Efficiency - Google

Business is part of the solution. Companies will bring amazing efficiency--such as here with Google--creativity, design improvements and models of sustainability for employees and supply (value) chain.  Google is like the stone that gets thrown in a still pond and their ripples help change the world.

Efficiency - Google

When it comes to running our company, we’re constantly looking for ways to minimize our environmental impact. We value being as efficient as possible in everything we do, from powering our data centers to getting Googlers to and from the office.            

Our data centers

Data centers power all of our products and services. For over ten years, we’ve been building some of the most efficient data centers in the world. In fact, our data centers use 50% less energy than the typical data center. Here's how we do it.
           

Our data centers are designed to use as little energy as possible

We drive down the cost and environmental impact of running our data centers by designing and building our own facilities. We install smart temperature controls, use “free-cooling” techniques like using outside air or reused water for cooling, and redesign how power is distributed to reduce unnecessary energy loss. We can only improve upon what we measure, so we calculate the performance of each facility using comprehensive efficiency measurements.
More on our data center efficiency 

We recycle 100% of the electronic equipment that leaves our data centers

Since 2007, we've repurposed enough outdated servers to avoid buying over 300,000 new replacement machines. Before we buy new equipment and materials, we look for ways to reuse what we already have. When we can’t find a new use for our equipment, we completely erase any components that store data, and then resell them into the market—giving our equipment a second life.

Our high standards are certified

We're the first major Internet services company to gain external certification of our high environmental, workplace safety and energy management standards throughout our data centers. Specifically, we received voluntary ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001 and ISO 50001 certifications. In a nutshell, these standards are built around a very simple concept: Say what you’re going to do, then do what you say—and then keep improving.

We collaborate to move the industry forward

We believe that industry collaboration is important to driving sustainability in the technology sector. We do this by supporting research and bringing thought leaders together to share challenges and best practices.
             

Our campus operations whether it’s installing solar panels on our roofs or implementing a bike-to-work program, we’re committed to reducing the environmental impact of running our offices worldwide. That means the overall environmental impact from our company and the products we build is lower.     

     

We promote green commuting we’ve built a green transportation system that includes biodiesel shuttles and the largest corporate electric vehicle charging system in the country. Every day, our shuttles keep thousands of Googlers out of the driver's seat. Our on-campus car-sharing program includes the next generation of plug-in vehicles. And we reward our self-powered commuters by donating to their favorite charities based on how often they bike or walk to work.                             

We're committed to sustainable food

Google is committed to offering nutritious, flavorful food to employees on all of our campuses worldwide. We provide healthy choices, local tastes and plenty of variety in the most responsible way possible. Social and environmental responsibility are built into every part of our food program: from the partnerships we develop with farmers and suppliers to our efforts to minimize waste.

We build greener, healthier workplaces we work hard to create the healthiest, most productive work environments possible for Googlers around the world. We create buildings that function like living and breathing systems by optimizing access to nature, clean air and daylight. Three of our key initiatives as part of this effort include eliminating dangerous substances, designing energy-efficient buildings and continually measuring and improving upon how we operate our buildings.

Tesla Ventures Into Solar Power Storage

So, other electric car makers may offer models that out perform those of Tesla, but Tesla is already racing ahead to add energy storage to companies and homes.  Great idea that will make small-scale renewables much more efficient and improve their ROI's.

Stay tuned this week on WRNP, Renewable Now radio network as we talk to a rep from Green Mountain Power, one of the first utility companies in the US to form a partnership with Tesla to quickly (this year) to bring this amazing storage option to their large customer base.

Tesla Ventures Into Solar Power Storage for Home and Business

By DIANE CARDWELL

                                     

In recent years, the fast-growing popularity of solar panels has intensified a central challenge: how to use the sun’s energy when it isn’t shining.

Now, Tesla Motors, the maker of luxury electric sedans, says it is taking a big step toward meeting that challenge with a fleet of battery systems aimed at homeowners, businesses and utilities. The company’s foray into the solar storage market will include rechargeable lithium-ion battery packs that can mount to a home garage wall as well as battery blocks large enough to smooth out fluctuations in the grid.

“We’ve obviously been working on building a world-class battery, a superefficient and affordable way to store energy,” said Khobi Brooklyn, a Tesla spokeswoman. “It’s just that we’ve been putting that battery in cars most of the time.”

