Page 112 - How to Be a Conscious Eater - Making Food Choices That Are Good for You

particular, it has more omega-3s, healthy fats that are found
in grass.
One last selling point: Many people who try grass-fed beef
like that it tastes purer, gamey, and even mineral-y. There’s
an emerging idea around the terroir of grass-fed beef. Much
like the joy of savoring wines from different regions—detect-
ing that a pinot noir from Oregon has different characteristics
than a pinot noir from Burgundy, France—you can start to
think of the unique opportunity to taste the difference among
cattle raised in different parts of the country: On the steep
and foggy California coast, cattle are eating different types of
grasses compared with those raised, say, on the flat and sunny
grasslands of Colorado.
It remains to be seen whether the potential to capture car-
bon in the soil by grazing cattle on pasture can essentially
cancel out their high methane emissions. Under optimal graz-
ing scenarios, it appears this neutrality is at least possible,
but only more research will clarify how replicable these sce-
narios are across the growing grass-fed industry. Some initial
studies also suggest that adding seaweed to cattle feed can
dramatically cut methane emissions, since it can alter their
gut composition.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN BUYING GRASS-FED BEEF
The USDA has in the past standardized the term grass-fed for
beef. However, it has revoked its label standard, acknowledging
widespread confusion about its meaning. It continues to reg-
ulate the use of the label on beef, though rather meagerly. The
FDA does not have a standard definition for the term on dairy
products. So, that term alone does not provide great assurance
of how much of an animal’s life it was allowed to graze for, or
what percentage of its overall diet came from grass.

Stuff That comes from animals 101

Conscious Eater_02 PT_4th patches.indd 101 10/23/19 1:31 PM