© Mark's Daily Apple
When making the transition into the Primal way of life, a lot of people get tripped up on the question of grass-fed beef. Is it necessary? (No.) Is there really that big a difference between conventional beef and grass-fed beef? (Kinda.) What does grass-fed actually mean? How do conventional cows live and what do they eat - and does that matter enough to me to make the effort to incorporate true grass-fed beef into my diet?
Hopefully, the following article will shed a bit of light on the subject, making it easier for you to make an informed decision based on your preferences, your needs, your budget, your personal ethics, and the objective information provided.
Cow's Diet
You'd think this would be a simple, single sentence section - grass-fed cows eat grass, grain-fed cows eat grain. Bam. Done, right? Not quite.
For the most part, all cows start on grass. Well, calves drink milk, obviously, and then
"milk replacement" (which appears to be a sort of high-powered protein shake made of milk proteins, lard, lactose, added minerals, and several choice supplements) upon separation from their mothers, but even the most
CAFOed out cow probably started with grass before being switched to concentrated feed. Concentrated feed can mean any number of things, but the base food is always a grain slurry, typically of
corn and corn byproducts (husks, cobs), soy and soy hulls, spent brewery grain, spent distiller's grain, and other cereals. CAFO nutritionists can get
pretty creative, though, sometimes including cotton byproducts, old candy (including wrappers), beet and citrus pulp, and peanut shells in their cows' diet.
Comment: Yet the evil culprit is still supposed to be smoking. . . .