Nutritional Composition of Commercially Sourced Meat from Two Anatomical Locations Under Regenerative and Intensive Production Systems

Regenerative agriculture approaches in livestock production may help produce animal protein that aligns with increasingly demanding sustainability criteria. This study compared commercially sourced beef from regenerative farming systems (RFS; n = 10; Longissimus lumborum, n = 5; Splenius capitis, n = 5) and intensive systems (IS; n = 6; Longissimus lumborum, n = 3; Splenius capitis, n = 3), evaluating the effects of production system (PS), muscle type (MT), and their interaction (MT × PS) on nutritional traits. IS chuck had higher polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and n-6 PUFA family (n-6 PUFA) contents (p < 0.05; 10.24 and 9.15 g fatty acids (FA)/100 g total FA, respectively), driven by C18:2 cis-9, trans-11, C20:4 n-6, and C18:2 n-6 contents. Consequently, IS chuck had a higher polyunsaturated FA and saturated FA ratio (P/S), peroxidability index (PI), n-6 PUFA family and n-3 PUFA family ratio (n-6/n-3), and hypocholesterolemic/hypercholesterolemic ratio (h/H) values (p < 0.05; 0.13, 23.87, 9.33 and 0.32, respectively). By comparison, RFS chuck had the highest n-3 PUFA content (p < 0.05; 1.28 g FA/100 g total FA), primarily due to its higher C18:3 n-3 content, resulting in a lower n-6/n-3 ratio (3.95). RFS meat showed higher vitamin E and α-tocopherol (0.58 and 0.56 mg/100 g of meat, respectively), exceeding the ≥0.30 mg/100 g threshold proposed to limit lipid oxidation, unlike IS meat.