Angela's Blog O' Fun

We were having a friendly family dispute about labels on ground beef/chuck/sirloin. So I did a little reseach and here is what I found out:

Ground beef is beef muscle (not organ meat) that is ground or very finely chopped. The part that the muscle comes from dtermines the flavor, texture, and to some degree, the fat content. Some ground beef is labeled by cut (chuck, sirloin, or round) while some is labeled by the percent fat or percent lean.

By law, the maximum fat content in any ground beef is 30% (70% lean). Ground chuck is usually the highest in fat content (about 20%) while round is usually the lowest (about 11%). However, the cut is not necessarily and indication of leanness. By law, all packaged ground beef can have fat added to it, as long as the label says how much. A package labeled "80% lean ground sirloin" contains 20% fat, which is about 5% more than ground sirloin naturally comes.

So your best bet is to closely read the fat content listed on the package, or another option is to pick a whole piece of meat and have it cut or ground for you!

(Information from Cooking Light.)