I’ve gotten many letters like this after I wrote to you about my Dr. Sears’ Healthy Food Pyramid, so today I’m going to answer a typical one:
Dear Dr. Sears,
I am perplexed by your food pyramid as a lot of people have told me that red meat is a major culprit in inducing high blood pressure.
I am worried about blood pressure and I am refraining from eating red meat on daily basis. Please explain to me why the other advocates are wrong and you are right.
William C.
It’s understandable that you feel this way, William. It’s hard to escape the onslaught of misinformation about the co-called “dangers” of red meat.
But here’s the problem I have with that:
All the evidence that meat is bad came from adulterated meat.
When they test, they look at meat from animals that have been fed an unnatural diet of grain and soy, fattened and grown unnaturally with hormones, and kept alive by antibiotics.
And the unnatural living condition of animals in the modern food industry produces diseased animal fat. All of the herbicides, pesticides, toxins and hormones that the animal has been exposed to collect in the fat.
Modern farming techniques then prevent the animals from getting normal exertional activity. This makes for an obese animal with the wrong kind of fat. It has an unnatural and unhealthy concentration of omega-6 fatty acids that cause heart disease.
What’s worse is that the soymeal is patented and genetically modified, and the farmers are not allowed to know its contents.
This genetically modified soy then makes its way into the tissue of the animal, and then we eat that meat that is unnatural in a way that humans have never experienced.
Commercially-raised red meat may be giving you health problems. But not because it’s meat.
The evidence that meat is wrong comes from meat that is itself wrong. We changed the nature of it, and the consequences have been horrible.
In fact, I regard pasture-raised, grass-fed, hormone-free meat among the healthiest of all foods. You have nothing to fear when you make it a part of your diet.
Grass-fed beef can lower your blood pressure,1 not raise it.
In one study, people were randomly assigned either to maintain their usual diet or to partially replace carbohydrate-rich foods with protein from lean red meat.
The meat was not grass-fed, yet replacing grains with meat lowered blood pressure by 4.7 mm Hg.2 Imagine how much lower their blood pressure would have been if the meat were grass-fed.
Plus, pasture-raised meat is better for your whole body. The Journal of Animal Science found that the more grass cattle ate, the more nutritious their beef became.3
Grass-fed, pasture-raised animals have a higher concentration of the healthy and essential polyunsaturated fat omega-3, and less omega-6, just like nature intended.
Grass-fed products have three to five times more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than that of commercial animals.4 CLA is an important nutrient that has cancer-preventing properties.
And I read another study that revealed grass-based diets for cows help them produce more vitamin A and E, as well as cancer-fighting antioxidants, such as glutathione and superoxide dismutase (SOD) compared to grain-fed cows.5
How to Enhance Your Health with Grass-Fed Meat
Some grocery stores are starting to offer grass-fed beef. You can ask the butcher. Grass- fed meat is a deep red to maroon color, not pink like commercial beef. And grass-fed beef is very lean. The flavor is richer and tastes like wild game.
The surest way to get grass-fed products is through a private farm. Three of the good ones I’ve seen are:
- Rocklands Farm (rocklandsfarmmd.com): A newer farm in Maryland that pasture raises black angus beef, rotated to fresh pastures daily.
- Seven Seeds Farm (sevenseedsorganicfarm.com) – Grass-fed on family land owned since the early 1800’s. It’s a “closed-based” farm, meaning nothing they use comes from any other farm.
- Long Lesson Farm (longlessonangus.com) – Angus cows graze in pasture during the summer and are fed only hay harvested from their own fields along with supplemental minerals and salt.
Make sure you find a farm that has 100% grass-fed animals. Don’t be fooled by beef labeled “organic.” The organic label only means that the cattle do not have detectable levels of antibiotics or hormones in their body at the time of slaughter. It does not mean that ranchers have never subjected cattle to antibiotics or hormones. And most organic cattle eat nutritionally deficient grains that are not part of animals’ natural diet.
Also, try other meats besides beef, from grass-fed buffalo to elk. When you’re preparing it, trim the fat how you like, but don’t trim it all off. You need it to absorb the fat soluble vitamins like vitamin E and D.
My favorite three sites where you can find out more information on local pasture-raised meat are:
- American Grassfed Association (americangrassfed.org) – Certifies farms and ranches around the country, works with the USDA to standardize what pasture-raised means, and has news and even recipes.
- US Wellness Meats (grasslandbeef.com) – A resource for naturally produced meat, with videos and insight from experts.
- Eat Wild (eatwild.com) – research-based information about choosing present-day foods that approach the nutritional content of wild plants and game, our original diet.
1. Clifton P. “Effects of a high protein diet on body weight and comorbidities associated with obesity.” Br J Nutr. 2012 Aug;108 Suppl 2:S122-9.
2. Hodgson J, Burke V, Beilin L, Puddey I. “Partial substitution of carbohydrate intake with protein intake from lean red meat lowers blood pressure in hypertensive persons.” Am J Clin Nutr. 2006;83(4):780-7.
3. French P, et al. “Fatty acid composition, including conjugated linoleic acid, of intramuscular fat from steers offered grazed grass, grass silage, or concentrate-based diets.” J Anim Sci 2000; 78: 2849-2855
4. Dhiman T, Anand G, Satter L, Pariza M. “Conjugated linoleic acid content of milk from cows fed different diets.” J Dairy Sci. 1999;82(10):2146-56.
5. Daley C, Abbott A, Doyle P, Nader G, Larson S. “A review of fatty acid profiles and antioxidant content in grass-fed and grain-fed beef.” Nutr J. 2010;9:10.