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The Ultimate Meat Buyer's Guide

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Introduction

It's a beautiful concept, knowing that the star of your dinner plate -- whether it's steak, lamb chops, chicken, or that pretty salmon fillet for sale at Whole Foods -- comes from a creature that grazed freely on nature's green grass or swam wild in the sea.
But then the sticker shock hits. And savvy shoppers often find themselves asking, "Are pastured meats and wild fish really worth it, especially in these economically unsteady times? Am I a fool to pay $16 a pound for a steak at the farmers' market when I could pay half that for conventional meat at the supermarket or even less at Costco?"
Here are a few bits of information to chew on.

Next: Poultry
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Step 1

Poultry

Flavor
Differences between pastured and conventional chickens aren't huge, although some say the former have a "truer" chicken flavor and a more pleasing texture.

Health
Chickens in pastures are able to scratch for bugs, worms, and seeds. Along with exercise, this results in leaner birds that are richer in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin A. Pastured chickens are also less susceptible to the curses of close confinement with manure, which may include pathogens such as salmonella. Conventional chicken operations used to routinely add antibiotics to chicken feed to promote growth but have cut back recently. The use of hormones is prohibited in chickens bred for meat.

Environment
Giant coops full of chickens create the same problems as confinement operations for cattle and pigs: Their waste has to go somewhere, and that means the air, ground, and water.

Next: Poultry
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Step 2

Poultry

Animal Welfare
Beak trimming -- actually, burning off the beak tip -- is routine for conventional chickens. Also, conventional chickens are often raised in battery cages. Many have been bred to grow so quickly that they have skeletal deformities and trouble walking; others have heart failure. Under USDA rules, a chicken sold with a "free-range" label must have had access to the outdoors. But this definition also applies to chickens raised in large coops where the door is left open part of the day -- the birds may or may not spend time outside.

Cost
Pastured chicken can cost about $5 a pound, or as much as $25 for a roaster. That's easily three to five times the cost of conventional. If you serve two pounds of chicken breast for a family dinner, and poultry is on the menu several times a week, buying pastured could become expensive. In addition, pastured chicken is hard to find because production is low; you'll have better luck at farmers' markets. If you're willing to go back to the days when roast chicken was a Sunday treat, or if you can stretch the meat between pasta one night and soup on another, pastured chicken may be worth it.

Next: Beef
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Step 3

Beef

Flavor
If the sweet, fatty taste of midwestern corn-fed beef is magic to your taste buds, pastured beef can take some getting used to. Pastured beef, like any grass-fed beef, is lean. It has less fat, or marbling, and a mild, herby flavor, and it cooks in a flash, compared with conventional. But by evading stressful environments, pastured cattle also avoid a biochemical reaction that occurs in some conventionally raised cattle: Duress causes a spike in adrenaline levels, resulting in off flavors, toughness, and a dark color.

Health
Pastured beef has more healthful omega-3 fatty acids than conventional, and less saturated fat. Some of its fat is called CLA, for conjugated linoleic acid, which is believed to have antioxidant properties and may be good for humans (the jury is still out). The real health benefit of pastured beef is what the animals aren't getting: growth hormones and antibiotics, which contribute to antibiotic resistance in humans. Pastured cattle are also far less likely to harbor and spread potentially lethal bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella, which thrive in jam-packed feedlots.

Environment
A pastured steer is the ultimate solar-powered dinner; sun makes the grass grow, no fossil fuels necessary. Then there's the other end of the equation: manure. Pastured cattle fertilize the grasses they eat, in a sustainable cycle. Feedlots produce massive amounts of manure that pollute the air with methane and often spill waste (along with any pathogens, antibiotics, and growth hormones it contains) into waterways and fields.

Next: Beef
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Step 4

Beef

Animal Welfare
In this category, pastured meat is always going to win. An open pasture or six months crowded into a manure pit? It's a no-brainer. Another point: A steer's digestive system is meant for grass; grain makes the animals perpetually a bit sick -- one reason conventional cattle are treated with antibiotics.

Cost
Conventional always prevails here. The feedlot system is designed to produce lots of meat cheaply. Grass-fed beef (and pork and lamb) costs 30 to 50 percent more than conventional; that translates to $5 to $6 per pound of grass-fed ground meat and up to $30 per pound for fancy cuts such as a rib eye. Meat purveyors say the gap shows no signs of closing. Truly pastured meat from small farms can set you back even more. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University and the author of "What to Eat" (North Point Press; 2006), offers a tip for stretching your beef dollar: Buy pastured, but scale down portions and don't eat it every day. Your health and wallet will thank you. If you buy a quarter or half steer right from the farm, the cost drops (especially if you share with a friend), but you may need an extra freezer.

Next: Pork
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Step 5

Pork

Flavor
Pastured pork tastes, well, porkier than conventional. Conventional pigs eat grain; pastured pigs get their share of grain, but they may also mow through brambles, whey from a nearby cheese maker, apples in an orchard, or anything else they find. Fat has largely been bred out of conventional pigs to make them "the other white meat." But pastured-pig farmers are bringing back old-time breeds with all their old-time fat and flavor.

