Low Fat Ground Beef Vs Ground Turkey

Enquire Dr. Gourmet

Is ground turkey better for you than footing beef?

For the last couple years I have been feeding my family ground turkey in all recipes that phone call for ground beef. After a friend fabricated a annotate that the ground turkey wasn't always improve for you I checked the labels. The 85/15 turkey is not as healthy as the 90/ten ground beef from a calorie and fat comparing. In fact, the footing turkey had a lot more calories and fat.

So at present I am wondering if we should be eating the lean basis beef (90/10 or college) instead of the footing turkey. I take tried the ground turkey that is 90/10 and it does non have much season. Is there a benefit to eating ground turkey over ground beef? We only swallow ground turkey once or twice a week.

Dr. Gourmet Says...

Nosotros get a lot of great questions here and this is 1 of my favorites recently.

I apply both footing turkey and ground beef in recipes. Virtually of the time I do this for flavour and not as much for wellness reasons. In some dishes I like the more than mellow flavor of the turkey vs. beef.

Ground turkey can exist leaner, but it depends on what you purchase and where it comes from. There's a wide variety of results when I look at different packages.

The Whole Foods nigh me grinds their ain and sometimes this is listed equally Turkey Breast and other times every bit Lean Ground Turkey. They tell me that both come in at nigh 85 calories for iv ounces and less than a gram of fatty. This is considering they utilise just white meat or lean nighttime meat. This correlates with about what the USDA reports with chest meat existence 83 calories and night meat being 85 calories for 4 ounces.

That's where the comparison stops considering the USDA reports iv ounces of footing turkey as having 170 calories and a little over 9 grams of fat. This correlates with what the Butterball company written report on their web site but in that location's even more fatty (230 calories and 17 grams of fat). Wowser! That'due south 65% of the calories from fat! There'due south something else strange about this. Here's the screenshot from their web site:

Detect that it says fifty% Less fat than Beef. In spite of their unusual employ of capital letters this is pretty wide of the mark. This would be true for ground beef that is seventy% lean and xxx% fat but this is not as available on the marketplace at present. Most folks carry 80/20 (80% lean and 20% fatty content). This is what McDonalds uses in their burgers. Now that'due south however a fair amount of fat coming in at 22 grams or right at 284 calories for a four ounce serving (200 of that as fat).

At a minimum I look for xc/10 and my Whole Foods even sells 95/5 basis beef. This is how four ounces of ground beef compares with Pudgy ground turkey.

90/10 basis beef = 197 calories, 22.4 grams fat, 4.5 grams saturated fat
Pudgy ground turkey = 230 calories, 17 grams fat, five grams saturated fat

So your friend is correct that ground turkey can be nearly the same every bit footing beef (or worse if y'all use the leanest basis beef). By looking for good quality ground turkey breasts or night meat you lot can salvage a lot of fat and calories. One good trick is to purchase boneless, skinless turkey breast and grind it yourself using a food processor. It takes simply a few pulses and you have a peachy product. I will unremarkably add back in a piffling fat when I use very lean footing turkey products or it volition be a footling dry out. About a tablespoon of olive oil per pound will do it and that adds only around four grams of fatty per serving (and great quality monounsaturated fat at that).

Here are some recipes on the Dr. Gourmet web site to get you started:
Asian Turkey Burgers | Low Sodium Version
Black Edible bean Chili
Turkey Burgers | Coumadin-Condom Version | GERD / Acrid-Reflux-Friendly Version | Low Sodium Version

And here are recipes that employ ground beef where you can substitute footing turkey:
Linguine with White Bolognese
Chili Con Carne
Sloppy Joes
Pasta with Sauce Bolognese
Quick Beef Stroganoff with Noodles
Tuscan White Bean Chili

Thanks for such a great question,

Timothy Southward. Harlan, Dr., FACP, CCMS
Dr. Gourmet

moralesseneiver.blogspot.com

Source: https://drgourmet.com/askdrgourmet/turkeyvbeef.shtml