Eat Red Meat Is It Essential ?

Specifically, all the nutrients found in red meat are also found in other foods, such as legumes, eggs or oily fish. The sirloin is not essential!

After the scandal of horse meat found in beef dishes, and now the WHO classifies red meat as probably carcinogenic, it is all our meat consumption that is questioned: do we really need from a nutritional point of view, to eat red meat? "To suppress it does not pose any problem for the health," says Anthony Fardet, a researcher in preventive nutrition at INRA. The fact that vegetarians are doing well, or even better than omnivores, is also a sign.

Certainly, red meat concentrates nutrients essential to the proper functioning of our body. Richer than white meat in heme iron, the best absorbed by our body, it is also richer in essential amino acids, those that the body can not synthesize alone, brings vitamin B12 (absent from plants) essential to the globules red as well as omega-3 necessary for the proper functioning of the brain and retina.

Mix cereals and legumes brings all the essential amino acids

"But you can find all these compounds separately in other foods," says Anthony Fardet: eating eggs and dairy products is enough to cover the vitamin B12 requirements. Animal proteins can even be replaced by vegetable proteins, provided that they are combined to obtain all the amino acids: by combining legumes and cereals, the absence of methionine of the former and that of lysine of the second (two amino acids essential).

Omega-3 fatty acids are found in oily fish. In the end, everyone can do without meat without being deficient. Provided that the diet is sufficiently diversified, including for vegetarians. Vegans, who suppress eggs and dairy products, will however have to monitor their daily contributions.

A protein deficiency can cause muscle wasting, vitamin B12 deficiency, a lack of red blood cells in the blood. Worsened consequences for children, the elderly and pregnant women. Finally, for those who want to continue to eat meat, an interesting solution is the "flexitarian" diet, where we only eat red meat occasionally. A return, in a way, to the time when meat was Sunday's dish.