Your health may depend on where your beef comes from! (Rule #8)

Often times, we make a decision to purchase a particular food due to either its health or environmental ramifications. Is the food high in calories and nutritionally deficient? Was the food produced locally and organically or oversees by individuals that do not think twice about how their practices impact the health of the environment? There has been a lot of talk about grass fed beef lately, and I found a great study that promotes eating it not just because it is better for the environment and our health, but because it could change the amount of calories consumed - even by those that are not aware of the differences between beef from grain and grass fed cattle.

Because meat from grass-fed animals is lower in fat than meat from grain-fed animals, it is also lower in calories. (Fat has 9 calories per gram, compared with only 4 calories for protein and carbohydrates. The greater the fat content, the greater the number of calories.) As an example, a 6-ounce steak from a grass-finished steer can have 100 fewer calories than a 6-ounce steak from a grain-fed steer. If you eat a typical amount of beef (66.5 pounds a year), switching to lean grassfed beef will save you 17,733 calories a year—without requiring any willpower or change in your eating habits. If everything else in your diet remains constant, you'll lose about six pounds a year. If all Americans switched to grassfed meat, our national epidemic of obesity might diminish.

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While changing over to a 100% grass fed beef diet may not be realistic for most (financially, accessibility) and changing this behavior alone is not the panacea of the obesity epidemic, it is a great step in the quest to being more sustainable in your overall wellness!