Health
In nature, pigs won't excrete waste near their living or eating areas. Conventional pigs, in pens, live in their own manure and can spread disease more easily than pastured pigs. They also get lots of antibiotics. Pastured pork may deliver more nutrients than conventional, especially vitamin E and omega-3s. But given that many cuts of pig are high in saturated fat, it's hard to call pork health food.

Environment
Pigs have a story similar to cattle's. Massive manure pits give off methane, a greenhouse gas, and are known to pollute waterways and groundwater. Conventional pigs consume more grain than pastured, which requires more fossil fuels.

Next: Pork
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Step 6

Pork

Animal Welfare
Conventional pig operations confine pregnant sows in narrow metal cages. Pigs' tails are docked, and the animals are deprived of space to do the things pigs like to do, such as rooting around and forming social groups.

Cost
As with beef, if cost is your main concern, conventional is the best bet. To get more from your pastured-pork dollar, buy cheaper cuts, such as the shoulder, which can be slow-cooked into a rich ragu for pasta. Or stretch your meat by adding vegetables; pork makes a great stir-fry.

Next: Lamb
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Step 7

Lamb

Flavor
Different animal, familiar story. Grass, sun, and exercise mean pastured lamb has more flavor. Buying pastured meat is also the best way to get real "spring" lamb -- animals born in late winter that feed only on their mothers' milk and young spring and summer grasses.

Health
Pastured lamb is rich in omega-3s and CLAs, which may offer protective benefits.

Environment
As with cattle and pigs, pasturing avoids the crowding, disease, and manure problems of feedlots

Animal Welfare
Most domestic sheep, conventional or pastured, are raised on relatively small farms, says Corby Kummer, author of "The Pleasures of Slow Food" (Chronicle; 2002), so this isn't as big an issue as it is with cattle and pork. But the farms aren't necessarily more humane.

Cost
Buying half a spring lamb directly from a farm makes your money go further. The price drops to as low as $5 per pound -- not a bargain, but better than retail.

Next: Seafood
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Step 8

Seafood

Choosing between farmed and wild fish may be the most complicated food decision you make. Even experts in the area say it's nearly impossible to follow the shifting advice. Nestle suggests carrying a pocket-size seafood guide. The Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch card can be downloaded at montereybayaquarium.org (search for "pocket guide"); it's also available as an iPhone application. Even with guidelines at hand, it's still the Wild West when it comes to buying fish; markets may sell farmed fish as "wild" or pass one species off as another (say, rockfish as red snapper).

Flavor
Big fish, such as salmon, taste better wild, because they eat krill and smaller fish, not soy meal and food coloring. And swimming in ocean currents increases their stores of flavor-carrying fat. Smaller fish, including branzino and striped bass, can taste clean and bright even if farmed, but they can also taste muddy. It depends on the fish farm. Wild shrimp will always taste better. Oysters, clams, and scallops in the United States are caught wild and farmed, and Seafood Watch considers them good choices overall. If farmed, their flavor depends on where and how their beds are maintained.

Next: Seafood
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Step 9

Seafood

Health
This is the toughest area to sort out. It's healthy to eat more fish, particularly if it's replacing meat. But mercury and PCBs are a concern in large, wild specimens such as tuna and salmon -- some of the same fish that deliver a bonanza of omega-3 fatty acids. Farmed salmon, which are sometimes fed ground wild fish, may be loaded with PCBs as well. Smaller wild fish don't have these problems. Most of the shrimp we eat is farmed in Latin American and Southeast Asian waters, where environmental regulations are iffy and pollution and fish-feed contamination are common.

Environment
The world's stock of wild fish is rapidly disappearing. But fish farms can be environmental disasters, polluting oceans and rivers and killing coral reefs. One solution is to look for wild fish from fisheries certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as sustainable.

Next: Seafood
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Step 10

Seafood

Animal Welfare
The Humane Society of the United States maintains that farmed fish are subject to the same stressful and damaging conditions as other food animals. They're crowded into pens, which can lead to filthy water and aggressive behavior. Although scientists disagree about the ability of fish to feel pain, these conditions do lead to health problems in the fish: They are more susceptible to disease and parasites, for example. Fish are often starved before they're transported to slaughter. Suffocation and other slow slaughter techniques are widely used. Not surprisingly, wild fish have it better overall, but slaughter methods are an issue with them, too.

Cost
No question, farmed fish costs much less than wild fish. A salmon fillet can run $15 to $25 a pound if it's wild fish from Alaska or the Pacific Northwest, but one-third of that if it's farmed. Another benefit of smaller sustainable sea creatures is that they're often bargains -- think calamari, which is just $2 a pound freshly caught.

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The Ultimate Meat Buyer's Guide

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