Have your steak and eat it - beef with omega-3 fatty acids reared in China
Can't stand fish but know it's good for you? Chinese-reared cattle have meat engineered to contain high levels of the beneficial acids associated with fish oils
We’re often told to include some oily fish in our diets because they’re rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which can help protect against obesity and cardiovascular and neurodengerative diseases. But what if you just can’t stomach salmon, tuna, sardines – or anything fishy?
Easy. Have beef instead – or at least beef from a type of transgenic cattle recently reared by Chinese scientists to be rich in the beneficial fatty acids associated with fish oils.
Reporting this week in the journal Biotechnology Letters, the team from Northwest A&F University and the National Beef Cattle Improvement Centre, both in Yangling, Shaanxi, explain how they’ve successfully introduced a gene into fetal cells from Luxi Yellow cattle, a Chinese breed with a high beef yield.
"We have provided the first evidence that it is possible to create a new breed of cattle with higher nutritional value in terms of their fatty acid composition," says corresponding author Linsen Zan from the College of Animal Science and Technology at the university.
Alpha-Linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docasahexaenoic acid (DHA) are the main omega-3 fatty acids. Linoleic acid (LA) is the primary dietary omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid.