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Advocate: Beef packs a nutritious punch
Published 5/26/2009 in Beef Empire Days-Food
By EMILY BEHLMANN
Beef still struggles sometimes to overcome a bad reputation and allegations of high fat content, but the food actually is "power-packed and nutrient-rich," and it's become leaner in the past couple decades, according to Karen Hanson, director of nutrition at the Kansas Beef Council.
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Brad Nading/Telegram — Sara Buffalow, left, skewers ingedients onto a stick while creating one of the beef dishes to be cooked during the 2008 Beef Empire Days Chuckwagons in the Park in Stevens Park. Buffalow was working on the Traveling B Wagon group from Cedarvale. Beef cuts have gottern leaner over the last few decades as the result of consumer demand.
For instance, a 3-ounce serving of beef is an "excellent" source of five essential nutrients — protein, zinc, vitamin B12, selenium and phosphorus — according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's definition. That means the serving provides at least 20 percent of USDA's recommended daily allowance.
Beef also is a "good" source — it provides at least 10 percent of the recommended daily allowance — of niacin, vitamin B6, iron and riboflavin.
Besides that, there's the protein. According to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, a 3-ounce serving of beef provides half of a person's recommended daily protein.
So per calorie, beef provides a lot of benefits, Hanson said.
As for the fat in beef?
Well, there isn't as much as some people think, Hanson said. She said that with advances in genetics and feeding products, beef producers have found ways to provide consumers with the leaner offerings they're looking for.
Of the remaining fat, about half is usually the monounsaturated type.
"It's heart-healthy, like what's in olive oil," she said.
About a third of the other fat is heart-neutral, Hanson said, so it has no effect on cholesterol.
"When we talk about fat in beef, we have to look at the entire fatty acid health profile," she said.
Brittany Howell, associate professor of agriculture at Fort Hays State University, agreed beef does a lot of good in terms of nutrition, and that "the industry as whole has focused on producing more lean beef — reducing calories."
The trick to making the most of beef's benefits is to be smart about it, she said.
"Beef is a very nutrient-dense food, so you can get a lot from what you eat," she said.
That's exactly the type of food people should eat if they're trying to cut down on calories, she said, so she recommends watching the portion size of a cut of beef.
According to the USDA's dietary guidelines, a serving of cooked meat is about 2 to 3 ounces, which typically is about the size of a deck of cards. But restaurants tend to serve much more than the recommended portion size for beef and many other foods, serving, for instance, an 8-ounce sirloin steak or 13-ounce prime rib.
If that doesn't sound like much, the Kansas Beef Council recommends making it a fuller meal by putting beef atop a salad, making a beef-and-vegetable wrap or adding beef to a stir fry with vegetables and rice.
Other health-conscious recommendations from Hanson and Howell include:
- Choose the leanest cuts. According to the Beef Checkoff, 29 cuts of beef fall between the fat content of a skinless chicken breast and a skinless chicken thigh, and all are classified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as "lean." The department states that lean cuts must have 10 grams or less of total fat, 4.5 grams of less of saturated fat and less than 95 milligrams of cholesterol per 100 grams. Some of the leanest cuts of beef include eye round roast and steak (4 grams total fat; 1.4 grams saturated fat) and sirloin tip side steak (4.1 grams total fat; 1.6 grams saturated fat).
- Trim all visible fat. "This is something butchers usually do," Hanson said.
- Use low-fat preparation methods. Grill, bake or stew beef, and avoid frying.
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