At Mt. Folly, our regenerative agricultural practices mean better soil, which means better health. How is soil connected to health?
You may have heard that the nutritional content of our food has fallen dramatically since the advent of chemical farming. It has. From carrots to cabbage, the data is clear and consistent. Drs. David Montgomery and Anne Bikle have written an excellent book on the subject, “What Your Food Ate,” marshalling evidence across numerous disciplines*.
But what about Mt. Folly beef? While the field is new and the science is developing, our initial work centered at the lab of Dr. Stephan van Vliet at the University of Utah demonstrates our beef is different.
Initial studies of Mt. Folly beef, carried out at van Vliet’s Food Metabiolomics Lab, show it has more vitamins and minerals, more protein and less fat, than feedlot beef. The study, linked below, demonstrates our pasture-raised beef is higher in B vitamins, with significant differences in other health-related compounds. For example, it has more calcium, more iron and more biotin than industrial produced beef.
Again, this is an emerging science, with many unknowns. The Mt. Folly beef samples were from cattle taken in December, so for 60 days on a winter feeding program of organic hay and non-gmo corn. These cattle had spent a summer grazing season on complex pastures made of fescue, orchard grass, timothy, red clover, berseem clover, chicory and sudan grass. Winter rations are made of non-gmo corn and corn silage, hay from certified organic pasture, mineral and slowly growing cool season grasses.
Next, we’ll sample the beef from summer grazing at Mt. Folly while expanding the sampling of beef suppliers.
And we’ll expand our research into how phytochemicals from complex pasture translate into Beef.
Here is the initial study, in full.
*To better understand the science of soils and nutrients, read the excellent article by Montgomery and bilke: https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.699147
To learn more about nutritional science, including the modern emergence of chronic disease, go here https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6020734/