Sara R. Hayden 
From the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal
April 12, 2002
 

For years, we've been told to cut back on red meat: "It's not good for you, it causes colon cancer, it clogs your arteries." And so on. 

But evidence suggests that it really depends on what kind of beef you eat. 

"Humans evolved eating wild animals that were eating wild plants," says Joe Morris, a cattle rancher based in San Juan Bautista who raises grass-finished beef in Santa Clara, San Benito, Monterey, Merced and Santa Cruz counties. "Meat from animals fed grasses has a better nutrient profile, which is what our bodies would like and what the American diet is deficient in. The last two to three years of research has backed up our intuition about the nutritional content of the beef." 

Mr. Morris quotes research by Dr. Tilak Dhiman of the Utah State University: that grass-fed beef is higher in the right kinds of fatty acids for good nutrition, and contains more vitamin E, beta carotene and conjugated linoliec acid. 

"CLA is the hot new thing," says Willa Keizer. "Why buy it in a bottle when you can get it through your food?" 

Ms. Keizer is a certified classical homeopath and the chapter leader for the Santa Cruz chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation. The nonprofit organization is dedicated to the principles of Weston Price, a 1930s dentist who visited cultures free from degenerative diseases to discover their "secrets." He became concerned that the refined foods Americans were eating were contributing to disease. 

"Julie and Joe [Morris] contacted me through the Weston Price foundation and I was glad to know that grass-fed beef was available in our area. Grass-fed is closer to what our ancestors ate and helps keep people free from allergies, degenerative diseases, cancer." 

"When you feed [cows] what's not natural to them, it's not natural to us," says Ms. Keizer. 

Another fan and consumer of grass-fed beef for the past two years is Jaclynn Bol, an oncologist trials researcher for the VA Palo Alto and Stanford health care systems. 
"In my own research [I've found that] we're not vegetarians by nature," says Ms. Bol. "We as civilized people have had to manufacture so much food we've gone genetically overboard. Our grandparents didn't die of all these diseases. Our meat is processed, force-fed, supplemented, injected -- in general it's not the meat."

But products from pastured animals are ideal for human health, says Jo Robinson, author of "The Omega Diet" and "Why Grassfed is Best" and the principal researcher for Eat Wild (http://www.eatwild.com). 

"We are genetically programmed to thrive on these natural foods," she says. "The research suggests that switching to grass-fed products could reduce the risk of diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer. 

"A sirloin steak from a grass-fed steer has about one-half to one-third as much fat as a similar cut from a grain-fed steer. In fact, grass-fed meat has about the same fat content as skinless chicken or wild deer or elk. When meat is this lean, it actually lowers your LDL cholesterol levels." 

Mr. Morris doesn't transport his cows; he raises each on one ranch. 

"The animals under our management help take care of that place. Cows are landscape gardeners, pruners. They are integral to the health of the land and the health of the community." 

"If I had the cultural knowledge my grandfather had, I would have started this a long time ago," says Mr. Morris. "It took me 29 years to come back to this." 

SARA R. HAYDEN is research director for the Business Journal.