Since scientists discovered that omega-3s can reduce the risk of heart attacks and cancer, food manufacturers have eagerly marketed the health benefits of beneficial fatty acids.
With the power of a heart healthy label in mind, researchers at Agriculture Canada’s research centre in Brandon sought to produce beef with a high content of omega-3s.
In 2009, Hushton Block, a beef production specialist at the Brandon centre, began a study where ground flax was added to cattle diets to alter the composition of meat and fat produced.
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Unfortunately, feeding heifers flax for 250 days didn’t increase omega-3 levels in the beef as much as the researchers had hoped.
But the study found meat from the flax fed cattle had much higher levels of vaccenic acid, a trans fatty acid that may also provide health benefits for humans.
“When we go to our flax supplemented groups, we’re getting somewhere in the range of eight to nine times (vaccenic acid) as present in the control,” Block said during a beef and pasture tour at the Brandon centre in early September.
“And that’s a huge increase that has beneficial health implications for consumers of beef fat.”
Scientists at the University of Alberta have been studying the fatty acid for the last several years.
In laboratory experiments, Spencer Proctor, the university’s director of the Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases Laboratory, has done tests where rats were fed a form of the trans fat.
The rats on the vaccenic acid diet demonstrated reduced levels of low density lipoprotein, the bad cholesterol, and lower levels of triglycerides, the most common form of fat in mammals.
“It (vaccenic acid) is a lipid. You find that this particular fatty acid is in quite high quantities, naturally, in dairy and beef products,” Proctor said.
“What a lot of people really hadn’t appreciated is that vaccenic acid is one of these precursors, it’s like a substrate that you need to get CLA produced,” he said.
“The quantities of vaccenic acid are probably five to 10 fold more than you find of CLA in dairy and beef…. You can find vaccenic acid in seven to 10 percent of entire fat in some of these foods.”
Proctor said the relevance for human health is that eating beef with vaccenic acid could have the same benefits as eating beef high in CLAs.
“When you eat more vaccenic acid, most mammals are able to produce more CLA, because you’re taking in more of the precursor to CLA.”
Block was also encouraged by the taste of the meat.
Results of a taste test showed that supplementing flax to a forage based diet didn’t significantly alter the flavour. Most animals in the study met the AA grade. However, flax fed animals didn’t produce beef that was high in omega-3.
“I suspect that the major reason was that as the omega-3 was coming into the rumen, it was turned into this vaccenic acid,” Block said.
Proctor said more research on vaccenic acid is required.
