Can You Trust 90% Lean?

We checked whether our beef samples contained the amount of fat their packages claimed. Dietary considerations aside, fat content has financial consequences: We paid, on average, $1.79 more per pound for the meat labeled at least 90 percent lean than for the meat labeled 70 percent to 79 percent lean. (Price differences decrease for cooked patties because the fattier the ground beef, the more it shrinks.)

If the actual fat content was within 20 percent of the labeled amount (for example, beef labeled 90 percent lean could actually be 88 to 92 percent lean), we gave it a passing grade. Nearly two-thirds of the packages, case-ready or not, told the truth about fat. Among the remaining one-third, packages of case-ready beef tended to have less fat than labeled; packages of conventional beef, more.

Before you worry about extra fat, this reassurance: Almost all samples that had more fat than claimed were already "skinny"---labeled as at least 90 percent lean---so the actual difference in fat was small.