Organic beef can be healthy for you as long as you have the healthy budget to afford it. It can be healthier than non-organic beef because it doesn't contain any additives or hormones, but it doesn't have any superior nutritional qualities. Its healthiness also relies on the cut of beef you choose and how you cook it.
What It Is
Organic beef comes from cattle raised on organic farms. Livestock owners do not inject their cattle with growth hormones or unnecessary antibiotics. Organic cattle eat grass-based diets, not the high-grain diets fed to cattle on non-organic farms. The cattle's food is also organic, with no additives, pesticides or other chemicals that can linger in the meat and contaminate the environment.
What It Isn't
As healthy as organic beef may be, it still has the same number of calories as non-organic beef and will not make you lose weight. Its nutritional values are also equivalent to its non-organic counterpart. For example, a broiled, 100 g portion of beef tenderloin trimmed of visible fat around the edges, for example, has 205 calories, 27 g protein and still contains 9 g of fat in the meat, whether it's organic or not. The same goes for organic versus non-organic ground beef. A broiled, 100 g portion of lean ground beef -- with only 5 percent fat and 95 percent meat -- has 171 calories, 26 g of protein and 6 g of fat. Organic beef is not cheap, either. The increased cost of raising cattle in an organic environment is reflected in the higher cost of the meat.
How to Spot It
Organic beef that is real thing will sport a green and white, "100 percent organic" sticker. Beef labeled any other way is not guaranteed to be organic. Don't be fooled by terms like "free range" or "free roaming," either. Poultry product that has regulations in regard to those terms, and the terms only mean the chickens were allowed outside for an unspecified amount of time each day. The labels might be stuck on your steak, but there are no regulations dictating what the labels mean.
Considerations
Frying an organic hamburger is still going to give you a greasy, unhealthy meal, just as picking a fatty cut of beef or mixing your meat into a high-calorie, creamy or buttery sauce will still give you a fatty, high-calorie or unhealthy dish. As with non-organic beef, cooking it improperly can also make you sick. To be fully cooked, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends beef and roasts reach an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit and ground beef reach 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Lean cuts of beef include top sirloin, tenderloin and round, and you can make any cut less fatty by cutting off visible fat. Healthy cooking methods include grilling, broiling and roasting, as long as you let the fat drain away from the meat during cooking.
References
- MayoClinic.com: Organic Foods
- Consumer Reports; Greener Choices: Free Range Label Information
- Greening Princeton: Organic -- What's the Big Deal?
- U.S. Department of Agriculture: Is It Done Yet?
- MayoClinic; Healthy Cooking Techniques; April 2009
- Medline Plus, National Library of Medicine: Managing Your Weight with Healthy Eating
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