It’s great to see Canadian science confirming what we’ve believed for some time now … that you get healthier dairy from cows that eat what they’re supposed to eat, grass, instead of being fed grains.
Rolling Meadow Dairy seems like the first brand in Canada to have aggressively put grass-fed butter on the Canadian grocery shelves and they’re also behind the KiwiPure New Zealand grass-fed butter you find at Whole Foods.
Here’s an article from the University of Toronto, looking at a recent research study that shows grass-fed cows are healthier and produce healthier dairy.
Grass-fed dairy has about the same amount of fat as conventional milk, which mostly comes from cows that eat corn and grains. But the type of fat in grass-fed milk is vastly different. Its ratio of Omega 6s (which promote inflammation) to Omega 3s (which are anti-inflammatory), for example, is about 3:1. Standard milk comes in about 10:1.
“It’s amazing to see what diet can do to an animal’s nutritional profile,” says Richard Bazinet, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Brain Lipid Metabolism in the department of nutritional sciences. Bazinet tested Rolling Meadow’s product in the year before its launch – free of charge – and found the Omega numbers ranged from 2:1 during the summer grazing months to 3.5:1 in winter, when the cows ate stored grass and oats.
The only scary part about this entire article is the quote by Richard Bazinet above where he states it’s “amazing to see what diet can do to an animals nutritional profile”.
We would have hoped that this would be common knowledge by now.
Hopefully it is soon!
