9 Reasons Why You Should Be Eating More Full Fat Ground Beef

A Carnivore Staple

People stepping into the carnivore diet might be under the unfortunate impression that sirloins and ribeyes represent the pinnacle of caveman cuisine. They’re certainly up there as one of the more expensive cuts, and as a member of the beef family, they are stacked in nutrition. But I wouldn’t go as far as to label them as the best. That’s a position that can only be saved for one.

Want the complete picture? Our Carnivore Diet Food List ranks every food from eat-freely to hard-no.

Which isn’t so much a cut as it is a combination of other cuts, but that’s besides the point. If you want to extract the maximum potential out of the carnivore diet, you’ll want to get extremely familiar with ground beef.

Here’s a list of 9 very good reasons to put this cut front and center of your carnivore cuisine.

1. It’s A Complete Nutrient Source

By virtue of being red meat, ground beef is a nutritional powerhouse with the complete array of essential vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients needed to allow the body to thrive.

That means you could easily survive on ground beef alone, with the odd bit of offal thrown in if necessary. No vegetables, no fruits, and no multivitamins to cover your bases. Ground beef can be the alpha and omega of your diet.

2. Monster Fat Content

Ground beef is capped at 30% fat, meaning it can have as much as 30% of its weight as fat while still carrying the ground beef label. People naturally get intimidated by the sheer amount of heart cloggery, and seek out the leaner, more expensive cuts.

This is a crying shame, because the full-fat option also happens to be the best. Fat is an energy source. Protein, not so much. Humans evolved to seek out large prey, because the animals had the highest fat content.

Ideally, you’ll keep the fat load as high as your bile acids can handle. You’ll know when you’re above that limit. And the longer you push those boundaries, the better your digestive prowess becomes.

Personally, I stick to 25%, because that’s the highest version at my local supermarket. If I’m trying to drop weight, I eventually switch to 20%, and 15% for the final sprint.

If you’re down below 10%, I feel for you, because the meat’s going to taste like cardboard, and your energy’s getting zapped.

3. Collagen

While you might prefer the delicate texture of a tender cut like ribeye, there are benefits to getting the ones that take a bit of chewing. Brisket doesn’t rip apart so easily, and that’s because as a much-used part of the cow’s musculature, it contains plenty of tough fibrous connective tissue.

Collagen is fantastic for maintaining healthy skin and joints, while also lowering inflammation by balancing out the methionine to glycine ratio and going towards glutathione production. The tougher the meat, the more collagen it has. Whereas sticking to tender meats can tilt it too far in favour of methionine, thereby raising inflammation.

Ground beef typically is made from the tough cuts, since they also happen to be cheaper and more likely to be put aside for processing.

4. It’s The Cheapest Cut

The carnivore diet is only expensive if you go for the fine dining experience. 20 pounds of ribeye over a week would set you back around £170. That’s going to stretch many a budget.

But then you could just get the same amount in ground beef for £36. With roughly the same amount of protein, fat, and a ton more collagen. Just don’t make the mistake of paying extra for the leaner versions, like 5% or 10%. The 20-25% cuts have more flavour, more nutrition, and they’re also significantly cheaper. You can’t lose.

5. Extremely Flexible In Recipes

You always have the option to just chuck your ground beef over the frying pan and sizzle it up with a pad of butter. It’s basic, and delightfully delicious. But if you’d rather get creative and tantalise your tastebuds and eyeballs, there’s an endless supply of ground beef recipes to choose from.

You don’t even have to depart from strict carnivore.

Bake it into a meatza.

Included in a giant omelette.

Mashed into liver burgers.

Or laid out in a lasagna-like casserole.

Personally, I don’t think you can’t consider your life well-lived until you’ve fried ground beef over bacon grease.

6. There’s No Gross Bits

In case you’re worried about getting eyeballs and guts shredded into your ground beef, relax. Neither is this the dirty leftovers of the carcass that nobody wants. Everything in ground beef comes from muscle cuts. Meat that isn’t the right shape, or too tough to be sold as a muscle cut is added to the grinder and sold as ground beef.

So it’s just regular steak, just repackage to make sure that more of the cow can be made use of. Which means you’re also doing the right thing for ethics.

7. Can Be Bought As Burgers

Life in the kitchen doesn’t get any easier than burger patties. All you need to do is chuck them in the air fryer and put them on blast for a few minutes. Then maybe throw on some cheese or butter for extra flavour. With a freezer stocked up with burger patties, dinner is never more than ten minutes away.

