Corn-Fed Cattle Produce Healthier Beef
Published Jan 24, 2008
For consumers, a lean cut is the healthiest kind of beef.
This is no bull: Texas A&M University has discovered the healthiest Angus beef for humans to eat.
Researchers at the university’s Department of Animal Science performed several studies in 2006 to find the ideal type of Angus cattle for the dinner table.
“Japanese cattle are considered the healthiest in the world for consumers, so we raised our own Angus steers to mimic the growth of Japanese steers,” says Stephen Smith, animal science professor at Texas A&M. “The key health factor in the Japanese cattle is that they have soft fat, which is the ideal type of fat for humans to consume.”
To raise Angus cattle with soft fat, the Texas A&M researchers first fed the animals a corn-based diet instead of hay. “Corn decreases the saturated and trans-saturated fat in the cattle meat,” Smith says. “The result isn’t lean meat like people might think, but corn truly upgrades the choiceness of beef.”
The researchers also found that slaughtering the cattle at a later age was key to realizing the soft fat objective.
“Most ranchers take their cattle to market when the animals are around 12 months old, but cattle fat actually gets softer as it gets a little older,” Smith says. “We found that the ideal Angus cattle going to market are corn-fed and would be 16 to 18 months of age.”
Smith says softer fat in cattle is not only tastier but it also reduces the bad cholesterol in humans while increasing the components of good cholesterol.
“Bottom line is that it costs money for ranchers to keep cattle on the feed lots, so most beef producers prefer to slaughter the animals by the time they reach 12 months,” he says. “Our study simply found what would be the ideal case in a perfect world.”
Story by Kevin Litwin
Photo by Michael W. Bunch
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