[psychanarch]

At the risk of sounding pedantic but also not being a meat eater, is there a difference between steak and ground beef? Because steak is mentioned twice in this article (in the headline and once in the body), but the actual chart shows ground beef. This is in no way a defense of Lucky Charms (although they are magically delicious), but I was always of the perhaps false belief that steak is healthier than ground beef?

[Mathnerd314]

I checked the supplementary material (https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00381-y#MOESM1). The scores have been revised post-publication. Lucky charms is 56, steak is 33 to 26 depending on how it is cooked and whether the fat is eaten, ground beef is 26. Still around the same.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Ground beef is simply steak ground into smaller pieces, so there's no difference.

Go to a nice burger restaurant (Red Cow in Minneapolis: I'm dreaming of you) and the ground beef could be ribeye or another really nice cut. Supermarket ground beef is usually a cheaper cut though.

[klipklop]

The downside is that it makes it easier to consume beef fat that you might normally trim off a steak. Also the grinding process makes it easier to eat, which reduces chewing time which allows you to consume more calories before your brain gets the "full" signal.

Love both btw, but processing the meat in this fashion does make it easier to have too much saturated fat in a meal. I won't argue if beef saturated fat is good/bad, but it does contain more calories. Excess calories is what most people usually have problems with.

Also yes, I know if you cut the carbs out that you eat along with a burger it's easier to reduce the amount of carbohydrate intake/total calories. Don't want this to turn into a carnivore/low-carb diet argument. Just pointing out meat processing in this single specific case.

[hirundo]

Ground beef is essentially an average of the beef across the cow, and the nutritional difference between those cuts is mostly fat content.

[notacoward]

> Ground beef is essentially an average of the beef across the cow

Usually across many cows, which can be problematic wrt pathogens. Similarly, ground beef is not like steak in that more of it might have been exposed to pathogens during processing. That's why it's important to cook ground beef all the way through whereas steak can be very rare as long as the outside is properly seared. Nutritionally, however, they're much closer.