Ingredients

Turn on your meat smoker and listen up!

Everyone is used to hearing about how bad red meat is for you -- it takes years off your life, it gives you cancer and diabetes and it curses you to a lifetime of despair. Or something. At least, that's what the National Institutes of Health say, minus the last one.

But guess what? A new study has concluded that your favorite barbecued beef brisket could actually be really healthy for you, since it has a lot of the same type of good fat you find in olive or canola oil.

"Brisket has higher oleic acid than the flank or plate, which are the trims typically used to produce ground beef," Texas A&M AgriLife Research's Dr. Stephen Smith told AgriLife Today. "The fat in brisket also has a low melting point, that's why the brisket is so juicy. That's also why we like it so much here in Texas, and it's by far the most popular choice for Texas barbecue."

Granted, you can probably get the same health benefits from a spoonful of olive oil as you can from a serving of brisket, we'll be happy to munch away at our Texas barbecue knowing that it might not kill us as quickly as we previously thought.

"[Oleic acid is] the most abundant fatty acid in beef," added Smith. "It's also most abundant in canola oil and olive oil. When cattle are fed high-concentrated diets for a long period, the meat becomes high in oleic acid and other monounsaturated fats."

Monounsaturated fats are the healthy ones, in case you forgot.

While Smith has found that those healthy fats and oleic acids are primarily found in marbled brisket, you'll also get a ton of it in American Wagyu Beef. You know, the expensive stuff that you most likely don't get to eat every day. Go figure.

But there's another unexpected place you might be able to find the nutrients -- ground beef. According to Smith, most ground beef has a ton of brisket in it, so that stuff you mold into hamburger patties and meatballs every week might actually be doing you some favors. You're welcome.

We'll go ahead and run with this one. Don't tell us if you hear again next week that brisket actually causes widespread sadness, or something.

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Turn on your meat smoker and listen up!

Everyone is used to hearing about how bad red meat is for you -- it takes years off your life, it gives you cancer and diabetes and it curses you to a lifetime of despair. Or something. At least, that's what the National Institutes of Health say, minus the last one.

But guess what? A new study has concluded that your favorite barbecued beef brisket could actually be really healthy for you, since it has a lot of the same type of good fat you find in olive or canola oil.

"Brisket has higher oleic acid than the flank or plate, which are the trims typically used to produce ground beef," Texas A&M AgriLife Research's Dr. Stephen Smith told AgriLife Today. "The fat in brisket also has a low melting point, that's why the brisket is so juicy. That's also why we like it so much here in Texas, and it's by far the most popular choice for Texas barbecue."

Granted, you can probably get the same health benefits from a spoonful of olive oil as you can from a serving of brisket, we'll be happy to munch away at our Texas barbecue knowing that it might not kill us as quickly as we previously thought.

"[Oleic acid is] the most abundant fatty acid in beef," added Smith. "It's also most abundant in canola oil and olive oil. When cattle are fed high-concentrated diets for a long period, the meat becomes high in oleic acid and other monounsaturated fats."

Monounsaturated fats are the healthy ones, in case you forgot.

While Smith has found that those healthy fats and oleic acids are primarily found in marbled brisket, you'll also get a ton of it in American Wagyu Beef. You know, the expensive stuff that you most likely don't get to eat every day. Go figure.

But there's another unexpected place you might be able to find the nutrients -- ground beef. According to Smith, most ground beef has a ton of brisket in it, so that stuff you mold into hamburger patties and meatballs every week might actually be doing you some favors. You're welcome.

We'll go ahead and run with this one. Don't tell us if you hear again next week that brisket actually causes widespread sadness, or something.

Important News! Red Meat Might Actually Be Good For Us

Turn on your meat smoker and listen up!

Everyone is used to hearing about how bad red meat is for you -- it takes years off your life, it gives you cancer and diabetes and it curses you to a lifetime of despair. Or something. At least, that's what the National Institutes of Health say, minus the last one.

But guess what? A new study has concluded that your favorite barbecued beef brisket could actually be really healthy for you, since it has a lot of the same type of good fat you find in olive or canola oil.

"Brisket has higher oleic acid than the flank or plate, which are the trims typically used to produce ground beef," Texas A&M AgriLife Research's Dr. Stephen Smith told AgriLife Today. "The fat in brisket also has a low melting point, that's why the brisket is so juicy. That's also why we like it so much here in Texas, and it's by far the most popular choice for Texas barbecue."

Granted, you can probably get the same health benefits from a spoonful of olive oil as you can from a serving of brisket, we'll be happy to munch away at our Texas barbecue knowing that it might not kill us as quickly as we previously thought.

"[Oleic acid is] the most abundant fatty acid in beef," added Smith. "It's also most abundant in canola oil and olive oil. When cattle are fed high-concentrated diets for a long period, the meat becomes high in oleic acid and other monounsaturated fats."

Monounsaturated fats are the healthy ones, in case you forgot.

While Smith has found that those healthy fats and oleic acids are primarily found in marbled brisket, you'll also get a ton of it in American Wagyu Beef. You know, the expensive stuff that you most likely don't get to eat every day. Go figure.

But there's another unexpected place you might be able to find the nutrients -- ground beef. According to Smith, most ground beef has a ton of brisket in it, so that stuff you mold into hamburger patties and meatballs every week might actually be doing you some favors. You're welcome.

We'll go ahead and run with this one. Don't tell us if you hear again next week that brisket actually causes widespread sadness, or something.