red meat.

red meat is fine to eat every day imo saturated fat is a necessary part of a healthy diet... cholesterol from saturated fats is, thru various chemical processes, eventually made into testosterone... saturated fat is also necessary for the cells in ur body to uphold their cellular integrity... with low saturated fat intake, cell membranes actually become soft and mushy and are more prone to infection and eventually cancer so why is there so much talk and conjecture in the media concerning saturated fats and health diseases?? i think the problem comes from the imbalance of fat intake rather than from the saturated fats themselves... an optimal fat intake would be a 1:1:1 ratio of saturates to monounsaturates to polyunsaturates, however the average american diet is about 10:1, monos to polys while some are believed to be 20:1 or EVEN 50:1 the solution is to supplment with the fats that u are missing... taking things like fish oil, olive oil, flax seed oil, ALA etc. will help keep ur fats in balance if u are not already achieving this from ur diet i also think its unfair to pick on red meat in particular, or eggs for that matter, as they are usually thought of as containing mainly saturated fat... this is entirely untrue though... xtra lean ground beef is over half monounsaturated fat while regular eggs are 30% saturated, 16% polyunsaturated and 44% monounsaturated... omega 3 eggs are well over 30% polyunsaturated fat in the end, saturated fats have gotten a bad rep cuz the majority of our population lives off of fast food that is both deepfried and generally not made up of lean cuts of meat... but as already mentioned, i think the solution is to balance ur fats moreso than it is to decrease ur saturated fat intake

good answer....

Well, from a purely bodybuilding perspective, red meat needs to be watched a little closer when using it in your diet....For example, a 6 ounce chicken breast has 185 calories and 39 grams of protein, as compared to 4 ounces of ground beef at 70% lean has 372 calories and only 16 grams of protein....Even if you go to 95% lean ground beef, you still get 228 calories and only 36 grams of protein. I love red meat and eat lots of it, but if you're trying to lose weight or get ready for a show, red meat is just way too calorie dense to eat lots of... holy

never feel the same from chicken as i do when eating red meat, get crazy pumps and make gains eating the cow. on bulkers i eat it twice a day, i buy 1/4 beef from a guy local that raises show cattle. i know what they eat and i know they are not diseased or sick, the meat tastes noiceably better.

ya holy intellect makes a good point... u should try and stick with xtra lean meat, i actually prefer the taste of the leaner cut... xtra lean mean, gram for grams contains 1/3 the cals that regular ground beef does... so while 6oz of xtra lean ground beef is approx. 300 cals, 6oz of regular ground beef is around 900!!

x-tra lean beef...like ground sirloin, flank steak fine to cosume daily along with your well-rounded building diet...but supplementing with the "healthy" fats as described above is an excellent idea.

i use like rump steak and cut all the fat off it.. then cut it into peices, n cut away the rest of the fat. another thing is that i got told your body cant digest alot of red meat. is this true?

Your body can digest red meat just fine. Its best to stick with the more lean cuts tho. Eye of round is my prefered cut. We allow most of our clients to use this right up to a few weeks out from show time. As said above, look at the overall calories/protein per ounce..... that should be the deciding factor. Anything that gets to be more than 60 calories per ounce is going to be high in fats. Good thread. JP

as far as digestion, i take the cheaper tougher cuts and run them thru the food processor to chop them up, i dont get the bloat after eating them chopped and im still ready for my next meal. sometimes its a problem with red meat that it does digest slower at least for me. when i make burger i brown well, drain then boil it, i can get the max amount of fat out of it before eating. greasy food of any type bothers my stomach so its kind of a necessity for me to do this.

True enough... some people may have probs with digestion.... everyone is different. A number of things can help solve the problem.... digstive enzymes etcetera... still others may need to avoid certain proteins. The only way to know is to try and see what happens. On the most part tho... from my experience..... most people have no probs digesting red meat. JP.

