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Comment by troystribling | Hacker News Reader

Here is an article summarizing research on the nutrition benefits of grass feed vs. grain feed beef http://www.bulletproofexec.com/grass-fed-meat-part-1/

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Omega-3's? That's the whole benefit?

Not having read the article provided, grass-fed beef has a much better fatty-acid profile, and that does not necessarily mean "more O-3!" but rather more likely, a lot less Omega-6, so the O-6 to O-3 ratio is closer to 2:1 which is what we're (theoretically) better adapted to, rather than the ratio in grain-fed beef, which can be as high as 14:1. Both types are "essential" as far as we need to consume them, but they way our diet has been distorted of late, with seed-oils and the "war" on saturated fats, the amount of O-6 we as a population get of late is way out of proportion. In general PUFA are easier to oxidize and possibly result in long-term degradation of health. Or you could (over)simplify and just say, hey, I need to eat what I'm better adapted to, and I would similarly insist that my food (the cow) also ate what it's supposed to eat, and they are supposed to eat grass, not grains.

You're kind of restating the premise of the comment that cited the research paper.

In what appears to have been a carefully run study, under the best circumstances, grass-fed beef provides a tiny fraction of the fatty acid benefits of fish.

In other words: even if grass-fed beef has a better fatty acid profile, "better than corn-fed beef" still doesn't mean "good source of healthful fatty acids"; both grass-fed and corn-fed are poor sources. If you believe you need a better fatty acid profile in your diet, take fish oil tablets or eat fish.

I see you've left a multitude of comments in this post going on around the same, yet it seems to my the angle you've taken is that you need more omega 3s, and not for example that, compared to grain-fed beef, if you are going to eat beef, it's qualitatively better, and to me it seems more important that this way you'll get a lot less omega 6 fatty acids, thus eating food with a better fatty acid profile. To supplement O-3 for the purpose of fixing or improving _your_ fatty acid profile (vs. that of the food) well, sure, but it's orthogonal to the quality of grass vs. grain-fed beef. (Edited last sentence)

That's a huge benefit however, there are few other sources of Omega-3s in our daily diet.

It's 30mg/100g. That's an order of magnitude lower than most fish, two orders of magnitude less than the best fish, and about what you'd get from a turkey sandwich.

Which is unsurprising, because mammals suck at making omega-3s, and plants are a bad source of healthful omega-3s.

Let's not get too excited.

Skip organic, save your money, eat purified mercury free fish oil softgels? I have 3-5 1200mg pills of it a day.

You're probably better off getting the theraputic grade stuff... my dad with Parkinsons has this drop shipped: https://omega-cure.com/

If you have a freezer, you store a 2 month supply for less than 2 months of softgels.

I looked at the pricing, it costs $34 for the '2 month supply'. 100 Softgels are $5 each and last a month, so I can get at least 6 months for the same price as your boutique 2 month version.

But I bet it has less mercury than fish, especially big fish.

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