Even if you keep the environmental and ethical concerns aside, eating meat causes a lot of threat to your physical wellbeing. With WHO declaring processed meat a ‘carcinogen’, questions around if meat is actually crucial for human wellbeing and fit for consumption have started trending. Eating meat on a rare basis might not affect you much, but if you are a regular meat consumer, it’s time to look into your eating habits. Be it processed, red or white meat, each of these can impact your health differently, some affecting more than the others. Supporting points for why meat is bad for you are
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Its carcinogenic- research has shown that processed meat increases the risk of you developing cancer by 18%. It is found that processed meat causes colorectal cancer. It is also suggested that vegetarians are 40% less likely to develop cancer.
Meat is devoid of fibre which helps prevent cancer, on the contrary it has saturated fats in abundance which trigger free radicals. When cooked at high temperatures it releases carcinogenic compounds like HCA (heterocyclic amine) and PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). -
Increased heart disease and diabetes – research has shown that people who consume meat have thrice the quantity of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), a compound linked to heart diseases, when compared to people who eat a plant based diet. The high saturated fat content in red meat leads to increased LDL cholesterol rates and is shown to increase chances of having a heart disease by 42%.
Eating red meat increases your chances of developing type 2 diabetes by around 22%. -
Food infections – almost 70% cases of food poisoning are known to have arisen due to consumption of contaminated meat, especially white meat. Usually seen in the cases of chicken, the meat gets contaminated with faecal matter during the slaughtering procedure.
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Hormones injections – low levels of natural animal hormones are normally found in meat but the concerning factors are the artificial hormones injected in cattle and meat stock animals to make them grow faster, lay more eggs, produce more milk etc. When these hormones enter into our food cycle, they become a cause of concern for our health.
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Antibiotics resistance – the antibiotics generally used to treat human illness are now being used to protect animals living in disease-filled conditions and to help them grow. Scientists fear that by eating meat of such medicated animals we might develop resistance towards the antibiotics, meaning our body won’t respond to those drugs in the existing quantity or quality.
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Impotency in men – it is shown that almost 90% of the cases of impotence arise due to physical factors. High meat consumption has been associated with high cholesterol, inflammation, diabetes, obesity and hormonal imbalance all of which can lead to impotency in men.
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Body fat maintenance – due to the high saturated fat content in meat it tends to get deposited in the digestive tract causing obesity and slowing down of our metabolism. It is known that meat eaters are three times more likely to be obese.
Studies have shown that meat eaters live shorter than vegetarians and are usually more likely to be disease stricken {2} {3}. Although evolution and the human body support the fact of human being omnivorous, the changing world demands a rather different, healthier, rather sustainable twist towards living life and consuming food.