A Quick Review of the Fats That Make Up Your Body

All food fats are a blend of the different types, saturated and unsaturated. Unsaturated fats include poly- and monounsaturated fats. Omega-3s and 6s are types of polyunsaturated fats, both are called essential because we have to get them from food, our bodies can’t manufacture them from other fats.

The Story on the Good Fats and Bad Fats

Whereas cellular proteins are genetically determined, the polyunsaturated fatty acids composition of all cell membranes is to a great extent dependent on the dietary intake.

There are many kinds of fats in the body. Some of the most crucial fats are in the list of compounds that make up the cell membrane for all of the body’s cells.

After isolating these fats scientific experiments determined that if the ratio of omega 6 fats to omega 3 fats exceeds 4:1, people have more health problems. This is especially meaningful since grain-fed beef can have ratios that may exceed 20:1 whereby grass-fed beef is down as low as 3:1.

Similar ratios are also found in all grain-fed versus grass-fed livestock products.

Grass-fed products are rich in all the fats now proven to be health-enhancing, but low in the fats that have been linked with disease.

If you want to read a comprehensive review of omega 3 fats along with 78 references to the clinical literature you can read Omega 3 Oils.

Why are Omega 3 Fatty Acids Important for Your Health?

Omega 3 fatty acids are essential for normal growth and may play an important role in the prevention and treatment of:

coronary artery disease
hypertension
arthritis
cancer
other inflammatory and autoimmune disorders
diabetes

Your Body Can’t Make These Fats So You Have to Get Them from Your Diet

Omega 3 and omega 6 fats are not interconvertible in your body and are important components of practically all cell membranes.

Whereas the proteins in your cell are genetically determined, the unsaturated fats of all your cell membranes are to a great extent determined on what you eat.

Therefore you need sufficient amounts of dietary omega 6 and omega 3 fats and they need to be balanced for normal development.

Your Diet Has Evolved From Your Ancient Ancestors

On the basis of estimates from studies in Palaeolithic nutrition and modern-day hunter-gatherer populations, humans evolved on a diet that was much lower in saturated fatty acids than is today’s diet. Furthermore, the diet contained small but roughly equal amounts of omega 6 and omega 3 fats.

Plant Fat Ratios

In the past 100 years there has been a rapid and unprecedented change in our diet. The modern vegetable oil industry was developed, and many are based on oil from seeds rich in omega 6 fats. Modern agriculture increased production by emphasizing grain feeds for domestic livestock, and grains which may be rich in omega 6 fats. Therefore, aggressive, industrialized agricultural management techniques have decreased the omega 3 fat content in many foods: green leafy vegetables, animal meats, eggs, and even some farmed fish.

This imbalance where omega 6 fats levels exceed omega 3 levels can be seen by comparing wild edible plants and wild animals and birds with products of modern agriculture. Products of modern agriculture frequently have drastically lower omega 3 levels. It is estimated that humans have evolved with an omega 6 to omega 3 ratio of one to one from both meat and vegetable sources.

Today the vegetable sources have an estimated omega 6:3 ratio of 10 to one. The modern diet of meat, chicken, and vegetable oils has a ratio estimated that may exceed 20 or even 25 to one.

Eggs and Beef Fat Ratios

Chickens that eat vegetables high in omega 3 fats, along with insects and lots of fresh green grass, and fish, supplemented with fresh and dried fruit, and small amounts of corn. Tend to have a lower ratio.

Eggs from these range fed eggs has an omega 6:3 ratio of lower than “supermarket egg” which tend to have a higher ratio.

Modern agriculture’s emphasis on increased production has led to the development of chicken feed that is being reflected in the out-of-balance ratio of fatty acids in the “supermarket egg.”

North Dakota State University conducted a study on the nutritional differences between grass-fed and grain-fed bison. The results of that study closely followed that of the egg studies. The grass-fed bison had omega 6 to omega 3 ratios as low 4.0 to one, and the grain-fed bison had ratios as high as 21 to one.

Additional studies by others clearly show that the longer cattle are fed grain, the greater the fatty acid imbalance. For instance, after 200 days in the feed lot grain-fed cattle may have omega 6 to omega 3 ratios that exceed 20 to one. Many cattle are fed 200 days or more in the United States.

