Well Go Figure, Ground Beef Beats Ground Turkey

I was visiting with my mom and dad about a week ago and the topic of ground turkey came up. We were commenting about prices and I stated that frozen ground turkey in a roll is quite affordable. It usually sells here is Columbus Ohio for about $1.25 for a 1 pound roll. My dad quickly spoke up saying that he agreed but pointed out that it is also pretty high in fat.

What! We routinely used it in spaghetti, chili and many other recipes that called for ground beef. Taking my dad to task, I finally looked at the label. Turns out, as usual, he is right.

The common ground beef sold in our grocery stores is 80/20, 90/20 and even lower ratios of fat. The last roll of frozen ground turkey that I bought was Butterball brand ground turkey. The fat content of the roll is 25%. Even more crazy is that they put “50% less fat than beef”. That may have been true in the past with higher fat percentages, but, it simply isn’t true with the commonly sold ground beef in our local grocery stores.

Luckily, you can further reduce the amount of fat in ground beef simply by draining the excess fat after browning and rinsing under hot water. A study by the Journal of The American Dietetic Association recently confirmed that you can reduce the amount of fat by 50% by simply following this procedure.

Make sure to keep reading those labels.