Ground Ostrich: A Comparison with Ground Beef

Abstract

The traditional red meat of the US diet is beef. Although lean choices are possible with beef, US consumers desiring even leaner red meat choices, due to diet restrictions or an overall intent to eat more healthfully, want other choices. A newcomer to the red meat scene is ostrich meat. Will US consumers accept ostrich meat? Only a few controlled studies using ostrich have been completed. In 1998, Paleari et al (1) compared ostrich to turkey and bovine meat. The weakness in this study was the use of milking animals too old to continue to produce milk to represent bovine. Horbanczuk et al (2) examined cholesterol and fatty acid content of Blue Neck vs Red Neck ostrich and found no significant difference.