The Differences Between Grass-Fed Beef & Grain-Fed Beef

In my opinion, if you eat any animal protein, that protein should come from an animal that eats only what it would normally eat in nature. In nature, cows eat grass, they don’t eat corn!

Grass Fed vs. Grain Fed Beef:

A Cow’s Diet:

You’d think this would be a simple. Grass-fed cows eat grass and grain-fed cows eat grain. It just isn’t that simple.

All cows start off drinking their mother’s milk. Most then move on to a milk replacement, which is a high-powered protein shake made from milk proteins, lard, lactose, added minerals and several other supplements. Upon separation from their mothers, most then start off on grass.

Grain-fed cows are then get switched to a concentrated feed, which can mean any number of things, but the base food is a grain slurry. That slurry is typically made up of corn and corn byproducts (husks, cobs), soy and soy hulls, spent brewery grain, spent distiller’s grain and other cereals. Sometimes this includes cotton byproducts, old candy (including wrappers), beet and citrus pulp and peanut shells.

To say grass-fed cows eat grass isn’t telling the entire story. It’s more accurate to say they eat graminoids, which comprise hundreds of different species of sedges, which are found in wild marshes and grasslands. A famous sedge iss papyrus. They will also eat rushes, which is a small family of herbaceous and rhizomatous plants and they will also eat true grasses,cereals, lawn grass, bamboo and grassland grass.

The pasture-raised cow gets access to open pastures, but those pastures are many times supplemented with feed bins containing grain feed.

Then you have grass-fed and grain finished. These cows are fattened up on grain, prior to being slaughtered. How long they eat grass for and how long they eat grain for is a fuzzy area.

Hormones, Antibiotics & Organic:

If you are buying conventional beef, it will no doubt be:

1. Grain-fed with genetically modified grains.
2. Injected with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), which can be potentially carcinogenic. rBGH fattens up the cows faster and therefore saves money.
3. Raised in confined animal feeding operation lots, which in my opinion constitutes animal cruelty.
4. Given antibiotics to prevent disease. The cattle are being raised in such a confined environment that without antibiotics, they could spread disease. These antibiotics are passed on to the consumer in the meat and can cause a number of health issues, including super-infections. These antibiotics also kill off beneficial human gut bacteria.

Orgainc doesn’t mean grass-fed. Organic means no GMOs, no antibiotics and no pesticides in their food, as well as having no administered hormones. Organically raised cows eat an organic diet.

Living Conditions:

While both grass-fed and grain-fed cows start out on grass and milk, only exclusively grass-fed pasture raised cows live out their entire lives on grassland. Most cows move to feedlots, once they hit 650 or 750 pounds, which is a weight it takes the average cow twelve months to reach on pasture.

Feedlot life lasts three to four months, which is plenty of time to boost the animal’s weight above 1,200 pounds and increase intramuscular fat deposition (marbling). Feedlots have the potential to be pretty grim places. Bleak pens, crowded with sick, overweight cattle, who can live in their manure. The purpose of the feedlot is to maximize weight gain and minimize overhead. You don’t do either by recreating the cow’s natural habitat.

A moderate sized feedlot can have 250,000 head of cattle annually, 100,000 head can be on this feedlot at any one time and about 200 million pounds of beef can be produced each year. It is no doubt that cows would prefer a grassy pasture.

Nutrition:

The ratio of omega-3 fats to:omega-6 fats is far superior from grass-fed beef. Americans get way too much inflammatory producing omega-6 fats. Although we need omega-6 fats, the perfect ratio is 1 omega-6 to1 omega-3. The average American may be getting 20 omega-6 to1 omega-3.

Grass-fed beef is also higher in B-vitamins, beta-carotene (look for yellow fat), vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), vitamin K, and trace minerals, such as magnesium, calcium and selenium.

Studies show grass feeding results in higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid, which is the “good” naturally occurring trans fat.

Studies also typically show lower total levels of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats in grass-fed beef, with more subtle marbling.

Grass-fed beef is superior in micronutrients because grass-fed cows get more nutritious food. They’re eating a wide variety of (often wild) grasses, sedges, rushes, shrubs and herbs, each with its own nutrient profile.

Cost and Accessibility:

For the average grocery store shopper, conventional grain-fed beef is cheaper and easier to get.

If you want a better deal for the grass-fed beef, you have several options:

• Wait for a sale at the grocery store and stock up your freezer. It probably won’t hit $3/lb, but you will be saving money.
• Find a farmers’ market nearby that has a grass-fed beef vendor and see if they are selling for a reasonable price, if not, ask if buying in larger quantities might lower their price.
• Buy direct from a farm. Search Eatwild.com, or do an online search.
• You will need a large freezer to store all of the meat, since you’ll have to buy in bulk to reduce costs. If you go this route, you can sometimes get a quarter, half, or entire cow for as little as $4/lb.
• If you buy a whole cow, get a number of friends together to split up the meat. It will be well worth it
• Buy a device to vacuum seal the meat packages. This will extend freezer life and eliminate freezer burn.

Availability:

From 1998 to 2009, the number of serious grass-fed producers in the United States grew from just 100 to over 2,000. Market share grew in the same time frame from just $2 million to $380 million (to over $1 billion if you include imported grass-fed beef). Today, you can find grass-fed beef, lamb and bison in standard supermarkets, not just your specialty upscale grocers.

Taste:

In the end, the final arbiter of a food’s worthiness is always taste. Typical grass-fed beef is intramuscularly leaner, more robust and “beefier” than typical grain-fed beef.

Gamey, stringy, tough and unpalatable grass-fed beef also exists.
The bottom line is that you need to sample a small amount of grass-fed beef from a vendor before you buy a whole cow. While good grass-fed is better than anything else, the grass-fed label can’t make up for a bad rancher, or poor foraging.

The superior version of beef comes from the grass-fed and grass finished cows raised by ranchers committed to providing excellent stewardship of both soil and cattle.

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