pictures of grass fed meat and fat?

[me]

hi!

if you have any pictures (or links to) of grass fed meat and/or fat, could you please post them here?

i would love to be able to learn how to judge meat quality for myself, without having to rely on the seller's word (they don't seem to have a clue about grass fed vs. grain fed here and i'm not sure what is more common in the stores). here, where i currently live (costa rica), the meat is not sold packaged, it's sold cut straight from the animal, so i have to go by appearance.

other tips regarding the difference in appearance between grass fed vs. grain fed meat are also very welcome!

thank you for any help on this subject 

[ys]

I could not see any difference whatsoever except that grass-fed cuts are way leaner than grain-fed.

And I do not know if underfed grain-fed animal would be as lean as well fed grass-fed.

[robbie1687]

Here's a slice of a grass-fed beef chuck roast from US Wellness that I just ate for lunch.   I don't know whether it's low or high quality, but as you can see, this particular roast has a lot of fat in it. It tastes very mild and fresh.   Not much taste at all.

By the way, in case anybody interprets this post as an endorsement of US Wellness, I think their whole cuts (like this chuck roast) are okay but I strongly recommend that you stay away from their "suet" (which is actually miscellaneous soft fat), tallow, and ground beef.   (Their ground bison is fine, it's made by another company, Northstar.)

[robbie1687]

Now I'm wondering.  Do chuck roasts from Slankers have that much fat?

[goodsamaritan]

Here's the kind of grass fed beef I look for in the market.  Freshly killed at 12mn, hung for sale at 5am. Never refrigerated.  Never frozen.



The taste of the fat is unmistakably yummy.  Our Philippine grass fed beef has the same characteristic fatty taste as new zealand grass fed beef.

I've tasted australian grain fed and I didn't like it I stopped buying it.

The deep yellow color in the fat has the yummy flavor in it.

[TylerDurden]

Personally, I find the deep yellow colour a sure sign of high quality(grassfed) fat.

[me]

thank you for the comments and pictures.

i read that yellow fat is a sign of a grass fed animal and i really (by instinct?) love the picture of those meats from the phillippines! when i asked the salesperson in the shop about yellow fat he frowned and said "yellow fat is bad because it comes from old animals and you don't want to eat old animals because they taste bad". all young animals have white fat, he claimed, and also that the very best cuts are the ones with very dark color and white fat. my tastebuds disagree with that, sadly.

i guess the meat itself tastes better also when the fat has the right color (and tasty contents). because even the meat has some fat in it..

a lot of the cuts i see have very little fat "in them" but on the edge there is this thick part of fat, very hard and white. a typical grain fed animal is supposed to have a lot of fat "in" the cut as well making it look almost white, was something i read also. but maybe they can be grain fed with white fat and no intramuscular (?) fat?

i saw a heart though, and it had some yellow fat around it, so there is hope i think 

regarding taste: i tried a cut with white fat and a kind of a greyish color in the meat, and it (the meat and the fat) tasted like cheese! very weird even though i liked the taste (and smelled like cheese for hours it seemed). has anyone else experienced something similar?

[ys]

Some info on white and yellow fat.


http://books.google.com/books?id=651Zv5hUzyIC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=meat+fat+color+white+yellow&source=bl&ots=uQMT6vS_iq&sig=A4gAz1uEFRBZ7Pl1ARgZzd0_cV4&hl=en&ei=QvnpSsGuOZXSNZr52aQN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCcQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=meat%20fat%20color%20white%20yellow&f=false



Interestingly, picture of the grass-fed meat posted by robbie1687 looks pretty white.  So, go figure...

[robbie1687]

It's white in real life too.  It wasn't just the camera.

[me]

when i searched some more, i found this photo. there is a small difference between the two cuts, i think, in color as well:

http://images.google.co.cr/imgres?imgurl=http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/files/2008/11/grassfedvsgrainfed.jpg&imgrefurl=http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/blog/articles/why-not-to-eat-grain-fed-meat&usg=__YNw3ajVndAtZZeYrZojCGoPGR5s=&h=375&w=500&sz=113&hl=es&start=9&tbnid=HVKjyjQHHHuX5M:&tbnh=98&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgrass%2Bfed%2Bgrain%2Bfed%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Des

[yon yonson]

i've read that costar rican beef is almost always grass fed due to convenience. i think it's just too much of a hassle for small time farmers to buy grain and stuff.

