Is Grass Fed Beef Anti-Inflammatory?

For many years I have struggled with inflammation in my body. I tried many different diets to reduce the inflammation and along my way I learned that Grass Fed Beef is among one of the items which is anti-inflammatory by nature because what the animal is eating is passed along to your health and vitality.

A little background on raising animals, in this case cattle, and tending to the land as stewards. When farms raise animals, they choose to pasture graze the animals, allowing them to consume on phytochemically diverse pastures which require less antibiotics than animals foraging on monoculture pastures or feedlots. Feedlots are characterized by controlled production practices and “nutritionally optimized” feeds to yield fat animals in less time than with grazing systems. That combination accelerates growth and enables more meat to be produced per unit area of land.

So now that you know about how farms can choose to finish meat, you’re asking yourself, ok what is your point? With greenhouse gas emissions at an all time high, there are increasing worries about how the meat production world adds to this stress on GHGE (Green House Gas Emissions) Many farms which choose to use feed lots, or choose to finish their mono-pasture or pasture raised cattle on (mass produced) feed are using grains to finish their meats. Conventional production of crops (Grains, Corns etc) grown to feed livestock in feedlots are often mass produced and create serious damage to soil—from tillage, inorganic fertilizers, and biocides. The lack of Biodiversity and stripping the land of its nutrients creates an imbalance which we know as the rise of GHGE. Plant diversity and grazing are vital for maintaining healthy soil to sustainably grow grains in rotation with pastures on farmland. Unfortunately the increasing demand for meat has created a beast of overproducing meat and mono agriculture.

Now back to WHY IS GRASS FED BEEF ANTI-INFLAMMATORY ??

In a peer reviewed article published by the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health it is said that “ Health is enhanced when livestock forage on phytochemically rich landscapes, and phytochemicals in herbivore diets protect meat and dairy from protein oxidation and lipid peroxidation that cause low-grade systemic inflammation implicated in heart disease and cancer in humans.”

Diet influences fatty acid profiles of animal tissues, and people often promote the health benefits of grassfed meat and dairy products based on improved ratios of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. Compared with diets high in cereal grains fed in intensive feeding systems, herbivore diets that are high in plants yield animal products that have higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids. Some scientists, medical doctors, nutritionists, and fitness advocates believe a healthy diet should have no more than 1–4 times more omega-6 than omega-3 fatty acids, but people who eat a diet high in processed foods consume a far higher ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. This imbalance is hypothesized to explain the increased incidence of heart disease, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune, and neurodegenerative diseases thought to stem from inflammation.

When people eat meat and fat, protein oxidation and lipid peroxidation cause inflammation, yet, when herbivores eat phytochemically rich diets, compounds in their diets protect meat and dairy from the protein oxidation and lipid peroxidation that cause inflammation. So in essence, what the animal eats affects your bodies response and reaction of inflammation.

Agriculture, land management, proper pasture rotation and animal stewardship is so important to our farm, this is why we have chosen to consciously steward our land and our animals. Bringing grass fed beef to our local community creates a circular system in which we are feeding our land which we steward and we are feeding the community as well. Our only goal in this life is to provide for our family and our community, we want people to be eating healthy nutrient dense food, and for our communities to be self sufficient. If we can provide one service, feeding you is what we choose.