Better than it looks.

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Better than it looks

The owner of Carolina Bison Co. was a vegetarian for 6 Vi years. Frank King thought it would be healthier, but for him it wasn't. So he decided to go buffalo and started eating bison. "My energy just soared. I felt better. I've been on a high ever since. ... Some people might do well with a vegetarian diet. But most people, in my 40 years of practicing, do need meat." A fourth-generation farmer, King was raised on a 450-acre Black Angus cattle farm on the Ohio-Pennsylvania line. He took over from his father, converting the operation to organic in the early 1970s. His interest in natural food and healing led him to Life University in Marietta, Ga., where he earned chiropractic and naturopathy degrees before establishing a natural health-care clinic in Lowellville, Ohio. He advised his patients to eat bison.

Between 40 million and 60 million bison roamed the plains when Europeans arrived in North America, but settlers hunted them, mostly for their hides, to near extinction by the late 1800s Fewer than 1,000 were left in 1900. Preservation and restoration efforts have since boosted the population to about 200,000 on private land by 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There were 220,000 more in Canada, and about 20,000 roamed public lands in North America. Ounce for ounce, their meat has less fat and fewer calories than USDA choice or select beef or, for that matter, skinless roasted chicken, claims the Westminster, Colo.-based National Bison Association. The health kick seems to be paying off. At the start of 2013, a bull fetched on average $3.88 per pound at market, 89% higher than...