Goat meat

[btiger]

Hi,

I am an Indian and I visit India often. The red meat of choice there is goat meat (called mutton there) which I believe is lean but very high in iron. I have never really read much about goat meat which is quite different from lamb and I am wondering what the iron content is as compared to beef and if this is a good choice of meat. I love goat curry and look forward to my India trips with relish!

[Mitra]

Welcome :).

I've never eaten goat meat (as far as I know!), though I've been to India a couple of times. You can use the nutriondata (http://www.nutritiondata.com) to compare foods. I did a comparison with lamb (http://www.nutritiondata.com/compare.php?q=B00001-01c21Cn.B00001-01c01EF).

[cmcole]

I've had it once (it was on sale in the store, frozen). We made a stew with it.

At that time, though, I wasn't paying attention to nutritional information.

[btiger]

Thanks for the link and comparison info. As you can see the protein content is twice that of lamb but the iron content is 71%. Is that supposed to be bad? I am definitely having my iron checked out!

Trust me, if you have been to India and eaten red meat you have tasted goat! Beef is almost never served in restaurants although you can certainly buy it and cook it at home. Lamb is only available in the colder areas of Kashmir. Many Indian restaurants serve goat meat in the US but I have always found the meat very tough and unpalatable but they do cook a mean goat curry in the Caribbean ;)

[hawk]

My neighbors father used to raise goats and sold the milk. He raised Nubians. Their ears hang down and they are cute. The male goats he butchered when they were old enough and had the meat ground. It was very lean and made great tacos ,pizza and spaghetti.. anything you would use ground beef in. I could barely tell the difference.

[mcsblues]

Welcome from me too.

ND is a great source of information but you need to be a bit careful with their statistics ... not to mention their crazy nutritional advice!!

It is best to forget about the percentages they list - goat meat doesn't have twice the protein that lamb does (well not unless you look at the percentage of calories in each). So make sure you have the top window in each screen set at 100g - that way you are making a direct comparison.

http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-B00001-01c21Cn.html

Goat - 20.6g per 100g protein 2.3g fat 2.8mg iron

http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-B00001-01c01EF.html

Lamb (forget that NZ rubbish buy Australian!!) - 18.8g protein 13.4g fat 1.6g iron.

Clearly it is the fact that goat is such a lean meat that skews the calorie percentages.

The percentage figures after the vitamin and mineral numbers are percentages of the DV (we call it RDI here) - this is what the recommended daily intake is ... and of course the amount of meat will influence this (you were looking at 454g (1 pound) to get the 71% figure.

I wouldn't worry too much about the extra iron in the goat, but you might like to get a serum ferritin test done (as the Eades suggest) to keep a track on the amount of iron you have stored, to see if that needs attention.

[deirdra]

If you have ever been to Morocco or the Middle East, you have probably eaten goat meat.

[Mitra]

forget that NZ rubbish buy Australian!!

I'll stick with English or Welsh, thank you ;) . But USDA don't include those in their database :confused: .

Btiger, I don't think I ate any meat in India - both trips were back in my veggie days.

Deirdra, my visits to Morocco, Jordan & Syria were also in my veggie days, but I think I had a bit of meat in Syria because I didn't want to live the entire trip on baba ghanoush and hummus :lol: So maybe the "lamb" they put in the bread was goat?