To herald its ambitions in the field, the company scheduled an event Thursday night at its design studio in Hawthorne, Calif., with Elon Musk, its chief executive, presiding.

In a news conference before the event, Mr. Musk said the consumer battery, called the Powerwall, would sell for $3,500, and was derived from the batteries that Tesla uses in its Model S vehicles. The device, which Tesla will start producing later this year, will be installed by licensed technicians.

    

The batteries will be connected to the Internet and can be managed by Tesla from afar. Customers can connect up to nine battery packs to store larger amounts of power.

“If you have the Tesla Powerwall, if the utility goes down, you still have power,” Mr. Musk said. He added: “The whole thing is an integrated system that just works.”

Energy and auto analysts have generally responded positively to Tesla’s move. “Elon thinks that there’s a long-term gain to be made or a long-term play not only in electric cars but also in electric energy storage — and he’s probably right,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

“There’s a universal application for portable energy and storable energy that goes to everybody. It’s really just a matter of getting the business model together.”

Tesla’s announcement comes as energy companies are moving in the same direction. Sungevity, a leading solar installer, announced a partnership this week with Sonnenbatterie, a smart energy storage provider in Europe, to begin offering their systems to its customers. NRG, one of the largest independent power producers in the United States, is also developing storage products.

“We have to be in this space,” said Steve McBee, chief executive of NRG Home. “If your goal is to build a meaningful solar business that is durable over time, you have to assume that that solar business is going to morph into a solar-plus-storage solution. That will be mandatory at some point.”

Still, the market is young and, some experts say, Tesla has the advantage of reach and scale — as well as a $5 billion battery production plant under construction near Reno, Nev., that it calls the Gigafactory.

   

The Gigafactory, a $5 billion plant being built near Reno, Nev., by Tesla, the maker of electric vehicles, will produce lithium-ion battery systems designed to be used by utilities and homeowners. Credit James Glover/Reuters

“Tesla’s not the only one doing it, but Tesla can bring it to a wider audience than most other people can,” said Shayle Kann, a vice president at GTM Research, which tracks clean-tech industries. “Once they get the Gigafactory up and going, they will be able to deploy on a scale that no one will quite be able to rival. So they may have a cost advantage in that.”

Tesla has been refining its storage business for a few years, working with a number of companies including Jackson Family Wines, the electric utility Southern California Edison and the installation company SolarCity, of which Mr. Musk is chairman and whose founders, Lyndon and Peter Rive, are his cousins.

The Tesla systems are designed for different scales. The home battery, roughly four feet by three feet, would allow solar customers to have power in the event of an failure, draw from it when utility rates are higher and use more of the electricity their panels produce, easing reliance on the grid.

For utilities, they can help compensate for fluctuations from intermittent sources like solar and wind — whose production can dip sharply or stop altogether — as well as meet demand during peak periods.

And for businesses, they can help lower demand for electricity from the grid, which in turn can lower costly demand charges.

Amazon Web Services, which manages cloud-based computing systems and has a goal to derive all its energy from renewable sources, is beginning a pilot program with Tesla in Northern California.

“Batteries are important for both data center reliability and as enablers for the efficient application of renewable power,” James Hamilton, distinguished engineer at Amazon Web Services, said through a spokeswoman. “They help bridge the gap between intermittent production, from sources like wind, and the data center’s constant power demands.”

This is the first road-legal big rig....

It looks as if Google is not the only entity thinking about self-driving vehicles.  It is intriguing to think about adding this feature to big rigs.  Without human intervention, self-driving trucks would, most likely, get better gas mileage.  Potentially, they could be much safer as well.

Think about our continued dependence on satellites and GPS as we move down the road in self-driving cars and trucks.

This is the first road-legal big rig that can drive itself

Last night at the Hoover Dam, Freightliner unveiled the Inspiration Truck — a partially autonomous big rig that could save lives, mitigate driver fatigue and stress, and reduce CO2 emissions up to 5 percent. Daimler, which owns Freightliner, says it has done more than 10,000 miles of testing on the truck. And now it's street-legal, having been officially granted one of Nevada's "Autonomous Vehicle" license plates (the first for a commercial truck) by Nevada governor Brian Sandoval at a media event before the unveiling.

