The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) has called on governments around the world to promote the benefits of animal-sourced foods.
The FAO, which is the UN’s agency for tackling hunger and improving nutrition and food security globally, said today (Tuesday, April 25) that meat, eggs, and milk are essential sources of nutrients, especially for the most vulnerable groups in society.
A new report from the FAO states that “much-needed” nutrients contained in animal-sourced foods “cannot be easily obtained from plant-based foods”.
These nutrients, the report said, are “particularly vital during key life stages, such as pregnancy and lactation, childhood, adolescence, and older age”.
The report is titled Contribution of terrestrial animal source food to healthy diets for improved nutrition and health outcomes.
The FAO calls the report “the most comprehensive analysis yet” of the benefits and risks of consuming animal-sourced foods. It is based on data and evidence from more than 500 scientific papers and some 250 policy documents.
According to the study, meat, eggs, and milk provide a range of important macro-nutrients, such as protein, fats and carbohydrates, and micronutrients that are difficult to obtain from plant-based foods in the required quality and quantity.
Some of the necessary nutrients provided by food sourced from terrestrial (land-based) animals include high quality protein; several essential fatty acids; iron; calcium; zinc; selenium; vitamin B12; choline; and a number of compounds including carnitine, creatine, and taurine.
These all have “important health and development functions”, the FAO said.
The report outlined that deficiencies in iron and vitamin A are among the most common deficiencies in the world, particularly in children and pregnant women.
Globally, more than one in every two preschool-aged children (about 372 million children) and some 1.2 billion women of reproductive age suffer from a lack of iron and vitamin A, as well as zinc.
Of those children affected, three quarter of them live in south and east Asia, the pacific region, and sub-Saharan Africa.
According to the report, animal-sourced foods, when consumed as part of a healthy diet, can help with meeting the nutritional targets related to reducing stunting and wasting among children under five years of age; low birthweight; anaemia in women of reproductive age; and obesity and non-communicable disease in adults.
However, the FAO also said that the livestock sector must still contribute to addressing challenges, particularly in relation to environmental issues of deforestation, land use change, greenhouse gas emissions, unsustainable water use, and pollution.
Other challenges for the global livestock sector to face, according to the FAO, are herd management, animal health, and, in some parts of the world, social issues related to livestock farming.
In terms of the health risks of these foods, the FAO report said that, while consuming processed red meat can increase chances of chronic disease outcomes, consuming unprocessed red meat in moderate amounts (up to 71g/day) is considered safe with regard to chronic disease outcomes.
Meanwhile, evidence linking milk, eggs, or poultry to disease is either inconclusive (in the case of milk) or non-significant (in the case of eggs and poultry).
The FAO called on governments around the world to update national dietary guidelines to consider, where appropriate, how meat, eggs and milk can contribute to specific nutrient requirements during the life course of humans.