[me]

has anyone noticed any difference in looks between free range chicken and conventional? color differences, fat amount, size, etc. ? seems even harder to tell than with beef. all the salmon (frozen) here seems to be imported from chile (farmed, is my guess) or from the atlantic (wild?) so to learn how to recognize a nice piece of wild salmon is also on my list as it's the only tasty fish i like so far.

[DeadRamones]

I've been seeing alot of New Zealand meats by me. Does anyone know if they are grass-fed/finished? The one I had a while ago had a gamey taste. Not so much with the most recent one I experienced though. I've also heard that Argentinian & Brazilian beef are predominantly grass fed.

[livingthelife]

how to recognize a nice piece of wild salmon

Should be firm, will "shred," meaning the muscle fibers stay intact when squeezed

Avoid soft fish that breaks down into a grainy texture when handled

Best is to buy from a reliable source because there are many ways of creating nice looking fish, such as adding dyes

[me]

are there similar dyes used in coloring meat as well? do they affect the taste/body effect in your opinion?

[invisible]

the fat on gass fed meat can be white or yellow. Older animals tend to have yellower fat. Grass fed suet is pretty much always white in my experience.

[PaleoPhil]

Grassfed suet is more yellow than grainfed in my experience. Lex has also noted this. If you melt it you can see the yellow more easily. Grassfed also has less connective-type material (it's like sticky netting) and more pure fat.

[alphagruis]

Grassfed suet is more yellow than grainfed in my experience. Lex has also noted this. If you melt it you can see the yellow more easily. Grassfed also has less connective-type material (it's like sticky netting) and more pure fat.

The color seems to be related to the presence of more or less yellow pigments from carotenoids and might well depend on the season as the color of butter. The liposoluble carotenoids stem from green grass and leafy plant matter but are essentially absent in grains.

[PaleoPhil]

Yes, the color varies depending on what the cattle ate, which varies by season. In general, grassfed suet will tend to be more yellow than grainfed.

[livingthelife]

are there similar dyes used in coloring meat as well? do they affect the taste/body effect in your opinion?

Yes, I know that dyes are sometimes used in beef. Sometimes beef is injected with CO2 so that it doesn't turn brown (oxidize) as well. I don't know much about this other than what shows up in the news. I haven't bought any "supermarket" beef in years.

[invisible]

Grassfed suet is more yellow than grainfed in my experience. Lex has also noted this. If you melt it you can see the yellow more easily. Grassfed also has less connective-type material (it's like sticky netting) and more pure fat.

I get grassfed fat and it has some of that sticky netting. I think that depends on the location where the fat comes from.

[PaleoPhil]

My grassfed fat has some of it too, but less overall.

[me]

i feel when i eat meat with white fat here, it sticks to my teeth in a way that yellow fat does not. the yellow fat just melts in my mouth and disappears whereas the white fat, often grainy in consistency, clings to the knife and plate and makes me want to spit it out. to me it feels more "natural" with soft and easily dissolved fat. however.. the meat with white fat tastes so much more here, compared to the meat with yellow fat. it's almost tasteless whereas the white fat meat tastes bloody and rich! i notice the color of the white fat meat is often more red and vibrant with the other meat being very dark looking. oh, you can't always have it all, so i guess i'll buy the yellow fat and eat the white fat meat

[Rawdietforhealth]

Just found the first company really marketing organic grass fed beef in the Philippines at http://www.downtoearth.ph/

I understand the real grass fed beef that they offer is quite a bit thinner than some of the other really fat beef you find in the market.  I guess that is a sign that the cattle is really grass fed and not fed a mixture of grass and grains and other things to fatten them up.  I even heard some stories of force-feeding the cows molasses to make sure they get fattened in some farms in the countryside.  I assume that changes the composition and quality of the meat quite a bit.

[donrad]

There is grass fed-beef and then there is grass-fed grass-finished beef. If a rancher is attempting to build a customer base and reputation he/she will finish the cattle on prime agricultural land during certain times of the year when the grass is lush and nutritious with a high energy content that will be converted to marbeling (fat) in the muscles. It is more costly to finish cattle this way compared to sending them to feed lots.

The New Zealand beef industry is predominately grass-fed. They have developed breeds of cattle that grow and fatten well on grass. Same with Brazil. The international agribusiness corporations have not taken over all the food production there yet.

Cows on winter hay will have white milk and fat. In the spring and early summer it will turn yellow as the start to eat the fresh grass. Omega3.

Recently in the news they are finding more than half of grocery store beef contains drug resistant staf bacteria. The bacteria is coming from the cows themselves. This is because the feed lots have to pump the cows full of antibiotics to keep them alive in confinement eating food they were not designed to eat.