FAO Identifies Meat, Eggs, and Milk as Most Vital Sources of Nutrients

Meat, eggs, and milk are vital sources of the necessary nutrients that cannot be provided by plant-based foods. This finding is based on the report titled Contribution of Terrestrial Animal Source Food to Healthy Diets for Improved Nutrition and Health Outcomes released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The report provides the most comprehensive analysis yet of the benefits and risks of consuming animal source foods based on evidences from over 500 scientific papers and approximately 250 policy documents.

“Meat, eggs and milk provide a range of important macro-nutrients such as protein, fats and carbohydrates and micro-nutrients that are difficult to obtain from plant-based foods in the required quality and quantity, the report says. High quality protein, a number of essential fatty-acids, iron, calcium, zinc, selenium, Vitamin B12, choline and bioactive compounds like carnitine, creatine, taurine are provided by foods from terrestrial animals and have important health and developmental functions,” FAO explains in their news release about the report.

Meat, eggs, and milk are particularly necessary during the key life stages including pregnancy and lactation, childhood, adolescence, and old age.

Know more from FAO News and Media or download the FAO report.