9 Reasons Why You Should Be Eating More Full Fat Ground Beef

September 11, 2022

Metabolism

8 min read

Contents

A Carnivore Staple
- 1. It’s A Complete Nutrient Source

A Carnivore Staple

People stepping into the carnivore diet might be under the unfortunate impression that sirloins and ribeyes represent the pinnacle of caveman cuisine. They’re certainly up there as one of the more expensive cuts, and as a member of the beef family, they are stacked in nutrition. But I wouldn’t go as far as to label them as the best. That’s a position that can only be saved for one.

Which isn’t so much a cut as it is a combination of other cuts, but that’s besides the point. If you want to extract the maximum potential out of the carnivore diet, you’ll want to get extremely familiar with ground beef.

Here’s a list of 9 very good reasons to put this cut front and center of your carnivore cuisine.

1. It’s A Complete Nutrient Source

By virtue of being red meat, ground beef is a nutritional powerhouse with the complete array of essential vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients needed to allow the body to thrive.

That means you could easily survive on ground beef alone, with the odd bit of offal thrown in if necessary. No vegetables, no fruits, and no multivitamins to cover your bases. Ground beef can be the alpha and omega of your diet.

2. Monster Fat Content

Ground beef is capped at 30% fat, meaning it can have as much as 30% of its weight as fat while still carrying the ground beef label. People naturally get intimidated by the sheer amount of heart cloggery, and seek out the leaner, more expensive cuts.

This is a crying shame, because the full-fat option also happens to be the best. Fat is an energy source. Protein, not so much. Humans evolved to seek out large prey, because the animals had the highest fat content.

Ideally, you’ll keep the fat load as high as your bile acids can handle. You’ll know when you’re above that limit. And the longer you push those boundaries, the better your digestive prowess becomes.

Personally, I stick to 25%, because that’s the highest version at my local supermarket. If I’m trying to drop weight, I eventually switch to 20%, and 15% for the final sprint.

If you’re down below 10%, I feel for you, because the meat’s going to taste like cardboard, and your energy’s getting zapped.

3. Collagen

While you might prefer the delicate texture of a tender cut like ribeye, there are benefits to getting the ones that take a bit of chewing. Brisket doesn’t rip apart so easily, and that’s because as a much-used part of the cow’s musculature, it contains plenty of tough fibrous connective tissue.

Collagen is fantastic for maintaining healthy skin and joints, while also lowering inflammation by balancing out the methionine to glycine ratio and going towards glutathione production. The tougher the meat, the more collagen it has. Whereas sticking to tender meats can tilt it too far in favour of methionine, thereby raising inflammation.

Ground beef typically is made from the tough cuts, since they also happen to be cheaper and more likely to be put aside for processing.

4. It’s The Cheapest Cut

The carnivore diet is only expensive if you go for the fine dining experience. 20 pounds of ribeye over a week would set you back around £170. That’s going to stretch many a budget.

But then you could just get the same amount in ground beef for £36. With roughly the same amount of protein, fat, and a ton more collagen. Just don’t make the mistake of paying extra for the leaner versions, like 5% or 10%. The 20-25% cuts have more flavour, more nutrition, and they’re also significantly cheaper. You can’t lose.

5. Extremely Flexible In Recipes

You always have the option to just chuck your ground beef over the frying pan and sizzle it up with a pad of butter. It’s basic, and delightfully delicious. But if you’d rather get creative and tantalise your tastebuds and eyeballs, there’s an endless supply of ground beef recipes to choose from.

You don’t even have to depart from strict carnivore.

Bake it into a meatza.

Included in a giant omelette.

Mashed into liver burgers.

Or laid out in a lasagna-like casserole.

Personally, I don’t think you can’t consider your life well-lived until you’ve fried ground beef over bacon grease.

6. There’s No Gross Bits

In case you’re worried about getting eyeballs and guts shredded into your ground beef, relax. Neither is this the dirty leftovers of the carcass that nobody wants. Everything in ground beef comes from muscle cuts. Meat that isn’t the right shape, or too tough to be sold as a muscle cut is added to the grinder and sold as ground beef.

So it’s just regular steak, just repackage to make sure that more of the cow can be made use of. Which means you’re also doing the right thing for ethics.

7. Can Be Bought As Burgers

Life in the kitchen doesn’t get any easier than burger patties. All you need to do is chuck them in the air fryer and put them on blast for a few minutes. Then maybe throw on some cheese or butter for extra flavour. With a freezer stocked up with burger patties, dinner is never more than ten minutes away.

Just read the label before you buy to make sure that those patties are at least 90% beef. Skip the filler.

8. The Perfect Bulk Food

As a guy who’s bulked on brisket, let me tell you. It takes some doing, and it’s a tall order for hard gainers. A fantastic workout for the jaws, and slowing the pace of eating certainly helps with satiety, but that’s not so good when you’re trying to pile on the calories.

Full-fat ground beef has a soft texture, and doesn’t take much chewing as long you eat it fresh off the pan. It’s also incredibly calorie dense, can easily be paired with other caloric foods, and doesn’t cause any crashes in blood sugar due to the absence of carbohydrates. All this gives you the ideal candidate for getting a boatload of calories in.

9. A Simple Way To Switch Between Bulking And Cutting

Most people still make the mistake of drastically changing their foods when trying to force weight loss. Overnight, the junk food and creamy lattes go out, to be replaced by salads and protein shakes.

Ideally, you’d already be eating the right foods, and it would just be a case of continuing the routine. The only thing that changes to begin the plunge, would be portion sizes. You eat less of the same foods.

But ground beef gives an even better option. You get to eat the same amount, you just pick a leaner version to lower calories while keeping the same density on your dinner plate. The change is barely perceptible, and fat loss happens organically.

So if you’re eating three pounds a day of 25% ground beef, you eat the same amount of 20%.

That takes you from 3726 calories to 3414.

Ride that for a few weeks, and then drop to 15%.

Now you’re down at 2829 calories.

Then, if you’re trying to scrape down to single digit bodyfat, you might eventually go to 10%.

The calories plummet to 2407 calories. And compared to the 25% cut, your protein actually goes up, from 268 grams to 340 grams.

Ground beef fat leveraging is fat loss and muscle gain made easy. You eat the same meals, eat the same amounts, just with a little bit more or less fat to fit your goals.

Even better, it encourages small drops in total calories, enabling you to lose fat while still bringing in enough energy to maintain muscle, saturate your nutrient levels, and continue a productive lifestyle.

Compared to that, sharp drops might lead to greater initial weight loss, but that tends to fizzle out as the body fights back against your self-induced starvation. So you don’t get any advantages in the long run, and it’s going to be much more of a slog than if you went for a gentle shave.