Does Grass-Fed Beef Taste Better?

"Grass-fed", "natural", and "organic" evoke images of contented cows grazing in the great outdoors, silhouetted against the Rockies. That's exactly what's shown in a Coleman Natural Beef brochure. But what do the words mean? And is the meat they describe safer, tastier, or better for the environment that standard supermarket issue?

Most of the words do mean something, at least when it comes to feeding, housing, medicating, or slaughtering the animals. but grass-fed doesn't necessarily mean that cows have been fed grass for life, and there's no verification process. Moreover, although purveyors of grass-fed beef cite its "old-fashioned flavor" and "elegant taste," a small informal blind taste test we conducted found no meaningful difference between steaks from cattle raised on grass and steaks from cattle fed a diet of corn and soybeans formulated to marble their muscle with fat.