Is Red Meat Good for You?

• Awesome post! Thanks for this. I have been researching the subject a lot lately and what you are saying here aligns perfectly with my findings.

  Now I feel more comfortable knowing you agree, especially the bit about refined carbs & processed oils & their relation to heart disease thru inflammation of the arteries. That was quite a revelation.

• Could I translate your posts for my Spanish language online newspaper? Full credit and linkback given of course. Our readers would love it. Let me know.

  It’s GP from Simply Optimal btw. How have you been?
  Thanks again.

  • GP!
    Lovely to hear from you.
    Of course, feel free to translate… I’d be honoured
    J

• One word: No. Not only no, but heck no! You can get just as much protein, vitamins and minerals from fruits and veggies. Heck, what do you think cows, chickens and pigs eat when they are fed the right stuff?! Moreover, there’s little evidence to prove that grass-fed beef is anymore healthier than the regular stuff. Lastly, grass-beef is very expensive and hard to find in normal groceries.

  • Sorry, not true. And nobody is more sorry about that than me. I have spent many years trying to be healthy on a vegetarian diet – including qualifying as a nutritionist – and have to eat meat and animal fats to avoid deficiency symptoms.

    If you live in the UK you will be pleased to hear that the organic beef sold in all supermarkets is predominately grass-fed (very small amounts of grains allowed in special cases). It has to be to meet organic standards. And many butchers sell grass-fed meat. All UK lamb organic or otherwise is grass-fed. If you don’t live in the UK check your organic regulations, you may be surprised at how strict the standards are.

    • Thanks for sharing your story Lorna!

      We have pretty good access to grass-fed meat here in Australia as well. I prefer to support local farmers and butchers because then I know exactly what I’m getting!

  • Thanks for sharing your opinion Gerald!

    Yes you can get protein, vitamins (except B12) and minerals from fruit and veggies BUT it’s much more difficult to get the right quantities in forms that our bodies can easily use. Which is the problem.

    J

• Aside from the question of whether red meat is good for you, I had to change my diet to mostly eliminate red meat.

  The reason is that red meat has the highest amount of purine of several foods, and eating too much of either red meat or other high in purine foods is apparently a major cause gout.

  You hear in the TV ads about the cause of gout being too much uric acid in the blood which crystalizes in the joints, notably the big toe. But what causes too much uric acid in the blood is purine.

  Although by changing my diet to mostly eliminate red meat, I do occasionally have a bison burger. By occasionally eating red meat in great moderation, I have not had any recurrence of gout since modifying my diet.

• When I developed anaemia it was when I was on a very high red meat diet – so, no you are very wrong here. I’m now vegetarian and don’t have any iron deficiencies. I pay attention to detail in where I get my iron from and the best way to boost intake such as supplemental Vitamin C. I also have to laugh at your current recipe which is ground meat – are you sure it’s really good meat – have you seen what they put in that stuff?

• Here in Australia, my red meat of choice is kangaroo. I know that’s controversial in other parts of the world, but my reasoning is that kangaroo is free range, organic, lean, sustainable, adapted to Australian environment, harvested and grown without cruelty – no abbatoirs or live transport and you don’t waste shots if you are a professional kangaroo shooter. I don’t have a problem with being a predator (we eat fish too, and home grown chicken). I just have a problem with intensive meat production systems, for both ethical and health reasons.

  • I think kangaroo is the healthiest red meat you just have to know how to cook it or it’ll turn out pretty gross.

• Hi Jules,
  Great post once again! I have been reading your blog for a while now and really appreciate your down to earth thinking and thought process. Ill be honest with you im a beef farmer and I work in the red meat industry so when this post popped into my inbox I was delighted! Everything that you have said is so true that it makes my heart sing to have a food blogger like yourself appreciate the importance of red meat in the diet!
  Thanks for your post, keep up the great work
  Kylie

• I love red meat… But some powerful studies (especially the 2012 annals of internal medicine study linking red meat consumption levels to mortality) have led me to cut back to a serving a week. More recently researchers at the Cleveland clinic (see the New England journal of medicine) have shown that a substance contained in red meat, tmao, may be to blame. As in all, moderation… Or perhaps the slight side of moderation :)

• This is a big controversy nowadays, if the meat is good or not. My only question is: are all the vegetables found in the supermarkets really healthy, really fullof all those nutrients we need? Because the real organic vegetables are also very expensive…

• Thanks Jules for your research here! We eat vegetarian (and chicken/fish) a lot to save money, but thinking about it more, perhaps a bit more red meat might help hubby with his tiredness. Your recipe looks so delicious right now! x

• Looks like Thai Laurb.

• Thanks Jules this was yummy. Love the freshness from the lemon! A must have.

  I hardly eat red meat any more but haven’t been making an effort to monitor my iron intake- hence been feeling extremely tired and light headed.

  Thank you so much for the information, I’m going to try to increase my intake a bit and see if any change ??

  • I struggle with low iron as well Ray and red meat really helps. If you like liver it’s even better!

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