With the scientific data that has been published concerning omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids, we must assume grass-fed beef is far better for human nutrition than grain-fed beef. If so, then having access to grass-fed beef can be very beneficial for one’s health.

And since REAL Beef has been raised naturally, without hormones.

Grass-Fed Products Taking Off – Simple Solutions for Many Problems

Grass-fed beef can be. Grass-fed beef is…
1 – Lower in total fat
2 – Higher in beta-carotene
3 – Higher in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol)
4 – Higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin
5 – Higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium and potassium
6 – Higher in total omega-3s
7 – A healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (1.65 vs 4.84)
8 – Higher in CLA (cis-9 trans-11), a potential cancer fighter
9 – Higher in vaccenic acid (which can be transformed into CLA)

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/03/31/grass-fed-products-taking-off.aspx?x_cid=20150819_ranart_grass-fed-products-taking-off_facebookdoc

More than one professional butcher in a large city have actually told me that chickens cannot possibly eat grass, that their digestive tract isn’t set up for it, that chickens look like they’re eating grass but really they’re just picking at things between the blades of grass.

Farmers in the country, who raise chickens naturally, have a hearty good laugh on this one! One of them even went out and butchered one of his pastured chickens and emailed me a picture of its gizzard ~~~ full of grass.

Chickens will consume 30% of their calories from grass, if allowed to truly “free range.” They do however need to eat protein and it is this protein that determines if they are truly Omega-3. The only way to achieve true Omega-3 chickens is to feed them fish products.

Since grass is very low in calories, that’s a WHOLE LOT of grass! Another thing chickens need is animal protein. Chickens are omnivores, just like the humans they’ve kept company with for all these millennia.

The new “all vegetarian” chicken is a convenience to the mass-producer, who thus doesn’t have to worry about the potential of latent animal diseases in poultry feed. Mass-producers of poultry are certainly leery of disease, which might bring about the destruction of their entire laying flock.

But, strictly vegetarian-fed chickens are potentially undernourished. An all-vegetarian diet is not natural for them ~ they need animal protein. The ideal is for a chicken to be free to roam grasslands that are not denuded by too many animals in one place, finding myriad bugs and eating lots of wild plants. If supplemented with grains, and especially with fish meal, these chickens will be the healthiest around, and live and lay eggs for many, many years. A poultry farmer in England says their chickens can lay for 12 years or more. Fish meal is the biggest protein source for those very healthy birds.

Chickens that are free to consume as much living grass as they want, along with the myriad other living things in a natural grassland or meadow, give significant health benefits to the consumer today; just as this poultry diet has done for the thousands of years of domestication of the chicken. Meat and eggs from grass-fed poultry, which is very low in fat, have high levels of Omega-3 fatty acids. Eggs from “pastured” (another form of “grass-fed”) poultry, high in omega-3 fatty acids, will lower one’s “bad cholesterol” and raise the “good cholesterol.” More and more consensus is emerging that grass-fed or pastured poultry eggs are good for the heart, and that not only should they not be avoided, they should be specifically included in the diet.

There are two main kinds of fatty acids, omega-3 and omega-6. We need approximately equal amounts of the O-3’s and the O-6’s in our bodies. But, because of not allowing our feed animals to eat grass (even cows don’t eat much grass any more ~ they eat largely corn); we are getting huge proportions of Omega-6 fatty acids, and very little Omega-3.

When we are oversupplied with Omega-6, our “bad cholesterol” rises, and our “good cholesterol” stays low. When we get equal amounts of Omega-3’s and -6’s, the good cholesterol rises and the bad cholesterol drops. But our diets have been so high in Omega-6 for so long, we really need to focus almost exclusively on eating Omega-3-rich foods to balance the levels out.
Poultry, however, needs some grain in the diet. It is very difficult to raise 100% grass-fed poultry. Tests show that even greatly-reduced-grain ration in poultry diets, supplemented with very large free-range grass consumption, still produces meat that is relatively high in Omega-6’s compared to the meat and milk of grass-fed ruminants. These carefully-structured dietary tests, conducted by our members in Malaysia, showed that adding seafood to the chickens’ diet is what raised the Omega-3 levels by the greatest amounts.

Why Grass Fed.