EATING MEAT. I think we all know it’s important, despite the Press claiming it’ll give us cancer or heart disease. But how do we balance both quantity and quality when we’re on a budget?

A simple statement of truth is that to build and maintain muscle we need to be consuming a relatively large quantity of protein (compared to an average Joe). Daily recommendations vary and are dependent on a large number of factors, but a common baseline is the guidance of consuming 1 gramme of protein per pound of total bodyweight. (For those of you in non-backward countries that use metric only (i.e. Not UK or USA), that’s 1 gramme of protein per 453.592 grammes of bodyweight.) Nutritionally speaking, meat as with anything else can contain a lot of good and a lot of bad. All meat contains protein, but pro-inflammatory omega-6 is abundant in some grain fed meats, whilst other meats can be packed full of lovely omega-3, CLA, vitamins and preferable saturated fat. There is a strong argument that meat based protein is preferable for body composition and as such I’d always recommend eating it liberally and at as high a quality as possible.

Various types of meat quality exist, but if we use beef as an example for now, we could start by placing them in five categories (in order of quality):

1) Very low quality – Cheap and usually mechanically recovered meat and/or very low grade quality. Could contain almost anything from the animal (as was encountered in the UK recently with the horse scandal). Often found in processed food, pies, cheap burgers.

2) 100% Grain Fed – These could be supermarket bought cuts of meat from cattle reared entirely on poor quality feed, e.g. grain, corn, soy. This is more common in the USA than in the UK which is fortunate to have a large proportion of its cattle reared mostly outdoors.

3) Outdoor Reared – This is more the norm in the UK, for supermarket meat which originates from cattle reared on a blend of grass and grain/soy/corn feed.

4) Organic – This is usually the most expensive of meats due to the lack of artificial hormones/antibiotics/treatments used to help rear the animals. But critically the quality of feed can still be poor, even if it is “natural”.

5) 100% Grass Fed – As the title suggests, meat from cattle raised outdoors entirely on grass (and anything else a cow may find to chew on). Often this will be organic as well.

Grass fed beef ticks all the boxes from a nutritional standpoint but its high price point (and its availability to a lesser extent) are often limiting factors. So as we move back down the scale, organic isn’t a brilliant alternative as it’s even more expensive and can be of questionable nutrient density. Outdoor reared beef is increasing in price fairly sharply in the current economic climate but is still relatively inexpensive and provides relatively good nutritional value. The fat will be fairly high in omega-6 so my recommendation would be to stick to leaner cuts of meat. If you were to choose this for 80% of your beef consumption, and 20% grass fed then most pockets could afford to keep consumption quite high.

Whatever meat you choose, whether it be bacon, beef, chicken, bacon, game, turkey or bacon, as with anything, just make sure that you balance it with other meats and source any missing nutrients from other foods, especially omega-3 from oily fish.

Happy Eating!