Standing in front of the beef counter can be a baffling affair. A well-stocked butcher can easily have 10 different types of steak and even more different types of roasts. While all these choices may be confusing, they provide an array of different nutritional choices that go beyond the percentage of fat that appears on the label.
Steak Names
Steak names tell you where on the cow the beef came from and speak to the tenderness of the cut. For example, starting with the shoulders and ending with the rear, the names chuck, rib, short loin, sirloin and round specify different regions of the top of the cow. The names shank, brisket, plate and flank indicate different regions on the underbelly of the cow. Each of these cuts is available in different grades such as prime, choice and select. These grades speak to the tenderness of the cut, with prime being the most tender.
Calories and Fat
Beef steaks pack in the calories. For example, an uncooked, 12 oz. beef tenderloin steak with the fat trimmed off has 837 calories and 60.8 g of fat. A better bet is a raw top sirloin steak, which has only 726 calories and 48.5 g of fat. Eating steak regularly makes maintaining a healthy weight difficult. Being scrupulous about trimming fat and taking care about what foods the steak is paired with can minimize this problem.
Saturated Fats
Even if you are trying to gain weight, you still want to avoid eating steak regularly because it packs in unhealthy saturated fats. For example, an uncooked, 12 oz. beef tenderloin steak has 24.5 g of saturated fats. A raw top sirloin steak is somewhat better with 19 g of saturated fat.
The American Heart Association advises eating a diet low in saturated fats because they are associated with high levels of unhealthy low density liproprotein -- also called LDL cholesterol -- which raises the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Protein
A 12 oz. raw tenderloin or top sirloin steak both provide more than 100 percent of the protein needed every day by a 130-lb. woman. The USDA recommends that people consume 0.8 g of protein for every kilogram of body weight. This means that a 130-lb. woman needs only 47 g of protein every day. The top sirloin steak tops this with 48.58 g of protein, and the raw tenderloin provides 60.83 g protein.
Other Nutrients
While beef steak has no vitamin A, C or E, it is a good source of iron. Both sirloin and tenderloin steak provide almost 5 mg of iron. This iron is part of the hemoglobin found in red blood cells. Hemoglobin carries oxygen molecules from the lungs and transports it to other areas of the body where it is needed. Two-thirds of the iron in the body is found in red blood cells.
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