The Inspiration Truck and Daimler's underlying "Highway Pilot" technology isn't meant to replace truck drivers completely. Instead, it's meant to solve the problem of fatigued driving, something that plagues truck drivers who have to pull long shifts. According to Daimler, 90 percent of truck crashes result from driver error, and in one out of every eight of those cases driver fatigue plays a role.

Dr. Wolfgang Bernhard, Daimler AG's truck boss, says that the Inspiration Truck mitigates that problem significantly. At a media event before the unveiling, he spoke about how taking control away from drivers positively impacts their ability to focus for long periods of time. "We measured brain activity with or without autonomous function, and it clearly shows that driver drowsiness decreases by about 25 percent when the truck is operating in autonomous mode," he said.

 Daimler and Freightliner chose Nevada as the venue for the unveiling because the state was the first in the nation to put regulations in place that allow the testing of autonomous vehicles. (Three others and the District of Columbia have since followed.) Nevada is also home to some of the first university curriculums dealing with autonomous vehicles, like the Nevada Advanced Autonomous Innovations Center found at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The Inspiration Truck is considered "level 3" on NHTSA's automation scale. That's the second-highest level of automation — the same that Google's self-driving cars currently operate on. It means that the vehicle is advanced enough to enable the driver to cede full control in certain traffic or environmental conditions. The driver can interrupt and regain control, but the vehicle should allow a "comfortable transition time."

As with other self-driving cars, that level of automation brings up a number of issues, some of which were discussed earlier in the day. A big one is liability — if the driver is ceding control to an automated system, where does the blame get placed if something goes wrong?

Bernhard compared it to the control a pilot has over a commercial airliner. "Technically speaking these vehicles are operating 'partly automated,'" he said. "So [the driver] is still in charge of what happens. He’s responsible."

Martin Daum, the president and CEO of Daimler Trucks, hedged on that answer slightly more, saying that liability is not a question for today, but for the future. "Certainly before it becomes mass production the liability question has to be discussed and has to be solved by the regulators," Daum said. "Ultimately it’s the people — like with any law — it’s the people that decide and the industry has to follow."

Another big issue is whether the Inspiration Truck will need any additional infrastructure as its production scales up. Bernhard said no, and he and the company plan to show us what he means at a much more hands-on event later today. The only thing that can assist them right now are the white guidelines painted onto the roads, which he claims are "fully intact" or can be repaired at a low cost in many states. While things like a broader infrastructure or vehicle-to-vehicle communication would bring additional benefits, the Inspiration Truck can operate at level 3 autonomy without any extra help. "That vehicle does not need any support other than nice white stripes," he said.  

We saw another one of Daimler's divisions tease its own autonomous truck last October when Mercedes announced the "Future Truck 2025." According to Daimler, the "Highway Pilot" technology behind the Mercedes version is the same that powers the Inspiration Truck, though the designs are very different — the Future Truck 2025 is thoroughly conceptual and futuristic, while Freightliner's version looks like it could roll down the highway today. And, in fact, it did at the end of the media preview at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. With Bernhard at the wheel, he and Nevada's governor Brian Sandoval drove the truck right off the premises — though it's uncertain if they let the truck take over once they were on the road.

"Obviously there's some more testing we have to do," Bernhard said. "We have to see how this thing performs in the rain, the sun, cold days, or at subzero." That's something that Daimler will have to wait for, as other states could be slow to adapt the same self-driving-friendly regulation that Nevada already has. Bernhard also pointed out that just getting a "patchwork of states" on board won't help — particularly since big rigs often operate interstate — and as Daum sees it, state regulation is just the beginning. Federal regulation will be necessary before we see a fleet of Inspiration Trucks (or other trucks running Daimler's Highway Pilot technology) swarm the highways.

The sun cools Sub-Saharan Africa

We love the international side of this business.  Here's a great story which tracks the sun's incredible ability to bring energy to the most demanding terrain.  You can imagine the quality of life changes, the new jobs, expanded economy, that these energy systems will bring developing regions.

The sun cools Sub-Saharan Africa

Anmar Frangoul  

       

At the moment, one in seven people in the world have no access to electricity to help them cook, keep food fresh and learn, according to figures from the International Energy Agency. And the vast majority of those off the grid live in sub-Saharan Africa and developing regions of Asia.

