KANANASKIS, Alta. – Beef and dairy producers may soon be able to brag about the health and diet benefits of their products.
Initial research shows conjugated linoleic acid, a fat found in the meat and milk of ruminant animals, may be one of the most promising health foods of the future.
Beef producer Elgar Grinde said early research that shows CLA-enhanced milk and meat as a weight loss product or a cancer prevention agent will be a huge boost for the livestock industry.
“For me as a producer it presents a real opportunity to present a food that has a scientific based quality to it as a health benefit,” said Grinde during a gathering of CLA scientists and researchers and industry officials.
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“It will be another way to pitch beef.”
Bruce Beattie, a dairy producer from Sundre, Alta., and chair of the CLA Network, said CLA-enhanced milk will never replace the main fluid milk markets, but it will be a selling feature for health conscious consumers.
“It’s an opportunity to take advantage of a niche market and the health conscious side of the consuming public. It’s an area that’s clearly growing and we want to be able to maintain that in the face of the soy markets and those products that compete directly and where people might switch,” Beattie said.
“We’ve always believed dairy is a very healthy choice and a nutritious choice, but we’re always trying to find new ways to enhance that to maintain a competition advantage.”
CLA was first identified in the late 1970s by researchers investigating the carcinogenic properties of grilled hamburger who also found anti-carcinogenic properties. They isolated the component responsible for this effect and identified it as CLA.
Synthetic forms of CLA have been developed for research and for sale as weight loss supplements, but many scientists believe the CLA found naturally in beef and dairy may offer the best health benefits. Early CLA research shows potential for human health benefits related to cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, kidney disease and bone density.
Corey Scott with Lipid Nutrition, an American company that makes and markets CLA as a diet supplement, said a two kilogram difference was found between participants who took the CLA supplements and those who took a placebo during a six month test.
The subjects who took a placebo gained 0.5 kilograms and those on CLA lost 1.5 kg without a change in diet or exercise.
“You can see a trend of more weight loss with CLA,” said Scott.
David Glimm, a University of
Alberta biochemist with the CLA dairy module, said while the weight loss potential may be interesting, he sees more benefit in using CLA for disease prevention.
“We’re looking at all the other diseases and its potential benefit as anticancer and cardiovascular disease,” Glimm said.
John Basarab, a senior beef research scientist with Alberta Agriculture, said there are health benefits to CLA in dairy and beef products, especially if the animals are fattened on pasture or have a diet enhanced with whole sunflower seeds, which allows the rumen to create CLA.
However, cattle lose CLA health benefits 30 to 50 days after they are taken off pasture and put in a feedlots. There is also no guarantee a steak or roast will have a specific amount of CLA. Early research has found CLA is not evenly distributed in the meat.
“We’re not going to take all of our cattle and put them on pasture. There’s just not enough market for that and it would be costly.”
Basarab said there is still a lot of research to be done, especially in understanding how a change in CLA levels changes fatty acid composition.