Grassfed dairy products needed for truly effective cancer prevention

Staff report

LOGAN, Utah: CLA researcher, Dr. Tilak Dhiman, published a paper that said grassfed meats alone probably provided insufficient CLA to effectively prevent cancer.

However, he said grassfed meats eaten in conjunction with 100% grassfed dairy products could be very effective.

In an exclusive interview with this publication, Dhiman said the whole problem is that the CLA is found in the fat of the animal and that many grassfed animals are currently sold very lean.

Dhiman said his lab does CLA analysis for many grassfed beef producers all over the country so he has a good feel for the state of the industry.

“Our goal should be to get our grassfed animals as marbled as those from the feedlots,” he said.

“The health benefits of grass feeding are in the fat, not the lean.”

Many grassfed producers currently advertise how much leaner their meat is than grain fed and then tout the CLA advantages of grass feeding.

“You can’t have both,” he said.

He said some very lean grassfed animals could actually have less CLA than feedlot finished ones.

He said animal studies suggest that the minimum effective dose of CLA needed to prevent cancer is 0.05% of the diet.

He said a 600 gram diet of traditional grain fed whole milk, cheese, beef and poultry would produce a CLA percentage of the diet of approximately 127 mg/day, which amounts to .021% of the diet or less than half that needed for cancer prevention.

However, a similar diet of 100% grassfed meat and dairy products could produce a CLA intake of about 441 mg/day or 0.074% of the diet, which is well above the minimum intake that has shown to be effective in reducing the incidence of cancer in animal models.

Poultry has little to no potential for increasing CLA in the diet.

“The greatest potential for increasing the CLA intake of humans is to consume high-CLA containing, whole fat, dairy products,” he said. He said animal models are always used in deadly disease research because it would be highly unethical to induce practices thought to create disease with humans.

© by The Stockman Grass Farmer

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