Solar Kiosk is a Berlin-based company looking to change the lives of people living without access to mains electricity. According to the company's website, its Solar Kiosk E-Hubb, "serves as a complete energy and business outlet for solar products, fast-moving consumer goods, and energy services."

The Solar Kiosk E-Hubb uses solar energy to provide off-grid communities with a range of services from charging their phones to purchasing perishable goods and cold drinks. As well as serving the community, the Solar Kiosk E-Hubb also offers opportunities to local businesses as franchise partners.

Andreas Spiess is the CEO of Solar Kiosk. On a film on the company's website, he outlines their philosophy. "When you fly over Africa at night it's a dark place, there's no electricity, there's no light, and that's an absurdity because during the day it's the brightest place that you can possibly think of, with so much sunlight," he said.

"So what we want to do is we want to capture the sunlight, transform it into energy and bring electricity and light at night to rural Africa," Spiess added.

Like many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, getting access to electricity in Kenya is a huge problem for many people living there. For Patina, a salesperson living in Ol'Kiramatian, in Kenya's Rift Valley, the Solar Kiosk has had a big impact.

"We used to travel long distances – like 7-8km – to get to a place to charge a phone," she told CNBC's Sustainable Energy. "You'd try to charge it, but it wouldn't fully be charged, so you'd have to leave it to the next day… the solar kiosk has shortened the distances."

Hamis Balito is a self-employed resident of Ol'Kiramatian. "We can find perishable goods in the Solar Kiosk as compared to initially [when] we could not… find such commodities," he said.

According to the website of Solar Kiosk, there are currently 45 E-Hubbs in use across 10 countries, producing 120,750 kilowatt hours of energy every year.

Rachna Patel is the Managing Director for Solar Kiosk Kenya. "Already we have subsidiary organisations established in Ghana, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania… and we also have operations in Botswana," she said.

If more people go solar

Great question;  one we just asked of Green Mountain, on a radio interview, a utility company speeding ahead with a partnership with Tesla on storage.  They believe their primary future is as a smart grid;  a great manager of energy that insures consistent access to clean, redundant power for generations.

We wonder how other utility companies answer that?

If more people go solar, what will happen to the grid?

Wind turbines, solar panels and backup batteries provide plenty of power for Kenneth Viar’s home and workshop in rural Virginia — yet each month he still buys a few dollars’ worth of electricity from the local utility. “There’s nothing better than grid power,” Viar says.

“Grid defection” – the idea that solar-and-battery technology will lead people to cancel their electric service – is a growing concern in the utility business. But utilities can take solace in the fact that early adopters like Viar still find the grid useful. It offers backup power and a place to sell their excess home electricity production.

Home solar and other off-grid technology is about to have its day. Tesla  Chief Executive Elon Musk’s announcement April 30 that his company would market $3,000 home batteries that can store solar power for nighttime use is just the latest twist in the rapid evolution of systems that will let homes and businesses unplug from utility companies.

Tesla’s $3,000 price point surprised experts at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a green-energy think tank which has studied grid defection. “We were expecting a similar product in the $15,000 range,” said Jesse Morris, a manager in RMI’s electricity practice. The low price means “more potential for load- and grid-defection, in more places, sooner.”

Wall Street analysts have said for several years that solar-and-battery might revolutionize the electricity business. And utility regulators fear enough people might defect from the grid to slash utility revenues and worsen service for those who stay.

“Customers will drive markets, and if the existing regulated markets do not provide choices that customers want or need, customers will eventually find alternatives,” warns New York’s Public Service Commission, which is reforming its rules to accommodate the new technology.

But even as solar-and-battery technology improves, the grid will remain useful, said Mark Cerasuolo, marketing director for OutBack Power Technologies, which sells electronic equipment used to operate home generating systems.

© Mario Anzuoni/Reuters Vivint Solar technicians Eduardo Aguilar (L) and Ian Boshard install solar panels on the roof of a house in Mission Viejo, California October 25, 2013. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (UNITED STATES - Tags: ENERGY) 

“I think the big area is going to be this third ground, the middle ground,” Cerasuolo said. “People are putting off-grid technology in their homes. They are off-grid when it makes sense, but they dip back into the grid when they need to.”

