01/12/2025
FUN FACT #5
Research performed by Dr. Stephan Van Vliet, Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Sciences, Utah State University, and the Bionutrient Food Association, found that grass-finishing, compared to conventional grain finishing, increases a wide variety of health-promoting compounds in meat and improves animal health. Phytochemical richness of meat is directly related to the finishing diet of animals. The research concludes that grass finishing animals concentrates significantly higher amounts of phytochemicals, including polyphenols, tocopherols, carotenoids (Beef Nutrient Density Project Report, Dec 2021).
Snip1
Many studies have found that grass fed beef has higher amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, which have important roles in heart and brain health. Additionally, research has shown that grass fed beef contains higher amounts of very-long chain fatty acids, which are associated with decreased risk of heart disease.
Grass-fed animals also had lower levels of homocysteine, triglycerides, and advanced glycation end products, all of which are associated with improved cardiovascular health, both for the animal and humans.
Van Vliet found that grain-finishing negatively affects glucose metabolism, while grass-finishing improves mitochondrial/energy metabolism. In addition, the grain-fed animals had more collagen metabolites and elevated markers of protein breakdown. This compromises both animal health and meat quality. Interestingly, the muscle of grass-fed animals closely resembles the muscle structure of a healthy human athlete. In contrast, the muscle of grain-fed animals exhibits early signs of metabolic health issues. Van Vliet and co-workers conclude that this is the result of both diet and ability to exercise. Animals being grass-fed on pasture are able to move all day, while animals in a feedlot are constrained in their movement. This would be similar to comparing active to sedentary humans.
Figure 1 shows the process used for the metabolomic research conducted by Dr. Van Vliet and his team.
Picture2
Phytochemical Benefits
In Van Vliet’s studies, grass-fed beef samples showed higher levels of many phytochemicals compared to grain-fed beef. There are several thousand phytochemicals in plants, and they are present in animal muscle tissue and fat as a result of diet. Phytochemicals are plant-derived bioactive compounds with important nutritional and health roles in both animal (Provenza et al., 2015) and human health (Dillard & German, 2000). Benefits of phytochemicals (Phytonutrients) include:
Anti-inflammatory/antioxidant effects in cells
Scavenging reactive or toxic chemicals
Enhancing the absorption and or stability of essential nutrients
Acting as selective growth factors for beneficial gastrointestinal bacteria
Representing substrates for beneficial oral, gastric or intestinal bacteria
Selectively inhibiting deleterious intestinal bacteria
Phytonutrients also play a role in preventing and managing chronic diseases, such as cancer (Choudhari et al., 2020), coronary heart disease (Ismaeel et al., 2021), diabetes (Cao et al., 2019), high blood pressure (Fraga et al., 2019), inflammation (Zhang et al., 2019), microbial, viral and parasitic infections (Yin et al., 2019), and neurological disease (Uddin et al., 2020).
Research shows that plant phenolic compounds, such as p-cresol sulfate, 4-ethylphenolsulfate, hippurate, stachydrine, and catechol-sulfate were elevated in grass-fed beef. Dietary differences significantly influence gut microbial populations in the rumen of cattle, thus influencing prevalence phytonutrient compounds. These are suppressed in grain fed animals due to the grain-based rations. These plant phenolic compounds are metabolized by the small intestine, gut microbiota and liver. They impact health and metabolism of animals and subsequently consumers of that meat.
Hippurate was almost two times higher in the grass-fed beef and is considered a strong indicator of dietary phenolic intake (Lees et al., 2013). Why is this important? Because higher levels of hippurate are associated with improved gut microbial diversity and lower odds of having metabolic syndrome in humans (Pallister et al., 2017). Catechol sulfate, a downstream metabolite of hippurate, is inversely associated with circulating cholesterol levels in humans confers anti-inflammatory effects in humans (Fang et al., 2018).
Other beneficial phytonutrients present in greater concentrations in grass fed beef include Cinnamoylglycine (cinnamic acid) and N-methylpipecolate (metabolite of coumaric acid). Cinnamic acid was 1.4 times higher in grass-finished beef compared to grain-fed beef. This phytonutrient has anti-inflammatory effects (Peperidou et al., 2017) and is linked to numerous health benefits, including reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease (Prorok et al., 2019) and cancers (Ruwizhi & Aderibigbe, 2020).
N-methylpipecolate was almost five times higher in grass-fed beef when compared to grain-fed beef. This phytonutrient reduces oxidative stress and has anti-tumor activity in colorectal cancer models (Al-Ishaq et al., 2020).
Additionally, when alfalfa was incorporated into the diets of grass-fed animals, the phytonutrients Stachydrine and homostachydrine are more highly concentrated in the meat. (Carrillo et al., 2016). Stachydrine has antioxidant properties and may have brain-protective (Li et al., 2020; Yu et al., 2018), cardio-protective (Cao et al., 2017), and anti-cancer effects (Wang et al., 2017).
