know your beef

story by | lynn brakke

Brightblue skies, long steamy days, and sizzling burgers, steaks, and bell peppers: what's summer without outdoor grilling? If you're looking to impress family and friends with the best grilled ribeye steak or the juiciest burger the next time you go shopping for meat opt for the healthy choice. Knowing the facts about organic, 100% grass-fed beef is important especially when the grocery store aisles are ripe with all sorts of cuts of grain-fed beef.

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Just Plain Healthier

Personal health is reason enough to be conscious of the meat you are buying. Grass-fed meat is low in both overall fat and artery-clogging saturated fat, and it provides a considerably higher amount of healthy Omega-3 fats than corn-fed meat. Meat from pastured cattle has up to four times the amount of vitamin E than meat from feedlots, and is much higher in Conjugated Linoleic Acid [CLA], a nutrient associated with lowering cancer risk.

The Life Of The Cow Matters

Another reason to prefer an organic pastured, grass-fed cow is that it has had a dramatically better life than its feedlot cousin. Cattle raised naturally on fresh pasture directly harvest the sun's energy to produce lean, healthy flavorful beef. Certified organic means the producer raising the cattle has met the stringent guidelines set for organic production, using no growth hormones, chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides on either the animals or the land. Almost daily throughout the grazing season the cattle move to a fresh new paddock. Rotating animals through different pastures more closely mimics natural migration patterns.

Here in the FM area Lynn Brakke Organic Beef offers the healthy choice your family deserves. Lynn's certified organic, 100% grass-fed animals get all the fresh air and sunshine they want. In the winter they eat hay made from his organic fields. The calves are born in carefully managed pastures starting in early June when the weather warms and the pastures are lush with new growth. They nurse at their mother's side as long as needed.

Grain-fed cows, on the other hand, are raised on pasture only for the first months of their lives. The vast majority of them are transported to distant feedlots where they are raised in confinement on a diet based on grains.

16 months* – 11 years

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To speed their growth and reduce the health problems that come from being fed this unnatural diet and from their stressful living, these animals are treated with hormones, feed additives and doses of antibiotics. Compare this with the happy life of Lynn's pastured animals, who don't partake in the daily stress of modern life. They don't need drugs and antibiotics to keep them healthy, and their growth is determined by genetics, not by genetically modified, growth-promoting hormones.

Why The Change

Traditionally, all beef was grass-fed and organic. But what you're likely to find in grocery store today is almost all grain-fed, feedlot beef. The reason? Simple economics. Cows grow faster in feedlots and they are more profitable to the producer. Plain and simple.

Eating healthy continues to be very important in today's fast-paced world, and knowing where and how your food is being raised should be equally important. So this summer, make an extra effort to obtain locally raised organic, grass-fed beef and happy grilling!

Lynn Brakke Organic beef offers certified organic grass-fed beef delivered to your home and can be found at the Cashwise store in the EasTen shopping mall in Moorhead as well as the newly located Sydney's Health Market in Moorhead. It’s because of their commitment to the environment, health, and quality products that they are able to make available the most nutritious as well as the best tasting beef you’ll ever find. A customer recently wrote to Lynn, "I wish I could find the magic argument to convince more people [and my friend] that it's much wiser to spend more on quality beef [and perhaps eat less of it] than to buy cheap beef that is less healthy, less humanely raised, and produced in a way that is environmentally unsustainable." For questions and beef orders, please call or visit Lynn’s website. Lynn welcomes you out to his farm to see the where's and how's of his certified organic, 100% grass-fed cattle.