The 'blue zones' or blue zones are areas in the world where people live the longest in good health. What do all those areas have in common? That the people there eat little or no meat. This is why it is healthier to eliminate meat from your diet.
Researchers studying the blue zones discovered a long time ago that eating red meat in particular is not really healthy. Red meat doesn't mean your steak is half cooked, but red meat refers to mammalian muscle meat. Think of meat from a cow, goat, horse, sheep, deer. Processed meats also fall under red meat. White meat refers to poultry meat (chicken, turkey).
Not only the saturated fat in red meat is said to be unhealthy, also the so-called heme iron, plus the large amounts of salt and nitrite in processed meat. l When burned – and in processed products you will find a lot of salt and nitrite.
Eating red meat and processed meat products is now known to increase the risk of colon cancer. The heme iron can damage the intestinal wall of the colon. Heme also stimulates the production of substances that can damage the DNA in our body cells (nitrosamines ), and thus can increase the risk of cancer.
Recent research by the Free University of Amsterdam shows that four in five Dutch people now want restaurants and supermarkets to eat more vegetable food going to offer. More than half of the respondents also agree if shops make meat more expensive
About 5 percent of adults never eat meat. On average, the Dutch eat about 77 kilos of meat a year, and that has not decreased in the past twenty years, despite the fact that more and more people are flexitarian to be. About eighty percent of people indicate that they want to eat less meat. Not only because of health, but also because of the environment and animal welfare.
Sources:Nutrition Center / World Cancer Research Fund / Health Network / Food Newspaper, Image:Getty
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