Saturday night’s supper consisted of grass-fed, free-range fillet steak we bought at the Earth Fair market (Tokai, Cape Town) on Saturday morning.

Surprisingly, it was less expensive than fillet bought from your regular large supermarket retailer.

I served it with a mixed salad and finished off the meat with a sauce concoction of garlic, whole-grain mustard,  butter and fresh herbs.

So why is grass-fed better ?

• No hormones or antibiotics apparently.
• The meat is considerably less likely to be infected with E-Coli (bacteria found in poop).
• The animal hasn’t been fattened on grains containing toxic pesticides.
• Animal hasn’t been fed on genetically modified grain feed.
• Let’s also not forget the ethical implications of feed-lot animals who are unnaturally confined. Grass-fed cattle would hopefully have had better and less stressful lives.

Granted, grass-fed beef is not always easy to come by, so try to get it when you can and as for the rest of the time, try your best to buy free range meat which is easily available in South Africa from most big retailers.

I do know of one guy in Cape Town, called Martin Raubenheimer, who runs a small business called Cure Deli. He sources only pasture reared meat and pork, farmed without growth hormones and antibiotics from local farmers. Contact him on curedeli@gmail.com to get onto his mailing list. He sells his meat and bacon products at local markets or he can deliver.

Tip from Mark Sisson (Author of the Primal Blueprint):
Unless you’re an athlete in training, the need for anything more than a small handful of flesh is exaggerated. We’re used to eating huge servings of meat, but then, we’re used to eating huge servings of everything.