We all love our steaks! Chicken or beef – a generous portion of steak can elevate anyone’s mood. Then, there are literally hundreds of ways that we incorporate poultry, beef, bacon and ham, turkey meat and any other kinds of meat in our lives. Sometimes for important celebrations or just for a regular lunch, meat makes unexpected appearances everywhere.
Even when it’s not a steak we are ordering four times a day, meat can be seen in many different forms in every meal all through the day: sausages and bacon for breakfast, a turkey sandwich for lunch, chicken fingers with our tea or a meat casserole for dinner. Meat is delicious and diverse, ad most of us love it.
Meat happens to be a very good source of protein, essential for building muscles and a source of many other minerals and vitamins. However, too much meat – especially processed meat – can be quite harmful to us.
Before we learn more about the negative effects of too much meat, we need to know about the different types of it.
Types of Meat
Lean Meats are healthy meat, such as turkey or chicken breasts; they keep you feeling full for a long time and maintains our body’s weight and protein balance. Low-calorie, low-carb eating habits always include lots of lean meat protein as they can be both nutritious and delicious, as well as filling.
On the other hand, processed meat is any kind of meat that has gone through a process of smoking, salting, preservatives, and curing. Any kind of sausage, bacon, ham, salami, pates, sandwich meat that we buy from the supermarket are processed food and harmful in the large amounts. These processed meats have very little vitamins or minerals in them but are high in salt, artificial preservatives, and saturated fats.
Red meat is the kind of meat that is redder than another kind of meat, even after cooking. This kind of meat has more myoglobin protein than white meat, and the most common sources come from pork, beef, mutton, venison, veal, and hare. Even when cooked, these meats end up redder in color than turkey, chicken or lamb.
Lean meats are the ones that should be preferred in contrast to processed or red meat, but also in a limited amount. Too much meat, even lean meat, can be harmful to our body is consumed for every meal, and that’s what you can find in the next segment of this article.
Negative Effects of too Much Meat
When we say “too much meat”, we mean the inclusion of any type of meat for all meals, more than four days a week. While red meat in moderation is tolerable for the body and lean meat is healthy for us, it is important that we don’t eat meat for every single meal.
Here’s what’s going to happen if you eat too much meat with your meals:
- You’ll Have Constipation Constantly
Too much meat means you are not getting enough fiber from your meals, which comes mostly from leafy greens, fruits, and whole grains. This would lead to constipation and irregular bowel movements, and this can be harmful to you in the long run.
For regular bowel movements and proper nutrition intake, it is important that you add a lot of fiber in your meals and limit your meat intake.
- You’ll Have Dull Hair and Skin
If you are not balancing your meat intake with the proper amount of fruits and vegetables, it also means that you are not getting the necessary minerals and vitamins your body needs. A Vitamin-C deficiency – which you mainly get from citrus fruits and certain vegetables – means that your hair and skin will become dry and dull within a few days. Too much meat in your diet will eventually mean rough hair, bumpy skin, and weak nails.
- You’ll Have Increased Chances of Heart Diseases
Most red meat and processed meat contain a lot of saturated fat in them, which increases the risk of heart diseases in the future. Meat with saturated fat and trans fat increases the amount of cholesterol in our body, and this can be directly linked to chances of heart attacks and heart blockage in men and women.
If your daily meals contain a lot of processed and red meat, it is highly likely that you’ll face heart problems in your life, even in your late 30s and early 40s.
- You Can Have Cancer in the Future
Too much red meat and processed meat can also increase the chances of colorectal cancer, as well as stomach cancer. These kinds of meat take too much time to be digested and processed inside the stomach, which causes turmoil for our digestive system, leading to different health problems. In the same way, processed meat uses a number of chemicals when they go through curing and smoking, and this is also harmful to our digestion.
If you are in the habit of eating processed meat regularly, your stomach may already be in a lot of distress that you are not aware of.
- You’ll Be Dehydrated
A high-protein diet with too much meat can mean that your kidney is producing a more concentrated form of urine, which causes dehydration. Dehydration may seem like a small physical problem, but it can also mean low energy levels, increased food cravings and appetite, damage your skin and cause muscle cramps, as well as damage your kidneys in the long run.
- You Might Have a Bad Body Odor
People who eat more meat than they eat fruits and vegetables have a more intense, pungent body odor than people who have a balanced diet. You might hide this problem with strong deodorants and perfumes, but too much meat can make your natural body odor more overpowering and unattractive to other people.
- You Can Have Constant Headaches
If you have regular headaches, it can be because your body is dehydrated, which can be a side effect of eating too much meat. We need whole grains and other carbohydrates as fuel for our brain, and without a balanced diet, it is possible to face poor mental function and headaches.
- You Can Have Vision Loss
A diet of too much meat can also mean early onset of vision loss, an acceleration of age-related macular degeneration that we usually see in our late 50s. This is also one of the most common reasons for blindness in Americans as they grow older, as the saturated fat in processed meat can be harmful to the blood vessels in our eyes.
Lean meat in moderation can be very healthy for our body, especially in the formation of muscles. However, it is meat in excess – especially red meat and processed meat, that are harmful. For better health, what we need to do is to limit our intake of red and processed meat, and only include lean meat.
