(Sources for Images: Venison¹, Moose²,Bison³)

A darker meat is due to a higher concentration of myoglobin. Myoglobin is similar to hemoglobin in humans and its function is to transport oxygen through the animal’s bloodstream to its muscles. Myoglobin concentration has to do with the cardiovascular capacity in cattle, meaning that the more myoglobin, the more exercise an animal is getting and the darker the meat is. 

Next time you are shopping for beef in the supermarket remember that the light color of red meat that you have come to equate with freshness is an indicator that the animal it came from was confined in a space where it could not get enough exercise to have a healthy cardiovascular system. A healthy animal makes a healthier product; there is a link between the darkness of meat and the concentration of iron, zinc, essential amino acids, niacin, and selenium. Maybe it is time to think about eating a healthier product yourself and to consider the health of those around you such as family and friends.

Nimitz Beef proudly supports a healthy lifestyle by providing a beef product that consumes a healthy diet and gets sufficient exercise and does not suffer from confinement before being processed. Our lean ground beef product also undergoes minimal processing as can be seen in comparison to the supermarket beef. There are no trimmings added to our beef which is something that is becoming more publicised currently with the “pink slime” debate across North America.⁴

All the animal meats in this experiment consume a natural diet of grazing grasses and leafy forages except the supermarket lean ground beef. As with most supermarket beef available it can be assumed that it was finished on a high grain diet. The affects of this will be seen more clearly in Nimitz Beef Experiment: Stage 2.

Sources:

1. Wild Ed’s Texas Outdoors. Venison Burger Made Right. Retrieved from http://wildedtx.blogspot.ca/2011/11/venison-burger-made-right.html 
2. Antiquated Canada (2011). IMG_4475. Retrieved from http://antiquatedcanada.com/2011/12/08/eating-moose-meat/img_4475/ 
3. High Plains Bison (2012). High Plains Bison Tostadas. Retrieved from http://blog.highplainsbison.com/2011/02/high-plains-bison-tostadas/ 
4. KARE 11 (2012). What’s the pink slime controversy all about? Retrieved from http://www.kare11.com/news/article/969040/14/Whats-the-pink-slime-controversy-all-about