

1.) A 1.65 ratio of Omega-6 to 3, instead of a 4.84 as is typical in feed-lot beef.

2.) Higher in CLA

3.) Lower in saturated fat and Omega-6 fat

4.) Higher in the anti-oxidant selenium

5.) Higher in the electrolytes calcium, magnesium and potassium

6.) Higher in B-Vitamins

7.) Higher in the anti-oxidant vitamin E

The only cons of grassfed beef are that it is more expensive, and harder to find. I justify the expense with two main arguments.

A.) Health is wealth. By investing in health you save money long term. Also, health takes priority over everything.

B.) It can actually be cheaper. 1 pound of 85/15 grassfed beef is nearly 960 calories. Approximately 37% of these calories are protein, the remaining 63% being from fat. This is a lot of fat, however, since the fat is HEALTHY fat you want to eat it all. When you get a conventional steak, or hunk of ground beef you want to cut off as much fat as possible, aiming to consume only the lean protein. Thus, you want to by the leanest beef possible. Say you buy a pound of grassfed beef at $6.00 that is 960 calories/ $6.00 = 160 calories per dollar. 93/7 ground beef is roughly 720 calories. You can find this beef for around $5.00 per pound, which seems cheaper. 720 calories / $5.00 = 144 calories per dollar. Therefore, the healthier option proves cheaper.

Where can you get grassfed beef? Eatwild.com is a great directory to pasture based farms commited to raising cattle without hormones and anti-biotics. They have over 1100 farms in their database. Around Delaware/Chester County, Martindales in Springfield consistently carries grassfed beef from $5.99-6.99 per pound for ground beef. Whole foods often has grassfed beef. Trader Joe's recently began carrying 85/15 grassfed beef for $5.99/lb (imported from Uraguay). Pete's Produce Farm in West Chester carries Dr. Elkins grassfed beef as does the Reading Terminal in Philadelphia.

Post some questions in the comments section below please.

Eating Paleo Locally

Ingredients: 1/2 eggplant, 1/2 albino eggplant, 1/2 yellow squash, 1/2 zucchini, 1 red onion, 1 stalk broccoli, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 pound Dr. Elkins grassfed beef.

This post is for those who are interested in the buying local movement. It's sustainable, better for the environment, better for our local economy etc... Also, it can be quite tasty and incredibly healthy. This meal in its entirety was purchased from Pete's Produce Farm in Westtown. All of the vegetables were grown on site at Pete's Produce Farm. The beef came from nearby Buck Run Farms.
Cooking...

Yummmmm... I'd estimate the entire dish was about 1100-1300 calories depending on the fat content of the beef which is not listed. The vegetables totaled ~$6 while the beef was $8.95.

I decided to get all Michael Pollan and find out exactly where this meal was coming from. Since I already had seen where the vegetables came from all I had to do is track down my beef. Coming soon, my trip to Buck Run Farms and visit with Dr. Elkins.

Eating Healthy Cheap

Being cheap conflicts with eating healthy. Healthy foods cost considerably more than their overly processed and/or overly marketed counterparts.  So what do you do if you are cheap or poor yet desire to eat healthy?

 First, remember that HEALTH IS WEALTH. You would be hard pressed to find ANYONE who would trade in their vitality for such relatively small monetary incentives. Would you take a 30$ a month stipend for an accelerated rate of brain degeneration and progressive hardening of the arteries? I think not. It's hard to enjoy life when receiving dialysis for your kidney, popping X amount of pills to treat all of your conditions, being so overweight with such a low work capacity that you can't enjoy the simple pleasures in life such as a walk on a nice day etc...

The truth is that most health problems (yes even those "genetic" and "age" related ones) can be attributed to diet and lifestyle (EAT, SLEEP, EXERCISE). Such diseases as Type II diabetes, hypertension, kidney failure, heart disease, CANCER(s), arthritis, heart attack, stroke, atherosclerosis, hypertriglyceridimia, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, iron deficiency anemia,GERD, celiac disease and too many others to name. Eating a lower calorie, well planned "paleo" diet will diminish your risk of ALL of the above. Cancer drugs can be pretty damn expensive eyy??

