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Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef debate


As I was grocery shopping this weekend I came across some corn fed beef. As you may know this is a very skeptical topic because it goes hand-in-hand with Generically Modify Foods (GMO). I thought to myself Cattle are not design to eat corn!? How would this be healthy to eat? And would this be considered to be GMO?
Well from my research I have found that some people are for it and some against it.
 
Cattle are fed corn for a multitude of reasons. Cattle love eating corn, and prefer eating corn over grass. Corn provides cattle with a means to obtain more energy from their diet which they use to help them grow. Cattle eating strictly grass often cannot obtain enough energy to meet their needs, growth and thus live their lives malnourished. Secondly, cattle are fed corn because feeding corn produces high quality, tender, juicy, and flavorful beef. Grass fed beef often has gamey "off flavours" and substantially less marbling which make the steaks you buy extremely tough when cooked, and can be comparable to eating a piece of leather.  Cattle fed corn have significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions than any form of grass fed program.  Sounds great but just wait the real truth is that cattle were designed to eat grass. The diet is primarily starch based (corn) is about as unnatural as you can get, and is intensely unhealthy for the animal as well as consumers of food products from those animals. Corn has been introduced to the feed to fatten them up faster; hormones and protein supplements. Also, the corn that they are feeding these cattle’s is genetically modified.  I’m sure cattle farmers would argue that without antibiotics and pesticides their cows would get sick in such close quarters and they can’t make a profit by scaling back or allowing cattle to feed in an open pasture.

This  is when we need to vote with our dollars and buy meat that is better for us.
If the demand is there, the industry will adapt and change the supply.

You get to vote for the food you want three times a day.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/29/grass.grain.beef.cookinglight/index.html
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