Just read the label before you buy to make sure that those patties are at least 90% beef. Skip the filler.

8. The Perfect Bulk Food

As a guy who’s bulked on brisket, let me tell you. It takes some doing, and it’s a tall order for hard gainers. A fantastic workout for the jaws, and slowing the pace of eating certainly helps with satiety, but that’s not so good when you’re trying to pile on the calories.

Full-fat ground beef has a soft texture, and doesn’t take much chewing as long you eat it fresh off the pan. It’s also incredibly calorie dense, can easily be paired with other caloric foods, and doesn’t cause any crashes in blood sugar due to the absence of carbohydrates. All this gives you the ideal candidate for getting a boatload of calories in.

9. A Simple Way To Switch Between Bulking And Cutting

Most people still make the mistake of drastically changing their foods when trying to force weight loss. Overnight, the junk food and creamy lattes go out, to be replaced by salads and protein shakes.

Ideally, you’d already be eating the right foods, and it would just be a case of continuing the routine. The only thing that changes to begin the plunge, would be portion sizes. You eat less of the same foods.

But ground beef gives an even better option. You get to eat the same amount, you just pick a leaner version to lower calories while keeping the same density on your dinner plate. The change is barely perceptible, and fat loss happens organically.

So if you’re eating three pounds a day of 25% ground beef, you eat the same amount of 20%.

That takes you from 3726 calories to 3414.

Ride that for a few weeks, and then drop to 15%.

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Now you’re down at 2829 calories.

Then, if you’re trying to scrape down to single digit bodyfat, you might eventually go to 10%.

The calories plummet to 2407 calories. And compared to the 25% cut, your protein actually goes up, from 268 grams to 340 grams.

Ground beef fat leveraging is fat loss and muscle gain made easy. You eat the same meals, eat the same amounts, just with a little bit more or less fat to fit your goals.

Even better, it encourages small drops in total calories, enabling you to lose fat while still bringing in enough energy to maintain muscle, saturate your nutrient levels, and continue a productive lifestyle.

Compared to that, sharp drops might lead to greater initial weight loss, but that tends to fizzle out as the body fights back against your self-induced starvation. So you don’t get any advantages in the long run, and it’s going to be much more of a slog than if you went for a gentle shave.

The Dangers Of Losing Weight Too Quickly

The Benefits Of Full-Fat Ground Beef

• Basically steak
• Total powerhouse of nutrition
• Incredible fat content
• Versatile
• Uses more of the animal
• Quick and easy to eat
• Ideal bulk food
• Simple to switch into fat loss

Check Out My Carnivore Recipes

Mince Fat Percentages Compared

The number on the label tells you two things at once: how much energy is packed into every mouthful, and where the meat sits on the fat-to-protein ratio that governs fat loss on carnivore. Here is what each grade of mince gives you, per 100g raw. Figures are approximate and shift a little between suppliers, but the shape of the table never changes.

The last column is the one that matters. On carnivore, fat is the fuel and protein is the scaffolding, so the ratio of the two is what decides how the diet behaves. A 1:1 ratio by grams is the floor and delivers fast fat loss. Around 1.5:1 is the middle road. Get up to 2:1 and you are into therapeutic, slow-and-steady territory, the setting for gut healing rather than dropping a stone in a hurry.

Read that against the table and the grades sort themselves. Standard 20-25% mince lands you right in the working range without you doing any sums. If you want the full 2:1, reach for 30% mince where you can find it, or fry your 20% in a knob of butter or a spoon of tallow. To set your own numbers, run them through the carnivore macro calculator and let the ratio do the steering.

Why 20% Mince Is The Sweet Spot

People ask whether 20% fat mince is bad for them, usually because a label or a leaflet has told them fat is the enemy. It is the opposite of bad. It is the single most useful grade on the shelf.

At 20%, the fat-to-protein ratio sits just above the 1:1 floor. That is the point where fat loss runs fast but the diet stays kind. You get enough fat to burn clean, keep your energy up, and feel properly fed, while the calories stay low enough that the weight comes off. Drop leaner than this and you start starving yourself of fuel, which is exactly the mistake the leaner grades encourage. Go fattier and loss slows to a gentle drift, which is fine if that is what you are after.

