Beef or Carrots

How do you want to get your vitamins?  When it comes to fat-soluble vitamins, choose pasture grazed and raised beef!  Let’s take a quick tour of the important vitamins found in animal fats A, D3 and K2.

Vitamin A

This vitamins proper name “retinol” refers to its role in supporting vision.  Growing up we were told to eat our carrots for healthy eyes, especially to have night vision like cats!  Hmm, do cats eat carrots?  It is the “carotene” in carrots that our bodies can (with effort) convert into vitamin A.  The drawbacks to relying on carrots for your vitamin A:

• We must use a biochemical reaction with bile salts and enzymes to convert the beta-carotene in carrots into vitamin A.
• The conversion rate of beta-carotene to vitamin A in each person depends on many factors and ranges from 4 to 28 beta-carotene units to produce one unit of vitamin A.
  • Resulting in about a 3% conversion rate when eating carrots.

For an adult male to meet the daily recommended intake for vitamin A, he would need to consume 2 pounds of baby carrots.  (Skipping the baby carrots, he could do one pound of regular carrots, for some reason baby carrots have half the beta-carotene.  Chlorine bath anyone?)  Don’t want to eat that many carrots?  How about 2.3 pounds of kale?  If you are like me, kind of lazy, I’ll opt for my vitamin A already formed in some beef liver.  Less than 1 ounce of beef liver will do the trick.

Still want to get your Vitamin A from carrots?  Boost your bodies conversion rate by eating carrots with animal fat such as cooking carrots with a pasture grazed beef roast!  In fact, we cannot convert the beta carotene found in plants without fat in our diet as a catalyst.

Besides vision, vitamin A supports our immune system, growth, repairs body tissue, and protects membranes of the mouth, nose, throat and lungs.  In addition vitamin A helps build bones, teeth and healthy blood.  Dr. Weston A. Price considered this fat-soluble vitamin to be a catalyst for efficient mineral uptake and use of the water-soluble vitamins.  Vitamin A supplies are so important, we store large quantities in our liver and other organs.  So go ahead and enjoy more than one ounce of beef liver at a time!  Vitamin A is depleted during times of stress, physical exercise and periods of growth.  Feeling sluggish or having trouble sleeping?  Look to vitamin A from pasture grazed animals to help you out.

Vitamin D (sun, beef or cod)

The bone (calcium regulator) and immune system vitamin.  When sunlight reacts with a cholesterol precursor in our skin, we receive vitamin D3.  The healthy fat from pasture grazed beef will have a small amount of vitamin D3 but the go to animal source for this vitamin will always be cod liver oil.  Other good animal sources for vitamin D3 include organ meats, lard, eggs and deep yellow butter from pasture grazed dairy cows.

Vitamin K2 (cheese, butter or beef)

Vitamin K1 is found in rapidly growing green plants.  When these plants are consumed by pasture grazed beef, the K1 is powered up and locked away in the animal as vitamin K2.  Vitamin K1 in plants is directly linked to chlorophyll and associated with beta-carotene (remember vitamin A).  The amount of K2 found in beef will be in direct proportion to the K1 consumed in their forage.  Beef harvested from green growing pastures can be identified by the K1 (beta-carotene) which gives the fat a yellowish deep cream color.

Why not just get vitamin K1 directly ourselves while eating plants?  We should!  Vitamin K1 main role is activating the blood-clotting proteins.  Recent research has determined that vitamin K1 and K2 are not simply different forms of the same vitamin, they are two different vitamins.

K2 works together as an activator for vitamins A & D.  Vitamin K2 tells calcium where it should go, into teeth and bones, not into arteries.  When taking vitamin D (a calcium regulator) consider adding K2 to make sure the calcium is being properly directed.  K2 helps us use minerals, protects teeth, is a major part of the brain and protects against calcification of the arteries/heart disease.

Vitamin E

Here is another fat-soluble vitamin found in plant and animal fats.  Vitamin E acts as an antioxidant, protecting the body against pollutants and free radicals.  The fat and especially pasture grazed beef heart will help supply your need for vitamin E.  In addition to the fat-soluble vitamins, pasture raised beef also provides vitamin B6 & B12 for healthy nervous system support.

Co Q10 anyone?

Have you heard of the coenzyme Q10?  Pasture grazed beef helps provide this key cardiovascular system and energy production nutrient for our bodies.  Beef heart (no surprise here) will be your best choice for this key nutrient.

Healthy Fats and More

Previously we have discussed the healthy fats found in pasture grazed beef.  Hopefully this post has shed some light on the many other benefits of consuming beef from animals that live their entire lives on pasture and harvested from growing green forages.

Much of the information from this post came from articles found on the Weston A. Price Foundation website.  To summarize Dr. Price’s work about the fat-soluble vitamins/activators:

If we compare the body to a house built of bricks and mortar, think of the minerals as the bricks and the fat-soluble activators as the mortar.  In other words, we can consume a certain diet of fantastically nutrient-dense foods, but the value of such a diet comes down to what is actually absorbed.  Without fat-soluble activator nutrients – namely vitamins A, D3 and K2 – our efforts to consume the “right” foods will be futile.

The above information lists some amazing scientific insights in how food fuels our bodies.  In reviewing the most current studies it is obvious there are still many interactions within our bodies that we may never understand.  A key takeaway should be to eat whole, real, food as God intended.  After that, your body is designed to handle the details.