Ready to sink your teeth into a nice, juicy steak! Go ahead – but make it lean and natural. You’ll get top-quality protein to build muscle and repair tissue, plus zinc, Vitamin B12, the antioxidant selenium, phosphorus, niacin, Vitamin B6, iron and riboflavin.

Ignore the beef bashers. Beef isn’t always loaded with fat and chemicals. Beef keeps slimming down so that today, many cuts of beef weigh in on the lean side. Learn which ones to order at restaurants or to choose at the market.

Be sure to trim any visible fat. You don’t want to consume the solid fat. That’s saturated fat and it could turn into solid fat blocking your arteries and impairing your heart. Not all the fat in beef is artery-clogging saturated fat. The lean cuts have only 1.4 to 3 grams of saturated fat per 3-ounce portion.

With beef, another factor to consider is portion size. Many restaurants offer monster-size portions of steak and prime rib. You certainly don’t need a full pound of prime rib. Even a so-called petite 12-ounce portion has more than 1,300 calories and about 50 grams of fat (depending on the grade and fat trim).

How much beef do you need at a meal? A portion is often listed as 3 or 3.5 ounces. That would provide about 20 to 25 grams of protein and 140 to 220 calories or more, depending on the fat level. As an active man, you could have double that amount – 6 or 7 ounces -- to get more protein and more appetite satisfaction. Unless you’re really massive, you wouldn’t need more protein at one sitting, and a much larger portion could end up as excess calories.

Go a step further and choose organic, grass-fed and natural cuts. You’ll have leaner, better-tasting beef that’s better for you. Patronize health-conscious restaurants and markets, and read the menus and labels.

Now down to the nitty-gritty – the lean cuts, courtesy of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. This is just a sampling of the more popular cuts. They have a list of 29 beef cuts now qualifying as lean. The figures are for 3-ounce servings with all visible fat trimmed.

Lean Beef Cut	Calories (per 3 oz.)	Total Fat (grams)	Saturated Fat (grams)
Eye Round	144	4.0	1.4
Top Sirloin	156	4.9	1.9
95% Lean Ground Beef	139	5.1	2.4
Tri-Tip	158	7.1	2.6
Tenderloin	170	7.1	2.7
T-Bone	172	8.2	3.0