So 20% is not a compromise. It is the setting most people should default to when they want to lean out without the wheels coming off. If you are new to using fat as a dial rather than a fear, the carnivore fat loss guide walks through how the ratio does the heavy lifting, and the carnivore hierarchy shows where mince ranks against everything else you could be eating.

The Cheapest Way To Eat Real Food

Judge food by cost per kilo and you learn nothing. Judge it by cost per calorie and mince wins outright, because most of what you are buying is fat, and fat is where the energy lives. A fattier grade gives you more calories for the same money than a lean one, which is why paying extra for 5% mince is paying more to get less fuel.

Set mince next to the rest of the carnivore shopping list and nothing else comes close. Steak is dear. Fish is dearer. Bacon and cheese carry a premium for the processing. Mince is the offcuts of the same animals, ground down and sold plain, so you get the identical nutrition for a fraction of the outlay. For anyone in the UK trying to run this diet on a real budget, full-fat mince is the anchor of the whole trolley. Everything else is a treat you add on top when the week allows it.

Mince Myths Worth Binning

Grey Mince Has Gone Off

It usually has not. Fresh mince is purple-red on the inside and turns bright red when the surface meets air. Leave it packed and the middle stays greyish-brown because no oxygen has reached it. That is chemistry, not spoilage. Trust your nose over your eyes. Off meat smells sour and sharp, and no amount of colour tells you as much as one honest sniff. If it smells clean, cook it.

Lean Mince Is Healthier

This is the low-fat era talking, and it has it backwards. The fat is the reason to eat the meat. It carries the energy, the fat-soluble vitamins, and the satiety that stops you grazing an hour later. Strip the fat out and you are left with a lean lump that burns badly and leaves you flat. Leaner mince is not the virtuous choice. It is the expensive one that does you fewer favours.

You Should Drain The Fat

Pouring the rendered fat down the sink is throwing away the best part of what you paid for. You picked the fatty grade on purpose. Draining it turns your 20% mince back into lean mince and undoes the whole point. Keep the fat in the pan and eat it with the meat, where it belongs.

How To Cook Mince So The Fat Stays On The Plate

The goal is simple: get the meat cooked without chasing the fat out of the pan and into the bin. A few habits do it.

• Cook over medium heat, not a raging one. Blistering heat splatters the fat everywhere and dries the meat out.
• Do not drain. When the mince has browned, the puddle of fat in the pan is dinner, not waste. Stir it back through.
• Serve it in something that holds the fat. A bowl keeps the juices with the meat. A rack or a slotted spoon lets your calories run off.
• Season at the end. A little salt to taste is all it needs. In your first few weeks of adapting you may want extra, but once you are settled, season to taste and leave the electrolyte sachets on the shelf. More on that in the salt on carnivore guide.
• Cook once, eat all week. Brown a big batch, keep the fat, and portion it out.

When you fancy something beyond mince in a bowl, the carnivore casserole is the easiest way to turn a batch into a proper meal, and it keeps every gram of fat in the dish. If you are eating to build rather than to lean out, the cheat sheet for building muscle on carnivore shows how to stack the calories using the fattier grades.

Ground Beef Questions

Is 20% fat mince bad for you?

No. It is the grade most people should be buying. At 20% the fat-to-protein ratio sits on the 1:1 floor, which gives you clean fuel, real satiety, and fast fat loss all at once. The fat is the point, not the problem.

Is higher-fat mince better for you?

For most carnivore eaters, yes. Fattier mince burns cleaner, keeps you fuller, and carries more of the fat-soluble vitamins. The only reason to go leaner is to pull calories down for a hard cut. Think of the fat percentage as a dial, not a warning.

What fat percentage of mince is best for weight loss?

Start at 20%. It sits on the ratio floor, so loss is quick but the diet stays liveable. If you stall late in a cut you can step down to 15%, or even 10% for a short final push. Do not live down there. Lean mince is a tool, not a home.

Can you live on just mince?

You can. Full-fat mince is muscle meat, and muscle meat alone is a complete diet. Organs are worth adding now and then, but dose them, do not deify them. Beyond that, iodine and a little vitamin D3 in winter cover the gaps. You do not need the rest of the supplement aisle.

The Carnivore Training Series

This is part of an ongoing series on lifting heavy, building muscle, and recovering well on a carnivore diet. See the full hub →

• Carb Cycling On Carnivore For Peak Fat Loss
• The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For Building Muscle On Carnivore
• 6 Variations Of Carnivore That Include Plants
• How To Use Carnivore For Bodybuilding

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