Bison are grasss fed and is a much healthier choice than beef.

Is it me, or does it seem like food recalls have never been higher than they have been in the past few years?

Whether its peanuts or peppers, sausage or spinach, it seems like there’s always a food in the headlines that’s being thrown out by the thousands of pounds.

No food rivals beef in the number of recalls.

Do a simple Google search of “beef recall” and you’ll receive a huge listing of beef recalls that have occurred in the past few months, never mind the last few years.

The latest beef recall comes from the Centennial state of Colorado, where 41,000 additional pounds of beef are being snapped up from store freezers and shelves, as the number of people stricken with E-coli has increased since the original recall (the original recall occurred on June 24th, when 380,000 pounds of beef was recalled).

But the list of recalls doesn’t stop in Colorado.  Less than three weeks ago, a South Carolina meat processing plant recalled pounds of ground beef after E.coli contamination; a Chicago company did the same thing a few days ago (their recall totaled around 6,100 pounds of beef); and another Chicago company recalled 240,000 pounds of ground beef in May…only the 240,000 pounds were recalled for reasons unrelated to E.coli – theirs was because of metal clips found lurking within several pounds of ground beef.

Nice.

But as many recalls as there have been in the last month with beef, I defy anyone to “recall” of a bison recall over the past several years.

This is not to say that there hasn’t been one, but I certainly can’t think of one (In fact, if you can think of one, I’d like to know about it).

There are several reasons for this.  One of them is that bison, unlike cattle, is not a mainstream commodity.  There are far fewer bison that undergo inspection by the USDA per day, thus a smaller pool of potential bison sources that could be infected with some food-borne disease.

Another reason is that bison are primarily raised by private ranchers.  In fact, among the 225,000 estimated bison in the country, 198,000 of them roam on private land.  And since private farmers know that bison is a “niche” meat – a meat that mostly health conscious consumers are interested in – it’s in their economic interest to make sure their bison remain as healthy as possible.

And given the bison industry is only recently making strides economically, an E.coli outbreak among bison could very well send the bison back to the brink of extinction due to diminished demand (there were only around 1,000 bison on the planet at the turn of the last century).

There is always the chance that bison will one day become a mainstream commodity, where the USDA will start inspecting bison in the hundreds of thousands per day like they do now with cattle (at present, roughly 125,000 cattle are inspected per day by the USDA, compared to the 54,000 bison).  If that happens, the chance of food-borne illnesses among bison also increases.  But rest assured in the knowledge that bison remains a “niche” market, and the National Bison Association doesn’t foresee bison becoming a commodity any time soon.

Finally, while there are many causes and sources of food-borne illnesses, two of them are how often they’re handled in production and the environment in which bison roam.  Bison farmers pride themselves on the fact that bison graze in wide open fields and not in feedlots like cattle so often do.  Further, in the production process, bison are barely handled, which diminishes the risk of cross-contamination.

These are all reasons why you should start consuming more bison meat.  And I haven’t even mentioned how much more nutritious bison is compared to so many other protein sources…including chicken, fish, and the leanest cuts of beef!

For example, bison is lower in calories and fat than chicken (even skinless), has more protein than salmon, and more iron than a select cut of beef!

In summary, by increasing your bison intake and decreasing your beef intake, you’re not only improving the chances you won’t be stricken with a food-borne illness, but your vastly improving your health in the process.

Sources:
bisoncentral.com
msnbc.msn.com
bisoncentral.com

Consumption of red meat should be limited.

It may not be game, set and match, but this latest finding on the dangers of red meat certainly gives its avoiders the advantage.

A 10-year study conducted by researchers from the National Cancer Institute seems to confirm what many of us suspected, but few of us readily acknowledged:  Red meat eaters are more likely to die than white meat eaters are. 

The study involved men and women who were between the ages of 50 and 71.  Approximately 500,000 was the grand total of participants, and the researchers followed up on their health and the types of foods they were eating regularly throughout the decade-long period

Over that 10-year period, a number of men and women died, about 48,000 of them men and 24,000 of them women.  When the researchers went back over their food frequency questionnaires that asked the participants how often they ate red meat and other meat sources (i.e. chicken, turkey, pork), then compared that to what they died of, they came away with a number of take-away findings.  Among them:

• The men and women who ate the most red meat were the most likely to die from all causes, but specifically heart disease and cancer 

• 11 percent of men and 16 percent of women could have decreased their overall mortality rate had they consumed fewer grams of red meat at each meal 

• High white meat consumers had a slightly lower rate of overall mortality than those who ate the lowest amounts of white meat

Now, this study may not tell us a whole lot – again, most of us already knew that red meat is heavy on the saturated fat, which clogs the arteries and all too often leads to heart disease and other cardiovascular-related deaths.  Even those unrelated to cardiovascular health, as this study found. 

But I bring this up because it re-ignites the debate of whether or not one should avoid red meat entirely.  After all, if saturated fat consumption from red meat contributes to all forms of death and even some forms of cancers like colorectal and breast, why wouldn’t you?  Who wants to hasten their death?

Despite this finding, I stand behind what I’ve always said and that is to eat red meat sparingly.  I say this because red meat is one of the best places to go to for iron and it’s very easy to become iron deficient, even if you’re eating lean cuts of chicken and turkey regularly.

Another reason why is because bison falls under the umbrella of red meat.  Bison is one of the healthier cuts of beef anyone can have, and depending on the cut, it has fewer calories, fat, and cholesterol than a skinless piece of chicken.  And if the bison is grass-fed, its nutrition facts are even more impressive.

This latest finding may be a point in the vegetarians’ column, but I still believe you can boast a winning nutritional profile and a long, healthy lifestyle by eating red meat sparingly and lean cuts of it.  There are many examples why, but I’ll point you here as just one reason why.

Sources:
New Grass Bison
ScienceDaily