Creating Healthier Beef - Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Dr. Noelia Aldai of Spain came to Canada as a Marie Curie Fellow and worked with Dr. Mike Dugan at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lacombe Laboratory, on a project to analyze and improve the fatty acid content of beef.

            The dangers of trans fats in the human diet have become well known in the last decade. Over consumption of trans fats can lead to the development of coronary heart disease. What is less commonly understood is the importance of “good” fats which can have health promoting properties.

This joint project between Spain, Canada and Australia aimed to analyze levels of “good” fats – such as rumenic acid, and vaccenic acid - versus “bad” fats - such as trans10-18:1. The researchers’ object was to measure the levels of fats in the beef, as well as the bacterial contents of the cow’s rumen (or stomach), and then use a combination of diet changes to attempt to improve those fatty acid levels.

Pasture-raised cattle naturally have a much healthier balance of fats than feedlot-based cattle. However most cattle in Canada and Spain are raised on feedlots, which means that rather than grazing on whatever grows naturally in their pastures, they are fed a specific diet, usually grain-based. Changing from feedlot based to pasture based agriculture would not be an economical or practical solution, according to Dr. Dugan. However, their research has determined specific dietary changes that can quantifiably reduce the trans fat content while increasing the content of good fats in the beef.

The study, according to Dr. Dugan, was particularly complicated because the good fats and bad fats are molecularly similar and so it takes a long time to measure them.

What Drs. Aldai and Dugan discovered was that the addition of a buffer (sodium sequicarbonate, similar to baking soda) would stabilize the pH of the rumen. This measure was combined with the addition of dried distillers’ grains, which are a by-product of the ethanol industry. They would also feed the cows a source of polyunsaturated fat such as safflower oilseeds. This combination of changes could create beef with much healthier fatty acid levels.

This research found Dr. Dugan’s aforementioned practical and economical solution since the diet mainly replaces high-cost grains like corn and barley with low-cost agricultural by-products. It’s a winning situation both for the cattle industry and the ethanol industry, as well as for Canadian and Spanish consumers who would, through the implementation of this research, gain access to a heart healthy designer beef product.

Dr. Dugan was absolutely thrilled to have had access to Dr. Aldai as an assistant through the Marie Curie Fellowship. “I’d recommend it to anybody,” he said. “She was less bogged down by administration, free to work on the research and she was prolific. She produced ten papers in three years.”

Dr. Aldai expressed the same sentiment. “The research levels have been outstanding which is corroborated with the high number of scientific articles I published together with my supervisor. I also met lots of other researchers and made really good contacts for the future.”