Check out this article. It is a good template for eating healthy without being a nutrition nazi like myself. 

I especially like his recommendation for eating fat. Yes the dreaded "F" word. Like the man says, fat does not make you fat, excess calories do. Don't avoid fat, avoid excess calories besides, it's cheaper too.

 I like to think in terms of price per calorie. At 9 calories per gram, fat  is often much cheaper than carbs and protein each at 4 calories per gram. So if we want healthy fats, we can get cheap, healthy fat from... 

Avocado (250-300 calories for 1$ at produce junction) 

Coconut (Nearly 1000 calories total milk + meat for ~$1.50 at produce junction)

Eggs ((80 calories x 12 eggs for 2.69 (200mg Omega 3 per egg) at Trader Joe's)

 Nuts (Trader Joe's is reasonable and have many unsalted varieties)

85/15 Grassfed Organic Beef (~1000 calories for 5.99 at Martindales)

Sardines!! (180 calories for 1.29 @ TJ's)

Herring!! (350 calories for 2.29 @ TJ's) 

These are my main sources of fat in my diet. ** It is very important to watch intake of omega 3 vs. omega 6 fats. But this will be a separate blog topic, I'll try not to digress.

Protein! All proteins are not created equal. Vegetable proteins are incomplete and crap, animal proteins are complete and superior. Whey protein is also a cheap source  of complete protein and I like to use it post workout or when animal proteins are out of the question (During a 3 hour lecture, though I have eaten animals in class:) Costs of livestock protein can be correlated with how much crap (grains, fat extracts, their own body parts, soy, etc...) they have to feed the animals. This is why Chicken is the cheapest source of animal protein. Chickens make good use of their calories and can roughly put on one pound of mass for every 2 pounds of feed. Pigs which will cost you more than chickens put on one pound of mass for roughly every 4-5 pounds of feed. And Cattle put on one pound of mass for every 7 pounds of feed. Don't quote me on these #'s as they are from The Omnivores Dilemma.

Back to eating healthy cheap. Extra freezer space is a great idea. It can be very expensive and time consuming to habitually have fresh fruits and vegetables. Rather, buying in bulk and freezing fruits, vegetables and meats can save big $$ at the store and at the pump while saving time. We have an extra freezer at my place that gets regular use.

The Three Basic Needs

Elementary school taught me that the three basic needs in life were food, shelter, and clothing. I've always had a problem with this as clothing is necessitated by society and the fact that man successfully inhabited land far from our more equatorial roots, and shelter is simply something that facilitates sleep. It is my contention that our three basic needs are food, exercise and sleep, thus the fittest individual will generally eat better, exercise better and sleep better than their peers. 

It is indisputable that food is a basic need. Without food the most one can expect to live is a few weeks and if we consider water as food, only a few days. Food should be viewed as a drug. Anything we ingest effects our homeostasis either making us more healthy, or less healthy. 

Sleep is vital to our survival. The longest documented case without sleep was 11 days (1). Without sleep our central nervous system cannot function optimally and eventually will fail altogether. Again, we can use sleep to promote health by taking advantage of its restorative properties. 

It's hard to say how long one can last without exercise but not hard to realize that without it your physical capacity will be akin to that of Stephen Hawking, and that's just no way to live. YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING. A human without any form of exercise is like Michael Jackson, dead. A human whose form of exercise is walking from the car to the desk job and back to the car is like Siskel and Ebert, half-dead. 

My goal is to help illuminate those interested in improving their health on the three things I study most, eating, exercising and sleeping. Stay tuned for such updates.

1.) ^ Thangham CV (October 2007). "What happens when you stay awake for eleven days?". Digital Journal.

About Bryan Stell

Upon creating this site, I was a 22 year-old college student finishing my degree in Exercise Physiology (7/17/09) with minors in nutrition and coaching. West Chester University PA is my Alma Mater. I currently work in a sleep lab as a Polysomnographic Technologist and am studying for my RPGST (Registered Polysomnographic Technician. Essentially, I study three things, diets, exercise and sleep, thus, Eat, Sleep, Exercise.