Simply Nature Organic 100% Grass Fed Ground Beef

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For several years now, I’ve been buying grass fed ground beef and pasture-raised chicken from a family farm in my region. I like knowing that we’re getting beef that hasn’t been given growth hormones and that hasn’t spent the last part of its life getting fattened up in an industrial feedlot.

There is a lot to like about grass fed beef compared to standard commercially produced grain-fed beef. It is more lean, has more conjugated linoleic acid, and it contains up to six times more omega-3 fatty acids, which are good for your heart. It also contains fewer omega-6s (bad fat) and saturated fat.

In addition, grass is better for cows. They’re designed to eat grass.

There’s also the environmental impact of all the corn being grown to feed cows in standard beef industry operations. It requires fertilizer, weed killer, insecticides, and large amounts of water, and it requires fossil fuels to transport that corn to feedlots. While maintaining grassy pastures for cows requires rotational grazing and takes some planning and effort, it does seem more intuitive than endless fields of corn, which isn’t even healthy for cows anyway.

While I’m partial to buying directly from a farmer, I’m not opposed to buying grass fed ground beef from the grocery store. Aldi has been selling grass fed ground beef for years now. I think it started as a limited-time Aldi Find or as a periodic fresh meat special, but lately I’ve seen it stocked all the time as an everyday buy.

Simply Nature Organic 100% Grass Fed Ground Beef is an Aldi Regular Buy, which means you should be able to find it all year long. Aldi sells it in the refrigerated fresh meat case. The label says it’s a product of Uruguay and/or the U.S. with no antibiotics and no added growth hormones, and it’s non-GMO.

At the time of writing, it cost $4.99 per pound for 85% lean 15% fat, or $6.19 per pound for 93% lean 7% fat.

For comparison, when I buy grass fed ground beef from my local farmer, I have historically gotten it for around $6 per pound if I buy at least 10 pounds at a time. (We go through a lot of ground beef between taco and chili nights, so it doesn’t take long to eat 10 pounds.) It’s $7 per pound if purchased in single-pound units from my local farm.

Also of note, Walmart sells Marketside Organic Grass-Fed Ground Beef. Their 85% lean option cost $6.36 per pound and their 93% lean option cost $7.43 per pound at the time of writing.

Overall, from a price perspective, the Aldi ground beef looks like a good deal.

Sourcing:

I often see grass fed ground beef at the grocery store. Buying grass fed beef from a grocery store is not necessarily the same as buying from a local or regional farmer, since store packaging isn’t always clear about sourcing. For instance, where specifically was the beef raised and what were farm conditions like? Most local farmers are happy to allow you to visit to pick up your grass fed beef purchase and to see the animals for yourself, but that’s likely not the case with larger-scale suppliers of grass fed beef.

Grocery store grass fed beef also travels a lot farther to make it to your table, sometimes from outside the U.S. because year-round grazing conditions are more readily available in places such as parts of South America or Australia. The result is that non-local beef requires more fossil fuels to transport.

This Aldi grass-fed beef was manufactured by National Beef Packing Co. LLC and was certified organic by Control Union Certifications. The company has processing facilities primarily in the Midwest, with a couple in Eastern states. Their grass fed organic ground beef is processed at their Dodge City, Kansas, facility. The label does not indicate what farms — either in the U.S. or in Uruguay — supplied the beef.

Inside the Package:

The ground beef I purchased had use or freeze by dates of just less than two weeks out from the date of purchase. Naturally, it should be kept refrigerated or frozen and cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees.

Nutrition information and ingredients. 93% lean on the left, 85% lean on the right. (Click to enlarge.)

The only ingredient in each pack is USDA certified organic 100% grass fed ground beef. Nutrition information differs slightly depending on whether you buy the 93% lean beef or the 85% lean beef.

The 93% lean beef has 170 calories per 4-ounce serving (1/4 of the package). It also has 8 grams of total fat (10% DV), 3 grams of saturated fat (15% DV), 70 mg of cholesterol (23% DV), 75 mg of sodium (3% DV), no carbs or sugars, and 23 grams of protein.

The 85% lean beef has 240 calories per 4-ounce serving (1/4 of the package). It has 17 grams of total fat (22% DV), 6 grams of saturated fat (30% DV), 1 gram of trans fat, 75 mg of cholesterol (25% DV), 75 mg of sodium (3% DV), no carbs or sugars, and 21 grams of protein.

93% lean patties after grilling.

I made this ground beef into hamburger patties that we cooked on our gas grill. I don’t always follow the same recipe when making hamburgers, but this time I made them the way my local beef farmers say they like to make theirs. I mixed salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, dried minced onion, an egg, some Worcestershire sauce, and some bread crumbs in with each pound of meat before shaping it into quarter-pound patties. I didn’t use exact measurements with the spices; I simply added a few shakes of each. 

Keep in mind that grass fed beef tends to cook faster than grain fed beef, so watch your meat closely and be ready to take it off the heat when it’s done cooking.

85% lean patty after grilling. We had four patties, but everyone dug in so quickly I only got a photo of one.

My family liked their burgers. The 85% lean ground beef makes a juicier burger because it has a little more fat, but I thought the 93% lean burgers were still good. Some family members thought the leaner ground beef would be better used in casseroles or in chili, where it gains more moisture.

The Aldi grass fed ground beef is perfectly fine for however you want to serve it, and it’s something I do buy from time to time. I’m glad Aldi carries it regularly.

The Verdict:

Simply Nature Organic 100% Grass Fed Ground Beef is a relatively inexpensive option for grass-fed beef. Aldi sells both 85% lean or 93% lean varieties, with the leanest variety costing a little more. They’re good for shaping into burgers (we recommend using the 85% lean variety for a juicier burger), putting in casseroles, making sloppy joes or tacos with, or adding to chili. The package discloses where this beef was processed, although we don’t know exactly where it was sourced from except that it comes from somewhere in the U.S. or Uruguay: we’ll leave it to shoppers to decide how important that is to them.