Cerasuolo’s idea of what the power system will look like is backed by a new Rocky Mountain Institute study.

Over the next 10 to 15 years, the cost of solar-plus-battery systems will make them economical for homeowners in all 50 states, the study says. Solar-battery setups are already economical in parts of Hawaii, which struggles with sky-high electric rates.

By 2030, Westchester County, N.Y. — another place with high power prices — could get 75% of its power from home and business solar-and-battery systems, RMI says. By 2050, the study says, solar-and-battery power will run 95% of the county’s businesses.

Because the grid offers backup power and a place to sell excess power, staying connected makes solar-and-battery more reliable and economical, said James Mandel, a co-author of the report. “Solar-plus-storage systems will have the best value and economics when they can interact with the grid,” he said.

Viar, of Chesterfield County, Va., would be a target customer of Tesla’s systems if he hadn’t already poured thousands of dollars and his own sweat equity in his solar- and wind-powered home.

Viar, a disabled Marine Corps vet and union boilermaker, powers his 1,500-square foot home and separate 1,100-square foot workshop with two wind turbines mounted atop 20-foot masts, and 20 2-by-5-foot solar panels on his workshop roof and on the ground nearby. There’s also a battery backup system to keep his lights, appliances and electronics humming when there’s no solar or wind power.

Viar said he bought the panels in 2009 for about $400 apiece. Today he figures he could buy the same panels for $140 each. Forced to choose between solar and wind, Viar said he’d take solar. It’s an easy call. Where he lives, the wind doesn’t always blow. But he’s found that his solar panels produce power even on cloudy and rainy days.

He takes power from the grid when he needs it. His bills are small — in March, his utility, Dominion Virginia, billed him $15.95. “I burned 45 kilowatt hours,” Viar said. “My neighbors burned 1,500 kilowatt hours.”

When weather knocks out Dominion’s power grid, Viar’s batteries and wind and solar generators give his home lots of electricity.

“It’s a win-win situation,” Viar said of the home-and-grid setup.

Even if people with solar-and-battery systems stay on the grid, they’ll use less grid electricity. How to fund the grid as sales shrink puzzles utilities and regulators.

“It’s going to be hard for utilities to be made whole in this transition,” Mandel said. “But I do think there is a set of outcomes that is much better, where utilities remain relevant and evolve into providing new services. There’s a risk that utilities won’t do enough in time.”

This electric Finnish supercar has 1,341 horsepower

 Tesla may not like this, but we do.  Improved performance, with cars that compete with traditional autos, is key to driving sales of electrics and hybrids.  Interesting to see cars come out of Finland, not a traditional bastion of auto manufacturing., 

A small Finnish automaker is producing an electric car that has so much horsepower that it makes a Tesla look like a go-cart.

The Toroidion 1MW, billed as a 100% electric "hypercar," boasts 1,341 horsepower, butterfly doors and a retro design.

It also has a breathtaking price tag.

Toroidion CEO Pasi Pennanen told CNNMoney that an exact price hasn't been set yet, but said the cost could range between $1.5 million to $3.5 million for the first batch of 100 cars.

The car was unveiled in mid-April by Monaco's Prince Albert II at a high-end Monaco car show called Top Marques.

Pennanen's young company has been working on building this car and its new battery technology for the last four years. The company employs roughly 15 people and has been completely self-financed so far.

Pennanen's plan is to get enough interest, investment and orders to build 100 Toroidion 1MW cars and begin delivering them to customers in about two years. He hopes to ultimately mass produce the car, bring the price down significantly and sell it to all kinds of customers, especially those drivers that appreciate Teslas and other electric vehicles.

The Toroidion 1MW was originally designed with the intention that it would be able to compete in the famed 24-hour French car race, Le Mans. Pennanen said he has no doubt his car would win the annual race.

"We have the winning recipe," he said, noting that many racing teams are already showing interest in the vehicle.

But Pennanen said the Toroidion 1MW is also designed with practicality in mind and he hopes to soon create a family-friendly version.

Unlike a Tesla (TSLA), the Toroidion's battery can be removed and charged indoors using an everyday plug and outlet. Or it can be left in the car and charged using plugs installed on both the front and back of the vehicle.

And unlike most supercars, the Toroidion's trunk can fit airline-sized baggage.

