The WSJ on steak, and why our steak has become what it’s become. In short, back in 1926 the USDA introduce “grading” to beef. And how is it graded? Fat.

How did the USDA separate the good beef from the bad? There was one thing everyone from ranchers and cowboys to butchers and USDA graders could agree on: fatter cattle tasted better than lean ones, so long as they weren’t too old. So that’s what they looked for: plump, well-fed cattle. They looked for fat on the ribs called feathering, and fat on the flank called frosting. If there was a great deal of that fat, the beef achieved the highest grade, Prime.

So, like any business, you look for ways to maximize your product and minimize your costs.

It’s the cattle industry that has changed. In the 1950s, cattlemen began sending their cattle to feedlots to get fat. A feedlot is a vast sprawl of fenced-in pens where tens of thousands of cattle eat grain—usually corn—out of concrete troughs. Soon after, cattlemen started using growth promotants—hormones and steroids, basically—to get cattle fat faster, and fed them antibiotics so they could eat corn in amounts that, under normal conditions, could kill them.

By the turn of the century, a new drug entered the scene: the beta2-adrenergic agonist, a muscle relaxant used in humans to treat heart and respiratory disease that makes cattle gain more muscle. And the corn cattle now eat, not surprisingly, has also taken great strides in efficiency, having been hybridized and genetically engineered to pack more fat-producing starch. More recently, we’ve been feeding cattle something called dried distillers grains, which is the muck that’s left over after corn is distilled into ethanol.

The result has been astonishing. In the 1950s, a cow was about two years old by the time it got fat. Today, it can be as young as one year old. An average carcass now yields 40% more beef than it did just 30 years ago. In short, the beef industry has experienced a tectonic supply-side shift. Production has become vastly more efficient. In 2009, beef cost 30% less than in 1974. Yet the average American is eating 20 pounds less of it per year.

But does more fat equal more flavor? Not necessarily. The article makes a good point: consider your wild game, which is amazingly lean but amazingly flavorful (and perhaps too flavorful for some). Yes, fat matters to some extent, but like all things there’s a limit and you can have too much of a good thing.

So what does the article say is best? Grass-fed beef, instead of corn-feedlot-based beef. But trying to find such a critter can be tough and expensive, and even then it’s no blanket guarantee for awesome beef. That’s one reason I’ve been enjoying doing my meat shopping away from the local grocer. At the local grocery store, who knows where or what the meat is. But if I go to a local butcher, I have more control. Furthermore, I can talk with local ranchers, or even kids selling their 4-H cattle at auction and get just what I want.  The article gives some guidelines:

The most important question to ask is age at slaughter. For flavor reasons, be wary of steak from a cow younger than 20 months. Ask how much the cow weighed when it was slaughtered, because any cow weighing less than 1,000 pounds is almost always too lean to be delicious. Ask about the breed. Be wary of “Continental” breeds, such as Charolais or Limousin, which do very well in feedlots and terribly on grass. Look for British breeds like Hereford, Galloway and Angus. And if you should find grass-fed Wagyu, buy it.