There Is Nothing Especially Healthy About Regenerative Meat

Surgeon General nominee Casey Means is the latest addition to the Trump administration to sell the benefits of regenerative meat, touting it as a health food and “one of the most powerful choices you can make as a health seeker or environmentalist.” Means is part of the Make America Healthy Again movement, which centers meat and dairy in their food policy goals. Yet Americans already eat more red meat, and the advice to eat more of it doesn’t track with a healthier planet or people.

Vani Deva Hari, aka @FoodBabe and Diana Rogers, aka @SustainableDish, are two influencers popular with MAHA who have also backed regenerative meat. Hari talks about “better” meat, while Rogers has said “any meat is better than no meat” and “it’s not the cow, it’s the how.”

Yet health claims about regenerative meat should be taken with a grain of salt too (or a big bean salad). While “grass-fed versus the grain-fed” has some nutritional differences, Kathleen Woolf, associate professor and director of the graduate nutrition program at New York University, tells Sentient, the benefits of eating more “fruits, vegetables and whole grains” are far more abundant.

Regenerative Beef is Not Uniquely Nutritious

Regenerative agriculture doesn’t have a set definition but tends to focus on cover cropping, not tilling the land and rotating cattle through pastures. The farming practice does seem to be good for soil health, but experts can’t say the same for climate change.

It’s also not scalable. If everyone in the U.S. switched their meat to regenerative it would be an environmental disaster. Studies show farms require an estimated 2.5 times more land to produce the same amount of meat. Despite the evidence, regenerative meat continues to be positioned as a climate fix. But while the climate evidence is clearer, it’s worth saying that growing beef on regenerative farms doesn’t make it uniquely nutritious. Despite the modest nutritional differences, it is still beef, after all.

But in her newsletter, Casey Means argues that farm animals “raised on good soil have more omega-3s and phytochemicals.” Grass-fed beef contains more omegas than conventional meat — but there’s not a significant difference there for human health. In fact, there are higher levels of omega-3s in certain types of fish, and plant-based sources like chia seeds and algal oil supplements.

Similarly, while grass-fed beef may contain higher levels of certain phytonutrients like carotenoids and tocopherols — compounds with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and immune-supporting effects — the amounts are minimal compared to those found in plant-based foods. The explanation for this is pretty simple: cows get these nutrients from eating plants.

Food containing high amounts of carotenoids include carrots, papaya, pumpkins and sweet potatoes. “There’s definitely other great sources of those nutrients,” says Woolf. And for tocopherols: nuts, seeds and leafy greens.

A 2021 review of the scientific literature published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition was funded, in part, by North Dakota Beef Council, yet found fruits and vegetables “are generally 5 to 20-fold higher” certain phytonutrients than pasture-raised meat and milk. The researchers also cautioned that the examples in the review should not be interpreted as evidence that eating meat or dairy eliminates the “need for obtaining phytochemicals from plant foods.”

Beef is Beef, No Matter What Cows Eats

Whether farmed regeneratively or not, eating high amounts of red meat  — as Americans do -– is not considered good for human health. According to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, “regardless if cattle are grain or grass-fed the majority of fat in the beef is saturated.” Though the amount of saturated fats can be lower in grass-fed beef than in grain-fed, it’s still there.

Saturated fat consumption has been linked to unhealthy cholesterol levels, leading the The American Heart Association to recommend limiting intake due to increased risk of heart disease and stroke. The World Health Organization has also listed red meat, including beef, as probably carcinogenic to humans — though the agency’s risk assessments have long been criticized for being limited and just plain confusing.

Ultimately, the evidence shows that simply swapping your steak for a “regenerative” cut, without substantially dialing back overall meat intake and upping the plant intake,, isn’t a path to greater health. Though grass-fed beef can have a bit more nutrition than its factory farmed counterpart, the cost to the climate and to the animals remains high. Ultimately, the real wellness trend isn’t “better” beef — but rather less beef, or none at all.