While many electric and hybrid cars are known for offering drivers a quiet ride, the Toroidion 1MW can get insanely loud.

Driving at normal road speeds isn't an issue. The car will make a revving sound, but it won't upset the neighbors.

The noise ramps up when the car hits racing speeds above roughly 125 miles per hour.
"It's [an] emotional, sensational feeling because you're overwhelmed with the performance and the sound of the engines ... it sounds like a mixture of a Grand Prix car engine and a jet turbine together," said Pannenen.

Toroidion executives are hopeful the car's battery may power the company's search for financing. They say the firm's new battery technology has many applications and could be used in airplanes, boats and windmills. If the company is able to license this technology to other companies, the licensing money could be used towards commercializing the vehicle.

"The direction of the company is quite flexible at the moment," said Pennanen.

Is Grass-Fed Beef Worth It?

As consumers we face many choices.  Those choices are increasing, including those we think are healthier--organic foods, as an example.

But, we all face difficult decisions on spending and budget.  Here's a good article, tied into a show we did on grass-fed beef, on evaluating our diet of meat.

Is Grass-Fed Beef Worth It?

Grass-fed meat is harder to find, more expensive and harder to cook. Is it worth it?

No matter what diet you choose to follow, whether it’s Paleo’s no-grain, no-dairy, no-legume approach or the Zone’s balanced ratios of macronutrients or just a generally eat-as-healthy-as-you-can plan, it’s important to eat the highest quality foods. That often means organic fruit and vegetables, but when it comes to animals, where does quality come from?

Let’s start with a little background: Cows eat grass. In fact, most of the beef produced in the U.S. up until the 1940s was from cattle that ate grass. But as the country grew, it eventually became necessary to improve the efficiency of beef production. Agricultural scientists discovered that mass production of beef was attainable by feeding high-energy grains to the cattle; this decreased the amount of time each animal had to be fed before being slaughtered — a shortcut if you will. (And yes, you read that correctly: We feed cows grains to make them fat, yet grains are supposedly “heart-healthy” for humans.)

Unfortunately, as with all things health related, there are no shortcuts. Research over three decades shows that the type of feed a cow consumes significantly alters the fatty-acid composition and overall antioxidant content of the beef it produces. This is so remarkable that as the concentration of grain increases in a cow’s diet, the ratio of “good fats” to “bad fats” in its meat decreases in a linear fashion. It is also worth noting that within 30 days of switching a cow from a grass-fed diet to a grain-fed diet, the resulting meat suffers dramatically. In fact, a review of existing research, published in Nutrition Journal in 2010, showed that meat from these cows — fed grains for a mere 30 days — will have a far more inflammatory fatty-acid composition and will lack the antioxidant content that is otherwise present in the meat of grass-fed animals.

The Facts on Fats

All fats are not created equal, so to understand the importance of quality and how feeding ruminants (the class of mammals that includes cows) grass contributes to high-quality food products, we must turn our attention first to this most maligned of nutrients. The myth of fats is that they’re bad and can make us fat. However, the truth is that bad fats are bad but good fats are essential — and some even have fat-burning properties. We admit, it’s overwhelmingly confusing. To clear things up a bit, fats are an integral part of the human diet, and consuming healthy fat from high-quality animal sources is important, period. This is where grass feeding comes into play — it improves the quality of fat in an animal’s meat and dairy.

One of the most remarkable advantages — and there are many — to eating grass-fed meat is the fatty-acid profile it offers. There are two main types of essential polyunsaturated fatty acids: omega-6 (inflammatory fats) and omega-3 (anti-inflammatory fats). The ratio of the two fats influences overall health, and maintaining an appropriate balance is critical. The ratio is particularly important because the machinery involved in metabolizing omega-6 fats and omega-3 fats is shared, meaning an excess of one type can interfere with the metabolism of the other type. The ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is between 1:1 and 3:1, and above 4:1 is considered problematic.

Alarmingly, the ratio of the average American diet has been reported at 15:1! This might not be surprising, considering that the fatty-acid ratio in grain-fed beef, one of the most popular sources of meat among American omnivores, can be as high as 20:1. On the other hand, cattle that have been fed grass — their natural food source, remember — have been reported to produce beef with a fatty-acid profile of 2:1 to 3:1, which, you’ll notice, happens to fall within the range considered ideal for human needs.

