It’s a pain to find it. It’s expensive. There’s not enough selection. There are a lot of excuses for not buying grass-fed beef. But there is a very good health reason for choosing grass-fed over grain-fed beef. It has to do with omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. Omega 3 and omega 6 should be in balance, but our modern diet is way too high in omega 6. This means trouble.
Grain-fed beef is high in omega 6. Grass-fed beef is high in omega 3. Omega 3 is what everybody needs so badly.
Our ancestors had a more balanced diet because they ate more raw and natural foods. Our commercial foods have us loaded with trans-fats, chemical additives and synthetic foods which are very high in omega 6 fatty acids. Did you think grain fed beef wasn’t a commercial food? They’re almost synthetic animals. Not being able to roam freely means their bodies don’t produce and store nutrients like pasture-raised animals do, like CoQ10, and especially omega 3 fatty acids.
Omega 3 acts as a natural blood thinner. The omega 6 family of fats cause blood to clot, promotes the rapid growth of cells (think cancer), induces smooth muscle cells to contract when they shouldn’t, brings about an inflammatory response, causes pain, and a host of other negative effects. Omega 3 has the opposite effect. You can see we have trouble here.
Our ancestors ate about twice the amount of omega 3 as omega 6. This is what we should do today. But the American diet is a whopping 20 to 50 times greater in the omega 6 family. We pay the health price.
Re-read the paragraph above. This is critical. I hope that you take it seriously.
Why this enormous imbalance in omega 3 and omega 6? Simply put, we live mostly on omega 6. We eat all kinds of bread, cereal, French fries, pies, cakes, crackers, and just synthetic and sugary junk.
We eat a lot of grains and grain products that load us up with omega 6 fatty acids. When cattle are fed out on a feedlot to fatten them for slaughter, they are fed grain which is very high in omega 6 fatty acids which becomes our omega 6 food. Grain-fed beef has an omega 6 to omega 3 ratio of 15 to 1, instead of the 2 to 1 found in game meat. How many of us know this?
Almost all salad dressings are made with high omega 6 fats as are all of our deep-fried foods in vegetable oils. Hey folks, we live on omega 6!
Studies have correlated an increased level of omega 6 in the diet with increased rates of heart disease, insulin resistance, cancer, diabetes, and the rest of the diseases that go along with aging. So aging is to a large extent, omega 6 induced. As a rule it takes 20 to 30 years for the system to break down because during youth, the enzymes work efficiently, striving to balance our omega 3s and omega 6s. As we age, our enzymes become far less effective and that’s when disease begins. It is happening at much younger ages. Before they reach their teens, many children are developing type-2 diabetes.
The answer to too much omega 6 is to start eating grass-fed beef, and fish. I take cod liver oil daily which has an abundance of EPA and DHA. I also do what most of you won’t do — I eat sardines. Sardines are at the top of the list for omega 3s without a worry for mercury. The best sardines are packed in sardine oil but hard to find. The next best are those packed in olive oil or spring water.
Make sure fish oil capsules, that some of you may take, are not rancid. Bite through one occasionally to test. Many on the market are rancid. This is a harmful fat. Buy fish oil or cod liver oil in glass bottles and keep refrigerated.
The trans-fat industry is all about shelf life for the commercial food processors and an early death for us. Our bargain with the food manufacturers is that we have traded longer shelf life for shorter human life.
Next time you eat or feed your family omega 6 trans-fatty acids in the form of margarine, salad oil, bakery goods, potato chips, corn chips, crackers, and candies, think what you are doing to yourself and your children. Early death and disease, caused by “foods” that taste good!