Poor-quality meats refers to all fast-food meats; processed meats such as packaged cold cuts and commercially produced hot dogs; meats in frozen prepared foods; any fresh or frozen meat that isn’t free range, hormone free, and fed real food; any meat produced from animals that are not raised and slaughtered with care and humanity.
As best you can, replace these poor-quality meats with any chicken, turkey, beef, pork, lamb, or other meat or poultry that is labeled free range, organic, grass-fed, or hormone free.
Many such products can be found fresh at your supermarket or deli. You can find organically produced hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken soups, sausages, and other popular frozen and prepared meat items at a well-stocked health food store. Free-range eggs are preferred quality choice. You can also replace some of the meat in your diet with fresh or smoked fish. Nut butters are also an excellent choice of a vegetarian protein.
Benefits of Quality-Meats
Meat is great. Besides being plain delicious, it’s a great source of the following things:
- Protein (the building blocks of your body)
- Iron (this helps carry oxygen to your blood)
- B vitamins (these help with energy release, your nervous systems, and red blood cell formation)
- Zinc (this helps your immune system)
- Magnesium (this helps with the building of bones)
What’s The Beef with Grass-Fed Beef?
Grass-fed cows eat better food than grain-fed cows do. Better foods means healthier cows and healthier cows mean better meat. You’ll hear that grass-fed beef contains more omega-3s than grain-fed beef (which contains almost no omega-3). It follow that by eating grass-fed meat, you’ll get all the health benefits of consuming omega-3s too.
Other Health Benefits of Grass-Fed Beef
- Grass-fed beef is leaner and contains less fat than grain-fed beef.
- Grass-fed beef contains fewer calories than grain-fed beef.
- Grass-fed beef is the richest source of CLA
CLA
Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLA) is a fancy term for an unsaturated omega-6 acid found in meat and dairy products that has numerous health benefits, including:
- Improving body composition (decreasing fat mass and promoting lean muscle mass development)
- Providing several helpful anti-cancer properties
CLA is found in high quantities in grass-fed beef. This is yet another reason to eat higher quality meat.
Meats To Eat Plenty of:
Meats
- Poultry
- Turkey
- Pork chops/pork tenderloin
- Chicken breast/thigh/leg/wings
- Steak
- Veal
- Bacon
- Pork
- Ground beef
- Grass-fed beef
- Lamb rack
- Venison steak
- Buffalo
- New York steak
- Bison
- Bison steaks
- Bison jerky
- Bison ribeye
- Bison sirloin
- Lamb chop
- Rabbit
- Goat
- Elk
- Goose
- Beef jerky
- Eggs (duck, chicken, or goose)
- Wild boar
- Reindeer
- Turtle
- Lean veal
- Chuck steak
Fish
- Bass
- Salmon
- Halibut
- Mackerel
- Sardines
- Tuna
- Red snapper
- Shark
- Sunfish
- Swordfish
- Tilapia
- Trout
- Walleye
Seafood
- Crab
- Crawfish
- Crayfish
- Shrimp
- Clams
- Lobster
- Scallops
- Oysters
Meats To Avoid or Limit
You might want to avoid these processed and low-quality meats whenever possible:
- Hot dogs
- Bacon (in overly large quantites)
- Grain-fed beef (if possible)
- Grain-fed poultry (if possible)
- Overly processed meat
- Large quantities of processed/packaged meats packed with sodium (ham, sausage, etc.)
- Foods high in nitrates
- Fried and deep-fried meat (completely unnecessary – just grill those puppies up instead!)