Even though feeding cattle grass yields overall leaner meat with way more good fats, bad fats in the meat remain largely unaltered. But as a result of the huge increase in good fats, the omega-6:omega-3 ratio is shifted to favor a more beneficial, anti-inflammatory profile. The bottom line: It’s what the grain-fed meat doesn’t have that is detrimental. A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2011 found that individuals who were put on a grass-fed red-meat diet for four weeks had a significantly improved plasma omega-6:omega-3 ratio (it went from 9:1 to 6:1) compared with those on a diet of red meat from animals that had been fed a fortified blend of grains and soy (from 8:1 to 13:1). Because they’re getting substantial amounts of omega-3 fatty acids from their diets, people who regularly consume wild fish and animal products from grass-fed sources generally do not need to supplement with omega-3 fish oil.

The Goodness of Grass

Why is grass so magical? It all comes down to the infinitely strange anatomy of the cow and its cousins. As any grade-schooler learns, cows have four stomachs — or, more precisely, their stomachs have four chambers. Those four chambers allow cows to derive nutrients from grass. They do that with the assistance of certain bacteria that ferment the grass — and just so happen to synthesize good fats. And like all other bacteria, the ones in cows’ bellies require a certain type of environment in order to function effectively. When cows consume commercial feed, it changes the pH in their stomachs, making the environment less friendly to the beneficial bacteria. Cattle fed a diet of grass have stomachs that are far more suitable for bacteria to function and produce good fat.

In cattle that eat grass, the bacteria work hard to synthesize conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and trans-vaccenic acid (TVA). TVA is important because it leads to the synthesis of CLA, which aside from its fat-burning potential, has been shown over the past 20 years to have numerous health benefits. What kind of health benefits? Oh, just enhanced immune function, improved regulation of blood sugar, reduced incidence of atherosclerosis and improved tumor suppression.

CLA is also present in dairy products produced by cows that have been fed grass. For example, analyses have shown that cheeses from grass-fed cows were significantly higher in total CLA content compared with conventional or even organic cheese. In fact, the healthiest part of dairy is the fat and the fat-soluble vitamins (e.g., A, D, K-2) it contains. If you can tolerate dairy, you would likely benefit from consuming high-quality whole-fat products like butter, yogurt and cheese from grass-fed cattle.

Beyond the Fat

There are several reasons beyond fatty-acid ratio that support consumption of grass-fed beef products over commercial, grain-fed cattle. First, toxins including antibiotics are typically routinely administered to commercial cattle. (It’s this overuse of antibiotics in beef cattle that is believed to be one of the causes of the unchecked proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria currently facing the medical community.) And to make matters worse, fat tissue is a storage compartment for toxins. That means that when you consume meat from these animals, which we know contains fat tissue, you are exposing yourself to whatever toxins the cows were given. On the other hand, the reason grain-fed cattle need antibiotics and other drugs is because their bodies are not made to digest grain, and doing so creates problems, like rampant inflammation, that have to be dealt with with drugs. Grass-fed cattle, which tend to be much healthier and not need drug injections, yield meat that is likely to be more pure and free from toxins.

Studies also show that grass-fed meat is significantly higher in antioxidants than meat from animals fed grain. Grass-fed meat can contain seven times more beta carotene (a precursor for vitamin A) and three times more alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E). No surprise, vitamins are good for you. Beta carotene has been shown to have tumor-suppressing effects on a variety of cancers. In a study of mice with melanoma, beta-carotene treatment inhibited tumor proliferation and angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels) by creating a more anti-inflammatory environment. Meat from grass-fed animals is also richer in CoQ10, an extremely powerful antioxidant; zinc; vitamin B-12; and the antioxidant glutathione, compared with meat from animals raised on a commercial-feed diet.

There are other benefits, too. Grass-fed meat is free from genetically modified organisms (which often pop up in the grain that conventional cattle are fed), growth hormones and other toxic chemicals. It’s not contaminated with wheat, soy, gluten or other allergens that can transfer to the meat from a grain diet and thus is safe even for those with allergies to consume. And finally, animals that are allowed to remain in their natural environment, eating the food they evolved to eat, are happier, less stressed and less susceptible to infection. And all that translates to healthier meat.