Genius Food #6

Grass-Fed Beef

The meat industry as it currently stands is cruel,
unsustainable, and frankly indefensible. In the case of beef,
the industry produces meat that is unhealthy, from stressed-
out animals that are pumped full of antibiotics and fed a

highly unnatural diet of throwaway grains and even candy.*
But let’s not conflate factory-farmed beef with the beef that
comes from healthy cows that have been allowed to pasture
on grass (their natural diet), experiencing—as their farmers
like to say—only one bad day.
Much of the debate surrounding the nutritional value of
meat centers on protein, but I believe it’s critical to broaden
the conversation to nutrients other than protein that play an
important role in our cognitive function. For example, grass-
fed beef is a rich source of essential minerals like iron and
zinc, where they are packaged in a form that the body can
easily utilize. (This is unlike, say, the iron from spinach or

zinc from legumes.)^1 Grass-fed beef is also a great source of
omega-3 fats, vitamin B 12 , vitamin E, and even certain

nutrients, such as creatine (covered on page), which, though
not essential, are highly beneficial. Researchers believe that
it was access to these very nutrients (along with the burst of
caloric energy from cooked meat) that catalyzed the
evolution of our brains into modern cognitive super-