Health Viewpoints

The Hidden Health Cost of Cheap Meat 

Making the case for spending more at the meat counter.
The Hidden Health Cost of Cheap Meat 
Sia Footage/Shutterstock
Jingduan Yang
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Standing in the meat aisle at Costco the other day, I found myself doing the math that so many of us do at the grocery store. Ground beef: $5.99 a pound for conventionally grown, $6.24 for grass-fed. Not a huge gap. Then the chicken breast: $2.99 a pound for conventional, $5.18 for organic.

I just stood there for a moment, holding a package in each hand like I was on a low-stakes game show, weighing the immediate hit to my wallet against the abstract promise of quality.

Jingduan Yang
Jingduan Yang
M.D.
Dr. Jingduan Yang is a board-certified psychiatrist and fifth-generation classical Chinese medicine physician whose work bridges Western psychiatry, functional medicine, and ancient healing traditions. He is the creator of the ACES Model of Health and Medicine—a four-dimensional framework spanning anatomy, chemistry, energy, and spirit—and the author of “Facing East” and “Clinical Acupuncture and Ancient Chinese Medicine.” As a principal founder of the Northern School of Medicine and Health Sciences, he advances whole-person care grounded in science, ethics, and humanity.