Pasture Raised Chicken

Pasture raising of chickens (with plenty of time allowed for pecking, foraging, and moving around outdoors) has been recently analyzed, with fascinating results, by a team of researchers at the University of Perugia in Perugia, Italy. In their study, conventional indoor raising of chickens was compared with organic raising (some outdoor access, but mostly higher quality feed) and also with "organic plus"—meaning organic feed with meaningful time spent outdoors. While organic standards—all by themselves—were sufficient to increase the amount of omega­3 fatty acids in breast meat obtained from the chickens, it took more than organic standards to improve the breast meat in two other important respects: increase in total antioxidant nutrients and decrease in risk of oxidative damage to fats in the meat. These additional benefits were not observed in the comparison of conventional to organic breast meat, but only in the comparison of organic plus (pastured) to organic meat. It's worth noting that in this study, "pastured" not only meant time outdoors foraging, pecking, and moving about but also the presence of outdoor space that averaged 10 square meters per bird. The authors concluded that pasture activities were directly linked to the health quality of the meat.
These findings are one key reason for our recommendation that chicken be purchased not only when certified as organic, but also when genuinely pasture raised.

High intake of red meat has consistently been associated with increased risk of colorectal cancer in large­scale health studies. ("High" in this context typically means a minimum of about 5 ounces per day.) Since red meat intake in most studies has not involved meat from grass-fed cows or cows raised with a natural lifestyle, we suspect that this increased risk of colon cancer risk rate might not be quite as great if the beef were higher in quality. Still, the association between high intake and increased risk has been a valid one, and one of the reasons that many people have shifted their meal plan to include less beef and more chicken. In fact, the average U.S. adult now consumes about 75-­80 pounds of chicken per year compared with 50­-55 pounds of beef. In light of this trend, we were very interested to see a recent study analyzing risk of colorectal cancer in more than 20 studies involving chicken, turkey, and fish intake. What the researchers found was no evidence of increased colorectal cancer risk, even when chicken was consumed four to five times per week. The study analysis also looked at the impact of very small increases in chicken intake (less than one ounce per week) and did not find increased risk of colorectal cancer as intake gradually increased from less than four ounces per week all the way up to four or more ounces per day.

Researchers at the University of Stellenbosch in Tygerberg, South Africa have recently analyzed chicken intake for its impact on blood fats (including total cholesterol, LDL­ cholesterol, and triglycerides) and they also compared this impact of chicken with the impact of red meat. All participants in this five month study followed a prudent diet consisting of about 17% protein, 53% carbs, and 30% fat, together with an average of 20 grams of fiber per day and 200 milligrams of cholesterol. The study design included two time periods: during one time period the participants ate lean beef five days per week and lean mutton two days per week, and during a second time period, their diet contained skinless chicken five days per week and fish two days per week. Blood work during the study showed that the prudent diet helped lower total cholesterol and LDL ­cholesterol regardless of whether chicken fish or beef mutton was eaten. However, the chicken fish combination was shown to have more favorable effects on the composition of triglyceride (TG) fats in the blood of the participants than the lean beef lean mutton combination. Anti-inflammatory omega­3 fats (including EPA and DHA) were higher in the TGs of participants when chicken fish was consumed, and levels of the pro­inflammatory fatty acid arachidonic acid (AA) were lower.

It's interesting that the researchers did not examine the difference between dark and light chicken and included both, provided that the chicken was skinless. From our perspective, the light meat versus dark meat difference is just as important as the with skin versus without skin difference. While a chicken breast with skin (light meat) is about 35% fat and a chicken leg with skin (dark meat) is about 44% fat, the chicken breast drops down to about 20% fat when skinned and the chicken leg only drops down to 40%. In addition, the chicken leg starts out with and retains about 125­-130 milligrams of cholesterol while the chicken breast starts out with and retains about 70-­90 milligrams. We expect that the participants might have seen even greater blood fat changes if skinned, light meat chicken had been consumed exclusively in comparison to lean red meats.

Both conventional and organic raw chicken may become contaminated with potentially problematic bacteria including E.coli, Listeria, Campylobacter, and Salmonella. (This risk of contamination is a key reason to make certain that all raw chicken has been cooked properly.) In a recent report that combined 10 studies on raw chicken and analyzed them as a group, the percentage of raw chicken samples containing the bacteria listed above was very similar in conventionally raised versus organically raised chicken. However, what was not similar was the extent to which these bacteria were antibiotic resistant. Bacteria resistant to three or more antibiotics were found 33% more often in conventional chicken. Since antibiotics cannot be used in the production of organic chicken, but are used routinely as a disease preventing step in the raising of conventional chicken, this finding makes sense to us and is a good reason to choose organically raised chicken. Even though proper cooking of chicken should prevent exposure to unwanted bacteria, antibiotic resistance can be a problem if a person gets sick from bacteria that don't respond as expected to antibiotics.