I’m an advocate of the low fat diet. The truth is, statistically speaking those who eat more saturated fats than those who don’t are at a greater risk for heart disease. All fats, whether its monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, or saturated, will increase your risk of developing blood clots (with the exception of fish oil ... fish oil is very good for you). Also all oils contain some saturated fats. Based on the total fat, olive oil is 14% saturated. Canola is 7%. Tuna fat is 27% saturated. Chicken fat is 30% saturated. Beef fat is around 50% saturated. Therefore, even adding a little bit of “good oil” to a diet already high in animal meats may put you at a greater risk for heart disease. That’s why its not a good idea for someone who is already fat from eating a lot of dietary fats to add a little “good fat’ to the diet. My advice is to reduce your consumption of saturated fats. Look for lean meats and low fat dairy products. If you are a bodybuilder using steroids then you are already at risk for heart disease. I would suggest you focus on vegetables which significantly reduce your risk of diseases and prevent oxidative damage.

the heart disease epidemic we are witnessing is mainly a north american problem, this is not happening everywhere else in the world many of our ancestors evolved on a diet that was pretty much made up of meat and some grains and veggies, but essentially all of their fat come from some animal source a good modern example of those on high fat diets are the inuit ppl of northern canada... eating a diet high in fish meat, we see them taking in a lot of saturated fat but its balanced by mono and polyunsaturates too and their risk of heart disease is the lowest in the world yet a large percentage of their cals come from fat there are countless studies that can be found on www.pubmed.org that show that those on higher fat diets actually improved coronary diseases as opposed to making them worse... this was accomplished thru fat supplementation, not fat reduction... simply go to pubmed.org and type in "mediterranean diet" or "fish oil" and u find a plethora of studies that have added fish oil, nuts and/or olive oil to otherwise low fat diets and coronary conditions improved saturated fats themselves are not the problem, they are a necessary part of a healthy diet but must be balanced with other fats

North Americans have a high prevalence of heart disease due to our high fat diets, highly processed foods, and laziness. The Inuit have a low risk of heart disease due to a genetic basis and a diet that is high in fish. Traditionally Inuit people eat wild game and fish. A grazing Caribou in nature has a much different nutritional profile than a cow that stands on a concrete floor all day pumped full of growth producing drugs. The theory, eating as our ancestors did, sounds great but it’s impractical in today’s world. Furthermore, our ancestors ate what was available. This may not be in our best interests. The argument “our ancestors ate such and such, therefore so should we today” may not be a valid argument. I would like to add, the Inuit suffer from obesity and other metabolic diseases due to their high fat diets as well. In my opinion the problem is consuming too much fat. If I were to consume a 1:1:1 ratio of fats, yet more than 75% of my calories were from fat, I put myself at a greater risk for developing disease.

In my opinion the problem is consuming too much fat. If I were to consume a 1:1:1 ratio of fats, yet more than 75% of my calories were from fat, I put myself at a greater risk for developing disease. well my current diet rite now has just over 60% of my cals coming from fat, but then again its only 2000 cals a day and about 130 grams of fat... i think absolute amounts should be more of a concern than percentages, although i doubt there is any research out there to support that claim... keep in mind though that im not advocating a diet with 300 plus grams of fat per day or claiming that unlimited amounts of fat are healthy for u, im only saying that the problems associated with saturated fats are due moreso to the imbalance they represent in our fat intake rather than their actual intake themselves and that some of the negatives of eating large amounts of saturated fat can be offset by healthy fat supplementation there is plenty of evidence out there, ESPECIALLY pertaining to fish oil, which u have already acknowledged is very beneficial, that suggests that simply adding some to ur diet can have a plethora of positive benefits including decreased cholesterol levels, increased cardio function, increased metabolic rate, increase glucose tolerance, decreased joint inflammation etc... since large amount of saturated fats can increase LDL cholesterol levels and polyunsaturates can decrease them, u have a balancing effect which is why i think balance is the key here and going back to ur suggestion that low fat diets are better than high fat diets from a cardiovascular perspective... a study pubished in the Annals of internal medicine (Ann Intern Med. 2006 Jul 4;145(1):1-11.) found that "Compared with a low-fat diet, Mediterranean diets supplemented with olive oil or nuts have beneficial effects on cardiovascular risk factors." so essentially what im saying is that i dont agree that low fat diets are necessarily any better than high fat diets as far cardiovascular benefits go and that saturated fats are part of a healthy diet and so to re-answer the original question on this thread, i think red meat is fine to eat everyday so long as ur other fats are in balance